When RCAF fighters strayed across the Iron Curtain...

And other curiosities from the history of NATO's early military exercises.

On July 29, 1953, NATO radar stations picked up signs of an unidentified aircraft entering West Germany.

An American control centre contacted the Royal Canadian Air Force fighter wing based at Zweibrücken, Germany, calling on them to intercept and identify the mysterious aircraft.

In response, No. 3 Fighter Wing “scrambled” four Sabre jet fighters.

“Alert crew at No. 3 Fighter Wing (Royal Canadian Air Force), Zweibrücken, Germany waits to scramble as Sabres fly overhead.” This is the same Wing scrambled in the episode recounted here. (This photo is from Leslie Roberts, There Shall Be Wings: A History of the Royal Canadian Airforce, 1959, and is now in the public domain.) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sabrecrew.jpg

The R.C.A.F. units in NATO Europe did not have the capability to “control” Canadian fighters in these situations — that is, to direct them on an intercept course. This control had to be provided by French or American ground systems.

In this case, it was a U.S.A.F. radar site elsewhere in Germany, at Holzhausen in Bavaria, that took responsibility for controlling the Canadians in the air.

But the radar site lost the Canadian aircraft.

Due to 'radar fade,' a phenomenon where radar signals can be disrupted for various reasons, the Sabres disappeared from radar.

Of course the Canadian pilots did not remain fixed in the air, but instead kept flying without ground control.

When the radar station located the Canadians again, the jet fighters were 30 miles inside the Czechoslovak border, and on the wrong side of the Iron Curtain.

The Sabres were recalled immediately, and returned to base “without further incident.”

The accidental foray across the border led to Canadian frustration with the United States rather than a Cold War crisis. Canada and the U.S. had already reached “a firm understanding” that Canadian aircraft should not be used for “intercept or identification purposes” over what was then, still, “occupied Germany.” (And Canada had no occupation rights.) This incident breached that agreement and Air Vice-Marshal Hugh Campbell, the Air Officer Commanding of the R.C.A.F.’s 1 Air Division in Europe, took it up with American commanders.

Campbell noted, however, that there would be no repercussions from “the Russians.”

As the Soviets had not scrambled any fighters to intercept the Canadian aircraft, he was assured that even if the Canadian planes appeared on a Soviet radar screen, “they [the Soviets] will be unable to identify a radar plot as being RCAF aircraft.”

You can read Campbell’s description of the details here.

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This curious incident is just one of hundreds of fascinating details of Canadian and NATO history that appear in a massive new briefing book at Canada Declassified, “NATO Exercises, 1952-1962”. The briefing book and its selected documents and extensive annotation were prepared by Chiara Barsanti, an undergraduate student of Economics and International Relations at the University of Toronto.

The documents Chiara selected range from tales of a Canadian sailor stealing a bicycle while on shore leave, which led to a Pravda article and other Soviet organs suggesting Canadians were terrorizing the good people of Norway, all the way to plans for Exercise Lion Bert, in which “the selective use of nuclear weapons is envisaged.”

This is an excellent collection of records for anyone seeking to learn more about NATO’s history, and especially Canada’s history in NATO in this first decade of NATO’s military exercises.

These documents all come from a large release from Library Archives Canada: Five volumes of External Affairs records titled, appropriately, “NATO - Military, naval and air exercises.” There are 1,118 documents from these volumes now available on Canada Declassified.

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If the granular details of allied military exercises are not your thing, then you may enjoy the art from some of these NATO exercises.

(Below are excerpts from CSC 1505:1).

The programme cover for SHAPEX 60. Interesting flight path…

This is how you manage an international alliance: With an interpretation selector! The programme included detailed instructions to select a delegate’s preferred language. This is the most “NATO” thing, ever.

A handy little map to get from NATO Headquarters to SHAPE Headquarters — when both were still in France. Not to scale.

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April 2024 marks both the centenary of the Royal Canadian Air Force and the 75^th anniversary of the treaty that created NATO.

The April-May issue of Canada’s History covers both important subjects. I have two pieces in the magazine: The main one, “NATO 75” looks mostly at NATO in Europe.  But because an important part of NATO’s history, and Canada’s history in NATO, occurred not in Europe but in Afghanistan, I also have a shorter piece titled“Canada and NATO in Afghanistan.” I think the staff did a great job with these pieces - tonnes of photos!

You can learn more about the magazine and Canada’s National History Society here.