Posted on 09/05/2016 11:21:26 PM PDT by sukhoi-30mki
On 6 September 1976, an aircraft appears out of the clouds near the Japanese city of Hakodate, on the northern island of Hokkaido. It’s a twin-engined jet, but not the kind of short-haul airliner Hakodate is used to seeing. This huge, grey hulk sports the red stars of the Soviet Union. No-one in the West has ever seen one before.
The jet lands on Hakodate’s concrete-and-asphalt runway. The runway, it turns out, is not long enough.
The jet ploughs through hundreds of feet of earth before it finally comes to rest at the far end of the airport.
The pilot climbs out of the plane’s cockpit and fires two warning shots from his pistol – motorists on the road next to the airport have been taking pictures of this strange sight. It is some minutes before airport officials, driving from the terminal, reach him. It is then that the 29-year-old pilot, Flight Lieutenant Viktor Ivanovich Belenko of the Soviet Air Defence Forces, announces that he wishes to defect.
It is no normal defection. Belenko has not wandered into an embassy, or jumped ship while visiting a foreign port. The plane that he has flown 400-odd miles, and which now sits stranded at the end of a provincial Japanese runway, is the Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-25. It is the most secretive aircraft the Soviet Union has ever built.
Until Belenko’s landing, that is.
The West first became aware of what would become known as the MiG-25 around 1970. Spy satellites stalking Soviet airfields picked up a new kind of aircraft bring tested in secret. They looked like enormous fighter planes, and the West’s militaries were concerned by one particular feature; they sported very large wings.
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.com ...
Belenko’s MiG 25 was disassembled, crated, and sent to Dayton, Ohio. A good friend and former roommate of mine worked in the Soviet division of the CIA at the time and he was sent to Dayton to inspect the reassembled MiG. He told me later that there was considerable disagreement within the Air Force and the CIA about how to interpret the plane’s construction and technology (hand rivets, vacuum tubes, the apparent lack of an ejection seat mechanism, etc.). We can now appreciate some of the advantages of the seemingly rudimentary design and construction, like we do the early AK-47, but at the time it was considered by many to be evidence of the inferiority of Soviet technology. It is true that their technology was generally far behind ours, but the MiG-25 was not the crucial evidence.
To me I think the XB-70 Valkyrie and the ‘Star Wars’ programs were both money well spent. That’s because even though neither program ever went into production the Soviets spent scarce money on full scale programs to counter these technologies. These weapons ended up destroying the one resource that a communist country is always short on and that’s wealth!
Tears = years although I suspect tears works equally well in this context.
6 years ahead of you....Denby-68
It also shows how one works against a one man government like the USSR. Make that Leader look weak, look like he is losing and that Leader will react. We just had to start producing the B70 and the Russians bankrupted themselves trying to react and counter our ‘threat”
I was recovering P40 Kittyhawks that we gave to the Russians during the war.And yes, we were not supposed to be there(that far north).We had staged out of arkangel and were renting heavylift choppers and landed on the base during an IG inspection.We had no idea how much of a world of shite we would have been in had we been found out.It was very chaotic back then and we got away with things that you would not today.I bought the airframes from individuals that most certainly were mob and they were transferred by truck to basil Switzerland and then to Rotterdam and then on to savannah Georgia.The guy I was initially dealing with was crooked and left me in Murmansk but I managed to get a flight out down to Moscow for 100us.I left a very generous tip to the lady running the flight crew lounge who taught engish as a teacher.(Lucky me)I would still be there had she not got me on that flight.I cant believe that’s been so long ago now.While there I did teach them all the game of quarters and they were extremely quick studys.
You make a salient point, and one that I cannot refute as it is by people who actually dealt with those threats and thus have first hand information. Thanks for your post sir.
Wow! Interesting story.
Three questions.
1. What kind of condition were the P-40s in?
2. Was the hop to Moscow Aeroflot or SovAF?
3. The “game of quarters?” Please explain.
Thanks again for sharing.
They were rebuildable in fact the first one I recovered has been restored and flying in Virginia.The second and third also have been rebuilt and are flying.The flight was SFO to anchorage and then onto Moscow.Thats a long damn flight.The flight out was to JFK and was only nine hours.The game of quarters require a quarter and a shot glass.You bounce the quarter off a table into the shot glass.As you ring the shot glass you make up rules all the while haing to take a shot when you miss.Lots of fun IIRC
You're welcome. I really enjoy discussions about aviation history.
Thanks for your reply.
Had the P-40s been in outside storage the whole time or were they crated/protected? What other Lend Lease jewels were up there? P-39s? P-63s? A-20s? B-25s?
I recall reading that all of the PT boats and other small surface combatants that had been loaned to the Russians were either scrapped due to their worn out condition or destroyed upon return. Assume the armor and trucks met the same fate. Surprised any aircraft (other than in museums) survived. Where these just some that escaped destruction because they were mislocated/lost from the inventory?
Actually, I was referring to the flight to Moscow from Murmansk.
I could see you being secreted aboard a SovAF transport as an unmanifested passenger (after, of course, the mandatory crossing of palm(s)(?) first.). Hard to see that working at Aeroflot check-in in a military restricted zone.
Of course, once you are airborne, there is an interesting question about the arrival airfield in Moscow. Military or civilian? Ha, ha, ha. Probably easier to just bundle the unexplained American into a taxi and wish him well rather than go through the bother of figuring out the how and why ... Anyway, Perestroika! Glasnost! Wave and smile!
Okay. Right. I get it. Any game involving drinking is going to get the Russians’ interest.
So, just how drunk were you when you got on that plane?
The P40s I recovered were from right where they bellied in during the war.Some were better than others but all were rebuildable.I had to remove the 50s from the wings and that was a bitch because the guns load from underneath so we had to jack the planes up to get at them.We are in the middle of nowhere and made log stacks to accomplish this.Somewhere I have pictures of me standing on top of the longerons with a death grip on the lifting cable we used to pick up one of the planes with a chopper.Even the Russians thought I was crazy.I was sober as a judge at the airport when I managed to get out.We got to arkangel by train from Moscow and they did not check our coach.21 hour train ride was something to experience.Wild youth.I did manage to aquire the P40 that was on display at the museum in Monino(?) much to the amassment of people in the business.
“I did manage to aquire the P40 that was on display at the museum in Monino(?) much to the amassment of people in the business.”
You acquired the P-40 out of the collection of the Central Air Forces Museum!? Wow! Now I know you were dealing with the Russian criminal element. I can imagine the line given to the guards at the facility gate or was the transaction conducted in cash?
How were the crates marked for export: “scrap metal” or “used machine parts?”
Very cheeky all the way around. Congratulations.
I wont go into any details but it wasn’t really that bad.They needed the money.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.