Following publication of his novel Ice Station Zebra, spy novel writer, Alistair Maclean was approached by US Intelligence and quizzed on how he had managed to obtain so much information and detail on US nuclear submarines of which he replied, ‘I just went into a toy shop in New York and purchased a model kit of the USS Nautilus.’
In the giant department store, Woolworths, in London’s Oxford Street, it seemed this source of intelligence was in abundance in the form of Airfix kits of the latest NATO aircraft, tanks and ships providing spy agencies with a three dimensional model to study and weigh up against their own equivalent military hardware. Moreover, on numerous occasions the range of model kits available would feature subjects still very much on the secret list!
In the height of plastic model kit popularity, namely the 1960s and 70s, whenever a new warplane prototype was introduced to the public, you could guarantee that boys and girls who dreamed one day of being jet fighter pilots would have a hastily-built and crudely painted model of an F-111, F-16, Harrier or an SR-71 Blackbird spy plane hanging on wire from bedroom ceilings, or the assault ship, HMS Fearless or a Chieftain main battle tank resting on a shelf. So what would prevent Soviet embassy staff going shopping, then returning to their desk to construct what would become the centrepiece for analysis at a defence strategy meeting? Take for instance the Panavia Tornado, Europe’s main strike aircraft of the 80s, 90s and recently retired by the RAF after thirty years in front-line use, but still flying in Germany and Italy. The prototype MRCA as it was then known first flew in August 1974. By the beginning of 1975, a future model kit appeared in Airfix’s 1975 catalogue even though it would be another four years before the type would enter full service with the three nations. In fact, it wasn’t just the U.K. manufacturer who were quick on the mark to produce a model kit of the Tornado, as both Revell and Italeri also had a kit out before the end of the same year. However, this didn’t always go to plan, as when Airfix announced in 1965 they were releasing a BAC TSR2 while the prototype was still in its testing phase, the government stepped in and managed to discourage the company from producing it. Consequently, it would be another thirty years (the period for which top secret paraphernalia can generally be released) before a licenced kit of the ill-fated TSR 2 finally hit the shelves of model shops to which it instantly sold out.
Ironically, as far as East and West was concerned, this opportunity to examine the latest machines of war in this way worked both ways. On September 6th 1976 at Hakodate Airport, Japan, Soviet pilot Viktor Belenko landed his brand-new MIG-25 FOXBAT interceptor and requested political asylum in the United States. This was a major coup for Western intelligence as the FOXBAT had rarely been seen in the West up to that time. The incident would also inspire author Craig Thomas’ first novel, Firefox. But it was Japanese kit manufacturers, Hasegawa, who pulled off the biggest scoop. They had sent their designers to Hakodate to see the aircraft for themselves while negotiations to return it to the Soviet Union were still taking place, and in a record fifty six days, they had released it as a kit with Belenko’s aircraft RED 31, as one of the marking options. It sold out instantly, some most likely whisking their way to Whitehall and the Pentagon. Forty eight years later, it can still be found in Hasegawa’s current catalogue.
This practice still goes on today as kit manufacturers feel the need to be the first off the starting blocks with anything new in weapon technology, so I wouldn’t be surprised the nostalgic aroma of polystyrene cement still manages to linger around embassy corridors as foreign diplomats unwrap an Amazon parcel and then sit down to put together a scale replica of an extremely highly-detailed Lockheed Martin F-35.
Being a spy fiction writer myself, I also find that using a model is a perfect way to inspire the best from the scene I want to depict in the story, and on a shelf above my desk, just as Maclean most probably did while writing his classic Cold War novel, I happen to have a model of a German WW2 Type XX1 U boat displaying a full interior, which will feature in my latest book.
Explore David's Alex Swan mystery series at http://www.alexswanmysteries.uk/, dubbed 'A Cold War Sherlock Holmes' by The Big Thrill magazine.
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