http://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/Northwoods.html8. It is possible to create an incident which will demonstrate
convincingly that a Cuban aircraft has attacked and shot down
a chartered civil airliner enroute from the United States to
Jamaica, Guatemala, Panama or Venezuela. The destination would
be chosen only to cause the flight plan route to cross Cuba.
The passengers could be a group of college students off on a
holiday or any grouping of persons with a common interest to
support chartering a non-scheduled flight.
a. An aircraft at Eglin AFB would be painted and
numbered as an exact duplicate for a civil registered
aircraft belonging to a CIA proprietary organization in the
Miami area. At a designated time the duplicate would be
subsituted for the actual civil aircraft and would be
loaded with the selected passengers, all boarded under
carefully prepared aliases. The actual registered
aircraft would be converted to a drone.
b. Take off times of the drone aircraft and the actual
aircraft will be scheduled to allow a rendezvous south of
Florida. From the rendezvous point the passenger-carrying
aircraft will descend to minimum altitude and go directly
into an auxiliary field at Eglin AFB where arrangements will
have been made to evacuate the passengers and return the
aircraft to its original status. The drone aircraft
meanwhile will continue to fly the filed flight plan. When
over Cuba the drone will being transmitting on the inter-
national distress frequency a "MAY DAY" message stating he
is under attack by Cuban MIG aircraft. The transmission
will be interrupted by the destruction of aircraft which will
be triggered by radio signal. This will allow IACO radio
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Enclosure A
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stations in the Western Hemisphere to tell the US what
has happened to the aircraft instead of the US trying to
"sell" the incident.
9. It is possible to create an incident which will make it
appear that Communist Cuban MIGs have destroyed a USAF aircraft
over international waters in an unprovoked attack.
a. Approximately 4 of 5 F-101 aircraft will be dispatched
in trail from Homestead AFB, Florida, to the vicinity of Cuba.
Their mission will be to reverse course and simulate fakir
aircraft for an air defense exercise in southern Florida.
These aircraft would conduct variations of these flights at
frequent intervals. Crews would be briefed to remain at
least 12 miles off the Cuban coast; however, they would be
required to carry live ammunition in the event that hostile
actions were taken by the Cuban MIGs.
b. On one such flight, a pre-briefed pilot would fly
tail-end Charley at considerable interval between aircraft.
While near the Cuban Island this pilot would broadcast that
he had been jumped by MIGs and was going down. No other
calls would be made. The pilot would then fly directly
west at extremely low altitude and land at a secure base, an
Eglin auxiliary. The aircraft would be met by the proper
people, quickly stored and given a new tail number. The
pilot who had performed the mission under an alias, would
resume his proper identity and return to his normal place
of business. The pilot and aircraft would then have
disappeared.
c. At precisely the same time that the aircraft was
presumably shot down a submarine or small surface craft
would disburse F-101 parts, parachute, etc., at approximately
15 to 20 miles off the Cuban coast and depart. The pilots
retuning to Homestead would have a true story as far as
they knew. Search ships and aircraft could be dispatched
and parts of aircraft found.