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N OCTOBER 1953, intelligenceagents of a Balkan country ap-proached the Central Intelli-gence Agency resident in theirnation, offering to hand over

to the US a current Soviet-builtfighter—a Yak-23 Flora—on a veryshort-term basis. Thus began a projectinvolving a small number of Air Forceand CIA personnel. It was called“Project Alpha.”

The Air Force declassified muchof the project’s technical material inthe mid-1990s, but it had expungedthe names of the Balkan countriesinvolved and three foreign officialssent as escorts. The CIA was evenless forthcoming. Fifty years afterthe fact, the agency refused to di-vulge any information. It would noteven acknowledge that such a projectever existed.

However, interviews with some

Purloined YakThe theft of the fighter was a classic tale of Cold War skullduggery.

By Bill GetzAir Force personnel who participatedin Project Alpha have helped to liftthe veil.

The story went something likethis: Agents of an unnamed Balkancountry (call it “Balkan CountryNo. 1”) knew a crated Yak-23 fighterwas being transported by train throughtheir country to another nation—Balkan Country No. 2. The agentsof No. 1 suggested that the US couldtake the fighter, study it, flight-test it, and then return it in thecrates exactly as it had been pickedup.

Soon, all parties shook hands onthe deal.

USAF sent a C-124 to Balkan Coun-try No. 1. The C-124 flew the cratedand disassembled Yak-23, along withthe three foreign escorts, to USAF’sAir Technical Intelligence Center(ATIC) at Wright-Patterson AFB,

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fighter test, and Capt. Tom Collins.Wolfe flew a safety airplane on thewing of the Yak-23, while it was flownby Collins. Ray Gardiner was chosenas maintenance crew chief. Assistinghim were two other mechanics, StanKulikowski and Ronnie Wilcoxin.

During the flight tests, the Yak-23 was disguised with removableUSAF markings. The Air Force cre-ated a cover story to explain the“strange aircraft” to curious eyes.If asked, project members were tosay it was the X-5 experimentalaircraft.

The cover was soon put to the test.Some F-86 pilots assigned to a fighter-interceptor squadron at the base weretaxiing out during an early morningno-notice practice alert at the sametime Collins was getting ready to takeoff in the Yak. At the officers’ clubthat evening, the F-86 pilots askedCollins about the strange aircraft.Collins gave them the cover story.The Yak-23 did bear a resemblance tothe X-5, so perhaps the story fooledthe inquisitors. One of the two X-5sbuilt had been destroyed in a crash,but one was still flying, so it would bedifficult to dispute the claim.

In all, Collins made eight testflights in the Yak-23. The last tookplace on Nov. 25, 1953.

The ReturnFor the return trip, airlift pilot Good

again got the call. He flew C-124 tailNo. 0097.

Good said that when he arrived at

Ohio. There, the Yak was reassembled,flight-tested, disassembled again, re-crated, and flown back to BalkanCountry No. 1.

Getting the YakAfter receiving the offer, CIA

agents contacted ATIC, whose mis-sion was to acquire and evaluate for-eign aircraft.

The first step was to arrange trans-port for the Yak. In early November1953, a C-124 cargo aircraft, assignedto the 4th Troop Carrier Squadron,62nd Troop Carrier Wing, LarsonAFB, Wash., was dispatched toWright-Patterson. The pilot was Capt.Leroy D. Good, a highly experiencedveteran of troop carrier operations.Good and his crew received a brief-ing covering the bare essentials ofthe flight. They were not told thepurpose or the ultimate destination.

The first leg of the journey tookthe C-124 to Westover AFB, Mass.From there, it flew to a US air basenear Munich, where it was refueled.The crew was given another briefingand made ready to continue its flight,having been told that the exact des-tination was to be revealed en route.The C-124, a large four-engine air-craft, was easy to identify, so therewas no effort to conceal its USAFmarkings, but the flight was to bemade at night.

However, Good and his crew nevertook off on the mission. Instead, theywere sent back to Larson. Good stilldoes not know why. That was not hislast involvement in Project Alpha,though.

Another C-124 from his same unittook over and completed the pickup.This second transport delivered thecrated Yak-23 to Wright-Patterson.Upon landing, the C-124 was towednear Hangar 145, where the crateswere unloaded and taken into a se-cure area.

Flight TestingTime was short, because the crates

had to be returned before anyonenoticed they were gone. The disas-sembled aircraft was quickly reas-sembled and underwent its first testflight on Nov. 4, 1953, at Wright-Patterson.

Heading the top secret Project Al-pha at ATIC was Air Force civilianI.H. Herman. He lined up test pilotsLt. Col. Fred Wolfe, chief of USAF

As a cover story to explain possible sightings, USAF ordered those in the knowto say the Yak-23 was the experimental Bell X-5 aircraft. The two airplanes bore apassing resemblence, and the Yak had been given temporary US markings.

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Wright-Patterson, workers hung ablack curtain inside his C-124, sepa-rating most of the cargo area fromthe front of the airlifter. He said thatsix to 12 men “who spoke a foreignlanguage” boarded the C-124, alongwith a man wearing an Air Forcecolonel’s uniform. The colonel, whogave Good route and destinationflight directions, wore no name tagand did not offer his name. Good didnot ask.

The disassembled and re-cratedYak was loaded aboard the C-124and the return journey began. Theaircraft flew heavy, according toGood. They again flew to the US airbase outside Munich. At the baseflight operations center, Good filedan instrument flight rules plan foran airfield north of the Munich area.The C-124 departed Munich at nightand flew north after takeoff. Al-most immediately, the colonel or-dered Good to shift to a southerlycourse.

Base air traffic controllers, saidGood, kept trying to contact the C-124 to find out why it was deviat-ing from its flight plan. The colo-nel ordered Good not to respond.When Good protested, the coloneltold him that the change had “allbeen arranged.”

After flying the southerly coursefor a brief period, Good was told totake an east to southeast heading.The C-124 was soon joined by anescort of two propeller-driven fighteraircraft, one on each wing. It was

too dark for Good to identify theaircraft or see their national mark-ings. All three aircraft flew with-out lights.

They landed in the middle of thenight at a military airfield and weremet by jeeps that led them to a re-mote parking area. The people whomet them brought food and drink.The C-124 engineer, Sgt. Roy H.Bass, recalled one gregarious andhappy member of the welcomingparty giving him a yellow bottle ofSljivovica, a Serbian liqueur.

The C-124’s passengers, exceptthe colonel, departed the aircraft

and boarded a bus. The colonel andaircrew stayed with the C-124,which was unloaded quickly. Shortlyafter landing, the Americans tookoff and the colonel told Good to flydirectly to Paris. At Orly Field, thecolonel thanked the crew and wishedthem good-bye. Good and his crewreturned to Larson Air Force Base.

Who Provided the Yak?Air Force documentation clearly

shows that a crated Yak-23 was be-ing shipped via rail through BalkanCountry No. 1 to Balkan CountryNo. 2. Both were identified as com-munist countries. The same recordsmade it clear that the shipment didnot originate in a third Balkan coun-try.

Four former Soviet client stateshave flown Yak-23s. Two wereBalkan: Bulgaria and Romania. Twowere not: Czechoslovakia and Pol-and. Yugoslavia was undoubtedlyBalkan Country No. 1—the one that“loaned” the Yak to the US.

Good confirmed that in an inter-view. He said he knows that, whenhe made the classified flight fromWright-Patterson, he flew into amilitary airfield near Belgrade, Yu-goslavia. At that time, Pancevo fieldnear Belgrade was a military pilottraining base.

Why would Yugoslavia offer theYak-23 to the US? At about thistime, the US and Yugoslavia hadbeen working out a military securityarrangement.

The Yak-23, shown here in its removable USAF markings, was of questionablequality but was in service with several Warsaw Pact nations. It was flown byCzechoslovakia and Poland, in addition to Bulgaria and Romania.

To retrieve the Yak, the Air Force flew a C-124 transport from Wright-PattersonAFB, Ohio, to Germany, and then on to Yugoslavia. It picked up a fighter thathad already been broken down and loaded into crates.

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A Long Intelligence History

The Air Technical Intelligence Center (ATIC) traces its roots to 1917. It was inthat year that the Army Signal Corps’ Airplane Engineering Department formedthe Foreign Data Section at McCook Field, near Dayton, Ohio. The mission of thesection was to study foreign aircraft, translate aerospace documents, and main-tain a technical library on foreign equipment.

By 1942, during World War II, the section had evolved and become theTechnical Data Laboratory. By 1945, TDL had grown from 25 to 750 people andhad been redesignated the T-2 intelligence section. Along the way, it moved fromMcCook to Wright Field. T-2’s primary job was to evaluate German and Japaneseaircraft and technical documents.

In 1951, the Air Force created ATIC and made evaluation of Soviet technologyits primary scientific and technical intelligence mission.

Although ATIC was discontinued 10 years later, its mission continued. On July1, 1961, USAF created, within Air Force Systems Command, the Foreign Tech-nology Division, headquartered at Wright-Patterson.

Out of FTD grew today’s National Air and Space Intelligence Center, stillheadquartered at Wright-Patterson. NASIC is a component of the Air IntelligenceAgency.

Bill Getz is a retired Air Force pilot and industry executive who nowfocuses on writing and publishing. This is his first article for Air ForceMagazine.

The purloined Yak is shown here in flight with its temporary markings anddesignation of FU-599. In all, the Yak was flown eight times at Wright-Pattersonbetween Nov. 4 and Nov. 25, 1953, when it was spirited back to the Balkans.

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orrThe leader of Yugoslavia, Josip

Broz, better known as Tito, prac-ticed his own form of communism,independent of direction from Mos-cow. This difference of opinion cameto a head early in 1948, and Stalinbroke off relations with Yugosla-via, withdrawing all materiel sup-port.

Tito believed that survival of hisgovernment depended upon gettingthe support of Western powers, par-ticularly the United States. The USsaw an opportunity to use a split in thecommunist bloc to its advantage, in-cluding gaining a foothold in theBalkans to help defuse the commu-nist problem facing NATO memberGreece.

Starting in 1949, Western nationsbegan limited economic support toYugoslavia. Two years later, theUS began shipping weapons to Tito.

Some unofficial sources claim thatUS military personnel were alsosent to Yugoslavia in the early1950s to help train the YugoslavAir Force.

In October 1953, the opportunityto provide the US with a Soviet-builtfighter aircraft—even temporarily—would have seemed a ready-madeway to further cement US-Yugoslavrelations.

No Real Value?There was probably no way for

Yugoslav officials to know that,weeks earlier, the US had acquired aMiG-15 when a North Korean AirForce pilot, Lt. Kum Sok No, flewone to Kimpo Air Base, near Seoulin South Korea. In September 1953,the 21-year-old defector landed hisMiG near a USAF F-86 and turnedover his fighter.

Air Force tactical intelligence per-sonnel at Kimpo partially disas-sembled the fighter, which was flownaboard a C-124 to Okinawa. After itwas reassembled and its North Ko-

rean markings were replaced withUSAF emblems, Air Force test pilotCollins, the same one to fly the Yak-23 about a month later, became thefirst to fly the MiG. In all, Collinsand Maj. Charles E. Yeager made 11test flights at Okinawa before theMiG was disassembled again and, inDecember 1953, transported to theAir Technical Intelligence Center atWright-Patterson.

The Yak-23 fighter, built by theA.S.Yakovlev design bureau, wasobsolete the day it first rolled out thefactory door in 1948.

According to an ATIC summaryreport contained in the Air Forcedocumentation: “The Yak-23, likeits predecessors, is a single-seat,low-wing, lightweight fighter, ...which was given in quantities to[Soviet] satellite air forces. ... Thereis a minimum amount of equipmentinstalled in the aircraft. ... The out-standing features of the aircraft areits takeoff, climb, and accelerationcapabilities, which are excellent. ...Lack of cockpit pressurization, a0.8 Mach No. restriction, and poordirectional stability above 325 knotsIAS [indicated air speed] are itsmajor drawbacks.”

The Yak-23 was outclassed by theMiG-15, which was introduced atabout the same time. However, theYak was a fairly new Soviet fighterand was flown by several WarsawPact countries. The offer to study onewas an opportunity ATIC obviouslycould not refuse. ■