From: skunk-works-digest-owner@harbor.ecn.purdue.edu To: skunk-works-digest@harbor.ecn.purdue.edu Subject: Skunk Works Digest V4 #62 Reply-To: skunk-works-digest@harbor.ecn.purdue.edu Errors-To: skunk-works-digest-owner@harbor.ecn.purdue.edu Precedence: bulk Skunk Works Digest Saturday, 13 November 1993 Volume 04 : Number 062 In this issue: CBS News... late Re: CBS TONIGHT! Mach 3.5+ Re: CBS News... late Interesting U2 tidbit from the net See the end of the digest for information on subscribing to the skunk-works or skunk-works-digest mailing lists and on how to retrieve back issues. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Rick Pavek Date: Fri, 12 Nov 1993 02:08:06 -0800 Subject: CBS News... late I'm told that late this evening... at around 1:30 am PST, CBS had a story about how a strange plane was sighted just before Bagdhad was attacked. Anybody hear it? Was triangle shaped, and very fast... Rick SR-75/XR-7 _|_*O*_|_ | Rick Pavek \ __|__ / | HA!! kuryakin@halcyon.com \_______/_(O)_\_______/ | Ruby - \___/---\___/ | Galactic Gumshoe ------------------------------ From: steveje@redeye.wv.tek.com Date: Fri, 12 Nov 93 08:02:41 -0800 Subject: Re: CBS TONIGHT! > > CBS News is running their Aurora story right NOW. > ... > -dean Thanks for the early warning! Never would have seen it without the early info., the whole family got to see it. Steve Jensen ------------------------------ From: Date: Fri, 12 Nov 93 12:58:47 -0500 Subject: Mach 3.5+ I believe a couple of my professors here at U of M. Did a study a couple of years ago(informally) on the Mach cone at the front of the engine, and estimated that Mach 3.4 would cause the shock wave to enter the engine and cause a compressor stall(?). Just my $.02. Regards, Matt Aero, University of Michigan ------------------------------ From: larry@ichips.intel.com Date: Fri, 12 Nov 1993 10:55:55 -0800 Subject: Re: CBS News... late Rick writes: >I'm told that late this evening... at around 1:30 am PST, CBS had a story >about how a strange plane was sighted just before Bagdhad was >attacked. Anybody hear it? Yes. The person that reported this to you was probably watching a rebroadcast of the AURORA + Groom Lake + SR-75/XR-7 segment that was broadcast earlier in the evening on CBS World News with Dan Rather and Connie Chung. The segment started with a camera close-up on the XR-7 saying "This is AURORA ... it can get from the U.S. to Iraq in 2 hours ...". So I'm fairly certain that is what you got a report about. Larry ------------------------------ From: Bruce Henderson Date: Fri, 12 Nov 93 12:04:16 -0800 Subject: Interesting U2 tidbit from the net I recently bought the book "Tower of Secrets" by Victor Sheymov. It is his story of his work as a cipher technical expert for the KGB, his growing disillusionment with the system, and his successful escape with his family from the USSR. Anyways, there is a passage in this book which contains some new (at least to me) information about the Gary Powers incident. In the following narrative, quoted without permission, the main speaker is a Soviet Air Force colonel, who is talking to Victor. "Well, it seems that during the May Day parade in Red Square, Nikita Khrushchev was standing on the Mausoleum in the parade lineup as usual. What wasn't usual was the figure everyone noticed behind the lineup moving toward Khrushchev. He saw the man too. Apparently, he forgot to turn off the microphone in front of him -- the one that was to broadcast his greetings to the crowd assembled for the parade. The mike picked up Khrushchev's voice, loud and clear: `Well, did you shoot it down?' The question reverberated throughout Red Square and all over the country as well, on TV and radio. Nobody had a clue what he was talking about. At the time, in the confusion of the festivities, nobody took much notice. In subsequent TV reruns, that incident was edited out. "What Khrushchev had been referring to was the U-2, piloted by Gary Powers. Khrushchev had been absolutely furious about the American U-2 forays over Soviet territory. They were not only a political embarras- ment, they also jeopardized his strategic ICBM game by disclosing the real strengths and weaknesses of the Soviet strategic posture. He ordered the flights stopped by any possible means. Khrushchev's assess- ment, which later proved correct, was that if one U-2 was shot down, the tresspassing would halt. But given the Soviet technology at the time, shooting down a U-2 was exceedingly difficult. "However -- and this will interest you -- we had one important thing going for us: we knew the exact flight plan of every U-2 invading Soviet airspace several days in advance. "That's pretty good." "Yes, but it still wasn't enough to bring a plane down. So an elite squadron of top pilots was assembled. Their aircraft were specially enhanced for the job, but to no avail. The problem was the inaccuracy of the ground guidance given to the pilots. Even when this was preset for a convenient point on the U-2's flight path, by the time they could see the U-2, the pilots found they were out of missile firing range. To close in on the target, they needed a booster. But the booster could only be turned on at a low altitude, so by the time they had dived down to where they could turn the booster on, the U-2 was long gone. The operational logic was that according to the law of probabilities, sooner or later a U-2 would run out of luck. If we hadn't had access to the flight plans, it would have taken nothing short of a technological breakthrough to shoot down the U-2. Meanwhile, Khrushchev was furious and insisted that a U-2 be shot down immediately. And, as it happened, there was a breakthrough -- of sorts. "There were very few ground-to-air missiles at the time; and their ground radars weren't good enough to guide a missile to the high-flying U-2. However, it was reckoned that a ground-to-air missile could hit the plane if the plane either flew directly over the missile's ground radar, or if the plane banked and exposed more of its surface, making it easier for the radar to guide the missile. The breakthrough appa- rently came from intelligence." "What kind of breakthrough?" "We figured that the Soviet source leaking the flight information not only knew the flight plans but was also able to influence them. On this occasion the source fixed things so that one of the flights, scheduled for a major Soviet holiday, required the pilot to fly within reach of the ground-to-air missiles and execute a turn -- banking left at pre- cisely the necessary point. A perfect setup. Khrushchev had been anxiously awaiting the news of the outcome during the May Day parade." "Amazing." "The hunt wasn't a 100-percent success, however, either as a result of the usual policy of redundancy or perhaps some excessive motivation -- the squadron pilots had been promised the Hero of the Soviet Union medal for shooting down the U-2. In any event, although the interceptors were ordered to disperse just before the U-2 reached the missile site, one plane continued the pursuit. It wasn't clear if his radio malfunctioned or if the pilot, intent on being a hero, had simply ignored the recall order. His plane was shot down by the first missile, while the second one got the U-2. As you know, firing two missiles is standard operating procedure." [Note -- this part of the story has been corroborated in the book "Fulcrum" by Alexander Zuyev.] "They were pretty lucky," Victor commented. "It sounds as though the Americans had their chance. Those Soviet military pilots' radio communcations must have been scrambled, of course. I'd guess what we would call their crypto-resistance must have been pretty low -- no more than an hour. The Americans should have been able to descramble their code within that time. I think that a routine security measure, a thorough analysis of the squadron's communications after each flight, would have revealed that the pilots hunting the U-2s were the same bunch each time, regardless of the flight path. That would have tipped off the Americans that their flight plans were being leaked. From there, it would not have been too difficult to plug the leak. Obviously, they didn't make use of their opportunity, though, and Gary Powers was shot down. Quite a failure. But a nice May Day present for Nikita." This book is published by the Naval Institute Press, ISBN 1-55750-764-3. If it isn't in your local bookstore now, it probably will be soon. ------------------------------ End of Skunk Works Digest V4 #62 ******************************** To subscribe to skunk-works-digest, send the command: subscribe skunk-works-digest in the body of a message to "listserv@harbor.ecn.purdue.edu". If you want to subscribe something other than the account the mail is coming from, such as a local redistribution list, then append that address to the "subscribe" command; for example, to subscribe "local-skunk-works": subscribe skunk-works-digest local-skunk-works@your.domain.net To unsubscribe, send mail to the same address, with the command: unsubscribe skunk-works-digest in the body. 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