Abstract
Between 1954 and 1960 Norwegian territory afforded a unique location from which to collect strategic and tactical intelligence on the Soviet Union.3 There were several reasons for this.
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Hanson W. Baldwin, “What Kind of Defense in the Atomic Age?” New York Times Magazine, 17 May 1953, reprinted in Robert Divine, ed. American Foreign Policy Since 1945 (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1969), pp. 79–86.
While strategic intelligence is required for the “information of policy and military plans at national and international levels,” tactical intelligence is intended to support “military plans and operations at the military unit level.” In actual practice these two categories “differ only in scope, point of view and level of employment.” Wolfram F. Hanrieder and Larry V. Buel, Words and Arms: A Dictionary of Security and Defence Terms (Colorado: Westview Press, 1979), p. 124 and p. 120.
Paul B. Stares, The Militarization of Space: US Policy, 1945–84 (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1985), pp. 44–45.
For balloon reconnaissance operations from Norway see Roger W. Sørdahl, “Den store hvite hvalen: Amerikansk etterretning fra Gardermoen 1956,” PRIO Report 5/1984 (Oslo: PRIO, 1984).
For the classic distinction between forms of strategic intelligence: “basic descriptive,” “current repertorial” and the “speculative-evaluative,” see Sherman Kent, Strategic Intelligence for American World Policy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1966.)
Memorandum from Actg. D/Intelligence, USAF, 8 April 1954, Ts. 4-6A to 4-1050 (1954), Entry 214, Rg. 341, NARA. Herbert York, The Advisors: Oppenheimer, Teller and the Superbomb (San Francisco: W. H. Freeman and Co., 1976), pp. 89–93.
See Harry H. Ransom, “Strategic Intelligence and Intermestic Politics,” in C.W. Kegley, Jr. and E.R. Wittkopf, eds. Perspectives on American Foreign Policy: Selected Readings (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1983), p. 306.
Jeffrey T. Richelson, The US Intelligence Community, Second Edition (Cambridge, MA: Ballinger Publishing Company, 1989), p. 35.
John Prados, President’s Secret Wars: CIA and Pentagon Covert Operations Since World War II (New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc., 1986), pp. 146–148
Stephen Ambrose, Eisenhower, Volume II (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1984), pp. 506–507.
Harry H. Ransom, “Secret Intelligence in the United States, 1947–1982: the CIA’s Search for Legitimacy,” in The Missing Dimension: Governments and Intelligence Communities in the Twentieth Century, eds. C. Andrew and D. Dilks (London: Macmillan, 1984), p. 205.
Bilag 1, til Stabsnotat av 8 juni 1957, Forsvarstaben til FD, Forslag om kon-trollsone nord for polarsirkelen. A/H-06502, FD, and Chr. Christensen, Vår Hemmelige Beredskap (Oslo: Cappelen, 1988), pp. 148–49
David Holloway, “Research Note: Soviet Thermonuclear Development,” International Security 4 (Winter 1979/80), p. 197.
The HASP programme started in 1954 and was sponsored by the Defence Atomic Support Agency. The programme was initially designed to “determine the role played by the stratosphere in the world-wide distribution of fission products from nuclear explosions.” See Jay Miller, Lockheed U-2 (Austin, Texas: Aerofax Inc., 1983), p. 37.
Dick van der Art, Aerial Espionage: Secret Intelligence Flights by East and West (Shrewsbury: Airlife Publishing, Ltd., 1985), p 31.
Robert Divine, Eisenhower and the Cold War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981), p. 128.
One of the first successful satellite discoveries, made by Discoverer 29 in August 1961, was that Plesetsk was indeed the first Soviet ICBM site. See Lawrence Freedman, US Intelligence and the Soviet Strategic Threat (London: The Macmillan Press Ltd., Second Edition, 1986), p. 73.
John Prados, The Soviet Estimate: US Intelligence Analysis and Russian Military Strength (New York: The Dial Press, 1982), p. 97.
Michael R. Beschloss, Mayday: Eisenhower, Khrushchev and the U-2 Affair (London: Faber and Faber, 1986), pp. 241–242.
Tamnes, Cold War in the High North, p. 133. If the target was Saryshagan (46 12 degrees north, 73 38 degrees east) it is highly unlikely that the U-2B could also have covered Plesetsk given its range (estimated) of 4,125 miles without using an operating location in Western Europe. See “Performance Data” for U-2B/C/D, in Mike Spick, American Spyplanes (London: Ospery Publishing Ltd., 1986), p. 19.
Robert J. Watson, History of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Volume 5, The Joint Chiefs of Staff and National Policy, 1953–1954 (Washington DC: Historical Division, JCS, 1986), pp. 34–35.
Lieutenant General Charles T. Myers, USAF, “Defense Strategy Looks to the Northeast,” Army Information Digest 9 (January 1954), p. 24.
Nikolaj Petersen, Denmark and NATO, 1949–1987 (Oslo: Institutt for Forsvarsstudier, 1987), p. 17.
Joseph and Stewart Alsop, “Keflavik and Dahran,” New York Herald Tribune, 4 December 1955. For the background to the construction of Thule Air Base which became operational in November 1952, see “Summary” 12 September 1952, Subject file: Reports and Tech. Data, 1938–1971, The Papers of Bernt Balchen, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, and “US Creates Huge Air Base in Far North of Greenland,” New York Times, 19 September 1952. The other main air base used by the US after 1951 in Greenland was Sondrestrom Air Base at Søndre Strømfjord, which was taken over by SAC in 1957. For a detailed account of these early developments, see Clive Archer, “Greenland and the Atlantic Alliance,” Centrepiece 7 (Summer 1985), pp. 10–15.
Memorandum for COS/USAF, 15 January 1959, Subj: Changes in SAC War Plan, Command SAC, Box 27. Papers of General T.D. White, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress. See also Merton E. Davies and William R. Harris, RAND’s Role in the Evolution of Balloon and Satellite Observation Systems and Space Technology, R-3692-RC (Santa Monica: The RAND Corporation, 1988), pp. 48–52.
Norman Polmar, ed. Strategic Air Command: People, Aircraft and Missiles (Annapolis, MD: The Nautical and Aviation Publishing Comp., 1979), pp. 40–41.
For the most detailed insight into SAC war plans at this time, see David A. Rosenberg, “‘A Smoking Radiating Ruin at the End of Two Hours’: Documents on American Plans for Nuclear War with the Soviet Union, 1954–55,” International Security 6 (Winter 1981/82), pp. 18–28.
The RB-47K also featured high-resolution and side-looking radars. Marcelle S. Knaack, Encyclopedia of US Air Force Aircraft and Missile Systems, Volume II (Washington DC: Office of Air Force History, 1988), pp. 147–155.
Memorandum for D/Operations, USAF Electronic Reconnaissance Peacetime Program (RB-47H), 23 November 1955, Ts. No. 5-1478 to 4-2957, Box 82, Entry 214, Rg. 314, NARA. See also David Donald, Spyplane: The Secret World of Aerial Intelligence-Gathering (London: Aerospace Publishing, Ltd, 1987), p. 23.
David Donald, Spyplane: The Secret World of Aerial Intelligence-Gathering (London: Aerospace Publishing, Ltd, 1987), p. 23.
As Paul Bracken notes, “the proliferation of listening posts and the U-2 constituted a forward deployment of warning sensors ... the U-2 and the listening posts around the Soviet border were intended to serve the warning needs of the military every bit as much as they did those of the CIA. Fierce jurisdictional battles between SAC and the CIA were fought as a consequence.” Paul Bracken, The Command And Control Of Nuclear Forces (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983), p. 13.
General Gruenther to SecDef Wilson, 7 Dec. 1955, ccs 092(8-22-46) (2) Sec. 21, Box 20, JCS 1954–56, Rg. 218, NARA. At the NATO ministerial meeting held in December 1955, Norway’s importance in terms of providing early warning of air attack against the UK and the US. was again emphasised. See Nils Handal, “Aktuelle forsvarsproblemer i dag,” (Speech 9 January 1956), Norsk Militcert Tidsskrift 115 (1956), p. 80.
In 1952 the Norwegian Defence Intelligence Staff initiated a HUMINT project, “Operation Uppsala”, whereby Finnish “Mannerheim soldiers” were recruited by the Norwegians and sent into Soviet territory from Finland. The CIA provided technical assistance and equipment but the operations appear to have yielded only modest results. See C. Christensen, Vår Hemmelige Beredskap, pp. 70–81, and Svein Blindheim, Offiser i Krig og Fred (Oslo: Det Norske Samlaget, 1981).
ONI observed in the summer of 1957 that “evidence of a rapid heavy bomber build-up is almost completely lacking.” See “Capabilities of Soviet Long Range Aviation to Attack the North American Continent,” The ONI Review: Secret Supplement, midsummer 1957, NHC. For an interesting account of Soviet air strategy see Raymond L. Garthoff, “Air Power and Soviet Strategy,” Air University Quarterly Review 9 (Winter 1957–58), pp. 80–98.
Egge described Norwegian authorities as being “very unhappy” with these reports, particularly as some of them even suggested that North Norway was “logistically impossible” to support, an assertion which German and Soviet Arctic operations in World War II demonstrated was clearly not the case. See James Gebhardt, The Petsamo-Kirkenes Operation: Soviet Breakthrough and Pursuit in the Arctic, 1944 (Washington, DC: USGPO, 1989).
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© 1997 Mats R. Berdal
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Berdal, M.R. (1997). Intelligence and Air Strategies in the Arctic, 1954–60. In: The United States, Norway and the Cold War, 1954–60. St Antony’s Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-13370-3_2
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