Air Force medical staff had more authority than their counterparts in the ground forces. Although a doctor might only be a captain, regimental commanders always accepted their doctor’s “suggestion” about grounding a pilot found to be physically unfit to fly. The doctors also made sure we got the mandatory eight hours sleep each night. If a man was seen outside his building late at night, the doctor might ground him the next day. And Air Force medical regulations about the maximum number of flying hours or sorties in the training month, as well as mandatory annual leave, were strictly enforced. Every pilot on an active flight status was required to take a full forty-five days’ leave each year. This was recognition that flying high-performance aircraft was both mentally stressful and physically debilitating. Under the same regulations, every year served on active flight status counted as two years toward retirement. The same regulations covered Navy submariners.
The pilots flying met with the meteorologist and tactical operations officer for a thorough weather briefing and a detailed walk-through of the objectives and maneuvers of the day’s planned sorties. This was not a static rehearsal of an inflexible procedure, but rather an assessment of the training goals and skills required.
At 0800 the regimental commander briefed the pilots as to what he expected out of the day’s sorties. At Ruslan, Homenko had usually stressed safety. In Rinchinov’s fast, precise briefings here at Vaziani, he normally told us to keep our eyes open and to work hard. The ground radar controllers then gave us our GCI briefing as to the altitudes and vectors we would follow to our training circuits or weapons poligons. We also received the daily codes for our SRZO aircraft-recognition equipment.
The final squadron briefing came at 0830. It was a precise military formation rather than a friendly chat. Major Kuchkov spoke personally to each pilot, both chiding and urging him to concentrate on improving his skills.
We pulled on our G-suits and drew our helmets at 0845, just before conducting our walk-around inspection of the aircraft parked outside on the squadron apron. The maintenance officer in charge of that aircraft always accompanied us to answer any questions we might have about the condition of the machine. These guys had been up and working even longer than we had. In their black coveralls, greasy berets, and neckties splattered with hydraulic fluid, they always had a mournful, harassed look about them. But they were all graduates of first-rate engineering academies and were good at their work.
By tradition, takeoff came precisely at 0900. This was more than just an empty ritual. By insisting on an exact takeoff time, a regimental commander could be sure all the complex, interrelated elements necessary for a successful flight, from pilots’ briefings to maintenance procedures, would be completed in proper sequence.
Because the training circuits were near the base, the first sortie was usually over by 0940. We ate a second breakfast after this first flight and held a quick debrief with the flight leader and the GCI officers to make sure the flight and ground controllers had no communications problems. Takeoff for the second flight of the day was usually around 1020, with the same postflight debriefing at 1100. We took off on our third flight by 1140 and had our final formal debrief an hour later.
Lunch was always a good meal. But we did not linger at the table. At 1300 we normally had a postflight analysis with our immediate training officer and began planning the next day’s flying. The fellows needing extra work then flew a training sortie with an instructor in a two-seat aircraft.
In theory we were required to carry out some kind of political work, which included writing in our personal political essay book for an hour or two each week. But most pilots found this irksome and often stuck a flight manual inside the cover of a Marxist-Leninist text. About this time I discovered a handy expedient. I had dutifully copied out a tract essay on the virtues of the proper Communist officer and submitted it to the squadron’s zampolit soon after I had arrived at Vaziani. He gave it high marks. Then, on a hunch, I resubmitted the same essay the next week in my spring binder, changing only the title page. Again he praised this work. From then on, I just revamped the same tired old essay, always adding a new title sheet. So much for the “keen interest” all zampolits were supposed to show in the pilots’ political development.
Like all good Air Force leaders, Major Kuchkov recognized that we could only take the stress of such intense training for so long. He was extremely well organized and made sure we had regular physical training and sports events. He organized passionately played soccer tournaments, which certainly took our minds off the strain of flying. Kuchkov also held Saturday small-arms practice on an outdoor range as a substitute for sports.
Air Force fighter pilots in a combat regiment were just as keen gamblers as their military forebears, the cavalrymen of the czar’s Hussar regiments. We bet on chess, cards, billiards, and even pistol marksmanship. One of our favorite games was “Watches.”
The fellows in my squadron introduced my group of young lieutenants to the game one bright spring Saturday afternoon.
“Here,” Captain Shalunov said, hanging his personal aviator’s wristwatch from a nail on the pistol-range target. “Take your chances, one ruble per bullet.”
Aviators’ wristwatches were probably the best timepieces made in the Soviet Union and worth a lot of money. But the captain believed we were either too poor to risk hitting it or were just plain bad marksmen.
I waited while the other guys bought a few chances. They all missed. After Shalunov had retrieved his watch, I hung my own up and challenged my fellow lieutenants to have at it for only a ruble per shot. After I had earned an easy nine rubles, I turned to Firefly, who was beginning to puff with frustration.
“Hang on,” I told him, “I’ll be back in a minute with a grandfather clock.”
Watches became one of my favorite games of chance. If my watch were hit, I’d have to replace it at my own expense before I flew again, but a watch was a very small target at twenty-five yards range. And someone with the guts to risk his watch repeatedly could win fifteen or twenty rubles on a good afternoon.
Such traditions, of course, cemented our loyalty to the Air Force through a proud and genuine sense of esprit de corps. Russian pilots are very superstitious. We had no aircraft or dormitory rooms numbered 13. Young lieutenants quickly learned never to use the word posledniye, “last,” when describing the final flight of the training day. Instead, all Air Force personnel, pilots and ground crew alike, said “ultimate” flight, krainiye.
Our other main diversion, of course, was drinking. When we completed an intense training cycle and were not scheduled to fly for several days, the squadron’s pilots would usually gather for a party in the regimental banya. As junior officers, we were responsible for organizing the zakuski, typically the kind of small dishes served with beer. And the older pilots brought the beer.
At dinners celebrating someone’s promotion, we usually toasted with excellent Georgian cognac. Often the second toast of the party was the standard za bezopasnost, “safe flying,” to honor men killed in accidents or in combat in Afghanistan.
We always stood around the table when toasting. The man offering the toast touched his glass, about halfway down from the rim, on the table edge and said, “Kontact".
Each of us in turn repeated the gesture, saying, “Yest, kontact,” as if we were a flight of Kobra pilots lined up on a grassy strip during the Great Patriotic War.
The man making the toast would then reply, “Ot vinta,” the command for the ground crew to clear the prop and start engines.
We would all then hoist our glasses, with our elbows at a precise ninety degrees from our torsos, exhale loudly, and drain the cognac.
But these parties became increasingly rare events as we dug into our serious training schedule. The weather on this eastern Georgian plateau held good through the spring and summer of 1984. And we were soon flying three or four sorties a day, four times a week. This meant our wake-up time was shifted from 0530 to 0400. As we were required to get at
least eight hours sleep a night, we were usually in bed immediately after dinner. The pace was exhausting, but no one complained. As always, Colonel Rinchinov had been right: Young fighter pilots loved flying more than anything else. We would have gladly flown seven days a week, if Air Force regulations had permitted.
And as the pace of training got tougher, we broke the stress with practical jokes and humor. Just before pulling on our G-suits every morning, someone would always crack a new joke that would keep us laughing until we climbed into our aircraft.
One day, during a particularly rough training cycle, Boris Bagomedov, the usually serious Dagestani, had us practically rolling on the tarmac.
“All right,” he said with his hoarse accent, “what’s the difference between an American, an Israeli, and a Russian pilot? An American pilot jumps in his cockpit and sits on a thumbtack.” He plucked at the seat of his flight suit to extract the imaginary tack. “‘Shit! What the hell is this?’ So he throws the tack out and gets on with his job.
“An Israeli pilot climbs into his F-16,” Boris continued, repeating the same gesture. “He cries out in pain, pulls out the tack, looks at it, and sticks it in his pocket. ‘This may be useful someday,’ he says.”
Boris folded his arms across his chest in a typical Russian posture. “A Soviet pilot sits down in his MiG-23 and gets a tack in his ass. He pulls it out and swears, ‘Blyat! What’s this?’ Then he thinks for a moment. ‘Maybe it’s supposed to be there.’ And he sticks it back in his ass.”
Like all good jokes, Boris’s story had a core of truth.
In July pilots from the 2nd Squadron came back to Vaziani on leave from Afghanistan and filled us in on the realities of combat in that particularly nasty war. The Mujahedin were a murderous bunch who took pleasure in torturing and butchering any unlucky Soviet pilot that they shot down and captured. And the Kandahar Air Base was often brought under mortar or rocket attack, so the air crew were not tempted to stray into town.
But they flew an intense schedule. There were no dogfights, of course. And the air-defense tactics of the Mujahedin were relatively primitive, at least for the moment. The enemy forces had American Redeye shoulder-fired missiles, which were not very effective in the hands of the Afghans. But their 12.7mm and 14.5mm antiaircraft machine guns could be dangerous below an altitude of about 4,500 feet. This happened to be the bomb-release altitude we were currently using for our ground-attack training. So we listened intently to the veterans from the 2nd Squadron.
Colonel Rinchinov immediately shifted tactics and tailored our attack training to meet these new conditions. Most of our bomb and rocket-attack training was conducted on a dedicated range of the sprawling Karachala Air Base in Azerbaijan. This was an ideal location to test our new tactics. Now we flew steep, fast, high-G bomb runs, dropping like an old Luftwaffe Stuka from 21,000 feet and releasing our 1,000-pound fragmentation bombs at about 9,000 feet before hitting the air brakes and executing a savage, seven-G pullout. After a bit of practice we could hit targets on a sixty-degree dive angle and consistently pull out above 6,000 feet.
Then our intelligence officer reported that the Mujahedin were receiving new American Stinger shoulder-fired antiaircraft missiles. These were far superior to the Redeyes. Major Kuchkov studied the specifications of the Stinger and concluded that he could develop bombing tactics to overpower the missile’s maneuverability and tracking. His new ground-attack maneuver was brilliant. Basically the four aircraft in a link would roll in on their target from four separate directions if possible, in a slightly staggered sequence. After weapons release at about 3,000 feet altitude, each plane would pull up steeply at a sixty-degree, six-G climb. The dive would be made with enough energy to allow the initial climb with the throttle at idle to minimize infrared emissions. In the climb, the pilot would begin a complete roll while simultaneously popping decoy flares. The roll would end with the aircraft back in level attitude, only 300 feet above the ground, with the nose turned toward the target and the tail pipe shielded from the enemy’s Stinger positions. The pilot would then hit his afterburner and speed away on the deck.
It was one hell of a maneuver to master, even on the simulator. But we all recognized how effective it would be in combat against the Stinger.
We became so proficient in our ground-attack training that our 3rd Squadron was selected to represent the regiment in the division weapons competition that summer. Kuchkov led us into the bombing run on the poligon, using his dazzling anti-Stinger maneuver. No sooner had he recovered than the division safety inspector was screaming on the radio, “Stop this gross violation! Stop this hooliganism immediately!”
Kuchkov was called on the carpet, but was not seriously reprimanded. The worst outcome, however, was this new innovative maneuver, which could have saved many lives in Afghanistan, was never added to the combat training syllabus.
In September 1984 I was one of five new lieutenants in the regiment to pass the written and practical flight examinations to qualify as a Second Class pilot. I was less than two years out of the Armavir Academy when I crossed this difficult hurdle, an achievement that usually required four years of regimental flying. This was less of a tribute to me than to the excellent leadership of Colonel Rinchinov, Major Kuchkov, and their subordinate officers.
The 3rd Squadron had received the warning order to prepare for deployment to Afghanistan after the New Year. We became even more serious about our training. No one was reckless, however. Major Kuchkov and Colonel Rinchinov trusted our individual judgment in any given situation. They recognized that self-preservation was a strong motivating force, even among hot young fighter pilots. Rinchinov always gave us the old Russian tailor’s advice, “Measure seven times and cut once.” This did not mean to act timidly, but rather to exercise mature prudence.
During this period the regimental Party secretary advised me that I was probably now ready to submit my application for membership in the Communist Party. I had been a candidate member since coming to Georgia. In any given Air Force regiment every active pilot and most of the maintenance officers were Party members. Party membership was not quite an automatic-privilege, however, and there was a certain traditional ritual to follow. Men with reputations as heavy drinkers were excluded and brand-new lieutenants were rarely accepted. Several of my fellow lieutenants also received the secretary’s nod at this time. They consulted their Komsomol manuals and submitted standard answers to the most important question on the membership application form: “Why do you wish to become a member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union?”
The stock answer always had something to do about the Party being in “the vanguard of the proletariat.” As long as you used some combination of that tested formula, your application was usually endorsed by the unit’s Communist kollectiv.
But I decided to write another answer. As long as I was going to become a Party member, I wanted to take the matter seriously. I understood that fewer than fifteen percent of Soviet citizens were granted this privilege, and I saw the Party as an elite group that could help bring about the needed fundamental reforms that Chairman Andropov had begun, but which were stagnating under his elderly successor, Konstantin Chernenko.
“Since becoming a military pilot,” I said to the members during the regimental Partkom meeting called to consider our applications, “I have gained increasing responsibility. I now feel that I am ready to take on an even greater responsibility, membership in the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.”
The secretary seemed thrilled by my answer, and Partkom wrote a glowing endorsement to my application.
A few weeks later I boarded a transport that flew my group of successful new applicants to division headquarters in Mikha Tskhakaya. Dressed in our pressed uniforms, we stood before the red banner of the Soviet Union and the standard plaster bust of Lenin as we took our oath as full Party members. Normally I wasn’t much for sentiment, but I felt real pride as I spoke those solemn words.
That autumn, Colonel Rinchinov off
ered us new Second Class pilots a radical proposal for earning our First Class rating. Instead of taking our mandatory forty-five-day annual leave, we would take a minimum one-week stand-down from flying duties that would permit us to delay the long leave for three months. In those three months, he said, he would guarantee us the flying time and instructors to have us qualified as First Class pilots before New Year’s. In short, he proposed compressing a year’s training into ninety days. Naturally we jumped at the chance.
On the last day of this brief leave, a squadron runner told me to report to Colonel Rinchinov as soon as convenient. The colonel’s secretary immediately showed me into his office. Given Rinchinov’s expression of gravity and excitement, I thought I was about to receive immediate replacement orders for duty in Afghanistan. This was great news. But I was wrong.
“Tomorrow,” the colonel announced, “a transport will arrive to take you to the Air Force test center in Lipetsk.”
I looked at him quizzically.
“You have been selected for training in the MiG-29.” He looked at me hard, then smiled broadly. “Congratulations,” he said, rising to shake my hand. “This is a real honor.”
“Comrade Colonel,” I asked, “does this mean I’ll be leaving your regiment and not going to Afghanistan with my squadron?”
“Yes, it does,” Rinchinov said gruffly, brushing back his thick black hair.
“Comrade Colonel,” I said, looking into his frank, open face, “what if I don’t want to go to Lipetsk?”
“Comrade Lieutenant,” Colonel Rinchinov said with a gleam in his dark eyes, “it’s not your job to make such decisions.”
I was on my way to Lipetsk.
Alexander Zuyev, age nine months, with mother, Lydia, Samara.
With American MiG-29 killers after Operation Desert Storm; Left: Lt. Nick “Mongo” Mongillo, USN, of VFA-81; Right: Capt. Chuck “Sly” McGill, USMC, serving as exchange pilot with USAF 33 TFW.
Fulcrum Page 15