Operation Jiu Jitsu

Operation Jiu Jitsu reveals how British and American secret services joined forces during the Cold War in a covert alliance to map the USSR and establish its long range nuclear weapon capacity. It's hard to imagine today, but no reliable Western maps of the region existed after World War Two.

With the pace of a thriller, Tom Whipple brings this vital moment of Cold War history vividly to life. From allied troops hunting down Russian maps in abandoned German outposts in 1945 to the pilots of the secret Russian overflights taking aerial photographs of Russian sites while under fire, ending with Gary Powers being shot down and imprisoned by the Russians as a spy in 1960, this is the story of the joint US UK air force mission that became a CIA, quasi-civilian, secret operation.