Target 8255

 

The Last Flight of Mathias Rust 

(Part 1)

There is nothing inside Mathias Rust’s neat, two-bedroom apartment outside Berlin—no mementos, no photographs, no framed newspaper headlines—nothing at all to indicate that for a few short weeks 19 years ago he was the most famous pilot in the world. Rust was barely more than a kid when, on May 28, 1987, he achieved what many thought impossible. The 19-year-old youth took off in a small Cessna from Helsinki, turned southeast toward the border of the then-Soviet Union, and flew 450 miles into the center of Moscow, the heart of the “empire of evil” and arguably the most heavily defended city on the planet. The daring youth then landed the plane next to the Kremlin Wall, not far from the office of Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, before parking it smack in the middle of Red Square, within spitting distance of Lenin’s Tomb. 

The stunt, one of the most spectacular (if misguided) feats in aviation history, was an international sensation. Newspapers all over the world splashed photos of Rust’s plane sitting under the distinctive onion domes of St. Basil’s Cathedral. Dubbed “the new Red Baron” and the “Don Quixote of the Skies,” Rust’s name was mentioned in the same breath as Charles Lindbergh and Chuck Yeager.

Given the political backdrop in which it was done, the exploit was even more sensational. The Cold War was coming to an end. Gorbachev was pushing “glasnost,” his policy of improved relations with the West. He and U.S. President Ronald Reagan were in the middle of a delicate series of arms negotiations, and as opposition among hard-liners in Gorbachev’s party mounted, rumors swirled that neither Gorbachev nor his bold policies stood much of a chance of succeeding.  

Into this flew a naïve, idealistic young man who decided to build “an imaginary bridge of peace” by flying solo to Moscow and personally delivering a good will message to the Soviet leader. Rust never got to meet Gorbachev, but within days, the Soviet defense minister and the Soviet air defense chief were sacked. Dozens of other military officers were replaced. Within a year, Reagan and Gorbachev would sign a major nuclear arms reduction treaty. Within a two and a half years, the Berlin Wall would come down. Within four years, the Soviet Union would be no longer. 

Now 38, Rust seems the same earnest, idealistic young man he was 18 years ago. Though he never flew a plane again, and in fact spent many years trying to distance himself from his famous flight, the memory of it has stayed fresh. “It seems like it happened yesterday,” he says. “It’s alive in me.”

 

The Planning and Preparation

As Rust remembers, two things preoccupied him during his high school years in Hamburg—flying and nuclear Armageddon. Though long interested in flying, West German regulations required student pilots to be at least 17 years old. Not long after his seventeenth birthday in 1986, Rust joined a flying club in Hamburg. Between his job as a data processor at a local mail-order trinket company and with his parents’ help, Rust spent all of his money and most of his time taking flying lessons. He received his license in August 1986.

Rust’s interest in politics, he remembers, began around 1983. A child of the Cold War, he had grown up in an era where distrust and paranoia marked East-West relations. Despite the bellicose posturing and occasional incidents, the two sides had settled into an uneasy, yet predictable stalemate. Reagan’s election to the presidency, however, threatened to push that to the brink. The U.S. president seemed on a personal crusade against the Soviet Union, calling it the “empire of evil” and denouncing it at every turn. He renewed a heated arms race, insisting on the development of the Strategic Defense Initiative, or “Star Wars” space-based anti-ballistic missile system, and based intermediate-range nuclear weapons in Europe. Many people, especially those living in Germany, were on edge. “There was a real sense of fear,” Rust says, “because if there was a conflict, we all knew we would be the first to be hit.”

Gorbachev’s ascendancy to the Soviet leadership in 1985 offered a glimmer of hope. His policies of “glasnost” (improved relations with the West) and “perestroika” (economic reforms at home) were radical departures from those of his predecessors. The maverick Soviet leader offered a vision of ending the Cold War. Though he and Reagan’s first summit in Geneva in November 1985 ended without a hoped-for arms agreement, the two leaders seemed to have a personal rapport. When a second summit in the Icelandic capital of Reykjavik was scheduled for October 1986, expectations ran high.

The two leaders left Reykjavik without an arms deal. Gorbachev presented a plan that would eliminate all strategic weapons, but Reagan refused to budge on the matter of SDI, so no deal was reached. 

Rust felt a chance had been squandered. He was bitter, particularly at Reagan. He felt the U.S. president’s reflexive mistrust of the Soviet Union had blinded him to Gorbachev and the historic opportunity he presented. Rust decided he must do something, something big. 

He decided to build an “imaginary bridge” by flying to Moscow. “I realized [that I needed] to go there to prove that Moscow is the source of peace. If I was be able to reach there, [if I could] pass through the Iron Curtain without being intercepted, it would show that Gorbachev was serious about new relations with the West. 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? This way, they couldn’t just ignore me.”

Of course, Rust had little reason to believe he could actually make it to Moscow. In the past, the Soviets had shown little hesitation in shooting down aircraft intruding into their airspace. Tensions still lingered over the 1983 downing of Korean Airlines Flight 007, a regularly scheduled flight en route to Seoul that was blown of the sky by a Soviet jet fighter after the airliner strayed into Soviet airspace near the Kamchatka Peninsula, sending the shattered Boeing 747 and all 269 persons aboard tumbling into the Pacific ocean. For years, the Soviets maintained the airliner was part of spy mission.

“I thought my chances of actually getting to Moscow were about fifty-fifty,” Rust says. His reasoning, Rust explains, went like this: “Gorbachev was saying that he really wanted to open a new chapter of peace. If he means it, he must react differently than his predecessors… he can’t give orders to shoot me down.” Of course, it was presumptive to think Gorbachev would even be the one to give the order, Rust admits, but, “I was young, I knew it was a big risk, but I was convinced I was doing the right thing. I just had to dare to do it.” 

So he quietly started making plans.

He decided to make the trip the following spring, when the weather was generally good. At the time, he barely had 50 hours total flight time, and up to then had only done a few short cross-country flights around Germany and one longer flight to Denmark with his family to celebrate receiving his license. But he figured he needed to test himself, to prove to himself that he was capable of making the flight. 

He would fly to Reykjavik, the city that had been the inspirational source of his plans. For Rust, Reykjavik was a bit of unfinished business, but more to the point, “flying to Reykjavik is a difficult flight, a long-distance flight, a long time flying over open water with very little navigation aids. But it would also put me under a lot of pressure, pressure I would receive flying to Moscow. I figured if I succeeded, I would be able to cope with the pressure of flying to Moscow.” 

The flying club owned four aircraft, one of which was a Cessna Skyhawk. The four-place, single-engine plane had a full complement of radios and navigation equipment for instrument flight. More important, the plane had a set of auxiliary fuel tanks that boosted fuel capacity and extended the aircraft’s range from a standard 575 nautical miles to 750 nautical miles, range Rust would need in order to safely reach Reykjavik and later Moscow. 

For weeks, Rust meticulously planned all the routes. From Hamburg, he would fly across northern Europe and the North Atlantic to Reykjavik, then back and across lower Scandinavia to Helsinki. He made sure he had all the maps. He worked out alternate routes in case he had to divert around weather. 

Rust told the flying club he needed to charter the aircraft for three weeks. The club didn’t ask him where he was going, and Rust didn’t say. To his parents, Monika and Karl-Heinz, a mild-mannered engineer, Rust simply said he was flying to Iceland, then to Helsinki and back home. “I just told them I wanted to do it because it was a very challenging flight, a very interesting flight,” Rust says. There was no point in telling them his true intentions, Rust says, because at that point he was not sure himself if he would make the flight to Moscow. So he kept it to himself. 

For the trip, Rust packed a small suitcase, a satchel with his maps and flight planning supplies, a sleeping bag, a box containing 15 quarts of engine oil, and a life vest. “I tried to get a lifeboat,” Rust says, “but they didn’t have any to rent at that time, so I bought a life vest.” Rust knew the vest would be of limited use in the frigid waters of the North Atlantic, but he brought it anyway. “If I had to land in the sea I wouldn’t drown,” Rust says. “I might freeze, but I wouldn’t drown.” And, as a final precaution, Rust packed a motorcycle crash helmet. The helmet was for his final leg to Moscow, “because I didn’t know what [the Soviets] would do, and if I was forced down it would give me extra protection [in case of a crash-landing].” Considering the risks he was taking, such precautions might seem a bit contradictory, but as crazy as Rust’s flight might seem, he wasn’t suicidal.

 

The Flight

From Uetersen Airfield outside Hamburg, Rust took off on May 13 at 10:51 a.m. Flying across the Baltic and North seas, he reached the Shetland Islands north of Scotland late in the day after nearly five-hours flying over open water. The next day, he flew to Vagar, on the Danish Faroe Islands, in the middle of the North Atlantic. 

On May 15, Rust flew to Reykjavik, where he decided to stay a few days. He visited Hofdi House, the white villa that was site of the Reagan-Gorbachev summit. “It was locked,” Rust says, “but I felt I got in touch with the spirit of the place. I was so emotionally involved then, and was so disappointed with the failure of the summit and my failure to get there the previous autumn. So it gave me motivation to continue.”

Rust departed Reykjavik on May 22, arriving at Helsinki’s Malmi airport on May 25 after stops in Hofn, Iceland, the Shetland Islands and Bergan, Norway. Since leaving Hamburg, he had covered nearly 2,600 miles and had nearly doubled his total flight time to more than 100 hours. He had proven to himself he had the flying skills he needed, but he still had doubts about his nerve. His resolve constantly wavered. Yes. No. Yes. No…  yes, it was something he had to do. No, it was crazy. He could not make up his mind.

“The whole flight had a huge question mark,” Rust says. “There were so many unknowns. Would they shoot me down as soon as I crossed the border? Or would they wait until I reached Moscow? Would they intercept me and force me to land? Even if I got to Moscow and Red Square, would there be a place to land? But it didn’t do me any good to ask all these questions because I really didn’t have any answers. The only real question was would I do it?”

Plagued by doubts, Rust spent a restless night the evening of May 27. “I didn’t sleep much that night, for sure. I was just very restless. I had this debate going on my head: Yes, I’m going to do it. No, I’m not going to. I just didn’t know what to do.”

By the next morning, he still was unsure. “I just decided to go through my pre-flight routine. I just decided that at the moment I had to make the decision, when I’m airborne, then I would decide.” 

After showering, Rust put on his red overalls. The jumpsuit’s color had no symbolic meaning for Rust. The suit was simply “warm and comfy.” He got breakfast. Though he figured he’d be too excited to eat during the flight, he had a cheese sandwich made for him at the hotel and bought a piece of chocolate and a bottle of water. He drove to Malmi airport. He got the airplane fueled, paid his fees, and checked the weather. A briefing officer later said Rust appeared calm, but “absorbed in his thoughts.” Rust filed a flight plan for Stockholm, a two-hour trip to the southwest. “You might say that Stockholm was my alternate if I chickened out,” Rust says. He then checked in with customs, did his final pre-flight inspection of the aircraft, and then buckled himself into the pilot’s seat. 

At about 12:21 p.m., Rust’s airplane lifted off the runway. Controllers at Malmi had Rust turn west towards Stockholm, asking him to keep the plane low to avoid other traffic. Though the plane was equipped with a transponder, a radio device that allows controllers to identify a particular aircraft on radar, Helsinki controllers had Rust depart without giving him a transponder setting, so the device was turned off. Rust held course for about 20 minutes, at which point controllers radioed Rust to say he was leaving their control area. Rust thanked them and said goodbye, tuning his communications radio to 121.5 megahertz, the international frequency for emergency communications. 

He was about to reach his first waypoint, Rust recalls, when, “all of a sudden, I just turned the plane to the left,” he says. “It wasn’t really even a decision. It was like I was having an out-of-body experience, like I was in the passenger seat watching myself. I wasn’t nervous. I wasn’t excited. It was almost like the plane was on autopilot. I just turned and headed straight across [the Gulf of Finland] to the border.”

At the Tampere air traffic control facility, Finnish air traffic controllers noticed Rust’s nearly 180-degree change of course. As the radar blip headed south and east across the water, passing through restricted military airspace as it did, controllers reportedly tried and failed to contact Rust. At about 1 p.m., Rust’s plane reportedly disappeared from radar screens, meaning either it was flying too low to be detected or had crashed. Assuming the worst, controllers asked other aircraft in the area to search for signs of a crash. At about 1:15 p.m., a helicopter pilot radioed that he spotted an oil slick and some debris on the surface of the water near where Rust’s plane was last detected on radar. A search and rescue operation was activated. That search was later called off when it was learned Rust had landed in Moscow. [Rust contends he climbed to 1,000 feet as he began crossing the Gulf of Finland, which should have made him visible to radar. Years later, Finnish aviation authorities investigated a series of incidents in which airliners mysteriously disappeared from Tampere radar screens for a period up to several minutes while in the same area.]

Meanwhile, at a radar station about 90 miles from Riga, in the small town of Skrunda, Soviet military personnel manning radar screens were also tracking Rust. Soviet controllers thought at first that the unidentified blip was a flock of birds, but quickly realized that the target was moving too fast to be birds and must be an aircraft.

Occasionally, small aircraft from the West might approach the border, only to turn around once they realized where they were. All foreign aircraft flying into the Soviet Union were required to get a permit and to fly along special corridors, so this was obviously not an approved flight. As the unidentified aircraft neared the coastline at around 2:10 p.m. Moscow time (an hour ahead of Helsinki) controllers assigned the radar target the number 8255. In addition, three missile units were automatically put on alert.

Rust put on his crash helmet. Awaiting him was the most formidable air defense system in the world. Over 40 years in the making and in a constant state of expansion and upgrade, Soviet air defenses were a marvel of technical innovation and shear magnitude—a complex network of radars, missile batteries and anti-aircraft artillery, all backed by hundreds of fighter-interceptors. 

After crossing the coastline near the town of Kohtla-Jarve, now in the independent state of Estonia, he climbed to his planned en route altitude of 2,500 feet above sea level, a standard altitude for cross-country flight, which would keep him at least 1,000 feet above the surface for the entire route. 

“As I headed inland,” Rust says, “the whole time I was just sitting in the aircraft, focusing on the dials. It felt like I wasn’t really doing it. Sometimes I had the impression that I was seeing myself—like I left my body and was sitting in the passenger seat, like it was beyond my ability to cope.” 

Soviet controllers continued to monitor the unidentified plane’s progress. Duty officers, perhaps afraid of being penalized for raising a false alarm, waited until Rust was well inland before deciding to scramble a pair of fighter-interceptors from nearby Tapa air base to investigate. The weather at that time was partly cloudy, with the lower edge of clouds at 1,300 to 1,900 feet above the ground, winds out of the west and occasional rain. After being directed to the area where the unidentified aircraft was detected, one of the Soviet pilots looked through a hole in the clouds and reported seeing a plane that looked similar to a Yak-12, a single-engine, high-wing Soviet trainer that from a distance looks very similar to a Cessna. The plane, the pilot said, was white with a dark stripe along its fuselage (as was Rust’s plane). 

Not long after first being seen by the Soviet fighter pilot, Rust descended in order to avoid some low clouds. For a brief period, his blip disappeared from Soviet radar screens. This happened in an area between radar sectors. Once the weather cleared, Rust climbed back to 2,500 feet, and the unidentified plane reemerged on radar screens. The commander of the radar center ordered two more fighter-interceptors to investigate. 

Nearly two hours into his flight by then, Rust says the sun was shining when suddenly, “I remember just seeing a shadow, a black shadow shooting in the sky and then disappear. I wondered what it was and then I realized it was an aircraft.” A few moments later, from out of a layer of clouds hovering in the sky in front of him, an aircraft appeared. At first, it was just a small speck, but it grew rapidly in size. The plane, Rust says, “was coming at me very fast, and dead-on. And it went, whoosh! Right over me.” 

At that point, Rust says, “I remember how my heart felt, beating very fast. This was exactly the moment when you start to ask yourself: Is this when they shoot you down?” But there was nothing he could do but wait. “It was like the hands of time stuck on the clock.” 

After what seemed an eternity, Rust saw it. From the corner of his eye, below and to the left, a MiG-23 fighter-interceptor was pulling up beside him. 

At nearly three times the size and more than 10 times the weight of Rust’s Cessna, the MiG seemed huge. Designed to fly at more than twice the speed of sound, the swing-wing fighter had to be put into full landing configuration, with its gear and flaps extended and its wings swung outward, in order slow it enough to fly alongside the Cessna. Its nose rode high in the air as it hovered near the edge of a stall.

“I realized because they hadn’t shot me down yet that they wanted to check on what I was doing there,” Rust says. He kept watching the Soviet plane, “but there was no sign, no signal from the pilot for me for to follow him. Nothing. They could have contacted me over the emergency frequency. They could have asked where are you coming from? Where are you heading? But nothing.” 

Rust’s investigators later told him that the Soviet pilot attempted several times to raise Rust over the radio, but that there was no response. Rust explained that his radio was turned on. They could have talked to him at any time. Only later did Rust realize that the Soviet fighter communicated over military channels on a higher frequency band than Rust’s radio, and that the two aircraft were probably incapable of communicating with each other.

After a minute of eyeing each other, the Soviet pilot retracted the jet’s gear and flaps. The jet accelerated, peeled away and disappeared. After a few more anxious minutes, Rust saw the MiG again. This time it circled from a distance of about a kilometer, drawing a long arc around Rust’s plane. Once. Twice. Then disappearing for good. 

Asked what he might have told the Soviets had they been able to contact him, Rust says, “I would have told them the truth. I would have said I was heading to Moscow. What else could I have done? I couldn’t tell them I was lost, that I had gotten there by accident. So if they had raised the question, I would have told them.” And if they had then asked him to follow them to the nearest airport? “Yes, I think I would have done that, because if I ignored them they would have done something else to just stop me.”

Unbelievably, Rust was allowed to continue. This despite the fact that the Soviet pilot could clearly tell that the plane was not a Yak, and that by its registration number (D-ECJB) and flag that it was of West German origin. The official account was that the pilot never found anything. But Marshal Sergei Akhromeyev, chief of staff of the all the Soviet armed forces, admitted in an interview in 1990 that the fighter pilot’s commander either did not believe his report or did not think it was significant, and thus the information was never passed up the chain-of-command.

The blunder, however outrageous, was not irrevocable. Rust was still nearly four hours from Moscow. Given the plane’s nearly constant heading, controllers down the line could probably deduce its destination and take appropriate action. At this point, the tiny plane posed very little threat to anybody. Between it and the Soviet capital was a flat landscape full of lakes and rivers, covered by forests with only few agricultural areas and very few towns and only an occasional factory.

In fact, had Rust maneuvered his aircraft in a way to try and evade radar, as many speculated afterwards, the Soviets likely would have taken more aggressive action to stop him. But even then their options for dealing with the situation were fairly limited. Since the fiasco surrounding the KAL 007 tragedy, strict orders were given that no hostile action be taken against civilian aircraft. Those orders could only come from the very highest level in the Soviet military. At that moment, the Soviet Union’s top military commander, Defense Minister Sergei Sokolov, along with a number of other top military commanders, was accompanying Gorbachev on a trip to East Berlin to meet with other Warsaw Pact states to discuss new military policies.

By 3 p.m., the weather had improved, the rain stopped, and Rust climbed back to an altitude of 2,500 feet MSL. As he did, he entered an area where an air force training regiment was performing flight-training exercises. At the time, from seven to 12 aircraft, all with similar performance characteristics and radar signatures as Rust’s, were in varying stages of flight. Some were doing maneuvers, some were landing, others were taking off, so that the number of planes on radar screens was constantly changing. 

Soviet military aircraft, like military aircraft around the world, are equipped with a radio transponder that sends out a signal that identifies them to controllers and other aircraft as being “friendly” (the Identification Friend or Foe system, similar to the civilian transponder that Rust had aboard his aircraft but which was turned off). Radar controllers on the ground can override the system and flag the aircraft as “friendly” in order to prevent the aircraft from being accidentally targeted and fired upon.

Common procedures for Soviet air forces were for all ground radar and aircraft to reset their transponder codes at prearranged times. On this day, 3 p.m. was one of those times. Those who failed to make the switch would have their radar signature go from “friendly” to “hostile.” As Rust proceeded, a commander looking over the shoulder of a radar operator—apparently thinking Rust’s radar return was that of a student pilot who had forgotten to make the transponder switch—ordered the officer on duty to change all the planes’ radar signatures to “friendly.” 

“Otherwise we might shoot some of our own,” he explained.

But the officer refused, explaining to his superior that to do so was a violation of established rules and regulations. 

The irritated commander then dismissed the duty officer, replacing him with a younger officer who, unfamiliar with the situation, carried out the order. Rust, now officially sanctioned as a “friendly” aircraft, continued on.

By  4.00 p.m., Rust crossed radar sectors near Lake Seliger, a popular summer retreat near the town of Kushinovo, about 230 miles from Moscow. As the radar return for Rust’s plane popped up on a new set of radar screens, controllers once again took note of the unidentified aircraft. Once again it was tracked, and once again a pair of fighter-interceptors was launched to investigate. But because of low clouds, commanders considered it too dangerous for the planes to descend through the cloud deck to intercept Rust, and thus visual contact was never made. Rust was now a little more than two and one-half hours away from his destination.

A bit further on, about 40 miles west of the city of Torzhok, a pair of helicopters had been doing search and rescue operations following the crash of a plane the previous day. The helicopters had been skimming the surface, landing and taking off, for much of the day. As Rust passed through the region, another radar controller saw the signal for Rust’s plane and assumed it was one of the helicopters. On his radar screen, he flagged it as such, thus for the second time marking Rust as a “friendly” flight.

As Rust flew on, military jurisdiction changed from the Leningrad Military District to the Moscow Military District. In the hand-off, the Leningrad commander reported to his Moscow counterpart that his controllers had been tracking a Soviet plane flying without its transponder turned on. There was nothing about tracking an unidentified plane from the Gulf of Finland, nothing about fighter-interceptors intercepting a West German aircraft and nothing about an unidentified aircraft tracking a steady course to Moscow. As such, no one thought much about the report. 

Although new radar and communication systems had been installed around Moscow, they were not integrated with the systems nearer the Soviet border. Had they been, Moscow commanders might have been able to evaluate the situation for themselves, rather than rely on reports from their Leningrad colleagues. 

But as radar controllers continued to track the unidentified target, an amazing conference call took place as the generals racked their brains about what to do about the still unidentified target.

“I’m afraid it was birds, small birds,” said Major General Gvozdenko, one of the commanders of the national air defense system.

“No,” objected Major General Reznichencko, in charge of the Moscow’s air defenses that day. “The pilots saw it.”

“They didn’t see anything. Those pilots are always seeing things.”

“But the pilot is very insistent. A plane appeared from somewhere.”

Frustrated at his colleague’s stubbornness. Gvozdenko tried a different approach. “Do you realize if we say it’s a plane, the high-ups are going to badger everybody? They’re going to say, ‘If you saw a plane, then look for it.’”

Reznichencko’s superior, Lieutenant General Brazhnikov, joined the conversation. “It’s a weather formation, or birds. That’s the most likely.”

“It would be nice if it really were a weather formation,” said Reznichenko. “But what if it’s a plane? And it comes down because it runs out of fuel. Then[the higher-ups] will really start yelling at us, ‘What did you do, and why did you do it this way and not that way?’”

“So it comes down,” argued Gvozdenko, still thinking about ways to cover himself. “We tracked it consistently. We sent fighters up.”

As the senior general among the group, Brazhnikov realized it was time to make a decision. “Okay, we have to make a report. What is it to be: birds, a weather formation, or a target?”

Another general listening in, Aleksandr Gukov, the general in charge of the radar system, chimed in. “I can’t make a decision,” he told Brazhnikov. “I doubt it is a weather formation. It’s moving too fast.”

A few minutes later, Gukov came back on line. A good soldier, he knew how to please his superiors. “Our conclusion is that it is a weather formation,” he reported.

“But, Alexandr Ivanovich, you’re so contradictory,” said Brazhnikov, exasperated. “Two minutes ago you said it couldn’t be a weather formation. You made a decsion. It’s up to us to work these things out.”

Taking a few moments, Brazhnikov decided he preferred the birds explanation. “Try to remember what the north and Siberia are like at this time of year,” he told Gukov. “Do geese fly for a long time?”

“Yes, they do. The Leningraders decided it was birds.”

Well, there you are,” Brazhnikov said to Gukov, “and you were saying a weather formation. Why should weather formations stand out against such a cloudy background? It seems very doubtful.”

“We should go along with the decision of the Leningraders and show solidarity,” agreed Gukov. “There’s just one thing that confuses me. Birds fly north in the spring. But this is coming from the north.”

“I still think we will conclude that it was geese,” said Brazhnikov firmly, bringing the debate to a close. “So, Aleksandr Ivanovich, it will be birds.” 

“Yes, sir, understood,” Gukov conceded. “Let it be birds.” 

Chief Air Marshall Aleksandr Koldunov, who commanded Soviet air forces and whose office was in the same building as the Moscow controllers then watching Rust’s steady progress toward Moscow, went home that evening without knowing anything was wrong. 

From Rust’s viewpoint, his flight was going flawlessly. The weather had improved, and despite overcast skies the visibility was quite good. He had no problem identifying the landmarks he had chosen as waypoints on the map, and he felt confident his goal was within reach. Considering the circumstances, Rust felt oddly safe. “I had a sense of peace. Everything was calm and in order.” During the flight, he ate the chocolate, but not the sandwich. 

At 40 miles out, he passed the outermost belt of Moscow’s vaunted “Ring of Steel,” an elaborate network of anti-aircraft defenses that, according to defense analyst John Pike, was “one the great engineering feats of the 20th century.”  Beginning in the 1950s, in response to the United State’s build-up of its bomber fleets, the Soviets started building a network of anti-aircraft and anti-missile missiles along a ring road that circled the city at a distance of about 10 miles. Over the next 40 years, the Soviets kept adding and expanding the system, creating two more rings at a distance of 25 nautical miles and 45 nautical miles. “It’s big,” says Pike. “The Soviets, and the Russians, like to do things in a big way. And this was big. The scale of it was enormous… They poured a lot of concrete, with many, many hundreds of missiles poised to fend off an attack.” It was one reason that the PVO, the national Air Defense Forces, with 630,000 troops under its command, was a separate military service. The system, however, was designed to fend off armadas of American bombers flying low and fast, not slow-flying Cessnas, which is one reason Rust’s landing caused such an intense commotion both within and outside the Soviet military.

Just after 6:00 p.m., at about 25 miles out, Rust reached the outskirts of Moscow. The city was enjoying spring-like weather, with mild temperatures, light winds and a high overcast. Moscow itself was a restricted area, with all overflights—both military and civilian—prohibited. As Rust started making his way toward the city, his investigators would tell him, radar controllers suddenly realized something was terribly wrong. As Rust’s plane passed near Sheremetyevo Airport, a departing Lufthansa flight had to be diverted when the small Cessna crossed the airliner’s path. 

But it was too late. Not only was there no one around with the authority to make a decision, there was simply little anyone could do. If the Soviets brought down Rust’s plane, he might endanger people below, and who knows how the world (or worse, their superiors) might react. Besides, no one knew anything about the pilot or his intentions. Was he lost? Was he incapacitated? Was he a reverse defector? Or perhaps the plane was some officially sanctioned flight that they happened not to know about? 

As the tiny radar blip headed toward the center of Moscow, those in command decided, as Rust’s investigators put it, “to just let it happen.” 

As Rust made his way over the city, he removed his helmet and began to search for Red Square. Moscow is a huge, sprawling city of about 11 million people. Unlike many Western cities, there was no skyline of glittering office towers for Rust to fly toward. The only structures breaking the relatively flat horizon were a series of massive gothic towers, “Stalin buildings,” hulking monuments to Communist-era excess built in the 1950s. Like giant wedding cakes, the buildings each rise to a spire topped with the Red Star. Unsure of where to go, Rust headed from building to building, first east to the Hotel Ukraine, then south toward Moscow State University, then east and north toward the Leningrad Hotel.  

“As I maneuvered around, I sort of narrowed in on the core of the city,” Rust says. Then, as he flew toward the Leningrad Hotel, he saw it: the distinctive crenelated wall surrounding the Kremlin running along the Moscow River. Turning toward it, Rust began a descent from an altitude of about 500 feet above the ground and started to look for a place to land. “I didn’t need much space. After all, I was flying light, with only a couple hours fuel on board, so even with the obstacle clearance, if I brought the plane in at full flaps I could bring the plane to a stop in 800 meters.

“At first, I thought maybe I should land inside the Kremlin Wall, but then I realized that although there was plenty of space, I wasn’t sure what the KGB might do with me. 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. 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 the idea [of landing inside the Kremlin wall].”

Rust made a gentle left-hand turn around Red Square, looking for a place to land. “There was a long line of people extending into the Square waiting to go into the mausoleum of Lenin’s Tomb. It wasn’t like St. Peter’s Square in Rome, where people can go all over the place. There were just lines of people, and later I noticed they were only allowed to walk across Red Square in certain directions. But without those people [in the way], there was plenty of space to land.”

He decided to make a low pass over the Square to warn the crowd of his intentions to land. He descended to about 20 feet off the ground, just about the height of the Kremlin Wall, and flew directly over the Square. The people scattered all right, some ducking as Rust passed, but rather than clear a space for Rust to land, they all ran back into the middle of the Square to see what he was doing. Rust decided to make another pass. He came in again, this time even lower, but he misjudged the amount of space available. At the end of the Square, next to the giant GUM department store, was a large construction crane. Rust pulled up quickly, just missing it. 

“My leg was shaking like mad,” Rust says, “and I thought to myself, ‘Now I think I [need to] stop this because that felt very bad.’  I realized I needed to look for another landing spot.” 

As he circled, Rust noticed that adjacent to the Square, between the Kremlin Wall and the Hotel Russia, was a roadway leading into the Square over a bridge crossing the Moscow River. The bridge was about six lanes wide. Traffic was light, and from above Rust could see that the only obstacles were some wires strung across the road at each end of the bridge and another set across the middle. He figured there was enough space to come in over the first set of wires, drop down, land and run under the other wires into the Square. 

As Rust set up for his approach, a pair of alert policemen on the ground realized what was happening and moved to block traffic to clear the roadway. Rust came in steeply, with full flaps, his engine idling. As planned, he came in over the first set of wires, dropped down, and flared for landing. As he rolled out under the middle set of wires, Rust noticed a car in front of him. The vehicle must have already been on the bridge by the time police blocked off traffic. It was an old Volga, and he was overtaking it. As Rust overtook the car he looked over and saw the old man driving it wearing a look of utter disbelief. Rust just hoped the man wouldn’t panic and lose control of the car, endangering them both.

After passing under the last set of wires Rust came off the bridge, slowed, and began looking for a place to park. He wanted to pull the plane into the middle of the Square, in front of Lenin’s Tomb. But St. Basil’s Cathedral was surrounded by a small fence with a chain strung across it that blocked the way. As he taxied around the yard over the cobblestones, Rust even considered taking off and leaving. But the moment passed. He told himself, “I can’t do that. I’m here for a purpose. I need to be serious.” Seeing no way to get around the fence, he pulled up in front of the church, and shut down the engine.

Rust closed his eyes and sucked in a deep breath. “There was this great feeling of relief, like I had gotten this big load off my back. It was like I had climbed this big mountain.” 

            Rust unbuckled himself, opened the cockpit door, climbed out and looked at the Kremlin clock tower. The time was 6:43 p.m., almost five and one-half hours since his take-off from Helsinki. He leaned against the side of the aircraft, took another deep breath, and waited.

(Up next: A Stranger in Moscow)