The Cold War

The Cold War

For those of you that don’t know, the cold war was a period of tension between the Soviet Union and The United States from 1947-1991. The cold war never officially got hot but there were plenty of times where things almost spiraled out of control, and times when they got hot by proxy such as the Vietnam War and the Soviets Unions war and invasion of Afghanistan. Both the United States and the Soviet Union supplied and supported each others enemies in each of those conflicts. The Cuban Missile Crisis is an example of just how high the tensions were between the Soviets and the Americans. For nearly fifty years the world lived on the brink of atomic destruction. Nuclear proliferation being the prime sources of conflict between both nations. This lead to the development of the aptly named nuclear doctrine and military strategy, called MAD or Mutually Assured Destruction. Put another way, each side prepared and developed nuclear weapons to ensure that if one side did happen to launch a nuclear weapon at the other, that they could respond in kind. This doctrine lead to the development of over one hundred and twenty one thousand nuclear weapons between 1945 and 1991. Now global thermonuclear war, don’t get me wrong is really interesting and I am fairly certain that I can dedicate a week to the amount of times the United States and Soviet Union almost destroyed the world. However the espionage and James Bond type stories is what I find to be the most interesting. The United States and Soviet Union throughout the forty four years of the cold war developed incredibly innovative ways of spying on each other. 

Julius and Ethel Rosenberg

I have a feeling the names Julius and Ethel Rosenberg sound familiar to a lot of people but not too many people know exactly how significant a role they played in the early stages of the cold war. The Rosenbergs were American citizens that spied on behalf of the Soviet government. They provided top secret intelligence to the soviets regarding American radars, submarine sonar systems, jet propulsion, and nuclear weapons secrets and designs. The Soviets were on track and pace to develop their own nuclear weapons, however the conservative consensus is that the Rosenbergs and the Atomic Spy Rings, saved the Soviets two to five years of development. 

The Space Race

The United States LOST the space race. The United States won the moon race by landing a man on the moon in 1969. The Soviet Union handily beat the United States by successfully launching Sputnik into orbit on October 4th, 1957. They then beat the US again by launching Yuri Gagarin into orbit on April 12th, 1961. On May 5th, 1961 the United States hastily launched Alan Shepard into space on a sub orbital flight. Meaning he went straight up and came right back down. Conceding space to the Russians was not an option. Launching Shepard was a huge risk because the Redstone rocket was not fully tested yet. It was important that the United States show that we weren’t technologically behind the Soviets so far that we couldn’t even get a person into space. It was almost a full year before John Glenn became the first American to orbit the earth. However in the time period between Shepard and Glenn the Soviets launched numerous manned missions and satellites into orbit. 

Having been badly beaten the Americans decided to rebrand the space race and make it a competition for both sides. The moon race is what it became in September of 1962 when President Kennedy declared “We Choose to go to the Moon.” Still it took until about 1965 for the United States to catch up to the Soviets. They were the first to successfully complete a spacewalk and even were the first to launch a woman into space. Not many people know this but Valentina Tereshkova was the first woman to launch into orbit on June 16th, 1963. She orbited the Earth forty eight times on that mission and spent three days in space. She is the only woman to ever have flown in space alone. 

The Blackbird

The United States and Russians loved spying on each other possibly more than they loved creating nuclear weapons. Each side did whatever they possibly could to spy on the other. One of the primary means of spying was aerial surveillance. The United States excelled at designing and flying planes that could take pictures of Soviet points of interest. Whereas the Soviets excelled at satellite photography. Each had their advantages and disadvantages. The disadvantages of satellites is that the window of opportunity to take pictures was intermittent because it all depended on the orbit of the satellite. Also photographs were taken from a much higher altitude so the fidelity wasn’t as clear. Finally since digital photography didn’t exist yet, the only way to retrieve photographs was to eject them from the satellite and have them reenter the atmosphere in specially designed canisters. That sounds extraordinarily difficult but the Russians perfected it and were very good at it. 

The Americans on the other hand liked a more aggressive approach. The United States designed one of the fastest and highest flying planes ever. The U-2 spy plane, was designed by Lockheed and used by the CIA from the late 1950’s until the mid 1970’s. The theory behind the use of the plane was to fly so high and so fast that the even if the Soviets could see it they couldn’t shoot it down even if they wanted. The U-2 would fly at 70,000 feet at over 400mph. The Americans thought the plane was invulnerable. That was until 1960 when Gary Powers U-2 was shot down over the Soviet Union. That leads us to the advantages and disadvantages of overflight reconnaissance. Whats preferable about flying over targets is that you can get high fidelity and accurate photographs. Also you can have almost real time photographs because once the plane returned home the photos could be developed immediately. The disadvantage is that they can be shot down. Once the Russians developed surface to air missiles that could shoot down U-2’s it became a lot more difficult to spy on the Soviets. The Americans decided that they needed to develop a plane that could fly faster than a missile. 

Lockheed was tasked with designing a plane that could do just that. Fly so fast that a missile couldn’t catch up with it. Lockheed delivered on that promise and released the A-12 in 1962. Its service lasted from 1963-1968, when it was replaced by the SR-71 Blackbird. The Blackbird was a variant of the A-12 it just had upgraded aerodynamics, a higher fuel capacity, and better cameras. Its top speed was an incredible mach 3.35. That translates to around 2500 miles per hour. It also had a ceiling of 85,000 feet. This means that no missile could even come close to the Blackbird. If the plane detected a radar lock instead of evasive maneuvers, they would simply throttle up the aircraft and outrun the incoming missile. The SR-71 Blackbird is one of the most extraordinary and impressive aircraft to ever fly. Just to give you an idea of how fast the Blackbird is, it once set a record flying from Los Angeles to Washington D.C, in one hour and seven minutes. If you check the flying record books, the SR-71 has just about all of them. 

Needless to say the Blackbird was one the United States most important and prized secrets. The Soviets wanted just a peek at this plane in hopes that they could copy the design or just even get an idea of how it works. So they launched a spy satellite with the purpose of getting pictures of the Blackbird. The Soviets knew where the plane was held and they knew when it would be outside ready to fly. The Americans however, knew that the Soviets launched this satellite and planned the test flights of the plane around the orbit of the satellite. What the Americans didn’t know about this satellite was that it didn’t take ordinary photographs. It took thermal photographs. Because the Blackbird was made out of titanium alloys it cast a rather cool shadow on the ground. So on a day they knew the Soviets were gonna fly over the Americans rolled the Blackbird into its hanger thinking they were in the clear. Unfortunately the Soviets were able ascertain the shape and size of the aircraft based on the outline of the shadow that was left on hot New Mexico sand. That game of cat and mouse is the Cold War in a nutshell. 

Not a Joke

I mentioned that some of the anecdotes from the cold war are funny, or at least they would be if the result wasn’t thermonuclear war. But two examples of espionage I discovered in my research really stood out for me as quite amusing or downright ridiculous. The first starts at the center of the Pentagon. 

Russian spy satellites were keyed in on all the hot spots in the United States. Washington DC being a prime example of a place the Soviet Union wanted all the pictures they could get, particularly the Pentagon. The Pentagon was and still is the headquarters of all military operations for the United States. During the Cold War both the United States and the Soviets had secret bases and bunkers to ensure that if a nuclear war was to break out they could run the military from multiple places around the country. Now the Pentagon was too obvious a place to keep a military bunker, or was it? Soviet spy satellites noticed a lot of activity at the center of the Pentagon. They even saw many high ranking government officials and military leaders exit and enter the building at the center of the Pentagon. The Soviets assumed that this heavily trafficked area was the entrance to a top secret nuclear bunker. Their response was point two nuclear weapons at the Pentagon just to ensure that it would be taken out in the event of a nuclear war. As if one wouldn’t have been enough. The truth is that at the center of the Pentagon, there is a pavilion with a hot dog stand. It was simply a place where everyone from around the Pentagon would get lunch or snacks. 

Operation Acoustic Kitty. Thats not made up, that is the name of a very real, very top secret, and very ludicrous operation that the United States planned on initiating in the late 1960’s. This was a twenty million dollar project to transform a cat into an eavesdropping device. The CIA got a cat, surgically placed a microphone in the ear of the cat, sewed a receiver into the base of its skull and hid a small wire antenna under its fur. The cats mission was to spy on two high ranking Russian officials, that worked at the Soviet Embassy in DC. These men used to frequent a specific bench in a park near the embassy. CIA agents released the cat into the park and even received some garbled transmission, unfortunately the cat got scared and darted into the middle of the street and was hit by a cab. 

The End

The fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 effectively ended the cold war. Conservative estimates have concluded that around eleven trillion dollars was spent between the United States and the Soviet Union on weapons, war, espionage, and research. I can’t even imagine what the 20th century might have looked like if we didn’t weaponize cats and target hot dog stands. I guess we will never know.