This morning I took one of my German colleagues and his daughter for their first GA plane ride. While we were cruising around he mentioned a guy named Mathias Rust and how he started the end of the Cold War.

In a nutshell Mathias flew a C172 nap of the earth into the USSR and landed on the Red Square. The event humiliated the USSR military because they couldn't keep track of him. During periods they did spot his airplane they were afraid to shoot him down. That was in 1987 and the USSR was finished four years later.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathias_Rust

New story to me.

It cracks me up that he landed on the Red Square and in the photo is just standing there having a smoke.

If that was in the US he would be piled on, tazered, batoned, cuffed, . . .

That didn't start the end of the cold war or the USSR, they were in severe decline many years prior to that. But it did embarrass them greatly and dozens of military officers were fired.

I was in Germany at the time and it was a pretty big thing. a few years later when the F-117 was unveiled I bought a patch that had a top view of the C-172 and "Cessna 172" around the top rim and "Original Stealth" on the bottom rim. Sometime later my kids "disappeared" it.

They got fired for not shooting him down when they had contact with him at several occasions.

He was and still is a major douchebag. Never occured to him that the aeroclub would loose the plane if he flew it to moscow.

He later served time in prison in germany for attempted manslaughter when a nursing student failed to be impressed my mister hot-shot pilots sexual advances and he ended up stabbing her. Narcicistic personality disorder at its best.

It may not have started the end, but it certainly helped....

It did facilitate the end of the Soviet Union and the Cold war, and here's why:
Mattias Rust's busting of Moscow airspace allowed Gorbachev to eliminate many hardliners in top military positions. The heads that rolled were not randomly chosen. They were Gorby's mortal enemies. It strengthened his hand enough to pull off perestrioka, and we all know how that ended up.
It also blew a gust of clean, fresh air right through the USSR, with some interesting effects. One of them concerns a man I wrote a book about: Captain Igor Britanov, the commander of the K-219- a Soviet YANKEE-class boomer that sank off Bermuda in 1986. The book, Hostile Waters, details exactly how Britanov saved most of his men, but at the expense of being branded a traitor by his own Navy. Mattais Rust's flight cleared out a bunch of old admirals, not just air defense generals, and so Britanov's death sentence for treason was revoked and he went on to a hero's retirement.
Robin White

How do you say, "Don't tase me bro" in Russian.

[youtube]http://youtu.be/6bVa6jn4rpE[/youtube]

The difference makes us look like a bunch of police state idiots.

Yeah, in the US he may have ended up in cuffs, but he would have been out the next day on bail and received a fine for improper lane use. The soviets put him in a labor camp for a bit over a year (didn' fix his personality disorder though).

Hey Cliff, Welcome to BeechTalk..... glad you're here....

...Babar.

Thanks for posting this. I was 11 when this happened and I had forgot all about it.

Florian,

You threatened me with some diagnosis back when I started to spread my wings writing on BT.

If a patriot came into your office with a political opinion that differed from yours, could you resist using your persuasive power as a doctor to advance your political opinion?

That's a serious question that trusted professionals have to deal with.

Florian,

You threatened me with some diagnosis back when I started to spread my wings writing on BT.

If a patriot came into your office with a political opinion that differed from yours, could you resist using your persuasive power as a doctor to advance your political opinion?

That's a serious question that trusted professionals have to deal with.

Ditto here. I'm getting better.

Ditto here. I'm getting better.