Sparks in the Sky

"I'm flying two meters above him. Now I can see his expression, and he can see mine . . . I wave him down . . . He waved back . . . He did not move . . . Can I get permission to shoot him down?"

These were the radioed words of a Soviet fighter pilot buzzing a Western transport plane in the skies near Berlin. Failing to get a reply from his Russian ground commander, the pilot did not fire. But the message, monitored by U.S. authorities, was evidence of dangerous new tension in Berlin's aerial war of nerves.

New Nuisance. On and off for several weeks, the Russians have been sending up fighters to harass Western planes. Last week the Reds announced dozens of air corridor flight plans that would put Soviet transport planes at precisely the same altitudes at precisely the same times previously allocated to Western aircraft. This maneuver turned out to be sheer bluff; the Russian flights usually were canceled at the last minute, or the pilots simply chose a distant, safer course. But Moscow now tried another nuisance technique.

Radar operators in the West Berlin air traffic control center were startled to find unusual pips showing up on their scopes. The signals were too small to be airplanes, much too concentrated to be a rainstorm. They were, in fact, reflections from great batches of aluminum chaff* dumped into the sky by high-flying Soviet planes. The idea, presumably, was to test new ways of confusing the flow of Western planes.

From a technical standpoint, the radar harassment was no major threat to today's sophisticated electronic gear, which allows skilled operators to ''see'' through such outmoded forms of jamming. But the West was concerned at the continual harassment. Noticeably annoyed, President Kennedy called dropping the aluminum chaff "a particularly dangerous kind of action.'' The U.S. seemed more determined than ever to fight if the Russians nudge too hard in the corridors. U.S. jet fighters, armed with Sidewinder missiles, recently have been aloft at the Western end of the Berlin air lanes, ready to reach the scene of trouble in minutes. Giant U.S. C-133 Cargomasters, capable of hauling huge trailer trucks, began practice runs up to West Berlin in case an airlift might soon be needed.

Doubletalk. At Geneva (see above), U.S. Secretary of State Dean Rusk and British Foreign Secretary Lord Home made Moscow's rough stuff over Berlin Topic A in their first talks with Russia's Andrei Gromyko. As reported by the New York Herald Tribune's Marguerite Higgins, there ensued some uncommonly blunt words among the three statesmen.

GROMYKO: "I know nothing of the difficulties you mention in the air corridor."

RUSK: "May I observe, Mr. Foreign Minister, that if there is a gap in your information, it could easily be rectified by one quick call to the Soviet Ministry of Defense in Moscow?"

GROMYKO: "And may I be permitted to observe, Mr. Rusk, that it is improper for the American Secretary of State to tell the Soviet Foreign Minister how to conduct his business?"

RUSK: "Mr. Gromyko, I have noted of late that Mr. Khrushchev seems to be speaking with two voices. One Mr. Khrushchev is the man of peace. The other Mr. Khrushchev is the one who makes the decisions in the air corridors. From now on, I am going to listen with two ears to establish which is the real Mr. Khrushchev."

* Tinsel-like strips, similar to the shredded British-designed material called window used with great success by R.A.F. and U.S. bombers in World War II to impair the accuracy of Hitler's radar-controlled antiaircraft guns.

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