1961 F-84 Thunderstreak incident

F-84 Thunderstreak incident
Part of the Cold War
A F-84 Thunderstreak of the German Air Force (Luftwaffe)
Date 14 September 1961 Location Near Berlin, East Germany Result West German fighters landed safely
Belligerents
West Germany	Soviet Union
Commanders and leaders
Siegfried Barth	Ivan Konev
Units involved
JaBoG 32	Western Group of Forces

The 1961 F-84 Thunderstreak incident, occurring on 14 September 1961, was an incident during the Cold War, in which two Republic F-84F Thunderstreak fighter-bombers of JaBoG 32 of the German Air Force (Luftwaffe) crossed into East German airspace because of a navigational error, before landing at Berlin Tegel Airport. The two planes successfully evaded a large number of Soviet fighter planes by finding cover in a heavy layer of clouds, but also by the actions of an airman at the United States Air Force air route traffic control center at Berlin Tempelhof Airport who ordered the planes on to Berlin rather than forcing them to turn around and face the pursuing fighter planes. The event came at a historically difficult time in relations between the two Germanies. Only a month before, the Berlin Wall had been built, which completely cut off West Berlin from surrounding East Germany and from East Berlin. It also came three days before the West German federal election, held on 17 September 1961.

At the time, violations of airspace at the border between West and East Germany were common, with, on average, two aircraft a month belonging to members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) crossing into Eastern airspace while a much larger number of Soviet planes crossed into that of West Germany. There were 38 violations of West Germany's air space by Soviet aircraft in a period of just four weeks between August and September 1961. Some of the violations were deliberate, to determine the opposite side's reaction, while others were by mistake, caused by the difficulty in determining the border line from the air.

Between the end of the Second World War and the German reunification, West German planes were not permitted to fly to West Berlin, regardless of whether they were civilian or military aircraft. The three existing air corridors to the city were only open to planes from the three wartime Western Allies: the United States, France and the United Kingdom.

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