MiG Pilot

by John Barron

  “Most of all, you must guard yourself against the Chechens,” the KGB officer said. “The Chechens use knives wantonly, and under stress they will butcher you. You know how valuable you are to our country. It is your patriotic duty to take care and ensure your own safety. Never sleep on duty. Always stand watch with a long knife.”

  It sounds like hell around here! They will just butcher you for nothing! It sounds like we’re in the darkest of Africa in the last century, like an outpost among savages. But this is 1969! The Soviet Union! And the Party says we’ve solved the nationality problem.

  Flight instructor Grigori Petrovich Litvinov, tall, thin, and prematurely bald at thirty-one, looked and acted like an ascetic, abstaining totally from alcohol, tobacco, and profanity. He wore about him an air of perpetual calm and, in Belenko’s hearing, never raised his voice. Upon being introduced, he insisted that they address each other by first names and admonished Belenko not to fear asking questions, however naive. “I will answer the same question a hundred times, I will stay up all night with you if need be, until you understand.”

  There was no need for such special attention. After being familiarized with the L-29 jet trainer, Belenko managed it more easily and surely than he had the old prop plane in which he had learned. The wasteful, melancholy waiting in Omsk, the submission to the straitjacket life of a cadet were now repaid by his certainty that he had done right. Alone in the cockpit, he was serenely free and unbound; he was where he knew he belonged.

  Toward the end of the six months of basic flight training at Grozny, Litvinov and Belenko were changing clothes in the locker room. As Litvinov picked up his flight suit to hang it in the locker, a thick little book, small enough to be hidden behind a man’s palm, tumbled out of a front flap pocket onto the floor. Belenko glanced down and saw the title of the book: Holy Bible. Litvinov’s eyes were waiting to meet his when he looked up. They asked: Will you inform? Belenko’s answered: Never.

  Neither said anything, nor was the incident ever mentioned subsequently. Belenko thought about it, though. It’s his business what he reads. If the Bible is full of myths and fairy tales, let everybody see that for himself. Everybody knows that a lot of what the Party makes us read is full of shit; we can see and prove that for ourselves. Why not let everybody read anything he wants to? We know our system is the best. Why be afraid of other ideas when we can show they are not as good? Unless… unless, of course, we’re afraid that our ideas aren’t the best.

  The schedule stipulated that the cadets would study the MiG-17 for two months back at Armavir preparatory to the final phrase of training. But the two months stretched into four because an emergency had sprung up in the countryside — another harvest was nearing. Each weekend and sometimes two or three more days a week, officers and men alike were packed into buses and trucks to join the battle of the harvest. For Belenko, it was a pleasant diversion. They mostly picked fruit and ate all they wanted. Because the schools and colleges of Armavir had been closed for the harvest, many pretty girls worked and flirted with them in the orchards. The farmers were hospitable and slipped them glasses of cider and wine. And at night they went back to the barracks, a good meal, and a clean bunk.

  Yet Belenko despaired at the acres and acres of apples, tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of apples, rotting because nobody had arranged for them to be picked in time. He remembered how precious apples were in Siberia, how once in Rubtsovsk he had paid a whole ruble to buy one apple on the black market.

  Why doesn’t anything work? Why doesn’t anything change? It’s barely ten years before 1980. But we’re no farther along toward True Communism than we were when they first started talking about it. We’re never going to have True Communism. Everything is just as screwed up as ever. Why?

  In April 1970 Belenko was assigned to a MiG-17 training regiment seventy-five miles northwest of Armavir near Tikhoretsk, whose 40,000 residents worked mainly in canneries and wineries. Although not accorded the privileges of officers, the cadets now, by and large, were treated as full-fledged pilots. They arose at 4:00 A.M. for a bountiful breakfast, then flew two or three times, breaking for a second breakfast around 9:30. The main meal at noon, which always included meat and fruit, was followed by a nap of an hour or so. They attended classes from early afternoon until early evening — tactics, future trends in aerodynamics, technology of advanced aircraft, military leadership, political economics, science of communism, history of the Party, Marxist/Leninist philosophy. Passes were issued on Saturday nights and Sundays, unless they were called to clean factories or work in the fields on weekends, requests which occurred roughly every other week.

  Fortune again gave Belenko a good flight instructor, Lieutenant Nikolai Igoryevich Shvartzov, who was only twenty-four. He longed to be a test pilot and was able enough; but he had given up this ambition because he had no influence in Moscow, and nobody, so it was believed, could become a test pilot without influence. At the outset, Shvartzov gave Belenko only two instructions: “Let’s be completely honest with each other about everything; that way we can trust and help each other,” and, “If a MiG-17 ever goes into a spin, eject at once. You can pull it out of a spin, but it’s hard. We can always build another plane. We can’t build another you.” Throughout their relationship, they were honest and got along well.

  The MiG-17, light, swift, maneuverable, was fun to fly, and Belenko had confidence in it. Vietnam had proven that, if skillfully flown at lower altitudes, it could cope with the American F-4 Phantom. Should he duel with an American pilot in an F-4, the outcome would depend on which of them was the braver and better pilot. It would be a fair fight. That was all he asked.

  Every four or five weeks the regiment received a secret intelligence bulletin reporting developments in American air power — characteristics, strengths, weaknesses, numbers to be manufactured, where and for which purposes they would be deployed. The bulletins were exceedingly factual and objective, devoid of comment or opinion and dryly written.

  Reading quickly, as was his habit, Belenko scanned a description of the new F-14 fighter planned for the U.S. Navy and started another section before the import of what he had read struck him. “What?” he exclaimed aloud. “What did I read?” He reread the data about the F-14. It would be equipped with radar that could detect aircraft 180 miles away, enable its fire-control system to lock onto multiple targets 100 miles away, and simultaneously fire six missiles that could hit six different aircraft eighty miles away — this even though the F-14 and hostile aircraft might be closing upon each other at a speed up to four times that of sound.

  Our radar, when it works, has a range of fifty miles. Our missiles, when they work, have a range of eighteen miles. How will we fight the F-14? It will kill us before we ever see it!

  Belenko put the question frankly to an aerodynamics professor the next afternoon. The professor stammered, equivocated, evaded. Every aircraft has certain weaknesses. It is only a question of uncovering them and learning how to exploit them. It may be possible to attack the F-14 from close range with superior numbers.

  Shit. That’s ridiculous. Besides, if what our own intelligence says is true, the F-14 still could outfty anything we have even if we got close to it.

  The professor who taught the technology of advanced aircraft was respected for his intelligence and technical background, so Belenko asked him openly in class. He answered succinctly. We presently have nothing to equal the F-14. We are experimenting with something that could be the answer. It is designated Product 84.

  Subsequently Belenko read details of the F-15 being built as an air-superiority fighter for the U.S. Air Force, then accounts of the planned B-l bomber, and they were still more devastating to him. The F-15 would fly at nearly three times the speed of sound and climb to altitudes above 60,000 feet faster than any plane in the world, and at very low levels, where metallurgical problems restricted the speed of Soviet fighters, it could hopelessly outdistance anything the Russians had. The capabilities of the B-
l seemed other-worldly. A thousand miles away from the Soviet Union, it could commence firing missiles armed with decoys and devices to nullify radar and nuclear weapons to shatter defenses. Then it could drop to tree-top level, beneath the reach of radar and missiles, and, at speeds making it impervious to pursuit, skim over the target area. Having unleashed a barrage of nuclear bombs, it could skyrocket away at extreme altitudes, at 1400 miles an hour.

  The professor of technology again was candid. He said that presently there was no known defense, practical or theoretical, against the B-l should it perform approximately as designed. The history of warfare demonstrated that for every offensive weapon, an effective defensive weapon ultimately emerged, and doubtless, one would be developed. The broader difficulty lay in Soviet technological deficiencies. The Russians still could not develop an aircraft engine that for the same weight generated the same thrust as an American engine. They were behind in electronics, transistors, and microcircuitry. And all technological difficulties were compounded by the comparative inadequacy of their computer technology. Cadets should not be discouraged by these handicaps but rather consider them a further stimulus to becoming better pilots than the Americans.

  But if our system is so much better than the Americans’, why is their technology so much better than ours?

  Again, though, the thrill of flight, the excitement of personal success diverted him from the concern and skepticism such questions inspired. In July 1971 he passed his final flight examinations, receiving both the highest grade of five and a commendation. The 258 cadets remaining from the original class of 360 were ordered back to Armavir to study for the state examinations. But Belenko knew these were meaningless. It was over. Having brought them this far, the Party did not intend to lose any of them. He had done it. For more than four years he had done all the military, the Party, the Mother Country demanded. He had done it on his own, despite the oppressions, brutalities, risks, and stresses of cadet life, despite multiplying, heretical doubts about the Party he was sworn to serve. He was about to be what since boyhood he had aspired to be. And he was proud of himself.

  The professors now tacitly treated the cadets as officers, and Belenko for the first time learned of all the benefits and perquisites bestowed on a Soviet pilot. To him they were breathtaking.

  Whereas the average Soviet doctor or scientist was paid 120 to 130 rubles a month, and an educator only about 100, he would earn 300. The typical young Soviet couple waited seven to eight years, and often much longer, for an apartment, and the majority of Soviet dwellings still were without indoor plumbing. As a pilot Belenko was guaranteed an apartment with bath and kitchen, wherever stationed. Food constituted the largest item in most Soviet family budgets; meat and fresh vegetables frequently were unavailable; shopping was arduous and time-consuming. Pilots, wherever based, were entitled to four excellent free meals a day seven days a week. Ordinary citizens were allowed two weeks of vacation; pilots forty-five days. Additionally, during vacation, pilots could fly anywhere in the Soviet Union on Aeroflot for a nominal fee. Normally a Soviet citizen did not retire before sixty-five; Belenko could retire at forty, receiving two-thirds of his regular salary for the rest of his life. There was more — the best medical care, free uniforms and shoes, little preferential privileges, and enormous prestige.

  Belenko had known of some of these benefits. But their full range was kept secret, never published or discussed. No wonder! If people knew how much more we get, they would detest us instead of liking us.

  A political officer at Armavir spoke to them about marriage, and though well intentioned, his advice was somewhat contradictory. He explained that because of the status and glamor of pilots, many girls were eager to marry them. Quite a few enrolled in school or took jobs in Armavir for that express purpose. While most were wholesome, a few were prostitutes. No one should enter into marriage quickly or lightly, because the effects of marriage would endure throughout life.

  At the same time, though, the political officer emphasized the personal and professional advantages of marriage. It represented a healthy and natural form of life. Married pilots could awaken fresh in the morning, ready to fly, whereas bachelors were likely to dissipate themselves by prowling around bars, looking for women.

  For reasons probably having little to do with the lectures, most cadets did marry shortly before or after graduation, and in late August Belenko attended one of the weddings. At the party afterward the bride introduced him to a twenty-year-old nursing student, Ludmilla Petrovna. She was blond, pretty, sensuous, and, to Belenko, ideal. Their physical attraction to each other was instant and mutual.

  Their backgrounds, however, were dissimilar. Ludmilla was the only child of wealthy parents living in Magadan in the far northeast. Her father managed a large factory, her mother ran a brewery, and both had high Party connections in Moscow. She had never worked or wanted for anything and was accustomed to restaurants, to theaters, and to spending money as she pleased. Her parents had lavished clothes and jewelry on her, often taken her to Moscow and Leningrad and to special spas reserved for the well-connected. She shared none of his interests in literature, athletics, or the romance of flying. But the sexual magnetism between them was powerful and delightful, and even though they had seen each other only seven or eight times, they married after he was commissioned in October.

  Belenko never had thought of himself as other than a fighter pilot. He expected to join a MiG-17 squadron, from which he hoped to graduate to MiG-23s or even MiG-25s, which continued to be cited as the most promising counter to the new generation of American fighters being deployed in the 1970s. When the Party commission released the assignments of the new officers, he ran to the office of the commandant to protest and appeal. He had been appointed a MiG-17 instructor — to him, the worst duty conceivable. He would be doing, albeit in a reverse role, the same thing he had been doing for the past two years. There would be no opportunity to improve professionally by flying more advanced aircraft, no excitement, no adventure.

  “You have been honored, and you should feel honored,” the commandant said. “The Party commission chose the best to be instructors.”

  “But I do not want to be an instructor.”

  “What kind of bordello would we have around here if everybody did only what he wants to do? You must serve where the Party decides you are needed, and I assure you we need instructors.”

  The December night was black, cold, and drenched with pelting rain, and when Belenko stepped on the train at 8:00 P.M., his mood matched the weather. He had been there before, twice, actually: on the train that had taken him from the Donbas to Rubtsovsk in 1953, and the train that had brought him from Omsk to Armavir in 1967. Everything was the same — the close, putrid air, the high wooden seats, the reeking toilet, the lack of beer or any amenities, the foul, unrelenting stink. His first duty station, Salsk, a city of 60,000, was only 100 or so miles away, but the train stopped frequently and did not arrive until 2:00 A.M.

  The rain was still falling hard as he waded and slogged through muddy streets to the city’s only hotel. It was full and locked for the night, and at that hour there was no transportation to the base five miles away, so he waded back to the station. All benches and virtually every square inch of the station floor were occupied by human bodies — kolkhozniks who had come to buy bread, salt, and soap; vagabonds and beggars in rags; dirty children, some with ugly red sores, others with pocked faces, resembling old potatoes — all trying to sleep on newspapers, using their canvas boots or little shoes as pillows. The odor was almost as bad as on the train. There being no place to sit, he nudged out enough space to stand through the night, leaning against a post.

  I wish they could see this, smell it, all of them, the whole Politburo, all those lying bastards who tell us every day and make us say every day how wonderful our progress is, how well-off and happy we are, how perfect everything will be by 1980. Look at these New Communist Men our society has produced! I would make them sit near the toilet s
o they could smell what is creeping out under the door. I would make them hold those children in their arms and look at those sores and then make speeches about the science of communism. Liars! Filthy liars!

  At daylight a policeman halted a six-wheel truck able to negotiate the mud and induced the driver to deliver Lieutenant Belenko to his first post. His new uniform and boots were soiled and splattered with mud. In his thoughts, much more was indelibly soiled.

  Nevertheless, Belenko shared the elation of all the other newly arrived officers when they were handed keys to their apartments in a building that had been completed and certified for occupancy only a month before. To be promised an apartment was one thing; to be given an apartment as promised, quite another. Eagerly and expectantly Belenko unlocked the door and smelled dampness. The floor, built with green lumber, already was warped and wavy. Plaster was peeling off the walls. The windowpane in the kitchen was broken, and no water poured from the faucet. The bathtub leaked; the toilet did not flush. None of the electrical outlets worked.

  Already gathered in the halls were other officers, who had found comparable conditions in their apartments. Together they marched forth to collar the construction superintendent responsible for building the apartments. Unmoved by their recitation of ills, he told them that the building had been inspected and approved by an acceptance commission from their regiment. Any deficiencies that might have developed subsequently were none of his concern.

  This is outrageous. The Party must know. The Party must correct this.