1958 C-130 shootdown incident

The 1958 C-130 shootdown incident was the shooting down of an American Lockheed C-130A-II-LM reconnaissance aircraft which had intruded into Soviet airspace during a reconnaissance mission along the Turkish-Armenian border.

Incident

On September 2, 1958, a Lockheed C-130A-II-LM (s/n 56-0528), from the 7406th Support Squadron, departed Incirlik Airbase in Turkey on a reconnaissance mission along the Turkish-Armenian border. It was to fly a course parallel to the Soviet frontier, but not approach the border closer than . The crew reported passing over Trabzon in Turkey at and then acknowledged a weather report from Trabzon, but that was the last communication received from the flight. It was later intercepted and shot down by four Soviet MiG-17s north-west of Yerevan. The six flight crew were confirmed dead when their remains were repatriated to the United States, but the 11 intelligence-gathering personnel on board have never been acknowledged by Soviet / Russian authorities. After the fall of the Soviet Union a US excavation team found hundreds of skeletal fragments; two remains were identified. A group burial of the 17 crew remains was held at Arlington National Cemetery.

Reasons for entering Soviet airspace

The exact cause of why the aircraft strayed into Soviet airspace is unknown, but according to the Aviation Safety Network, the crew may have confused a radio beacon in the USSR with similar frequencies to the Turkish beacons they were briefed to use, or it may have been a deliberate maneuver to obtain better data.

When two NSA cryptologists, William Hamilton Martin and Bernon F. Mitchell defected to the Soviet Union in 1960, they listed the C-130 flight as one of their reasons. They contended that it was designed to gain an understanding of Soviet defenses, and that it therefore represented an American interest in attacking the Soviets rather than defending against them. James Bamford agrees with their analysis.

Memorial

In 1993, Armenian sculptor Martin Kakosian unveiled a khachkar, a traditional Armenian cross stone, at the site of the aircraft's crash in the village of Nerkin Sasnashen. Kakosian had witnessed the crash as a college student on a field trip in 1958. This khachkar later fell over and cracked, and a joint US-Armenian memorial was built to commemorate the site. In 2011, the US Army Office of Defense Cooperation renovated the village kindergarten in appreciation of the villagers' commemoration of the downed airmen.

References

External links

NSA website of C-130 shootdown


at ArlingtonCemetery.net, an unofficial website{{Better source needed, date=January 2021, reason= WP:SPS, provides pictures, but does not have attribution for the text

Violations of Soviet airspace
Soviet Union–United States relations
Aviation accidents and incidents in the Soviet Union
Cold War military history of the United States
1958 in the Soviet Union
1958 in Turkey
September 1958 events in Europe
Accidents and incidents involving the Lockheed C-130 Hercules
20th-century aircraft shootdown incidents