Origins The unit's origins can be traced to 9 August 1946, when an
Army Air Forces Douglas C-47 Skytrain departed
Tulln Air Base near
Vienna, Austria, on a scheduled courier run that would take it to
Venice, Italy, then south to
Rome. These flights were routine, and this aircraft had three passengers besides the crew and cargo. As the C-47 flew toward Venice, it encountered heavy weather, including an undercast, and, unknown to its crew, blundered into
Yugoslav airspace for several minutes. Before long Yugoslav
Yakovlev Yak-3 fighters shot the C-47 down. The pilot crash-landed and all the people aboard survived but were interned. This caused an immediate uproar from the US government, and stern statements were issued to Yugoslav prime minister
Josip Broz (Tito) about immediate release and access to the crash site. Talks were underway when, on 19 August, incredibly, almost the same exact event occurred again. Another C-47 courier aircraft was shot down by Yugoslav fighters in the same area. This time the crew was not so fortunate and all aboard perished. Under threat of US cutoff of aid to Yugoslavia, Tito yielded, the interned Americans were released, and some compensation paid to the next-of-kin of the dead personnel. Relative calm ensued between the US and Yugoslavia, but a question lingered in the minds of officials in USAFE Headquarters at Wiesbaden, Germany. How did those Yugoslav fighters, twice, find those C-47s in bad weather and shoot them down?
7405th Support Squadron The 7405th Support Squadron became the flying element of the upgraded
group, remaining at Wiesbaden as the only unit to conduct corridor collection. The 7405th was openly tasked with the courier mission to West Berlin, meaning it was to conduct daily flights to and from Tempelhof Central Airport carrying passengers and priority cargo. It was known as the "Berlin for Lunch Bunch". Under this cover the newer aircraft were to continue their collection using better sensors, including the first infrared imagery sensors. Its C-47s and RB-26s soldiered on into the late 1950s, and some C-54s until 1963. In 1959 the C-47s were supplanted by four
Convair T-29s, navigation trainers converted for courier work and vertical photography, but another generation was about to arrive. A new aircraft, a specially modified Boeing
Boeing EC-97G Stratofreighter, made its appearance in 1953. This aircraft (serial 49-2952), covertly carrying a 240-inch focal length camera, was codenamed Pie Face and was mostly used along the periphery of the satellite nations. This camera, with a 20-foot focal length, was developed by
Boston University and was installed initially in a
Convair RB-36 Peacemaker. However, it was later decided that because an overflight though the Berlin Air Corridors to Tempelhof by an RB-36 would probably be too provocative, it would be better if a transport aircraft was equipped with this huge camera. The work to remove the camera from the RB-36 and install it in the C-97 was conducted in a secure hangar at
Convair at Air Force Plant No. 4,
Carswell Air Force Base, Texas. The camera took 18 x 36-inch negatives exposed at 0.0025 seconds and could be positioned to take vertical or left or right oblique photographs through a large window which was hidden by covert doors. Under the
Big Safari program of special procurement,
E-Systems converted ten C-130A aircraft for
signals intelligence (SIGINT) duties under project Sun Valley. These C-130s replaced the RB-50Es which were modified as RB-50Gs and transferred to the Pacific. Four Soviet
MiG-17 pilots took turns firing on the unarmed C-130 when the American aircraft inadvertently penetrated Soviet airspace while on a recon mission along the Turkish-Armenian border. The C-130 had flown fewer than 200 hours when it was shot down. and capable of carrying P-2s, K-17, K-37, K-38, or T-17 cameras in the bomb bay which could be interchanged according to the aircraft's mission. The intended mission of Project Heart Throb aircraft included day and night, high and low, and visual and photographic reconnaissance. The RB-57A was unarmed. It was painted with a high gloss black paint which was intended to minimize detection by searchlights. The crew was two—one pilot and one photo-navigator. The 7407th flew between 16 and 20 sorties before it was closed down. These sorties were flown over Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Yugoslavia between September 1955 and Aug 1956 and were usually fairly shallow penetrations. Many sorties were tracked by
Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-15s or
Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-17s, but these aircraft lacked sufficient performance to pose a significant threat to the high-flying RB-57As. It is possible that one of these planes was shot down by a surface-to-air missile during the
Hungarian Revolution of 1956, after which Heartthrob operations ended. Four RB-57s were sent to the
6021st Reconnaissance Squadron at Yokota Air Base, Japan in early November 1956. Two other B-57s, designated RB-57A-2 were modified with a bulbous nose containing AN/APS-60 mapping radar and a SIGINT direction finder system in 1957 under project SARTAC. It is known that they carried a high-capacity data tape recorder in the bomb bay to store intelligence data obtained during sorties, and they were also equipped with doppler navigation radar. The aircraft and their missions were very secret and little information about them was ever released. The overflight operations these aircraft conducted are still classified, however, one details of one particular flight in 1956 have leaked out. On this sortie the pilot of 53–1551 took off from a base in Turkey to photograph a rocket base deep inside the Soviet Union. The RF-100A was quickly picked up by Soviet radar and, as the target was at the extreme range of the aircraft, the pilot had no option but to fly a virtually straight track. As a consequence the Soviets soon determined the intended target. Throughout the mission, the pilot was faced with the unnerving spectacle of a never-ending stream of Soviet interceptor fighters attempting to bring down the RF-100A by firing a variety of machine-guns, cannons and missiles at the aircraft. What actually happened is still uncertain. There were reports that the aircraft had been shot down by a Soviet
S-75 Dvina Surface-to-air missile, but at the time, the official statement by the USAF was that the aircraft crew had probably perished from an oxygen system failure, since it took over an hour for the aircraft to spiral down from altitude and fall into the Black Sea. Although searches for the wreckage continued through 28 December, only small bits and pieces of it were ever found. However, there were also reports that the two crewmembers were captured alive by the Soviets, with their ultimate fate being uncertain.
Downsizing of the 7499th All along, the 7405th and its sister squadrons were also flying peripheral reconnaissance missions throughout Europe and, increasingly, the Middle East, but beginning in the late 1960s
Strategic Air Command Boeing RC-135s assumed a greater share of the peripheral strategic reconnaissance mission and on 30 June 1974 the 7499th Group and the 7406th and 7407th squadrons were inactivated. However, the 7405th Support Squadron, redesignated the
7405th Operations Squadron, and continued its mission because the Berlin Air Corridor missions were unique and no RC-135s would be flying to West Berlin. Therefore, the 7405th Operations Squadron and its "Berlin for Lunch Bunch" C-130s continued this unique task, with the squadron being directly assigned to Headquarters, USAFE.
7575th Operations Group In late December 1975, the 7405th flew its last EC-97G mission from Wiesbaden Air Base when the USAF turned the base over to the
United States Army and moved its operations to Rhein-Main Air Base. There, it acquired three heavily modified C-130E Hercules, airlifters in name only. By this time, technology improvements were such that each aircraft could carry a variety of sensors with advanced capabilities. Thus, if one sensor type detected a new and unusual activity, the aircrew could almost instantly bring other sensors to bear on it. This ability provided lucrative intelligence time and time again. On 1 July 1977, the squadron was assigned to the newly organized 7575th Operations Group' at Rhein-Main. Along with the 7575th Group, the 7580th Operations Squadron was activated on 1 July 1977. The 7580th was a non-flying squadron staffed with C-130 electronic warfare officers and aircraft maintenance personnel. In 1977, when the 7575th Operations Group was formed at, USAFE realigned the
7th Special Operations Squadron under its control, until March 1983, when the 7th transferred from USAFE to
Military Airlift Command. The 7th operated four
MC-130E Combat Talon Is (64-0523, 64–0555, 64–0561 and 64-0566). Although even today very little is known about this special unit, the mere fact that the USAF information service always answers 'no comment' to any questions about its role is sufficient to allow the tentative conclusion that clandestine operations are involved, with the squadron performing undisclosed missions under the direction of the DCS Operations of HQ USAFE. The 7th's MC-130Es were spotted in every corner of Europe. These sightings were perhaps connected with
NATO marine unit exercises with which thesquadron was also involved. One of the most bizarre sightings dates from January 1976 when a traveler from West Berlin saw a low-flying C-130 over the Transitstrasse, the transit route, near
Magdeburg in the German Democratic Republic. Flying at an estimated fifty meters over the motorway, the Hercules disappeared northwards at great speed. It was certainly an MC-130E from the 7th but what it was doing in East Germany is not so certain. Granted it was flying perfectly legally in the Berlin Air Corridor at the time of the sighting, the fact that it was a black MC-130E from the 7th SOS does make one a trifle suspicious. The 7405th's Berlin Air Corridor/Control Zone collection missions, with their pivot at Tempelhof Central Airport, continued through the 1980s. Then came the 1989 collapse of the Warsaw Pact and the fall of the
Berlin Wall; the 1990
German reunification, and the phase-out of Soviet armed forces from Eastern Europe. The 7405th helped monitor this until shortly before Germany was reunified. On 29 September 1990, the last C-130 collection mission was flown; then, on 3 October, the Berlin Air Corridors and Control Zone officially disappeared. From 1946 to 1990 the "Berlin for Lunch Bunch" had flown over 10,000 missions to West Berlin. Now it had flown its last, Germany and the city of Berlin were again unified, and the 7405th Operations Squadron faded into military aviation and intelligence history. Its mission was completed. The 7405th Operations Squadron was inactivated on 1 January 1991; the 7575th Operations Group and 7580th Operations Squadron were inactivated on 31 March 1991. ==Lineage==