MiG Pilot Viktor Belenko: ‘I Am the Luckiest Man Alive’

Soldier of Fortune ^ | September 7, 2022 | Susan Katz Keating

[lowbridge]

Belenko had been a respected pilot with the Soviet Air Defence Forces. But by 1976, he wanted to leave the Soviet Union. At the time, he was based near Vladivostok, as part of the 513th Fighter Regiment, 11th Air Army. The unit lived at Chuguyevka Airbase. It’s worth noting that the Soviet Air Defence Forces were a separate aerial branch from the Soviet Air Force, and that its members were an elite and trusted band. As such, Belenko, too, would be trusted. So much so, that when his blood pressure was elevated on the morning he planned to escape, the flight surgeon believed Belenko when he said he wasn’t nervous about anything, and that his BP was up because he’d been exercising.

Lieutenant Viktor Ivanovich Belenko at the time was learning to fly the new Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-25 supersonic interceptor jet. Western analysts had not yet examined a real “Foxbat,” and considered it to be a highly capable threat to NATO aircraft. The Secretary of the Air Force, Robert Seamans, had said the MiG-25 was “probably the best interceptor in production in the world today.”

The 29 year old Belenko correctly assumed that the United States would want to obtain a Foxbat.

Belenko planned to deliver one in person, in exchange for asylum. The jet was a voracious consumer of fuel, though, and wouldn’t make it from Chuguyevka to a U.S. or Canadian air base. It could, however, in theory reach a support base in Japan. Maybe.

Belenko set his escape for Sept. 6, 1976, when he would have good weather.

[larrytown]

My father once told me that the only reason that America won wars was because our enemies were more stupid than we were,

Your father was a brilliant observer of facts and the human condition.

[redinIllinois]

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