Stolen MiG-25 - Bilingual Subtitles
At the height of the Cold War,
Western satellites, stalking Soviet military installations, caught brief glimpses of a warplane that many feared could overwhelm the West's air defenses.
Attempts to get detailed on the build and features of this craft proved futile, posing dire security risk for anti-Soviet nations.
Larger and faster than other military forces.
military planes at the time, the MiG-25 eluded espionage, capture, and even the imaginations of those who theorized about its capabilities.
That was until 1976,
when a Soviet pilot aboard one of those most scrutinized but enigmatic aircraft attempted a daring defection from the USSR,
bringing with him top-secret military property.
offering the West access to both classified enemy technology and prime propaganda.
The Hello at MiG-25 The Soviet Union's Mikoyan-Gurovich MiG-25 was, by all accounts, an incredible plane.
It was big, heavy, and powerful.
For some time, it was the envy of Western military powers, especially those of the U.S.
Air Force.
The first prototype flew in 1964 with the aircraft entering service in 1970.
It was designated a supersonic interceptor and reconnaissance aircraft among the fastest military planes to ever enter service.
It had an operational top speed.
Mach 2.83, and it was capable of flying in excess of Mach 3 that altitude's few aircrafts could reach.
At the time,
the technological leap needed to take an aircraft from Mach 2 to Mach 3 had proven to be too enormous of a challenge for the Americans.
Flying that fast required engines that generated colossal amounts of thrust, but the USSR had already developed technology.
that was well suited for the task.
The RF-15 turbojet was originally intended for a high-altated cruise missile project,
but instead two of these were fed to the new MiG, each one capable of pushing out 11 tons of thrust.
At 64 feet long,
the MiG-25 was only a few feet shorter than the to accommodate the engines and to contain the up to 30,000 pounds of fuel needed to power them.
Notably, it was one of the few combat planes built primarily using stainless steel and was the
last plane designed by famed Soviet aircraft designer Nikhil Goribich before his retirement.
The entire famous MiG fleet was named after him.
With the Soviets proven to be track record in military aircraft design, it's no wonder that the West was genuinely worried.
Glimpses of the Ghost
Spy satellite footage collected by the West in mid-1970 was the first to pick up evidence of a mysterious new Soviet jet.
All the West knew was that it had huge wings and was very fast.
At least according to the blurry photographs of it, nobody knew anything else about it.
In western intelligence circles, the plane was referred to as the Soviet Union's ghost plane, alluding to its almost mythical existence.
Another glimpse of the aircraft was recorded in the Middle East.
In March 1973,
Israel picked up the presence of a plane at the surprising speed of Mach 3.2 more than three times the speed of sound.
The craft had also climbed to an astounding 63,000 feet.
Israeli fighters were scrambled, they tried fruitlessly to intercept the aircraft a few days later.
Especially notable for observers was the plane's large wing area, a particular feature useful fighter planes to help generate lift.
In theory, that should have made the MiG-25 more nimble and easier to turn than other fighter jets at the time.
To Western intelligence and military experts, the Soviet jets seem to combine this ability with a pair of enormous engines.
How fast could it really go?
Could anything in the US Air Force or other Western Air Forces keep up with it?
U defense chiefs were so in the dark about the Ming's supposed capabilities that they coat named the Soviet aircraft Foxbat,
giving it both the letter F designation for fighter and the B designation for bomber.
This was the most secretive aircraft project at the USSR up to that time, and competing powers were dying to unveil the Soviet secret.
Enter Viktor Belenko Back in the Soviet Union, fighter pilot Viktor Ivanovich Belenko was a very unhappy man.
His home life was falling apart with a looming divorce.
He also began to question life in the Soviet system, which he saw as corrupt and not beneficial for ordinary citizens such as him.
In despair, he started to think that...
affecting to the west might be his best option.
While training to pilot the new MiG-25 with the Soviet Air Defense Forces, Bolingo carefully crafted his plan.
A training exercise for a squadron of MiG-25 pilots would take place at the Tugayevk Air Base in Primorsky-Krai,
near the far eastern Russian city of La Rivostok on September 6th, 1976.
Japan was a mere 400 miles away.
That day, Bolingo had a full tank and a one-way route in mind.
In mid-flight, Bolingo broke formation and headed for Japan.
In order to evade both Soviet and Japanese military radars, he flew just 100 feet above the sea.
Once he was far enough into Japanese airspace,
He took the megaphone to,000 feet, so that it could be picked up by a Japanese radar.
The Japanese did pick up the plane's presence via the radar system at Chitose Air Base, near Sapporo Hokkaido.
The surprise Japanese tried to hail the unidentified aircraft, but Balingo's radio was tuned to the wrong frequencies.
Two Japanese F4 Phantom fighters were sent up to intercept the mystery plane, but by then Balenco had dropped below the cloud cover.
The mystery plane that disappeared from Japanese radar screens.
Balenco makes a landing.
The Soviet pilot spent the entire trip flying by educated guesswork based on his memory of maps he had studied before.
take-off.
His intention had been to fly the aircraft of the Chitose Air Base,
but he started running out of fuel and needed to land at the nearest available airport.
Hakodate Airport on Japan's northern island of Hokkaido.
He circled the plane over the airport twice, and then attempted landing on the airport's concrete and asphalt runway.
A drag shoot was an attempt to slow it down, but unfortunately for him, the runway was not long enough.
The jet plowed through hundreds of feet of soil before finally coming to arrest at the far end of the airport.
The Japanese on the tarmac and in the control tower was stunned.
In the distance was a large, hulking grey warplane with the distinct red star of the Soviet Union on its tail.
It was the first MiG-25 stationed, visible and accessible outside of the USSR.
Belinko climbed out of the plane's cockpit and promptly fired two warning shots from his pistol.
He didn't want anyone approaching his aircraft before he got off.
Airport officials driving from the terminal reached him after a few minutes.
He offered no resistance.
police who approached them.
He did however ask the police to cover the plane with a canvas because it contained military secrets.
Right then, the 29-year-old pilot announced he wanted to defect.
The airport was close to commercial traffic after Balenco landed.
American personnel were also in the scene almost immediately.
The Soviet police The pilot the night at a secret location in the outskirts of Hakodate.
The MiG-25 was heavily guarded throughout the night by the police.
Hakodate's normally quiet airport had suddenly become a hive of intelligence activity.
The Japanese were at first flummox as to what to do with the defected Soviet pilot.
Japan's foreign ministry began consultation with the United States government at the request of Balenko since he was seeking asylum in the United States.
The Soviet Union was shocked by the defection, and its embassy in Tokyo asked the foreign ministry for permission to interview the pilot.
he replied that it would have to investigate the incident before making a decision.
The Soviet embassy would later demand the immediate return of both plane and pilot.
The Japanese politely refused either.
Belenka was granted asylum by the United States, and his U.S.
citizenship was personally approved by President Jimmy Carter.
Myths of the MiG-25 to bunkers.
early intelligence about the MiG-25 suggested that it easily outclassed existing Western fighters.
Western believed that the Soviets had a highly maneuverable and ridiculously fast secret fighter jet.
However, few of its shortcomings were known.
The plane was impressive, but not nearly as functional as previously thought.
Big and heavy, it wasn't particularly useful in combat.
Its handling was considered quite poor, and its range limited due to rapid fuel consumption.
The plane's speed turned out to be fast only when flown in a straight line.
The mink's turbo-jets generated thrust by sucking in air to help burn fuel.
At any speed, the above 2,000 miles per hour, force of the air could overwhelm the fuel pumps.
Furthermore, as the plane went above Mach 2.8, the immense force exerted by the compressors
could potentially turn the engines inside out, and the plane would literally start sucking up parts of the engine.
This explains why MiG-25 pilots were warned never to exceed Mach 2.8,
meaning that the MiGit Mach 3.2, tracked by Israeli fighter jets in 1971, likely destroyed its engines while flying.
That plane was lucky to return to base.
Essentially, the MiG-25 could take off quickly and fly in a straight line very fast to fire missiles or take pictures.
On the subject of mistaken military intelligence, U.S.
editor of Flight Global,
Stephen Trimble, said quote, they, meaning American military intelligence, knew it would be very fast, and also thought it would be very maneuverable.
They were right about the first one, but not about the second one.
The U.S.
had been hugely spooked by the Soviet plane before Blanco's defection.
As a result, the government had revised and accelerated its plans for what would become the F-15 Eagle.
Once in circulation, the Eagle would be the world's most formidable air superiority fighter.
This American aviation accomplishment was mostly inspired by the imagined necessity to compete with a Soviet plane with extraordinary abilities that only really exist.
existed in the misinformed imagination of the intelligence community.
As for that famous MiG-25, unsurprisingly, the Soviets demanded the return of Balenco's MiG-25.
Once inspection of the aircraft concluded, the plane was partly reassembled and shipped back to the USSR in 30 crates.
The Japanese then sent the Soviets a US $40,000 bill for shipping costs,
and for the damage Balenco caused when he landed the Planet Hakko Daddy Airport.
Yet from the returned craft were missing.
In retaliation to the bill and the parcel returned, the Soviet Union billed Japan US $10 million.
To this day, neither bill has been.
has been paid.
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