Industrial espionage during the development of the Concorde

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In the course of industrial espionage during the development of Concorde were plans as well as information on the manufacturing technology and materials of 1959-1976 in development located supersonic - commercial aircraft Concorde from British and French factories in the Soviet Union reached.

background

Concorde and Tu-144 in Sinsheim

When the Tupolev Tu-144, which had previously been developed in secrecy , was presented as a model at the Le Bourget Aerosalon in 1965 , it was given the nickname Konkordski due to its outward resemblance to the Concorde, which has been "instantly recognizable" since 1962 . According to the author Simons, however, it is a myth that the Tu-144 was a copy of the Concorde. However, there are indications that the Soviet Union wanted to obtain the technical documentation of the Concorde prototype by means of industrial espionage.

Later assessments spoke - especially after the discovery of industrial espionage by the British newspaper Observer in 1969 - of a "classic example of industrial espionage" ( NZZ ). In 2013, in the French town of Figaro, there was talk of the espionage campaign, which “marked the history of espionage in the twentieth century”.

The aviation journalist Andreas Spaeth named the extremely tight deadline on the Soviet side as the reason for the role of espionage.

The author duo Bottom / Gallati called the known cases of this espionage "the tip of the iceberg".

Course / arrests

The espionage had already started in 1959, the activities of the spy ring of the GDR were code-named Operation Brünnhilde .

Due to his lavish lifestyle, the Belgian secret service began to be interested in the Swiss retired chemist Jean-Paul Soupert in 1961 , who actually acted as a courier between Belgium and East Berlin after training in the GDR . He was arrested in January 1964, which in turn led to the arrest of Herbert Steinbrecher in November of that year. Steinbrecher had bought information in France for five years.

Sergei Pavlov was arrested in 1965; When he was arrested, Pavlov had blueprints for the Concorde's landing gear and brakes. In January 1966, the French defense organization arrested the two Czechoslovak citizens Stephan Krigovsky and Jean Sarrady . The two men, who disguised themselves as priests, were later sentenced to eight and four years in prison, respectively.

It was not until 1977 that Sergei Fabiev was arrested, in whose despatches, decoded after his arrest , had been congratulated by Moscow on the complete plans of Concorde.

James Doyle had sent around 90,000 documents about Concorde and other projects to the Soviet Union at BAC . No criminal act could be proven, also because the Concorde as a civil project was not subject to secrecy.

impact

At that time senior engineers at Tupolev such as Alexander Pouchow confirmed the receipt of espionage material. According to Pouchow, it “could of course have been useful” if it had not come too late for the first prototype, which, however, was fundamentally different from the aircraft built afterwards. In addition, even in the details known technical solutions cannot be implemented unchanged with different standards and procedures depending on the country. With regard to the similar basic concept, it was partly argued that similarities could also be explained with a normal technological evolution. In fact, however, the designs of the US aircraft manufacturers Boeing , Lockheed and North American resembled the Concorde much less than the Tu-144.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Christ Kitching: The making of a legend: Rare black-and-white photographs show Concorde being assembled in giant hangars in England and France. In: The Daily Mail . February 18, 2016. Retrieved June 20, 2020 (using the 1962 model in Farnborough).
  2. ^ A b Dale Anderson, Ian Graham, Brian Williams: Flight and Motion: The History and Science of Flying , Verlag Routledge, 2015, ISBN 978-1-317-47042-7 , page 194; "Concorde was an instantly reconizable delta-wing airplane."
  3. ↑ Small successes for the Russian aircraft industry , NZZ, January 7, 1997
  4. ↑ a b c Operation Brünnhilde , Der Spiegel, December 22, 1969
  5. ^ Graham M Simons: Concorde Conspiracy: The Battle for American Skies 1962-77. History Press, New York 2012, ISBN 978-0-7524-7693-3 , p. 74.
  6. ^ A b c Sabine Cygan: How the Soviet Concorde clone wrote aviation history. mdr , December 6, 2016, accessed June 20, 2020 .
  7. ↑ Konkordski - the plane that came from the cold , NZZ, April 20, 1998, 32
  8. ↑ Les précédentes affaires d'espionnage industriel en France Le Figaro, November 9, 2013; "Si une affaire d'espionnage a marqué l'histoire du XXe siècle en France, c'est bien celle dont a été l'objet le projet du Concorde"
  9. ↑ a b The Cold War of the Supersonic Aviation - Tupolev TU-144 vs. Concorde (3sat documentary) , 3sat: “The blueprints of the Concorde were on the tables of the Tupolev engineers. Did they remain unused? "Pouchow:" Let's take the wings: If we had been given 2 years more time, we would have built them differently "
  10. ^ Norman R. Bottom, Robert RJ Gallati: Industrial Espionage: Intelligence Techniques and Countermeasures , Butterworth-Heinemann Limited, 1984, ISBN 978-0-409-95108-0 , page 263; "It should be understood that the cases that have been made public by court action, arrests, and so on are only the tip of the iceberg"
  11. ↑ a b c How the GDR helped to clone the Concorde , Schweriner Volkszeitung , December 27, 2013
  12. ^ Raymond Palmer, (1974) “Espionage threat to British industry: Spies don't only operate in books and films. They can be for real. And their target might be your industrial secrets, " Industrial Management, Vol. 74 Issue: 7/8, pp.10-13 ,; "They included Herbert Steinbrecher, an East German spy who between 1959 and 1964 made 20 forays into Western Europe and obtained many valuable industrial secrets, particularly about precision machinery and chemical processes"
  13. ^ Peter A. Heims: Countering Industrial Espionage , 20th Century Security Education, Limited, 1982, ISBN 978-0-905961-03-3 , page 31
  14. ↑ Jay Robert Nash: Spies: A Narrative Encyclopedia of Dirty Tricks and Double Dealing from Biblical Times to Today , Rowman & Littlefield, 1997, ISBN 978-1-4617-4770-3 , page 539
  15. ^ Peter Wright: Spycatcher: The Candid Autobiography of a Senior Intelligence Officer Verlag Viking, 1987 ISBN 978-0-670-82055-9 , page 303
  16. ↑ Konkordski - Documentary , Channel 4 , Secret History, 22 August 1996
  17. ^ Du Concorde à Renault, 14 affaires d'espionnage industriel , usinenouvelle.com, January 11, 2011
  18. ^ The Bridgeport Post, Connecticut, Apr. 26, 1967, p. 30; "Stephan Krigovsky, a Czech, wag sentenced to eight years"
  19. ↑ Howard Moon in Supersonic Spies (Transcript) , PBS , broadcast January 27, 1998 in the science magazine NOVA
  20. ↑ Industrial Espionage Against Concorde , Speedbird Concorde, May 31, 2016
  21. ↑ UK Politics: 'Ace' spy revealed Concorde secrets , BBC, September 14, 1999
  22. ↑ Jonathan Glancey: Concorde: The Rise and Fall of the Supersonic Airliner , Atlantic Books Ltd, 2015 ISBN 978-1-78239-108-1
  23. ↑ Mr. James Doyle , Question from Arthur Lewis, MP in the British Parliament to the Attorney General , October 18, 1971
  24. Jump up ↑ Johann Althaus: The Tu-144 came to a head in the USSR , Die Welt, December 31, 2018