Eight seconds after brake release, my airspeed passed 124 knots and I gently rotated the nose. The main gear lifted at exactly 150. A soft tug on the stick kept my nose at the proper climb angle.
With the fighter aerodynamically clean, both the altimeter and the rate-of-climb dials spun as if in a fast-forward video. I wanted to level off smoothly at 3,000 feet, without chopping power too quickly and going through an ugly porpoise bounce. As Orlov had briefed me, I simultaneously slid the throttles back to seventy-eight percent while easing the stick forward. The airplane responded with an even precision I had never known before. But I still popped through 3,000 feet and had to shove the nose down hard to level off at the proper altitude.
“Shit,” I whispered.
This first flight was a simple double krug around the runway circuit, out to the nearby maneuver range north of the city, then back to the ILS beacon marking the glide path to Runway 09. As I set up for the long final approach, I was again conscious of the plane’s precise balance and control. I slid the throttle back to eighty percent and tripped the flap button to landing. The aircraft settled into a steady sink rate. The landing flare and touchdown were easier and softer than any I had ever experienced.
I was grinning inside my oxygen mask as I gently squeezed the brake lever and turned toward the taxi ramp. This was a fighter pilot’s airplane.
A week later the regimental zampolit and Lieutenant Colonel Torbov held a ceremony for the first group of pilots to fly their solos on the MiG-29. Even though this was the expected pokazuka, we were all proud of our achievement. Our certificates were photocopies of the originals that had been ceremoniously mailed to the XXVIIth Session of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, “dedicating” our labor to their greater endeavor. Under a bold headline, “For Our Soviet Motherland!” the certificate pictured a stylized MiG-29, “Fourth Generation Aircraft,” beside a rather whimsical drawing of an old first-generation prop fighter. We were, the message noted, “carrying on the proud traditions of a Red Banner combat unit” of the Great Patriotic War. My photo, a rather ugly mug shot, was pasted in the right-hand corner, above the cheerful message “Clear Sky and Soft Landings.”
We were all so excited about flying the new aircraft that no one managed to slip in any whispered sarcasm at the blatant and sickening propagandistic language of the certificates as we lined up to face the zampolit’s camera.
CHAPTER 8
Mary and Akhtubinsk
1985-87
The flying weather was good for most of the summer and autumn. Every week ferry pilots delivered new MiG-29s to our regiment. The beautiful gray aircrafts remained an exciting novelty for most of the summer. Each ferry flight from the factory at Lukhovitsi drew soldiers and pilots outdoors to watch the fighters come in.
Our transition program was structured to move smoothly and rapidly toward mastery of the aircraft. The pilot had to successfully complete forty-six flights, beginning with simple krug oval circuits of the base area to make sure he understood all basic systems and procedures, and leading on through increasingly higher performance missions, first dogfights and ground attacks, then onto night and poor-visibility flying with ILS landings.
According to this schedule, all the regiment’s First Class pilots were to be combat qualified on the MiG-29 within five months. No later than seven months after we received our first aircraft, the entire regiment was scheduled to take its unit combat proficiency test at the VVS evaluation center at Mary in the Kara Kum Desert in the Turkmen Republic. We were the third fighter regiment to receive the MiG-29, and would be undergoing the demanding Mary center process after the Guards regiment from Kubinka and the Ros regiment from Ros in the Ukraine. They were certainly our greatest rivals, especially the “Royal” regiment from Kubinka Air Base outside Moscow, where all the Party bosses were taken to be shown the latest Soviet military achievements.
After a few orientation flights, I found myself advancing rapidly up the ladder of this transition program. The MiG-29 permitted skilled pilots to easily fly with the kind of precision required in modern air combat or ground attack. I did not have to worry about the plane remaining stable as I progressed through increasingly higher performance maneuvers. Flying loops, highspeed barrel rolls, and split-S dives was a real pleasure.
And the plane was so forgiving that even a timid, sloppy pilot could perform basic maneuvers with responsible precision. But I also realized that only a highly qualified fighter pilot could push the MiG-29 to its true potential. In effect, this fighter was going to sort out the natural pilots from the fellows who had to sweat through every combat turn, gritting their teeth and hoping that somehow they would get it right.
Although I was absorbed in flying each training sortie that autumn, the issue of my future as a military pilot became increasingly important. For several years I had been unofficially exploring the possibility of becoming a military test pilot.
Test pilots probably had the most interesting assignments in the Air Force. And they usually were stationed near Moscow, where they were assigned comfortable apartments. The very best of them traveled overseas, demonstrating new planes at air shows. To a young junior lieutenant just out of the academy, these were dazzling possibilities.
Two years before at Vaziani, an Air Force celebrity delegation visited the base as part of a “Bridges Between Generations” morale-boosting tour meant to cheer up units bound for Afghanistan. The group included a couple of cosmonauts, an old Hero of the Soviet Union Shturmovik pilot, and even a woman veteran of the war, who had flown with the famous Night Witches, the Po-2 biplane squadron. One of the senior members of the delegation was Lieutenant General Stepan Mikoyan, son of the famous designer. After the usual patriotic speeches, I privately asked General Mikoyan the best approach to eventually becoming a test pilot.
“Civilian or military?” he asked, looking me over.
“Is there much difference, Comrade Lieutenant General?” I asked.
He smiled, a suave Moscow operator. “Well, my young friend,” he said, “I think you’re best qualified for the military program.”
Without being explicit, Mikoyan indicated that family connections were a prerequisite for the civilian test pilot school at Zhukovsky near Moscow. But the military test pilot school at Akhtubinsk, south of Volgagrad, was open to the best-qualified Air Force and PVO pilots.
After learning about Akhtubinsk, I informally queried the Ministry of Aviation and Air Force Personnel Command in Moscow when I was there for a physical exam at the Central Aviation Hospital. The officers I had spoken to had not been very forthcoming.
When Boris Orlov delivered the first MiG-29 to Tskhakaya in July, I asked him directly how I could cut through the red tape to make a formal application to Akhtubinsk.
“I want to become a test pilot,” I told Orlov. “I’ve already been briefed on the process in Moscow. I just need advice on how to best prepare for the exam. I hear it’s a rough one.”
Orlov nodded and smiled with the same knowing, sophisticated expression as General Mikoyan. Orlov folded his thumb. “Study everything about every airplane you’ve flown.” He now folded his index finger. “Practice your technical flying skills. They are very important. A test pilot must fly with smooth precision in all flight regimens.”
He explained that the public image of the test pilot as a rough-and-tumble fighter jockey was completely inaccurate. Military test pilots were obliged to accurately apply engineers’ requirements, day after day, month in, month out.
“In test aviation, Sasha,” Orlov told me, “there’s no substitute for precision. The engineers fill the aircraft with data recording instruments. They soon find out who can produce, and who cannot.”
I was developing these skills, but I certainly did not have the blat necessary for nomination to the Zhukovsky civilian test pilot school. So that autumn I began assembling the seemingly endless stack of command endorsements and flying and education records that I needed to submit with my preliminary applicatio
ns to Akhtubinsk.
Even in the intense MiG-29 transition program, we could only fly so many sorties a week. But I didn’t travel much during this period because I wanted to be among the first in the regiment to qualify on the new aircraft. My social life was rather tame. When I wasn’t studying aviation manuals, preparing for test pilot’s school, I’d get together with friends to watch a soccer match on television or perhaps go fishing in one of the nearby lakes. When I’d first come to Tskhakaya, I had met Alexander and Yuri Olmelchenko, two brothers from Siberia who were maintenance officers at the base. Like many Siberians, they were physical culture enthusiasts. Their particular sport was weight lifting, an activity I practiced irregularly to stay in shape for high-performance flight.
Alexander had a girlfriend named Yelena, who had an apartment in the same building as our deputy division commander, a colonel named Alexander Baglai. He lived one floor above on the same podyezd, the mutual “staircase,” which made them all neighbors. Yelena was a friend of Colonel Baglai’s oldest daughter, Jana.
That’s how I met Jana Baglai. Yuri and I were drinking tea at Yelena’s apartment one Saturday afternoon that summer when Jana came over to have her hair set for her school graduation party that night. She was eighteen, a remarkably good-looking girl, tall with long dark hair and blue-green eyes. When we shook hands, I tried not to stare too obviously at her figure, but that was difficult. Even in blue jeans and an old sweater, she was a head-turner.
But I was just as impressed with her manner. She seemed unusually mature and responsible for her age. And I wasn’t surprised to learn she was going to begin the State University in Kiev that September as a chemistry student. Her father had been a MiG-23 regimental commander in Hungary, one of the best assignments in the Air Force. In the “fraternal Socialist republics” of Eastern Europe, you received double pay and the Voyentorgs were stuffed with luxury goods unobtainable back home.
But Jana Baglai didn’t give the impression of a shallow young girl simply interested in Levi’s and Toshiba stereos. Chatting briefly that afternoon, I learned that Jana, as the oldest child, had been responsible for her younger brother and sister since she herself was a little girl, which probably explained her own quiet maturity.
At the Armavir Academy I had first experienced the matchmaking that was so prevalent in the Soviet professional military officer corps. Young lieutenants with good prospects were courted by single girls in military families, with the active encouragement of their parents. An Air Force pilot was an especially valuable catch. Unlike ground force officers, pilots were rarely heavy drinkers, they had solid engineering degrees, and their prospects for assignment overseas (where pay was double and luxury goods readily available) were good.
I had been dragged into one of these romantic intrigues almost by accident. My last year at the academy I met an attractive young fashion design student named Svetlana at a dance club in Armavir. She was there on a blind date with one of my classmates, but quickly latched onto me. We chatted as I walked her home that night. Her father was a senior VVS colonel stationed in Tbilisi, who had just returned from overseas. She made a point of mentioning that her family had come back from their year abroad laden with luxury goods they had purchased with their hard currency. When I told her of my assignment in Georgia, we exchanged phone numbers and addresses.
To my great surprise, Svetlana showed up in Samara as an uninvited guest when I was home on my postgraduation leave. My mother and I had been working on Grandma’s little apartment, and when we returned home that night, my grandmother said we had a “surprise guest.” It was Svetlana, who had come to Samara to take a course and had simply moved in with my family. Since we had to sleep in the same small room, she was obviously hoping a romance would develop quickly. But I kept her at arm’s length. Then she followed me to Georgia and told everyone we were “probably” going to become engaged. This was awkward for me because her father, an important senior officer, had insisted I stay with his family in Tbilisi while I was processed into the district.
Before I knew what was happening, I had a fiancee, and her parents were sending out wedding invitations. Luckily I had followed the advice my mother had given me at the end of my leave. “Whatever you do,” she warned, “don’t sleep with her.”
I had not. And that was fortunate. When I finally realized the unnatural pressure Svetlana and her family were subjecting me to, I bit the bullet and told her the engagement was canceled. Her family raved and shouted, but at least they couldn’t claim I had dishonored their daughter by seducing her and then canceling the wedding.
I had never met Jana’s parents, Colonel Baglai or his wife, and I knew for certain that my first meeting with Jana had been an accident, so I didn’t think about her much that summer. I was also preoccupied with my qualification flying on the new aircraft, so dating a good-looking young university student was not my top priority.
But then Yuri’s girlfriend, Yelena, let me know that Jana was definitely interested in seeing me again. She came home to Tskhakaya on her fall vacation late that autumn and asked Yelena to invite the two of us to dinner. As luck would have it, I had just completed my qualification flights on the MiG-29 and had sneaked off to the mountains to celebrate. When I returned to the base, Jana’s brief autumn vacation was almost over. But we did manage to join Yuri and Yelena for dinner the night before Jana went back to Kiev.
Again I was taken by both her good looks and her calm maturity. She seemed to have adjusted well to university life, but like all students, complained good-naturedly about the dormitory food.
“And none of the girls have any decent music,” Jana told me. “I’ve got a tape deck, but I’ve listened to all my old tapes until they’re worn out. I was hoping I could copy something new…” She scowled theatrically. “But who wants to copy Bulgarian ‘disco’?”
“I’ve got a whole collection of American rock tapes,” I told her. “And Yuri’s got a great machine to make dupes.”
Jana smiled and stared at me with those luminous blue eyes. “Could you possibly make me a few copies?”
She wrote her university address and the dormitory telephone number with a neat hand. Before I realized exactly what was going on, we had exchanged addresses and agreed that I would write her when I sent the tapes.
After Jana left that night, Yelena, a good Air Force matchmaker, was radiant.
“She’s a wonderful girl, Sasha,” she said. “A young officer could do a lot worse, you know. Her father will be a general soon.”
I shrugged. “I’m not interested in her father,” I told Yelena honestly.
“Ah,” she said, “but are you interested in Jana?”
I knew how these girls worked among themselves. If I said no here, that would be the end of it. Again I was honest. “Yes,” I said. “I certainly am.”
That autumn Jana wrote every week, and I replied as often as I could. I also made sure that Yuri copied my best tapes on good blank cassettes. Jana appreciated the gesture and we agreed to see each other for the New Year’s holiday.
When Jana came back to Tskhakaya in late December, there was a subtle difference in her attitude toward me. Now she revealed in small ways that she had been too busy with her first-year classes to attend any dances. In effect, she was saying that she was available for me, if I chose her. But I knew enough about Air Force etiquette to avoid the obvious temptation of seducing a senior colonel’s young daughter. If I was going to see much more of Jana Baglai, we were going to have to become engaged.
I was only twenty-four, however, and, as much as I was attracted to Jana, I wasn’t ready for marriage. And she wasn’t even nineteen yet. I decided to delay any decision. For the moment, we both had full agendas.
By early March 1986, all the regiment’s pilots had qualified on the MiG-29, and we were ready for our combat proficiency test at the Mary center. We all understood how much depended on our performance out there. Both the Kubinka Guards regiment and Ros in the Ukraine had failed their ten-da
y test at Mary that winter. Obviously, if the glory boys from Kubinka couldn’t charm the humorless judges from the Defense and Aviation ministries who scored the Mary test exercises, our chances of passing the test were not good. But on the other hand, if we somehow did manage to score well, we’d become one of the hottest units in the Air Force.
When a regiment went to Mary, the entire unit deployed, right down to clerks, cooks, and drivers, and the civilian waitresses in the officers’ dining room. Our intelligence officers had briefed us on the Red Flag air-combat exercises the American Air Force conducted out in their western desert bases. Apparently only those pilots deployed with their planes; the maintenance and administrative personnel remained at the home base, presumably reading Playboy magazine, or however such people amuse themselves.
That was hardly a realistic test of a unit’s combat proficiency. So, when the 176th Regiment deployed to Mary, our entire ground support structure flew ahead of us aboard several Il-76 jet transports. Our armorers, mechanics, meteorologists, and maintenance officers would be there to meet us when we flew in, just as if we had deployed to a Warsaw Pact base during a real military operation against NATO.
Our first success came when all forty of the regiment’s MiG-29s, plus two MiG-23UB trainers, took off from Tskhakaya right on schedule. This was a tribute to our maintenance and engineering staff who had worked around the clock all week to prepare the aircraft. Our second success came late that afternoon when all the aircraft had landed at Mary West Air Base in four-plane zveno formations. We had flown the nine hundred miles from Tskhakaya to the Kara Kum Desert of the Turkmen Republic, making one refueling stop at Sital Chay on the Caspian Sea, without incident. The other two MiG-29 regiments that had failed the Mary center test had come straggling in like wounded ducks over a period of several days, due to maintenance aborts en route and, in the case of one sad pilot from Ros, landing with his gear up.
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