1987: West German teenager Mathias Rust cracks the Iron Curtain with an incredible unauthorized flight from Helsinki to the heart of Moscow — and lives to tell the tale.
The Cold War was still in full force in the spring of 1987. Rust, described by his mother as "a quiet young man of wonderful character with a passion for flying," decided he was going to help us all just get along. Not only did he escape a fiery death and fail to ignite World War III, but his stunt actually smoothed the way for an eventual easing of global tensions.
U.S. President Ronald Reagan was an old-school Commie-hater who in all seriousness called the Soviet Union "The Evil Empire." He once joked on an inadvertently open microphone: "My fellow Americans, I am pleased to tell you I just signed legislation which outlaws Russia forever. The bombing begins in five minutes."
Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev — who must have known the real extent of a dismal economy that would cause the USSR to implode only four years later — wanted to introduce reforms and embrace the West, but he faced considerable institutional resistance.
Each side had thousands of nuclear warheads and the ability to deliver a devastating nuclear payload within minutes. Improbable accidents had been the common literary device underpinning apocalyptic 1960s Cold War movies like Dr. Strangelove and Fail Safe. While tensions had cooled somewhat by 1987, the possibility of MAD, or mutually assured destruction, still seemed only a single, small misstep away.
Enter an improbable accident waiting to happen. Rust, 19, was determined to prove that the empire really wasn't all that evil and that Gorbachev was earnest in his desire to end the Cold War. His plan was simple: Violate the most heavily defended airspace in the world, get to Moscow in one piece, and show the world the softer side of the Soviets.
If he could complete his crazy quest to "pass through the Iron Curtain without being intercepted, it would show that Gorbachev was serious about new relations with the West," Rust told Air & Space Magazine 18 years later. "How would Reagan continue to say it was the 'Empire of Evil' if me, in a small aircraft, can go straight there and be unharmed?”
Rust was not political or a professional agitator — and he was barely a pilot. He had learned to fly only over the previous couple of years, spending virtually all of his meager earnings (and some of his parents' money) for lessons, racking up about 50 hours of flight time.
His scheme was well-thought-out, all things considered. But without colossal luck, a fair amount of official bungling and an abundance of caution from the Soviets (who did not want a repeat of a 1983 incident when they blew Korean Airlines 007 out of the sky, killing 269 innocents), it could all have gone terribly wrong.
Two weeks before his fateful flight Rust checked out a 1980 Cessna Skyhawk 172 from his flying club. He modded the four-seater to hold auxiliary fuel tanks, giving him the range he would need to reach Moscow. To build his confidence and get in a little last-minute practice, he logged 2,600 miles flying from one Nordic city to another.
On the eve of his Moscow flight Rust wavered, thinking his plan could be, you know, a little nuts. The next morning he filed a flight plan for Stockholm -- "my alternate if I chickened out." He took off, dutifully obeyed instructions from Helsinki air traffic control, exited its air space ... and then shut off the plane's transponder and took a left turn to Moscow.
Within minutes Rust was picked up by a radar station in Skrunda, Latvia (then part of the Soviet Union). Missile units were activated. Ground units were put on high alert. It wasn't long before a Soviet fighter jet was in pursuit. Rust could see his fellow aviator, but said later he wasn't given any instructions by him. Turns out the MiG could only communicate on military frequencies that the Cessna couldn't receive. Eventually, the MiG just broke off and disappeared.
Rust's luck continued to hold. He flew through a training exercise using planes that looked like his Cessna. Radar stations continued to spot him, and assumed the best. One mistook him for a helicopter on a search-and-rescue mission. Another thought he was a student pilot who had forgotten to set his transponder to "friendly."
At any moment Rust could have been fired upon, or at least forced to land. But the KAL incident had made the Soviet military gun-shy. Only the most senior commanders now had the authority to issue shoot-down orders and, on this day, they were all at a meeting in East Berlin.
Six hours into his flight, as dusk approached, Rust reached the outskirts of Moscow. He wanted to head to the Kremlin but had trouble finding it. So he buzzed the city for a while. When he spotted the landmark, he had one last decision to make: Try for inside the Kremlin walls, or not.
Personal safety (irony noted) dictated his choice. "If I landed inside the wall, only a few people would see me, and they could just take me away and deny the whole thing," Rust said. "But if I landed in the square, plenty of people would see me, and the KGB couldn’t just arrest me and lie about it. So it was for my own security that I dropped that idea."
Rust actually landed on a bridge by St. Basil's Cathedral and taxied to within about 100 yards of Red Square. He mingled with curious passers-by for a bit, and was put under arrest. After a trial on charges which included hooliganism, he served about 18 months of a four-year sentence, and then was allowed to return home.
Rust never flew again, but he did get into serious trouble. He was convicted of attempted murder in 1989 when he stabbed a woman who had rejected him. He served 15 months in prison for that. He was convicted of shoplifting in 2001 and fraud in 2005, paying fines each time.
In a series of interviews he did in 2007, the 20th anniversary of his flight, Rust said he had become a successful high-stakes poker player.
That can't be confirmed, but Rust had already proven to a nervous world that he was something of a gambler.
Source: Various
*AP Photo: Mathias Rust's **single-engine Cessna aircraft sits in Moscow's Red Square near St. Basil's Cathedral, May 28, 1987.
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