"Direct evidence suggests that American servicemen were transported to the territory of the USSR from the Korean War zone of combat operations."
Dr. Paul M. Cole

VOLUME I - Part III

Politics have prevented the Russian side from being candid.Although the official party line from Russia has been, no Soviets had direct contact with American Servicemen, the surviving interrogation protocols of POWs belie something quite different... not only contact with Americans, but the actual interrogation.

One must ask, if the Soviets were so interested in US POWs, why stop at inetrrogation? APPARENTLY, THEY DIDN'T. There are two basic categories of POW who could qualify for a one-way trip into the Crimea.

From World War II onward, the Soviets had a different perspective of Nationality and Citizenship than do we. To the Soviet Union, citizenship to one nation was exclusive... and it was based on ones patronymic heritage. Those whose parents were Eastern European or Slavonic emigres, could automatically be considered Soviet citizens by virtue of their bloodline. Hence an American born Airman of Ukrainian ancestry could realistically be considered by the Soviets as one of their own if captured. Displaced persons were particularly vulnerable by this reasoning.

The continued pattern of Soviet exploitation of foreign POWs for intelligence information, technology and tactical data, slave labor and of course the potential to turn the POW into an agent, was the second category. Along the lines of this thought is also the reserve component a particular POW or 'captive' might offer. In 1960 when the USSR shot down Francis Gary Powers on May Day in his U-2, he was originally tried as a spy. However, the possibility of a 'spy-trade' at a later date makes high-tech prisoners all the more valuable. Frank Powers was eventually 'traded' in such a manner some time later.

Since the North Koreans and the Communist Chinese were not readily sharing their POWs with the Soviets, and since the goals of each group was profoundly different, the Soviets had to develop a means by which they could get their hands on Americans first. Dr. Cole opines " The lack of cooperation among the Chinese, North Koreans, and Soviets led Soviet forces to organize their own pilot and materiel collections independant of the efforts of their fraternal allies." And it would appear that one of their biggest targets was the F-86. To digress for a moment, we would like to refer to the 77 page 'Transfer..." document, which spent a majority of its length analyzing the targeting of F-86's.Presently, we have at least two separate studies that state American F-86's were specific, and Soviet units with the prime directive to seek out and secure them. There also appears to be a pattern whereby approximately two dozen BNR cases associated with F-86's occured within the operational region of the Soviet F-86 'acquisition' program.