THE SOVIET–ISRAELI WAR, 1967–1973“at the request of the Eg yptian command and according to the signed agreement,” did
include airmen.
According to then-Lt. Leonid Zakharov, a naval-aviation navigator, it was also in
March 1968—probably on the same occasion as the Grechko–Gromyko visit—that
another agreement was signed to formalize the “temporary” deployment of Soviet
reconnaissance aircraft in Eg ypt, for operations over the Mediterranean “in the com-
mon interest.” The Tu-16Rs were prepared at the Severomorsk-1 base in the arctic
Kola Peninsula and flown to Cairo-West via Crimea, repeating the airlift’s flight path.
“Their range enabled direct flight, but this was rare. Usually they refueled in Hungary
... Yugoslavia, which was ostensibly a socialist country, unlike Hungary did not allow
our planes to land in its air bases ... it was fortunate that Yugoslavia even let us use its
airspace.”^28 Yury Gorbunov, an English-language specialist who had already done a
tour of duty in Eg ypt from 1962 through 1965, was summoned urgently to
Severomorsk in March 1968, issued a three-page glossary for conversations with air
traffic controllers and flown to Cairo-West, where hulks of MiG fighters destroyed
by “the Israeli pirates” were still visible. He claims that the US Sixth Fleet did not
detect the Badgers’ presence until their first appearance in low-altitude passes over its
ships. This corresponds with a CIA report that mentioned only on 16 May that
“there have been recent instances of surveillance of a Sixth Fleet carrier by Tu-16
aircraft with UAR markings.”^29 But afterward, Gorbunov credits the Americans for
sending up carrier aircraft to fly under the Tu-16s in order to prevent them from
descending too low.
Boris Kudaev, a GRU English linguist who was attached to the Tu-16R crews to
interpret US signals, is one of the former servicemen who turned to “fiction” in the
Putin years. However, his “novel,” A Bullet Needs No Interpreter, agrees precisely with
Gorbunov’s memoir in describing the squadron’s modus operandi: two crews flying
pairs of aircraft for six-hour missions in three-day rotation, ranging from Sicily to the
Arab Sea. If locating the US carrier groups required extension of the flight westward
beyond their range, they would refuel at Tököl. They “sometimes buzzed the USS
Independence so low we could see the bolts on the deck.” Gorbunov specifies that the
photos and reports were submitted both to the “Ofis” and directly to naval headquar-
ters in Moscow. Kudaev adds that “for the Eg yptians’ benefit,” on their way to and
from assignments the Tu-16Rs would fly along the Israeli coast to pinpoint military
radar stations, concealing their own radar signature in the morning rush of civilian
airliners.^30 This was a continuation and expansion of existing activity: in late February,
Mossad chief Meir Amit had already described Soviet advisers with the Eg yptian
Navy and Air Force as “mapping Israeli [naval] activities by means of electronic intel-
ligence ... trying to get a fix on Israeli radar and ... participating with the Eg yptians in
the establishment of electronic countermeasures.”^31
The Badgers, attended by “small signals and logistics detachments,” were followed by
two An-12RR radio-intelligence aircraft, Il-38 anti-submarine warfare planes, and “in