Photos The Cold War
- Thread starter BravoZulu
- Start date
- Joined
- Apr 2, 2017
- Messages
- 37,822
- Points
- 463
A mob of Australian citizens attempts to prevent armed KGB agents from forcibly repatriating the wife of a Soviet defector back to the USSR in 1954.
The Petrov Affair is one of the most famous chapters in the espionage history of Australia. Vladimir Petrov and his wife Evdokia Petrova were KGB officers who had worked undercover in Australia since 1951. When Stalin's successor Beria was executed in 1953, Vladimir was determined once and for all not to return to the Soviet Union ever again. However, he did not tell his wife Evdokia about his intentions, instead defecting on his own. Once his defection became public, the KGB sent two "couriers" to retrieve Evdokia and take her back to the Soviet Union.
At the time, she was under virtual house arrest at the Soviet embassy in Canberra due to suspicions regarding her loyalty. When the couriers took her to the airport, the media and an enormous crowd gathered to prevent it. Many in the crowd were immigrants from Eastern Europe who were firmly anti-communist. Evdokia was visibly frightened and heard to say "Help me" and "I don't want to go" as she was dragged onboard, losing a shoe on the tarmac in the process (picture 2). Australian police attempted to prevent the crowd from gaining control, and eventually firefighters had to threaten to hose the crowd before they moved away from the plane. The flight departed only after a significant delay.
Onboard, the pilot and crew worked on a hasty rescue plan, coordinated with the Australian government. Flight steward Robert Muir spoke privately with Evdokia in the lavatory, away from her minders. She acknowledged a desire to defect to Australia. When the plane landed to refuel in Darwin, ASIO agents swarmed aboard and forcibly disarmed the KGB couriers. Evdokia disembarked and remained safely in Australia for the rest of her long life.
The Petrov Affair is one of the most famous chapters in the espionage history of Australia. Vladimir Petrov and his wife Evdokia Petrova were KGB officers who had worked undercover in Australia since 1951. When Stalin's successor Beria was executed in 1953, Vladimir was determined once and for all not to return to the Soviet Union ever again. However, he did not tell his wife Evdokia about his intentions, instead defecting on his own. Once his defection became public, the KGB sent two "couriers" to retrieve Evdokia and take her back to the Soviet Union.
At the time, she was under virtual house arrest at the Soviet embassy in Canberra due to suspicions regarding her loyalty. When the couriers took her to the airport, the media and an enormous crowd gathered to prevent it. Many in the crowd were immigrants from Eastern Europe who were firmly anti-communist. Evdokia was visibly frightened and heard to say "Help me" and "I don't want to go" as she was dragged onboard, losing a shoe on the tarmac in the process (picture 2). Australian police attempted to prevent the crowd from gaining control, and eventually firefighters had to threaten to hose the crowd before they moved away from the plane. The flight departed only after a significant delay.
Onboard, the pilot and crew worked on a hasty rescue plan, coordinated with the Australian government. Flight steward Robert Muir spoke privately with Evdokia in the lavatory, away from her minders. She acknowledged a desire to defect to Australia. When the plane landed to refuel in Darwin, ASIO agents swarmed aboard and forcibly disarmed the KGB couriers. Evdokia disembarked and remained safely in Australia for the rest of her long life.
- Joined
- Apr 2, 2017
- Messages
- 37,822
- Points
- 463
A P-3 Orion reconnaissance plane from the Royal Australian Air Force captured photos of a previously unknown Soviet space plane prototype in March 1983.
A trawler was in caught in the act of recovering it at the time.
In order to test the heat shield for their new design, Soviet engineers built a half-scale model of a reusable space plane. It was designated the BOR-4 and carried no crewmembers. It was launched into space and reached speeds up to Mach 24 before reentering the Earth’s atmosphere and splashing down in the Indian Ocean, where it was spotted by the RAAF.
This was the western world’s first look at the BOR-4, and it probably turned a lot of heads in the intelligence community at the time. But the BOR-4 was never used for more than a test bed design with a few limited applications. The reusable space plane concept was similar in many ways to an earlier US program called the Dyna-Soar, which also never fully materialized as envisioned.
This was just one of many instances where research, conquest, international politics, and espionage intersected during the Cold War and Space Race.
A trawler was in caught in the act of recovering it at the time.
In order to test the heat shield for their new design, Soviet engineers built a half-scale model of a reusable space plane. It was designated the BOR-4 and carried no crewmembers. It was launched into space and reached speeds up to Mach 24 before reentering the Earth’s atmosphere and splashing down in the Indian Ocean, where it was spotted by the RAAF.
This was the western world’s first look at the BOR-4, and it probably turned a lot of heads in the intelligence community at the time. But the BOR-4 was never used for more than a test bed design with a few limited applications. The reusable space plane concept was similar in many ways to an earlier US program called the Dyna-Soar, which also never fully materialized as envisioned.
This was just one of many instances where research, conquest, international politics, and espionage intersected during the Cold War and Space Race.
- Joined
- Apr 2, 2017
- Messages
- 37,822
- Points
- 463
A British army soldier from a ‘stay behind platoon’ fires an L34A1 suppressed submachine gun. The stay behind platoons were designed to allow the Soviet advance to pass them and then observe and call in fires on the rear area
- Joined
- Jul 10, 2016
- Messages
- 1,800
- Points
- 338
A Russian submarine runs aground in Swedish waters 1981. Spying? Nah - couldn't be! 
- Joined
- Apr 2, 2017
- Messages
- 37,822
- Points
- 463
Czechoslovak soldiers with UK vz.59 machine gun fighting in a burning building. Warsaw pact military exercise, 1970s
Czechoslovak army medic tends to a wounded infantryman. Warsaw pact military exercise, 1970s
Czechoslovak army medic tends to a wounded infantryman. Warsaw pact military exercise, 1970s
Last edited:
Similar threads
