Soviet espionage of Concorde and the "Concordski"
France, 1960s
This case is a work of fiction. The characters, names, places and events in the game do not portray real people. The account below is a factual summary, based on public sources, of the case that served as inspiration.
In the 1960s, France and the United Kingdom were building Concorde together, a supersonic passenger airliner, while the Soviet Union raced to put its own in the air, the Tupolev Tu-144. The Soviet aircraft flew first, on December 31, 1968, two months before Concorde, and looked so much like it that the Western press nicknamed it "Concordski." Aviation historians point out that the two projects had major differences in engines, wing and landing gear, but the resemblance fed the suspicion that the Soviets had stolen their rival's secrets.
The suspicion had a basis. Warned by British and American intelligence services, French counterintelligence (the DST) began watching Sergei Pavlov, the Aeroflot representative in Paris. On February 1, 1965, according to accounts of the case, he waited two hours for a contact at the restaurant La Flambée, seated across from a DST agent, and was arrested on his way out with plans of Concorde's landing gear and anti-skid brakes. Protected by his diplomatic status, he was expelled from France and left the country through Le Bourget airport on February 16, 1965.
Sources
In the game
Landing Gear
Toulouse, Wednesday, February 3, 1965, 11:30 pm. Beside the runway, in an aircraft factory, the Zéphyr is taking shape: the West's first supersonic passenger airliner, a white dart that the Soviets want to copy at any price.
He was not the only one. Sergei Fabiew, who had worked for Soviet military intelligence since 1962, was arrested on March 15, 1977 at Orly airport, after messages from Moscow decoded by the French congratulated him on obtaining the complete plans of Concorde; on February 1, 1978 he was sentenced to 20 years in prison. The Tu-144, rushed and full of flaws, crashed at the Paris Air Show at Le Bourget in 1973 and, in 1978, was withdrawn from passenger service after only 55 passenger flights, while Concorde flew for more than 25 years.
