1958 C-118 shootdown over Azerbaijan

On June 27, 1958, a C-118 cargo aircraft of the United States Air Force at Wiesbaden, "en route from Wiesbaden to Teheran and Pakistan on a flight carrying cargo for CIA," strayed in bad weather from Nicosia into Soviet Armenia, where three MiG-17s fired on it and set the left wing alight. Five of the nine crew bailed out; the rest landed the burning plane at a small airstrip at Gendarkh in Soviet Azerbaijan. The parachutists "were surrounded by Soviet peasants, some of whom beat and struck at the crew members. One of the men was taken by the mob to a telephone pole and narrowly escaped hanging before being rescued by the Soviet military."¹

Baku

The crew were taken by way of Stepanakert and Yevlakh to Baku and interrogated from June 30 to July 3 in the headquarters of the MVD. One interrogator, Vladimir Bourdine, had served with the Soviet purchasing commission in the United States from 1943 to 1945 and as first secretary in Ottawa from 1949 to 1955, and in 1955 had interpreted for Nikita Khrushchev with Jawaharlal Nehru. Two of the crew "were separated from the group and given preferred treatment, apparently with the intention of developing them for information purposes." The crew were handed to the American air attaché at Astara on the Iranian border on July 7.¹

The Debriefing

A team from headquarters, "including a medical officer, an Air Maritime officer, and two representatives of the Security Office," had gone to Wiesbaden in anticipation of the release. The crew were debriefed there jointly by the CIA and the Air Force, briefed "as to the text and limitations to be observed" before press interviews, at which agency men were present "under appropriate cover arrangements," and flown to Washington on July 18 for debriefings that ended on August 6 and ran to "some 7,000 to 9,000 pages." Two of the men "were extremely knowledgeable of highly sensitive Agency operational activities and of the identities of numerous CIA personnel"; one "was knowledgeable of CIA operational activities on a world-wide basis." Two briefcases of classified material were believed burned in the aircraft. An address book "containing several names, addresses and telephone numbers of CIA personnel and cover units," with the agency's open telephone number EX 3-6115 written under the owner's name, was taken by peasants and returned by the Baku commission unexamined. "Several of the crew destroyed incriminating building passes and notations in their wallets while on their way down in their parachutes."¹

The Office of Security concluded on November 1, 1958, that "the Soviets 'missed' on the true nature of the flight and personnel of the C-118," that "no major compromises occurred," that the crew "were all in uniform and not in mixed civilian and Air Force clothing, which properly established their cover," and that the early Soviet acknowledgment of the landing, together with American pressure over nine Army men held in East Germany after a helicopter landing, "tended to take the 'play' away from the MVD and military intelligence." "All possible steps were taken during the period immediately preceding and immediately after the release of the crew to effect the minimum of publicity."¹