A cold war incident

In a previous blog post, we learned that of all the countries in the world, only Czechoslovakia was selling arms to Israel and only because mother Russia, or Big Daddy, allowed them to.

Now Mommy Russia was not doing it out of the goodness of her heart, oh no, who would do that? Russia was one of the countries that immediately recognized the new state of Israel, albeit three days later. Maybe it took the email three days to arrive.

So why? Well the Cold War between the west and the east had begun in 1947 and tensions were high. The cold war actually started in 1947 with what was called the Truman Doctrine. The Americans did not want Russia to spread communism around the globe, they wanted to spread democracy instead. Good luck with democracy in Islamic countries, but that is another issue.

Many of the big boys in the Jewish State had origins in the eastern bloc. Many even spoke Russian. OK they also spoke English, German, Yiddish, French and nonsense, but since when is that relevant. So the Russians naturally thought that Israel would become a Russian satellite. Who knows they may even become a communist country.

America, on the other hand, did not trust the Jewish State for the same reason and placed an arms embargo. Actually POTUS called David Ben Gurion just before the declaration and begged him not to declare independence. The American Secretary of State George Marshall did not believe that the Jewish State would survive the war and did not want to support it. WW2 had just ended. He also did not want to loose the Arab countries. Logical after all, they had more money and were huge.

England did not want Israel not as a Jewish State and not as anything and some of their Spitfire jets attacked Israel. Some of their soldiers were actually caught as prisoners of war. Their ships still patrolled the port of Haifa after the Mandate ended and one of their generals, Glubb Pasha, was in charge of the Jordanian Legion.

But after the war, Israel did not become a satellite of Russia, nor did it buy arms from them. They bought from France. However Israel was not really on either side, the new kid just wanted to survive. Can't really blame her, right? She was faced with belligerency on all sides and constantly attacked and the world did nothing. Wait are we talking about 2021 or 1950?

Now tensions between East and West are high and the west had created the NATO defense pact. In May 1955, the Soviet Union and her satellites created their own defense pact, the Warsaw Pact. Bulgaria was one of the countries which was a part of that pact and there begins our story of the day.

EL AL, Israel's state airline, which was once jokingly referred to as Every Landing Always Late, was on a routine flight from London to Tel Aviv on the evening of Tuesday, July 26, 1955. It departed Heathrow Airport en route to Lod (today Ben-Gurion International Airport), via Vienna and and then Istanbul. After a brief layover at the Austrian capital, the Lockheed Constellation – a four-engine propeller plane – took off for Istanbul shortly before 3 A.M. on July 27.

Soon after takeoff, the flight encountered a thunderstorm, something that was known to cause distortions in the old-fashioned NDR navigation system in use in those days. In the case of LY-402, which was flying along the “Amber 10” air lane, it appears that the pilot changed course after concluding incorrectly that he had passed over the Skopje (Macedonia) navigation beacon. This change of direction caused the aircraft to cross from Yugoslavia into Bulgaria, near the border village of Tran.

Detecting the violation of its airspace, the Bulgarian air force scrambled two MiG-15 “Fagot” jet fighters from the Dobroslavtsi airfield to intercept the intruder. The plane flew over Bulgaria for 200km with the two Bulgarian jets trailing it for most of that distance, and at the time the pilots claimed to have issued several warning shots, but this claim was soon retracted. According to a history of Bulgarian aviation, the deputy commander of Bulgarian air defense, Gen. Velitchko Georgiev, told the two pilots, “If the plane is leaving our territory, disobeying orders, and there is no time left for more warnings, then shoot it down.”

What’s clear is that, as the civilian plane neared the country’s southern border and was about to cross into Greek airspace, the MiGs fired at it. The Constellation exploded at an altitude of 2,000 feet, with its pieces falling to earth near Petrich, Bulgaria. 51 passengers and seven crew members were killed.

The cover depicted above survived the crash. There is a Hebrew violet cancel: "This letter survived the EL AL flight that was brought down in Bulgaria, 27/7/55"

What happened and why? There was speculation that the Constellation plane was being used by the American Air Force for intelligence activities and was involved in espionage on Bulgaria and they didn't want the plane to leave Bulgarian air space. In fact, the plane that was used by EL AL was the same type as the American intelligence gathering plane.

One researcher concluded that “The Bulgarians wanted to demonstrate to the Soviets their power and their ability to control their airspace, to prove their loyalty and that they were worthy of the mission and purpose that had been delegated to them”.

Although the Bulgarian government at first refused to accept responsibility, blaming the Israeli airliner for penetrating its airspace without authorization, it eventually issued a formal apology, stating that the fighter pilots had been “too hasty” in shooting down the airliner, and agreed to pay compensation to the victims’ families. The compensation amount was a joke, each of the families of the victims received $8,236 which corresponded to the maximum compensation payment fixed by the Warsaw Convention for damage claims of individuals against foreign governments.