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Summary of Initial Missions
In the period from 20 June to 10 July 1956 the Soviet Bloc air defense
system as subjected to eight penetrations of an unprecedented nature, seven
occurring within a period of only eight days. It must be remembered that
COMIN provides the only basis of judging the performance of the Soviet
system. This is important because it is clear from RECAL material that
considerable air defense business is conducted over landlines and thus not
observed by COMINT. However, some tentative conclusions may be drawn from
these initial flights and these are indicated as follows:
:
1. In spite of the fact that these missions come as a surprise,
none of them went undetected. This is clear evidence that their
radar coverage extends above (72,000) feet.
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2.
By 5 July 1956, the fourth flight, the USSR was aware
of the purpose of the missions and were taking counter action.
One 
positive action was the standdown of civil flights while the
mission 
aircraft was over the USSR, and a second action which is
believed 
related is the moving of MIG-19 aircraft into East
Germany 
and Poland on 7 July 1956. Also MIG-19's were moved
into Hungary 
at about this time.
3. The performance of the Soviet system on the 5 July mission,
2014, 
was indeed curious
. While the action evident from COMINT
is 
not clear an explanation which appears to fit the known facts
is offered as 
follows: As a result of the previous missions, the
Soviets had concluded 
the essential facts concerning the missions,
i.e., that they 
were for reconnaissance, that they flew above 65,000
feet, and that a 
penetration as deep as Moscow was possible.
probably surmised 
that the 5 July mission was headed for Moscow when
They
the track 
appeared on a northeasterly heading. The loss of the
target 
when it entered Soviet territory was probably deliberate and
the red herring
" track returning to the west was either a dodge
of a 
convenience to avoid broadcasting a track for all the system
to see that a "hostile or 
intruder" was coming over Moscow with no
means 
available to stop it. This idea is supported by the use
of a raid 
number assigned in the region just beyond the point
where the track had 
been "lost". In addition, the track was not
labeled "hostile 
or intruder" when it was broadcast after it
had passed beyond Moscow. The reporting of the track when it did
appear 
was only by Moscow and it has been suggested that other
stations had been instructed not to broadcast the track. Further, it may
or may not be a coincidence that 
the height broadcast was almost
exactly 
half of the true altitude of the mission aircraft, but on
the next 
missions, four days later, the altitude reporting was
consistently 
above 50,000 feet.
4. By 9 July 1956, in addition to the evident recognition of
the great height of the mission flights, tracking was better and
in 
general the performance of the warning system was much improved.
5. The next day, 10 July 1956, the Soviet air defense warning
system 
closed a 
3000 mile track with only two short periods of
confusion 
or track loss. Altitude reporting was over 60,000 feet
with one 
plot passed 68,800 which was only 100 feet off target.
6. The first eight missions proved that the air defense warning
system 
is deployed 
in depth. This was evident from both the continuity
of track and most 
forcefully from the ELINT data collected.
intercepts of Soviet Bloc radars operating in the 3000 mc/s band were
Some 1461
obtained by 
project ET.INT as follows: TOKEN-1331, WHIFF-37, GAGE-26,
PATTY CAKE-37, 
Other 30. These numbers cannot be equated to in-
dividual radar sets 
since the same radar may be intercepted more than
618 TOKEN 
sites were located, including 213 new sites.
343 additional TOKEN signals were identified but available information
Some
does not 
permit determination of location so that it must be con-
cluded 
that these signals include both known and new sites.
of the limitation of ELINT to the 3000 mc/s band and the Soviet
Because
practice of collocating radars on different frequencies the total
number 
of radars may be expected to be at least double the number
of sites.
chce.
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7. Confusion and track loss seemed to be related to the
presence of large numbers of fighters although the saturation point
has not been 
determined because of insufficient date.
8. The question of radars for height finding, the capabilities
of TOKEN in this role, the introduction of ROCK CAKES and later
developments are discussed in another section. It is believed,
however, that 
these missions were a catalyst in the introduction
of ROCK CAKES.
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