Data Sources - Air Force Manual No. 200-25A, Department of the Air Force, Washington, October 16, 1961  page 1. Sanitized copy. National Archives KOREAN Conflict Casualty File (KCCF) 1950-1954. 

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THE TRANSFER OF U.S. KOREAN WAR POW TO THE SOVIET UNION

Joint Commission Support Branch Research and Analysis Division DPMO

26 August 1993

WORKING PAPERS

This study was prepared by Mr. Peter G. Tsouras, DAC Major Werner Saemler
Hindrichs, USAF Master Sergeant Danz F. H. Blasser, USAF with the assistance
of Second Lieutenant Timothy R. Lewis, USAF Mr. Paul H. Vivian, DAC Staff
Sergeant Linda R. H. Pierce, USA Sergeant Gregory N. Vukin, USA

WORKING PAPERS

This study is to be used for internal use only.  It contains subjective
evaluations, opinions, and recommendations concerning on-going analysis that
may impact future U.S. foreign policy decisions.  This document has not yet
been finalized for public release.

WORKING PAPERS

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

U.S. Korean War
POWs were transferred to the Soviet Union and never repatriated.

This transfer was a highly secret MGB program approved by the inner circle
of the Stalinist dictatorship.

The rationale for taking selected prisoners to the USSR was:

To exploit and counter U.S. aircraft technologies;

to use them for general intelligence purposes;

It is possible that Stalin, given his positive experience with Axis POWs,
viewed U.S. POWs as potentially lucrative hostages.

The range of eyewitness testimony as to the presence of U.S. Korean War POWs
in the GULAG is so broad and convincing that we cannot dismiss it.

The Soviet 64th. Fighter Aviation Corps which supported the North Korean and
Chinese forces in the Korean War had an important intelligence collection
mission that included the collection, selection and interrogation of POWs.

A General Staff-based analytical group was assigned to the Far East Military
district and conducted extensive interrogations of U.S. and other U.N. POWs
in Khabarovsk.  This was confirmed by a distinguished retired Soviet
officer, Colonel Gavriil Korotkov, who participated in this operation. No
prisoners were repatriated who related such an experience.

Prisoners were moved by various modes of transportation. Large shipments
moved through Manchouli and Pos'yet.

Khabarovsk was the hub of a major interrogation operation directed against
U.N.  POWs from Korea.   Khabarovsk was also a temporary holding and
transshipment point for U.S. POWs.  The MGB controlled these prisoners, but
the GRU was allowed to interrogate them.

Irkutsk and Novosibirsk were transhipment points, but the Komi ASSR an Perm
Oblast were the final destinations of many POWs. Other camps where American
POWs were held were in the Bashkir ASSR, the Kemerovo and Archangelsk
Oblasts, and the Komi-Permyatskiy and Taymyskiy National Okrugs.

POW transfers also included thousands of South Koreans, a fact confirmed by
the Soviet general officer, Kan San Kho, who served as the Deputy Chief of
the North Korean MVD.

The most highly-sought-after POWs for exploitation were F-86 pilots and
other knowledgeable of new technologies.

Living U.S. witnesses have testified that captured U.S. pilots were, on
occasion, taken directly to Soviet-staffed interrogation centers.  A former
Chinese officer stated that he turned U.S. pilot POWs directly over to the
Soviets as a matter of policy.

Missing F-86 pilots, whose captivity was never acknowledged by the
Communists in Korea, were identified in recent interviews with former Soviet
intelligence officers who served in Korea.  Captured F-86 aircraft were
taken to at least three Moscow aircraft design bureaus for exploitation.
Pilots accompanied the aircraft to enrich and accelerate the exploitation
process.

The Transfer of U.S. Korean War POWs to the Soviet Union

Table of Contents

Introduction

Part I: Technological Exploitation
The First Modern Air War
The Technology Gap
The 64th. Fighter Aviation Corps
The Soviet Interrogation Effort
The Soviet Hunt for F-86 Pilots
The 15 F-86 Pilots That Came Home
A Chinese Link in the Chain of Evidence
A Special Air Force Unit
Avraham Shifrin
The Soviet Hunt for the F-86 Sabre Jet
Sand in the Fuselage
MGB and GRU: Who Did What? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .15
Three Case Studies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .19
The Case of Cpt Albert Tenney, USAF . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
The Case of Roland Parks, USAF . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .20
The Case of Cpl Nick A. Flores, USMC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .22
Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24

Part II:  The Hostage Connection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .26
POW Exploitation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .26
The Stalin - Chou En-lai Meeting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .26
Lieutenant General Kan San Kho . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .27
Colonel Gavril I. Korotkov . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .27
Lieutenant Colonel Philip J. Corso . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .31
Lieutenant Colonel Delk Simpson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
John Foster Dulles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .34
Captain Mel Gile . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .35
CCRAK . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
Zygmunt Nagorski . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .36
Turkish Traveler . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .38
Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38

Part III:   Evidence From Within the Soviet Union . . . . . . . . 40

Sightings in the Komi ASSR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .40
Sightings in Khabarovsk . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
Sightings in Irkutsk . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .45
Sightings in Taishet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .46
Sightings in Mordova . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .46
Sightings in Novosibirsk . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .47
Sightings in the Bashkir ASSR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
Sightings in Norilsk . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .47
Sightings in Kemerovo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
Sightings in Kazakh SSR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
Sightings in Archangesk . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
Patterns Among the Sightings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .49
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . .  51
Postscript . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .51
Appendices
Appendix A: How Many Men Are Truly Unaccounted For? . . . . . . . 53
Appendix B: 31 Missing USAF F086 Pilots Whose Loss Indicates
            Possible Capture  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . .57
Appendix C: Korean War USAF F086 Pilots Who Were Captured
            and Repatriated . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
Appendix D: Outstanding Questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
Appendix E: Individual Sources of Information
            Cited in this Study . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
Appendix F: Soviet Officers Whose Names Appear On
            Interrogations of U.S. Korean War POWs . . . . . . . .76

TABLES
Table 1.    USAF Korean War Pows On Whom the Russian
            Archives Should Have Information . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Table 2.    BNR Cases Where Death Was Witnessed by
            Repatriates or Otherwise Documented . . . . . . . . . 55

The Transfer of U.S. Korean War POWs to the Soviet Union

Introduction

The United States lists 8,140 casualties from the Korean War whose remains
have not been repatriated.  Some of that number are "truly unaccounted for"
in that there is not evidence at all as to the circumstances of their loss
or to their ultmate fate.  One estimate is provided at Appendix A.

Since the Joint Commission was established, a mass of convincing evidence
has accumulated that U.S. POWs were taken to the Soviet Union in a tightly
controlled MGB operation and never repatriated.

We believe that the transfer of U.S. POWs to the Soviet Union involved two
separate programs.

1.  Technological Exploitation.  This program was a pure intelligence
collection program for the purpose of acquiring high-tech equipment and
their operators technical exploitation.  The F086 Sabre Jet was the great
prize. However, we believe that Soviet intelligence collection requirements
were not limited to the F086.   There is growing evidence that other types
of aircraft, including the B-29, were also the subject of intelligence
collection.

2.  The Hostage Connection.  The other program was based on the collection
of POWs as hostages and for general inteligence exploitation.

These programs are discussed in Parts I and II which present our assessment
of the origins and operation of the transfers.

From the conduct of the transfer operation, we switch in Part III to the
next stage in the issue: evidence of Americans actually within the Soviet
concentration camp system. Here we discuss the mass of sightings by citizens
of the former USSR of U.S. Korean War POWs.

Note 1: Throughout this document references will be made by various quoted
sources to the primary Soviet security organ as the NKVD, the MGB, or the
KGB.  All references are to the same organization and represent only an
organizational name change. At the time of the Korean War, the organization
was titled the MGB and will be referred to as such.   Quotations will not be
altered where the speaker is imprecise. The MGB (Ministerstvo Gosudarstvenoi
Bezopasnosti)  was formed in March 1946 by the merging of the NKVD and the
NVD (Ministry of Internal Security). This new organization w s broken back
into its original two parts in March 1953 after Stalin's death.  That part
that had been the NKVD was renamed the KGB.

Note 2: Task Force Russia was organized under the auspices of the U.S. Army
in June 1992 to support the U.S. side of the U.S. - Russian Joint Commission
on POW/MIAs. There were two elements in the Task Force:  (1) The
Washington-based analytical, translation, and administrative element
(TFR-H), and (2) the Moscow-based research, interview, and liaison group
(TFR-M).  In June 1993, Task Force Russia was subordinated to the Office of
the Assistant Secretary of Defense for POW/MIA Affairs, and TFR-H was
renamed the Joint Commission Support Branch (JCSB).  The Moscow-based
element will continue to be designated Task Force Russia - Moscow
(TFR-M).

Note 3: Translations of documents provided by the Russian side of the Joint
Commission were translated by TFR-H and are numbered as TFR documents, e.g.,
TFR-36, and are referred to as such in the narrative.

Part I

Technological Exploitation

The First Modern Air War.

One of the worst-kept secrets of the Cold War was the head-to-head clash in
Korea between the two former Allies of World War II, the Soviet Union and
the United States.  Although the ground war was fought essentially with the
weaponry and tactics of the new air power technologies of the postwar world.
The Korean War was the first modern air war and was characterized by an
entirely new techonology that was electronics intensive and depended not
only on the keen wits and high mastery of the pilots flying the jet combat
aircraft but on a host of advanced support activities such as air-intercept
radar and airborne reconnaissance.

The Technology Gap.

This was the backdrop for an even more insidious form of warfare.  The
Soviet Union cloaked its participation in the Korean War partly to conceal
its urgent need to bridge the techonological gap with the West, which was
widening geometrically even then.  Based upon a precedent repeatedly
acknowledged by senior Soviet officers, which began with the wholesale
reverse engineering of the Massey-Ferguson tractor by the State Automobile
Factory in the 1930s, the Willys Jeep in the 1940s, and a variety of
propeller technology aircraft during World War II, the Soviets sought to
avert he inevitable by systemized theft of design.

The 64th Fighter Aviation Corps.

The Soviet Union initiated its battlefield testing in the Korean War with
the activation of the 64th Fighter Aviation Corps Headquarters in Antung:
(now Dandong), Manchuria, in November 1950, just as North Korea teetered on
the edge of destruction.  The Corps was charged with a threefold mission:
(1) air defense of the area north of the 38th Parallel; (2) protection of
the trans-Yalu bridges; and (3) training of North Korean and Chinese pilots.
Analysis of documents provided by the Russian side, however, shows that the
64th had yet another mission:  the management of the overt and covert Human
forces.  A review of the documents provided by the Russians reveals regular
and intense coordination between Moscow, the senior advisors to the Korean
General Staff, and the Commander of the 64th Fighter Aviation Corps (General
Georgii A. Lobov)  on a variety of topics related to prisoner of war
interrogation and control.  The gaps in this document insinuate a direct
role which the Russian side to date denies.

The air-focused Soviet priorities are perhaps best summed up by the comment
of retired Colonel Aleksandr Semyonovich Orlov, a veteran of the 64th, and
the chief (note above says not a chief) of intelligence for one of its
divisions.  He casually dismissed the significance of ground forces
personnel with the comment that he knew more about the operations of the
American infantry battalion that a U. S. Army captain would.  Orlov, himself
a captain at the time of the Korean War, then described in painstaking
details Soviet intelligence collection requirements which were focused on
aircraft technical parameters.

The Soviet Interrogation Effort.

The Soviet interrogation effort was largely disguised.  Soviet
interrogators, when present for interviews, wore Korean and Chinese uniforms
without visible rank, and in some cases were ethnic Koreans or other
oriental Soviet nationalities.  One such officer is Colonel Georgii
Plotnikov, who called him self by the Korean translation of his name
Kim-Mok-Su, which means carpenter in both languages.

Another Soviet officer was a Buryat Mongol.

Most Soviet involvement was probably concentrated on the preparation and
translation of collection requirements to be filled by their North Korean
and Chinese allies.  Some, however, appears to have taken place without the
Chinese and North Koreans.  One such case is that of escaped POW Marine
Colonel Nick A. Flores who was mistaken for an F086 pilot when captured by
Soviet anti-aircraft troops and sent directly to Soviet interrogation at a
Soviet airbase in Antung.  This case is developed in more depth at the end
of this section.  Additionally, General Lobov, Commander of the 64th Fighter
Aviation Corps, has stated that at some point in the war, the Chinese and
North Koreans became somewhat less cooperative in turning over captured U.S.
POWs for interrogation. As a result, Lobov had 70 Soviet teams out looking
for shot down U.S. pilots.

According to one report, Stalin had singled out U.S. Air Force POWs to be
held as hostages.

All USAF Pows already held in the camp system were segregated from other
POWs, held in separate camps under Chinese jurisdiction on North Korean
territory, and subjected to interrogation by Chinese and Soviet personnel.
One such POW was USAF Sergeant Daniel Oldewage who has stated that he and a
number of other captured USAF NCOs were transported to Antung for
interrogation by the Chinese and the Soviets. Oldewage stated that the
Soviets were dressed in Chinese uniforms and appeared to be pilots based
upon their thorough professional understanding of air operations against the
B-29.

The Soviet Hunt for F-86 Pilots

According to U.S. Air Force data,  1,303 USAF personnel were declared
missing for all reasons between 25 June 1950 and 27 July 1953.  After
reclassification, this figure had been reduced to 666 whose bodies were not
recovered (BNR).

Of that number, the argument can be made from an analysis of their
circumstances of loss, that several hundred survived their crashes and were
potential candidates for transfer to the Soviet Union.  There is almost
blatant evidence that this was, in eed, the case for a number of technically
proficient, well-educated, and highly-skilled pilots of the F-86 Sabre jet.
Most captured American pilots who did not die in the prison camps did in
fact return. However, these is one major statistical aberration:  the F086
pilots.

A total of 56 F-86 aircraft were downed in aerial combat or by anti-aircraft
artillery.  From these aircraft, 15 live pilots (Appendix C) and one set of
remains were repatriated.  Of the 40 remaining losses, for whom no pilots
were repatriated, the circumstances of loss indicate a high probability of
death for nine.  Of the remaining cases (Appendix B), conditions were such
that survival was possible.  The 55 percent missing in action rate is
unusually high compared to missing rates for pilots flying other
airframes.

In late Summer 1992, the Russian side provided two lists of U.S. POWs that
they stated had been provided to them by the Chinese and/or North Koreans.

One list had 59 names and the other 71 names. There were 42 names that
appeared in both lists and in almost identical sequence.  The list of 59
names purported to be of those POWs who had transited an interrogation
point.  On a number of documents provided by the Russian side (translated in
TFR-76) were the names of Soviet officers who had had some role in
interrogations or the reporting process.  The most prominent of them was a
Lieutenant General Razuvayev whose position was such that he could report on
occasion directly to the Defnese Minister and the Chief of the General
Staff.

The names of these Soviet officers are at Appendix F.

At the request of the American side, the Russian side provided the
interrogation files associated with these two lists. However, the Russians
provided files for only 46 individuals. By reviewing the archival data
handwritten on the files, Task Force Russia determined that 120 pages were
missing.  In those cases where interrogation material was missing, another
41 names can be correlated from the two lists.

Analysis of ancillary information and coordination with Air Force Casualty
Affairs indicates that the 120 missing pages should contain data on eight
identifiable MIAs. In addition to these eight, a ninth MIA was identified in
the interrogation files who name was not on either list.  The nine MIAs are
listed below.

Table 1. USAF Korean War POWs

On Whom the Russian Archives Should Have Information

NAME                         RANK           AIRCRAFT     DUTY POSITION
1. Tenney, Albert Gilbert    CPT              F-86          Pilot
2. Wendling, George Vincent  MAJ              F-86          Pilot
3. Harker, Charles A., Jr.   1LT              F-84          Pilot
4. Niemann, Robert Frank     MAJ              F-86          Pilot
5. McDonough, Charles E.     MAJ              RB-45C        Pilot
6. Unruh, Halbert Caloway    CPT              B-26          Pilot
7. Shewmaker, John W.        CPT              F-80          Pilot
8. Reid, Elbert J., Jr.      SSgt                           Gunner
9. Bergmann, Louis H.        SSgt             B-29          Radar Operator

Of the seven pilots in this group, three flew the F-86 and one the
experimental RB-45C reconnaissance aircraft, types of aircraft in which the
Soviets had high interest.  In addition to the F-86s, the Soviets would have
had an equally high inerest in the RB-45C flown by Major Charles McDonough.
The North American RB-45C was the first operational U.S. multi-engine jet
bomber employed by the U.S. Air Force, and its reconnaissance configuration
would have made it doubly interesting.......

continues -
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