Was there ever a case, during the cold war, of US and Soviet (or Warsaw Pact) uniformed ground troops actually exchanging small-arms fire? If not, what was the closest they came?
This is assuming (as it is generally defined as) the cold war started after WW2 and ended with the fall of the Soviet Union so not including the western intervention in the Russian Civil War.
It’s not small-arms fire, but during the Cuban Missile Crisis, an American US destroyer dropped practice depth charges to flush out a Soviet submarine. The submarine captain wanted to launch a nuclear torpedo in response but one of the officers vetoed the plan. That’s probably as close as things came to actual battle during the Cold War.
Again not really small arms fire, but a few Soviet pilots were covertly involved in the Korean war and probably fired on US troops at some point.
Again, not ground troops, but:
Wikipedia just featured this article about an incident in 1964 that I’d never heard of. And unarmed, small military jetliner strayed over East German airspace, had problems with their radio and couldn’t respond to challenges, and was consequently shot down by a MiG-19 with the loss of three American officers on board. Wiki makes a point of calling them, “…some of the few confirmed direct casualties of the Cold War.”
I suspect there were friendly fire incidents at the end of the war with Germany
Not small arms, but Francis Gary Powers was shot down when flying over the Soviet Union in his U2 spy plane.
There were more than a few U.S. intelligence aircraft that got shot at and shot down over the Soviet Union during the Cold War. One of the biggest losses of life was a C-130 over Soviet Armenia on 2 September 1958. 17 crew lost their lives. The official story is that they all died in the crash, though there is some doubt as to whether that’s true. This declassified article from an NSA in-house journal, mentions 13 different shootdowns during the Cold War. By Any Means Necessary: America’s Secret Air War in the Cold War, by William E. Burrows, is an interesting book that looks at the secret reconnaissance campaign against the Soviet Union and other Communist regimes during the Cold War. Prior to this, the Soviet Union famously obtained a B-29 during a 1944 raid over Japanese-held China. Mechanical difficulties forced the plane near Soviet airspace and Soviet fighters “escorted” the B-29 to an airstrip near Vladivostok.
Other instances include Soviet advisers in North Korea, as already noted, and North Vietnam. It would not surprise me either, if accounts came out of fighting between Soviet troops in Afghanistan and U.S. advisers to the Mujahideen. According to the book, Charlie Wilson’s War, officially, U.S. forces were barred from going into Afghanistan, unlike U.K. special forces like the SAS, but I don’t know if that rule was always followed. Similarly, I’ve not read of any, but wouldn’t be surprised if SOG recon team members ever encountered Soviet advisers in either Laos or Cambodia. Ditto U.S. Special Forces and Soviets during the various Nicaraguan conflicts.
I remember reading an account that there was one or more Soviet officials with the North Korean navy when the *USS Pueblo *was seized. According to this site, a code machine from the Pueblo made its way back to Moscow from North Korea within hours after the seizure. OTOH, this working paper from the Woodrow Wilson Center claims the seizure was a complete surprise to the Soviets. See also these reactionsfrom Pueblo survivors to the idea that the purpose of the seizure was primarily to obtain the code machine.
Are there any documented accounts of US forces actually encountering Soviet advisers on the ground? (or vice versa in the case of Latin America) I was aware of the air force pilots that **TroutMan ** mentions.
They say the cold war started right after the Romanovs were ousted and ended in 1991. WW2 was just a sideshow that grew too hot. Anyway, after the Romanovs were shot, US marines actually landed in what was newly Soviet territory. There was book published about it.
Is it just me or is that article terribly written for someone who claims to be a history professor?
I meant that Soviet advisers were flying against U.S. forces (in Korea, and maybe Vietnam too) and that Soviet advisers were assisting the North Vietnamese with their anti-aircraft efforts. As to advisers shooting it out on the ground, I haven’t seen any documented evidence of it, with regards to U.S. vs Soviet troops. SAS troopers did go into Afghanistan during the Soviet conflict and did take fire, according to Charlie Wilson’s War. Nonetheless, I wouldn’t be surprised if U.S. forces were actually in Afghanistan once or twice, especially when the Stinger SAM was being introduced to the Muj, despite being officially barred from going there.
It’s not just you; I was wondering where the footnotes were… And there’s the whiff of the mimeograph about that short post. I wonder who’s correct: the Wilson paper, that was written with the aid of ex-Soviet archival material, or the professor/History Channel documentary?
With the assault on the Blue House by a DPRK commando force a few days before, IMHO Kim Il-Sung didn’t need any Soviet pushing for him to be provocative. Indeed, not quite a year and a half later, and four months after the Pueblo crew was released, DPRK fighters shot down a U.S. EC-121 recon plane, 90 miles offshore. All 31 of the crew were killed. I have no idea if the Soviets ever received any of the cryptology equipment, though I can see it being eventually sent to the Soviet Union as a mea culpa and a plea to restart any cessation in aid. Which is different than sending the equipment to the Soviets immediately after seizing the vessel.
Apparently at least one of the RB-47 overflights of Russia in the 50s had aircraft exchanging gunfire.
I worked with a guy who had been a flight officer on RB-47s, and had a DFC. I don’t know any details but sure would have loved to know…
could you please translate this into English?
“I worked with a guy who was a flight officer on Boeing Bomber-47 Reconnaissance aircraft, and was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross…” Note the the DFC is awarded to an Air Force personnel who ‘distinguishes himself or herself in support of operations by “heroism or extraordinary achievement while participating in an aerial flight, subsequent to November 11, 1918”’ according to Wiki.
There certainly were. Unsurprisingly a lot of them involved aerial combat, like this account of an incident in Kosovo.
Don’t be fooled by the staged camaraderie of the Elbe meeting; the Soviets were deeply suspicious of the Western Allies. Friendly fire incidents towards the end were almost inevitable as the Soviets rejected any attempt by the Allies to send liaison officers to try and organise ceasefire lines.
Sorry, didn’t mean to be cryptic. I imagine there are few DFC accounts that aren’t an interesting read, but one on from a spy overflight mission? Wow. I tried to get him to spill a few details once or twice, but nothing could make him shut up faster - and he was a very genial, garrulous guy otherwise.
Is there any searchable database of such awards? He had a very unusual name that should be easy to locate.
It’s mentioned above, but worth expanding: the US sent some 15,000 troops to Russia in 1918-20 to help protect the railroads and other resources from Bolshevik forces. There were engagements and firefights and both divisions took casualties. It was most definitely a “cold war” action in two respects: the Reds eventually overthrew the US-supported Whites, leading to a century of armed face-off, and it WAS in Siberia, where the cold killed more US troops than anything else, and froze water-cooled weapons. It was a very cold war… insert jokes about salt treaties here.
It isn’t the Soviets, but North Korean troops axe-murdered a pair of US officersin the DMZ in 1976.