Back from Russia

With a perfunctory acceptance of U.S. apologies, the Russians last week turned back the nine U.S. Air Force men whose C118 (DC-6A) transport got lost in bad weather, was forced down just inside Soviet Armenia fortnight before. But the U.S. moved on from apology to strong protest when it heard the shocker in the airmen's report: their unarmed transport was shot down in an unprovoked attack by Soviet MIG interceptors.

The plane had just come out of a storm and was flying at 15,000 ft. when the interceptors showed up. Believing that he was still on the Turkish side of the Iron Curtain, the plane commander, Major Luther Lyles, thought they were Iranians or Turks, quickly changed his mind when they started firing. Lyles lowered his landing gear--"to indicate we were under their control"--and ordered everybody into chutes. Seconds later the MIGs made a second firing pass, set an engine and wing tank ablaze. Lyles gave orders to bail out, and five men did. Then he looked around for a place to set down, just made it to a 2,000-ft. Soviet air force emergency dirt landing strip. The MIGs followed the C118 down. One of them made another firing pass when the transport was at 1,000 ft.--and missed.

"New York! Chicago!" Major Lyles and his three remaining crewmen leaped out of the burning plane, were soon rounded up by Soviet troops. But the five who had bailed out safely had a far rougher time. Hundreds of copper-skinned Armenian peasants swarmed around Relief Pilot Colonel Dale Brannon, Copilots Major Robert Crans and Major Bennie Shupe, first curiously, then aggressively hostile. The peasants marched them off toward a village, began slapping, kicking, hitting them, dug into their pockets for souvenirs as they loaded them into cars and trucks. The truck carrying Major Shupe stopped beside a telephone pole. One peasant threw a grass rope over a hook high on the pole. Said Shupe: "It sure looked like a necktie party was being organized. I had no doubt they were going to hang me."

Major Shupe began yelling "Americano! Americano!" No effect. But suddenly, from somewhere in the crowd, he heard the words "New York! Chicago!" Shupe threw his head back and shouted "New York! Chicago! New York! Chicago!" He shouted every U.S. place name he could think of--"Pittsburgh! Kansas City! Kansas City! Boston! Dallas! San Francisco!" And at last the peasants, who perhaps had thought that the airmen were their old enemies, the Turks, fell back. Just before the Soviet military police arrived one of the peasants offered Shupe a drink of water. "Don't ask me why," said he afterward. "I'll never know why those words worked."

Charge It. After that the Russian treatment of the nine men got better. They were flown to Baku, were interrogated frequently (the Air Force would not let the airmen disclose the Russian questions), were fed four times a day before their release ten days later. But when the Air Force men's reports were in, the State Department fired off a protest against 1) the MIG attack upon an unarmed U.S. transport, 2) the brutal mistreatment of the airmen by the Armenian peasants. Said State: "To suggest that a slow, four-engine propeller-type unarmed aircraft would attempt to violate a heavily defended foreign area is preposterous."

But the Soviets were still not quite through. One day last week they handed the U.S. Government a bill for the cost of the food and housing of the nine airmen while they were in the U.S.S.R. The price tag: $750.

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