Posted on 09/05/2016 11:21:26 PM PDT by sukhoi-30mki
On 6 September 1976, an aircraft appears out of the clouds near the Japanese city of Hakodate, on the northern island of Hokkaido. It’s a twin-engined jet, but not the kind of short-haul airliner Hakodate is used to seeing. This huge, grey hulk sports the red stars of the Soviet Union. No-one in the West has ever seen one before.
The jet lands on Hakodate’s concrete-and-asphalt runway. The runway, it turns out, is not long enough.
The jet ploughs through hundreds of feet of earth before it finally comes to rest at the far end of the airport.
The pilot climbs out of the plane’s cockpit and fires two warning shots from his pistol – motorists on the road next to the airport have been taking pictures of this strange sight. It is some minutes before airport officials, driving from the terminal, reach him. It is then that the 29-year-old pilot, Flight Lieutenant Viktor Ivanovich Belenko of the Soviet Air Defence Forces, announces that he wishes to defect.
It is no normal defection. Belenko has not wandered into an embassy, or jumped ship while visiting a foreign port. The plane that he has flown 400-odd miles, and which now sits stranded at the end of a provincial Japanese runway, is the Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-25. It is the most secretive aircraft the Soviet Union has ever built.
Until Belenko’s landing, that is.
The West first became aware of what would become known as the MiG-25 around 1970. Spy satellites stalking Soviet airfields picked up a new kind of aircraft bring tested in secret. They looked like enormous fighter planes, and the West’s militaries were concerned by one particular feature; they sported very large wings.
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.com ...
I distinctly remember this event when it happened. I was 17 years old and just finished my junior year of high school in Detroit.
For a minute there I thought this was a recap of the movie “Firefox”
I remember that day, and thought it was a great victory for the free world by that courageous man.
Its radar profile signature would light up like the Strip in Las Vegas. It would be dead meat in air to air or ground to air missiles. It is an engineering masterpiece but dead meat in combat against a technologically sophisticated foe.
Today in combat the rules are quite simple, “if you can see it before it sees you,” you will die.
Some people laughed about the mig-25 using vacuum tubes in its avionics — until they realized that this made it much more resistant to EMP in a nuclear conflict.
I was just 2 years ahead of you.
CC High Class of 74
Ha! I was thinking the same thing.
I was at Laughlin AFB, TX, when he drove that Mig 25 into Japan. I read the book too. I was told it was not designed to be a fighter, but an interceptor, to shoot down the B-70. It was inferior to the F-15 below 50,000 feet, but superior over 50,000 feet. It was, essentially, an aircraft without a mission, since the B-70 was canceled.
Also used in recon role ... at Mach 3+ (of course at those sustained speeds it destroyed its powerplant).
To be honest I think the only reason the Foxbat had landing gear was because they needed to train with it during peace time - in a nuclear war survivability for military bases and equipment on both sides was nil, which is why - for example - Soviet naval capital ships usually had a lot of anti air and anti sub rockets that were only there to buy it enough time to launch several nuclear-tipped 'Granit' supersonic anti ship cruise missiles at a USN carrier group, following which it had 'permission' to die.
Anyway, it was supposed to intercept the Valkyrie, which ironically was never put into production by the USAF I think. That explains why it had huge speed, why they didn't care if the engines burned out at max speed, why it did not need crazy maneuverability (an interceptor going after a bomber), the vacuum tubes (there would be nuclear weapons going off during a hot war, including the use of nuclear tipped air to air missiles). It was not stupid - it was a very clever design, just designed against a plane that never made it.
What is more ironic is that it led to the development of the F-15 Eagle. In the same way the Kremlin got worried about the XB-70 and created a super interceptor, the White House got worried about the MiG25 (at the time they thought it would be a super fighter), which led to the development of a real super fighter in the F-15. Funny how life works - a super bomber that never made it led to the development of a super interceptor to shoot down a threat that never existed, which led to the development of a super fighter to shoot down a super interceptor that couldn't even turn fast. And thus we have one of the most beautiful planes in the world, the F-15 Eagle.
I heard it had been tracked at Mach 3.2 somewhere, but it needed the engines replaced after that.
This page http://www.futurescience.com/emp/emp-protection.html talks specifically about radios, but it says transistors in faraday cage are more resistant to EMP than vacuum tubes.
The book is a good read.
A lot of interesting details about life in the Soviet Union at the time and about being a Soviet MiG-25 pilot in the Soviet Far East. Some that immediately come to mind:
- The painting of the trees along the entry road to the base to make a good impression on a Soviet AF general during an inspection visit. The trees would die; the base commander didn’t care.
- The prohibition against turning on the interceptor radar at full power while on the ground. Besides being a marvel of miniaturized vacuum tube engineering, it was also so powerful (to burn through American ECM) that it was fatal to ground personnel in front of the aircraft.
- The stealing of the pure alcohol used in the aircraft’s flight control system for drinking purposes. The aircraft used 50 liters/per flight, so to make the account books balance, thousands of gallons of AVGAS were dumped in the woods around the base. In some places, the ground was so saturated you didn’t want to smoke for fear of sparking a massive forest fire.
The book, which is worth reading, is sort of pricy, even as a used paperback:
Perhaps borrow it from the library if they have a copy?
That’s awesome.
Victor had a great sense of humor.
Bookmark
Redford High, Class of ‘74, Go Huskies! The Red and Gray.
Remembering what the old neighborhood was like back then and seeing what it has become now, it feels like I came from another planet. “A Stranger In A Strange Land.”
The big fallacy about radios in faraday cages being invulnerable to EMP is sort of hypothetical. Completely isolated, yes possibly. However, it is not a ‘radio’ if it can’t pick up anything (i.e., without using a transmission line to an antenna). It is here through this path that it becomes vulnerable and requires a lot more thought about mode and method of protection.
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