Developed for Spetsnaz and the KGB Wet Teams, the PB was a Suppressed Pistol with some Serious Design Compromises Developed for Spetsnaz units and the KGB in the mid-1960s, the Soviet PB — also known as the 6P9 — took the proven Makarov PM design and incorporated a two-stage, integral suppressor. During World War II, the Soviet NKVD had…
Category: Cold War Files
Espionage Files: North Korea’s Shadow War, Part IV
South Korea’s Covert Operations in North Korea After Pyongyang attacked Seoul in the late 1960s, the South counterattacked This is the fourth story in a series. Read parts one, two and three. In the late 1960s, North Korea unleashed a guerrilla war on South Korea, sending spies and special operations troops across the Military Demarcation…
Military Aviation History: 11 of the Worst Soviet Aircraft
The Soviet Union lasted a mere sixty-nine years (the Spitfire has been flying longer), but in that time produced some of the largest, fastest, toughest and most agile aircraft. Even now, 25 years after its collapse, almost all Russian and Ukrainian aircraft have their roots in the communist super state. Favoring clever robust design over…
Espionage Files: North Korea’s Shadow War, Part III
How South Korea Thwarted Kim Il-sung’s Shadow War North Korea’s late-1960s commando campaign came to a bloody halt This is the third story in a series. Read parts one and two. In the late spring of 1969, a 75-ton North Korean speed boat hurtled through the Yellow Sea off the western coast of South…
Cold War Files: America’s “Secret War” and The Most Bombed Country in History
Christine Boyle’s store, Queen Design Lao, offers rings, necklaces and pendants to shoppers along Luang Prabang’s quaint peninsula. Most of the trinkets resemble normal jewelry, but the miniature cluster bombs on some chains in the friendly Aussie’s shop are less subtle. Known as “peace jewelry,” the necklaces sport metal harvested from unexploded bombs, a reminder…
Espionage Files: North Korea’s Shadow War, Part II
This is the second story in a series. Read part one. Thirty-one shadows crept up to the fence in the cold winter night, cut it and slipped through, walking into the American side of the demilitarized zone that buffers North and South Korea. It was January 1968 and the North Korean special operations troops were…
Cold War Files: The Confusing Times of the Six Day War
During the Six Day War pitting Israel against its Arab neighbors in 1967, Americans were thrust into the crisis — even though they weren’t directly involved in the fighting. After Israel pre-emptively attacked Egyptian forces on June 5, 1967, much of the Arab world came to Cairo’s aid. Recently-declassified messages describe American fliers handling their own chaotic…
Cold War Files: The Ghost of Soviet Past
CRAWLING THROUGH THE DECAYED NUCLEAR MISSILE BASES OF THE USSR Editor’s note: In December 2015, two Army intelligence officers set out on a trip to explore the mysterious remnants of the Soviet Union in the Baltic States. In the first of this two part series, they showed War on the Rocks readers what they saw…
Cold War Files: When the Air Force Dropped a Nuclear Bomb on South Carolina
A version of this story originally appeared on Muckrock.com. If you ever find yourself traveling on Crater Road in Mars Bluff, South Carolina, be sure and carve out a few moments for a marker commemorating this whimsical footnote in Cold War history – that time the US nearly nuked itself. Although the event was written about extensively at the…
Socialism Sucks: The Political Rehabilitation of Che’ Guevera
It might surprise some of you to hear that I can be completely unreasonable and even aggressive about certain issues; the rest of you already know me well enough to expect it. I left all my social skills someplace in Eastern Europe. I’ve even been known to make an ass out of myself in public…