34. “It’s Hit the Fan”
The following day, when Quanbeck returned from a mission, he was met by Diefendorf who informed him: “It’s hit the fan“. Instead of crossing the coast well south of the Soviet border the previous day, the duo had done so well to the north. Rather than attack an airfield on North Korean soil, they ended up attacking Sukhaya Rechka, a Soviet airfield on the outskirts of Vladivostok, nearly 80 miles north of the border with North Korea.
Understandably, the Soviets were quite alarmed, unclear whether the attack was a mistake, or a deliberate provocation that presaged the outbreak of World War III. The following day, October 9th, 1950, the Soviet government presented an official note of protest to the United Nations.