National Affairs: Aerial Piracy

The Soviet Union last week gave an answer that was no answer at all to a strongly implied U.S. charge that Russian planes had committed an act of aerial piracy.

In a curt note Moscow rejected the witness-backed U.S. statement that three fighter planes had intercepted an unarmed Air Force C-130 transport and its 17-man crew near the Turkish border on Sept. 2. forced it to fly into Soviet Armenia, where it crashed and burned. Instead, the Russians accused the U.S. of attempting to justify an “intentional violation” of the Soviet border, promised only that the bodies of six crew members found in the wreckage would be returned.

Ignored were urgent U.S. requests to inspect the C-130 wreckage and, more important, for information concerning the eleven airmen still unaccounted for. If the airmen were dead, the Soviets would have no reason to hide the fact. If they were alive, were the Russians holding them hostage? Or were they at large in the Armenian hills, attempting to avoid capture, hoping to make it back across the Turkish frontier?