Border Incidents

Seventeen hundred miles south of its Alaskan base, and only 25 miles from Kamchatka, the long tongue of Soviet territory that hangs down from eastern Siberia, a U.S. four-engine B50 bomber sighted two MIG-15s. One of them closed to a cautious 800 yards and opened fire; the B-50's gunners returned a few bursts. The bomber returned to base undamaged.

The U.S. Air Force, announcing the incident last week (three days after it happened), claimed that the B-50, a weather reconnaissance type, had been on a "routine" weather flight. The U.S. lodged a protest. But it was quickly discovered that routine weather flights from Alaska usually do not reach farther west than the Attu area, 375 miles east of Kamchatka. In the Senate, a Democrat and a Republican questioned Air Force judgment in sending the B50 so close to Siberia and wondered how the U.S. would feel about a routine Soviet flight 25 miles off the U.S. coast.

In London, Prime Minister Winston Churchill was still steaming last week over the shooting down of an unarmed British bomber over the Elbe River (TIME, March 23). He admitted that the British plane had been out of bounds, but saw no reason why "the lives of seven British airmen were callously taken for a navigational error. The Russians repeatedly fired on the Lincoln and mercilessly destroyed it when it was actually west of and within the allied zonal frontier."

In response to British protests, General Vasily Chuikov, the Soviet military boss in East Germany, was remarkably polite. He regretted the British loss of lives and suggested a conference looking toward prevention of future air clashes. The fact is that both Communist and allied air arms have invaded the other side's air space numerous times (the Reds over Alaska and northern Japan as well as in Europe, the U.S. over the Chinese mainland). In jet-age speeds, if a pilot flying from 400 to 600 m.p.h. drifts one degree off course he can be miles off that course in a matter of minutes. This week the U.S. Air Force again ordered its pilots to stay at least 30 miles from Czech and East German borders.

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