Posted on 06/30/2025 10:54:45 AM PDT by where's_the_Outrage?
Viktor Belenko, the former Soviet Air Defence Forces pilot who defected to the West in 1976 in a MiG-25 high-speed interceptor, has passed away on Sep. 24, 2023 Alert 5 first noted.
He died in a nursing home in a small town in Southern Illinois on Sep. 24. However, journalists learned about his death only now. The New York Times quoted Belenko’s son, Paul Schmidt, on Nov. 20 as saying that his father had died after a brief, unspecified illness in a nursing home in Rosebud, Illinois.
Viktor Belenko was born into a simple family of Soviet workers on Feb. 15, 1947, in Nalchik. But he managed to build a military career, making his way into the elite USSR Air Defense Forces, which defended the country from a possible attack from the outside.
On Sep. 6, 1976, then Lt. Belenko flew his MiG-25P fighter to Hakodate Airport in Hokkaido Prefecture of Japan, as the photos in this post show. After circling Hakodate airport three times, Belenko landed at the airport with around 30 seconds of fuel remaining.
As explained by Yefim Gordon in his book Mig-25 ‘Foxbat’ Mig-31 ‘Foxhound’: Russia’s Defensive Front Line, it will probably never be known if Belenko contacted the US military intelligence on his own or was hired by them (there is even a theory that ‘V Belenko’ was just a cover name for a trained agent tasked with stealing the latest Soviet military hardware, shades of Clint Eastwood in Firefox). Investigators found out that the defection was not an impulsive action of a dissatisfied officer – Belenko was expected in Japan and made preparations for the flight. He high-tailed it to Japan the very first time he had a full fuel load, taking the classified technical manuals with him.
(Excerpt) Read more at theaviationgeekclub.com ...
Damn. I read that book back in the 80s. Yikes! Didn’t the the boys take the MIG apart and then send it back to the Russkis in boxes. ROTFL!
Wasn’t the radar jam-proof because its effective radiated power (due to the antenna) was so high? 600 kilowatts?
The F-14 Tomcat was sold to Iran to combat intrusions by the MiG-25s, according to this ex-USAF pilot.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lSgCA1CYFq4
How so?
define lucky!
Apparently they tried, but....
Belenko claims that SR-71s flew off the coast of Russia, “taunting and toying with MiG-25s sent up to intercept them, scooting up to altitudes the Soviet planes could not reach, and circling leisurely above them, or dashing off at speeds the Russians could not match”)
On an obscure technical point, you might be interested in checking out the follow-on to the MiG-25, the MiG-31, specifically its rear landing gear. Rather than one wheel on each side, it uses two, with substantial linkage. The rear of each pair is ever so slightly offset from the front, so that it can fill any rut left by the corresponding front tire. Good for grass fields, if needed.
Of course, the F-108 was also cancelled.
As I recall, it was very high power for the day. Resistant to noise jamming common back then.
.
The U.S. started development of the AWACS in the early 1970s to detect interceptor takeoffs, so the AWACS crew could direct the SR-71 away from the inbound MiGs.
“Belenko claims that SR-71s flew off the coast of Russia, “taunting and toying with MiG-25s sent up to intercept them, scooting up to altitudes the Soviet planes could not reach, and circling leisurely above them, or dashing off at speeds the Russians could not match”)”
There’s a YouTube video of an SR-71 putting on full power and climbing away from a MiG-25.
The USAF took the Mig 25 apart down to the last cotter pin.
The Soviets were hopping mad and were demanding that we give the plane back to the. The AF sent the plane back on a ship. Each individual part was in it’s own box. Thousands of boxes.
I remember when all this happened and read the book.
Cool stuff.
Somehow this made it to the wrong thread.
It sure was. Belenko was the man and those were the days that America Was Great. It was the days when Americans were Americans and not a bunch of treasonous foreigners selling our secrets to any of America’s enemies who wanted them.
I briefly met him a million years ago. He was flying through and stopped for fuel. Of course in a T38.
Hand Salute to that dude!
Great big balls of steel.
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