Stolen American missiles, Soviet spies sent them to Moscow by mail

A KGB agent breaks into a US air base in Germany, steals a new AIM-9 missile and sends it to Moscow by mail.

The K-13 missile model was copied from the AIM-9.

In the 1960s, Russia produced air-to-air missiles.R-3S (K-13A) based on the modelThe American AIM-9B is equipped on MiG-21 fighters.However, air battles in the Middle East have shown that the weapon has become obsolete in the face of new AIM-9 variants developed by the United States. A Soviet spy helped the Soviet Union catch up with its rival with a daring mission and an unlikely way to deliver the missile, according toWar is Boring.

On the night of October 22, 1967, Manfred Ramminger, a KGB agent in West Germany, took advantage of the fog and a lack of security to break into the Neuburg air base. Ramminger, along with driver Josef Linowski and pilot Wolff-Diethard Knoppe, entered the ammunition depot and successfully stole a new AIM-9 missile. They loaded it onto a wheelbarrow and pushed it to a car parked outside the base.

The 9-foot-long projectile was so cumbersome that Ramminger had to smash the back window of his car and cover the protruding part of the missile with carpet. To avoid attracting police attention, he used a red cloth to mark the protruding part, as required by law.

After arriving home without incident, Ramminger patiently disassembled the AIM-9 into its parts. He kept the fuse, which he then handed to his contact. Finally, Ramminger packed all the parts into a box, took it to the post office, and sent it via airmail to Moscow. To avoid problems with customs, Ramminger declared the contents of the package as “low-quality export goods.”

R-13M missile, developed from a sample stolen by Ramminger. Photo: Wikipedia.

Because the AIM-9 missile weighed nearly 100 kilograms, he had to pay $78.25 in shipping fees. The shipping service’s oversight caused Ramminger’s package to travel from Germany to France to Denmark, then back to Germany, before arriving in Moscow 10 days later than expected.

Possessing this missile helped Soviet scientists successfully develop the R-13M air-to-air missile with significantly improved performance. The R-13M missile can attack targets from the front, instead of being limited to attacks from the rear like the previous K-13 models.

The Soviet Union then began developing more modern short-range air-to-air missiles such as the R-60 and R-73, which had many superior features to contemporary American and Western weapons. Ramminger himself and his assistants were arrested by German counterintelligence in late 1968 and sentenced to four years in prison.

According to VNE