The Third World War: The Untold Story

What exactly happened in the next hour is not public knowledge. What is known is that just before the outbreak of war, details of Cooker’s IFF codes, operating frequencies, transmitters and receivers, all of absolutely critical importance, reached the Radar and Signals Research Establishment at Malvern in England for analysis by British scientists. According to press reports at the time, the crew of a Polish LOT TU-134 made a scheduled run from Gdansk to Copenhagen late on the evening of 27 July and the crew then asked for political asylum in Denmark. Passengers on that flight described how Soviet airmen led by a portly, noisy Colonel were allowed into the duty-free shop of the Gdansk terminal and also said that as they were taking off they saw Soviet troops replacing Polish guards and Soviet uniformed ground crew taking over from the Polish engineers in their overalls who had been examining the port wing of a Soviet military aircraft near the front of the terminal. Whether there were disaffected men among the Polish guards, or among the ground crew, or whether Major Makhov allowed his anger at the bragging behaviour of the Colonel to distract his attention from his aircraft for a few minutes we do not know. But an elderly Polish cloakroom attendant, born in the Ukraine, alleged that while he was on duty one night just before war broke out an SAF Colonel was in the lavatory in the terminal building when a highly excited Soviet airman rushed in.

“The operating and maintenance manuals have gone from the aircraft!” he is alleged to have said.

His excitement was understandable. These were classified documents of high importance. Their loss was a serious matter. He was shortly followed into the lavatory by a grim-faced Major. Unaware that the attendant could understand Russian, the three men argued furiously for several minutes about whether and how the manuals could have disappeared and who was responsible.

Then the Colonel said: “Understand one thing: NO documents have been removed from my aircraft. If it is necessary to replace certain damaged manuals on our return to base, you will do so; but if one word of this reaches the ears of the regimental commander I will personally ensure that every member of this crew sees nothing but a Gulag for the rest of his life.”

History, therefore, had almost repeated itself. In 1939 the Poles had given Enigma to the West; in 1985 they seemed to have passed over the secrets of Cooker. Because of a political commissar’s fear of his superiors, and the airmen’s fear of the commissar, it looks as if the loss was never reported. By 3 August NATO commanders began to receive complete operational and technical data on Cooker. This did not get down to squadrons for another forty-eight hours, which was only just in time.

Chapter 7: The Warsaw Pact

Soviet hopes and aspirations for a world position of compelling power had by the beginning of the 1980s passed through two phases and entered a third. In the early days of the revolution it was confidently hoped that Marxist-Leninist ideology would prove an irresistible magnet to the peoples of the world and the Soviet Union would sit supreme above all nations as its unique source and sole interpreter. In the background, of course, would be the additional solid support of powerful armed forces. Hopes of ideological supremacy were never realized. There has never been a mad rush on the part of other nations to follow the example of Soviet Russia and set up Marxist-Leninist states. These hopes were before long replaced by the equally confident expectation that the Soviet Union would become an economic superpower. It would easily overtake the United States and exercise thereafter unchallenged authority as the world’s richest and most productive nation. There would, of course, still be the support of powerful armed forces. These hopes too were disappointed. The gross national product (GNP) of the Soviet Union by 1984 had not yet reached $3,000 per head of population, which put it in nineteenth place among European nations. By the early 1980s the Soviet Union had indeed become a world power of truly formidable might and influence, not through the attractions of its revolutionary ideology, nor yet through its economic performance. The Soviet Union’s power, which was very great, was almost exclusively military.