Viktor Belenko dead at 76

You young’uns should know about this guy.

Back in the ’70s, the baddest of the bad was the MiG-25 Soviet interceptor called the Foxbat. (Russian fighters all get a F-word codename by protocol.) The Foxbat was scary – at Mach 2.8 it could catch anything we flew with the exception of an SR-71.  Speculation was rampant, until a Soviet pilot name of Viktor Belenko stole one and defected by flying it to Japan.

Experts’ initial impression was that the plane was far less advanced than had been supposed, one Washington intelligence source describing it as “no more than a rocket with wings”. Within a few days they revised their opinion somewhat, noting that the radar and electronics were of a high standard.

This was hardly surprising as they discovered, to their shock, that the plane’s weapons guidance system was controlled by an IBM computer.

Yeah, that’s embarrassing…  Read the article to get the details of his escape. One thing to note – he made it to Japan with literally a few of gallons in that thirsty plane’s tanks… think that takes a very nervy, or a very foolhardy pilot. Based on the rest of the story – he had a pretty good sized set of brass ones on his side. The following is from a book called “MiG Pilot” about Belenko’s escape:

A little more on the “rocket with wings” – initially experts thought the plane was very crude. Tube type radio system which worked on weird frequencies, non-titanium riveted wings, old off-the-shelf fuel-guzzling engines – seemed to be a T-34 tank when we were developing M-1 tanks. But:

• Tube -type electronics are far less vulnerable to EMP than transistorized stuff. Given this was for defense against nuclear bombers…
• Odd freq range? It’s hard to MIJI someone who can’t receive your signals. He could hear his base and other -25s, but there’s no way to spoof or meacon a deaf pilot.
• The wings were riveted – where airflow didn’t matter. The critical areas like the leading edges of wings were nicely welded and polished titanium, the top-end material for the job.
• Gas-guzzler engines – which were a) as powerful as anything flying and b) off-the-shelf. No development time needed, tons of thrust, and cheap. Who cares about fuel use when you have a very short-distance mission to stop the US planes at the border?

So the experts had to change their tune quickly when they realized the Russians built the fastest purpose-built fighter in the world…more capable than most interceptors in the world – on the cheap?  Not exactly the multi-billion dollar Swiss-army-knife approach we like to use nowadays on everything. To be fair, like many Soviet designs, it had horrible build quality and thankfully never lived up to being the threat we originally thought it was – but it was a heck of a first step into more modern MiG/G-15ish fighters of the next 30 years.

Of course, the USSR howled and insisted we send the plane back AT ONCE. I understand it actually took a few weeks – to disassemble it into component pieces and stick it into cargo containers for delivery to (presumably) Vladivostok.

Category: Cold War