Germany.Berlin · pilots see red lights in the air corridor

The document is a US Air Force AF Form 112, report 260-53 of the 7350th Base Complement Squadron, the unit at Tempelhof air base in West Berlin. It was prepared by Captain Fred L. Allen, air intelligence officer, with a report date and information date of August 11, 1953. The subject is "Extracts from Air Traffic Control Logs", the area "Soviet Zone Germany", the source "Air Traffic Controller" and the evaluation "None". It was classified Confidential (now declassified, authority NND 57597), bears the log stamp of Tempelhof air base headquarters and was distributed to the intelligence section (A-2) of US Air Forces in Europe headquarters, to that of Twelfth Air Force and to OSI District Office No. 3. It contains no analysis: it copies, with their times, the Tempelhof air traffic control entries about three pilots flying the center corridor, the air route between Berlin and Hanover that crossed the Soviet occupation zone.

The first entry is from August 10 at 1936Z, the time of the entry and not necessarily of the sighting. In it, the pilot of a British European Airways DC-3, with the registration the log writes as "GALXK", inbound for Tempelhof via the center corridor, reported observing "what appeared to be red colored rockets, being fired approximately one (1) mile in front of him". The log does not give the aircraft's position, its altitude, how long the observation lasted or the pilot's name.

The second is from 2245Z. The "Bad Eisen" air traffic control, as the log spells it, passed on to Tempelhof that the pilot of another British European Airways DC-3, registration "GAGIP", had sighted a stationary red light twenty nautical miles west of Genthin, a town whose position the log gives in brackets (52°24' N, 12°09' E). The light appeared to be at about 5,000 feet but not above 5,500. The time is that of the message between the two control centers, not that of the sighting, which the log does not give, and it does not name the pilot either. At 2315Z the Berlin Air Safety Center, which the log calls British, reported that "the Soviets checked on this reported red light and could not account for it". The log does not say what the Soviets checked or how.

The third is from August 11 at 0235Z. Pilot Lesser, of Pan American's "Clipper C-193A" (as the log has it), en route to Hanover via the center corridor, reported to Tempelhof when over the area twenty nautical miles west of Genthin. He "observed no light or activity of any description", but said that on Friday night, August 7, 1953, he had observed "ground to air firing" in that same area, that the firing stopped as his aircraft approached and that he was unable to determine what type of projectile was being fired. The second page of the report adds a note: as of the report, the office had been unable to contact pilot Lesser for further information. The report ends with Allen's signature, and in the space for library codes someone wrote by hand, in red, "Nodex".

The point the log gives twice, twenty nautical miles west of Genthin, falls at about 52.40° N and 11.60° E (our own calculation from the coordinates in the log). That lies inside the Colbitz-Letzlinger Heide, a training area of some 232 square kilometers in its present extent, centered at about 52.43° N and 11.57° E, which, according to the German encyclopedia, the Soviet forces in Germany occupied from July 1945 and turned into a live-fire range, and did not leave until the 1990s. The log does not mention that range or any Soviet exercise on those nights; the match is our own calculation.

The sky conditions are also our own calculation, for an observer about 1,600 meters above that point. The Sun set at about 1850Z and at 1936Z, the time of the first entry, was some 7° below the horizon, in full twilight; the Moon was practically new and below the horizon all night. At 2245Z no bright planet was above the horizon: Jupiter was about 2.3° below the geometric horizontal (calculated without refraction), in the northeast, and from 1,600 meters the apparent horizon lies 1.3° below that horizontal, so with refraction it could have grazed it. Since the sighting came before that message, and Jupiter was rising, it was lower still earlier. Since the log does not say where the DC-3 was or at what time it saw the light, nor that it saw it toward the northeast, that calculation can neither attribute the light to Jupiter nor rule it out.

We have not found other documentation for these nights. The Project Blue Book files for August 1953 on archive.org number 31 and none is from Germany, and a search of period press turned up nothing; that does not prove they do not exist, only that we do not have them.

What the log provides is institutional context: three reports from airline pilots logged on the same night by a military control center, in an air corridor that crossed the Soviet zone, and a query to the Soviets themselves through the Berlin air safety center, who replied that they could not account for the light. The report went to Air Force intelligence in Europe the next day without a conclusion and without an evaluation of the source.

The witnesses themselves describe something being fired: the first pilot, what appeared to be red rockets fired a mile ahead of his aircraft (the log does not say from where), and the Pan American pilot, ground-to-air firing at the same spot three nights earlier, which stopped as he approached. That spot matches a Soviet firing range (our own calculation), which makes pyrotechnics or military fire plausible. Two things in the same log weigh against it: the second observation is a stationary red light, at an estimated height of 5,000 to 5,500 feet, which does not look like a rocket's trajectory; and the Soviets, who according to the air safety center checked that light, could not account for it. The log does not say what the Soviets checked or how, and nothing in it links the stationary light of 2245Z to the rockets of the 1936Z entry, which may have been different things in different places.

As evidence it is weak. The two British European Airways pilots have no names, only their aircraft registrations; the report of the stationary light reached Tempelhof second-hand, through another control center; no entry gives the exact time of the sighting, its duration or the position of the first aircraft, and the log does not mention any radar. The only named pilot, Lesser, saw nothing that night, and the office did not manage to speak to him about what he saw on August 7. That is why the case sits at the lowest level of evidence: the official documentation is contemporaneous, but it relays accounts without identified witnesses.

What remains open is specific: whether there were night exercises on the Colbitz-Letzlinger Heide range on August 7 and 10, 1953, what exactly the Soviets told the air safety center, and whether British European Airways' reports or a British inquiry preserve the pilots' names and the time of each observation.