As the C-47 flew toward Venice, it encountered heavy weather, including an undercast, and, unknown to its crew, blundered into Yugoslav airspace for several minutes.

This caused an immediate uproar from the US government, and stern statements were issued to Yugoslav prime minister Josip Broz (Tito) about immediate release and access to the crash site.

[1] Under threat of US cutoff of aid to Yugoslavia, Tito yielded, the interned Americans were released, and some compensation paid to the next-of-kin of the dead personnel.

[1] USAFE acquired a Boeing RB-17 Flying Fortress from a photo-mapping unit, Detachment A of the 10th Reconnaissance Group at Furth Air Base, Germany.

These aircraft were in Europe as part of Project Casey Jones, an attempt to photomap as much of the world as possible to create maps and charts for use in future contingencies, and installed electronic countermeasures equipment in it.

[1] Most likely because of the airlift and its accompanying sharp increase in tensions, USAFE decided to form the reconnaissance and ELINT units into a single squadron.

[2] The 7405th Support Squadron became the flying element of the upgraded group, remaining at Wiesbaden as the only unit to conduct corridor collection.

The 7405th was openly tasked with the courier mission to West Berlin, meaning it was to conduct daily flights to and from Tempelhof Central Airport carrying passengers and priority cargo.

This aircraft (serial 49-2952), covertly carrying a 240-inch focal length camera, was codenamed Pie Face and was mostly used along the periphery of the satellite nations.

The camera took 18 x 36-inch negatives exposed at 0.0025 seconds and could be positioned to take vertical or left or right oblique photographs through a large window which was hidden by covert doors.

[3] When flown on an occasional Berlin Air Corridor mission, even at the required altitudes of less than 10,000 ft, the camera would produce spectacular, high-resolution photography, very useful for technical analysis of equipment.

This aircraft would provide valuable imagery right up until 1972, when it was finally retired to AMARC after some productive missions around Cuba during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

[3] The 7406th Support Squadron was activated at Rhein-Main Air Base, West Germany on 10 May 1955 and received its first aircraft (a Boeing RB-50E Superfortress) in March 1956.

A separate USAF Security Service (USAFSS) squadron provided the crew that manned the intelligence collection positions on the aircraft.

[2][4] Under the Big Safari program of special procurement, E-Systems converted ten C-130A aircraft for signals intelligence (SIGINT) duties under project Sun Valley.

The Aerial Reconnaissance Memorial honors all Silent Warriors (all military airborne recon crews) who paid the ultimate price while defending their country.

After inactivation of the 7406th Squadron the 55th Strategic Reconnaissance Wing at Offutt Air Force Base, Nebraska took over the missions with Boeing RC-135 aircraft.

In late 1955 the squadron received ten highly modified RB-57A-1 Canberra reconnaissance aircraft, These aircraft were modified RB-57As under Project Lightweight (later renamed Project Heartthrob) with higher-thrust Wright J65 engines, a reduction of the crew from two to one, the removal of all items not absolutely essential for the daylight photographic reconnaissance mission.

The intended mission of Project Heart Throb aircraft included day and night,[citation needed] high and low, and visual and photographic reconnaissance.

[7][page needed] Two other B-57s, designated RB-57A-2 were modified with a bulbous nose containing AN/APS-60 mapping radar and a SIGINT direction finder system in 1957 under project SARTAC.

[7] The 7407th squadron had a Detachment 1 organized at Bitburg Air Base, West Germany using three North American RF-100A Super Sabre reconnaissance aircraft (53-1551, 53–1554, 53–1554) called as "Slick Chicks".

The RF-100A was quickly picked up by Soviet radar and, as the target was at the extreme range of the aircraft, the pilot had no option but to fly a virtually straight track.

Throughout the mission, the pilot was faced with the unnerving spectacle of a never-ending stream of Soviet interceptor fighters attempting to bring down the RF-100A by firing a variety of machine-guns, cannons and missiles at the aircraft.

In June 1958 the Detachment was inactivated and the two remaining RF-100A's were transferred to the 3131st Maintenance Group at Châteauroux-Déols Air Base, France and eventually were sent to Taiwan.

[7] On 14 December 1965, one of the prototype RB-57Fs (63-13287) operating temporarily from Incirlik Air Base, Turkey, was lost during a mission over the Black Sea.

[10][page needed] All along, the 7405th and its sister squadrons were also flying peripheral reconnaissance missions throughout Europe and, increasingly, the Middle East, but beginning in the late 1960s Strategic Air Command Boeing RC-135s assumed a greater share of the peripheral strategic reconnaissance mission and on 30 June 1974 the 7499th Group and the 7406th and 7407th squadrons were inactivated.

One of the most bizarre sightings dates from January 1976 when a traveler from West Berlin saw a low-flying C-130 over the Transitstrasse, the transit route, near Magdeburg in the German Democratic Republic.

Granted it was flying perfectly legally in the Berlin Air Corridor at the time of the sighting, the fact that it was a black MC-130E from the 7th SOS does make one a trifle suspicious.

Then came the 1989 collapse of the Warsaw Pact and the fall of the Berlin Wall; the 1990 German reunification, and the phase-out of Soviet armed forces from Eastern Europe.

On 29 September 1990, the last C-130 collection mission was flown; then, on 3 October, the Berlin Air Corridors and Control Zone officially disappeared.