John Barron - MiG Pilot

The Americans needed to ascertain first what the MiG-25 Belenko delivered represented. Was it an obsolescent aircraft whose production had been discontinued? Were more advanced models than he flew extant? Was the MiG-25 being superseded by a newer, higher-performance aircraft?

The Russians first flew a MiG-25 prototype in 1964 and began assembly-line production in the late 1960s. After the commanding general of the Soviet Air Defense Command was killed in a MiG-25 crash in 1969, they halted production for about a year but resumed it in 1970 or 1971. Periodically they modified the aircraft, eliminated flaws, and upgraded capabilities. Far from considering the plane obsolete or relegating it to a reconnaissance role, the Russians in 1976 regarded the MiG-25 as their best high-altitude interceptor. And MiG-25s along with MiG-23s were replacing all other aircraft assigned to the Air Defense Command (MiG-17s, MiG-19s, SU-9s, SU-15s, and YAK-28s).

The MiG-25 Belenko landed in Hakodate had rolled out of the factory in February 1976, and the date of manufacture could be deciphered from the serial number stamped on the fuselage. The plane thus was one of the latest models and embodied the highest technology then in production. It was the plane on which the Russians intended to rely as a mainstay of their air defenses for years to come.

Meanwhile, dozens of American aeronautical, electronic, and metallurgical experts from the United States and elsewhere joined the Japanese in scientific exploration of the plane itself. The initial, critical task was to ferret out the explosive charges planted to destroy sensitive parts of the plane the Russians were determined no foreigner should ever see — the radar, fire control system, electronic countermeasures, computer, automatic pilot. With difficulty, the Americans located and removed the explosives — “something of a cross between a cherry bomb and a stick of dynamite.” Then the Japanese and Americans painstakingly removed the wings, horizontal tail fins, afterburners, and pylons and loaded them, together with the fuselage, into a giant U.S. Air Force Galaxy C-5A cargo plane. Some of the Japanese technicians lettered and strung on the fuselage a large banner saying, “Sayonara, people of Hakodate. Sorry for the trouble.”

Soviet fighters still prowled the skies around Hakodate, and fearful that they might interfere, the Japanese cloaked the C-5A within a formation of missile-firing F-104s and F-4s while it transported the MiG to Hyakuri Air Base sixty miles north of Tokyo on September 25. There, in a large hangar guarded by Japanese soldiers, the real unwrapping of the “present for the Dark Forces” began. Some of the Americans had devoted much of their careers to dissecting captured or stolen Soviet equipment, and they, along with their Japanese colleagues, approached the hangar much in the spirit of eager archaeologists allowed temporary entry into a forbidden tomb full of rare and glittering riches which might be surveyed but not kept. They had to analyze swiftly and urgently, yet carefully and thoroughly, so the labor was divided among teams which focused day and night upon separate sections or components.

As the entire MiG was disassembled and the engines, radar, computer, automatic pilot, fire control, electronic countermeasure, hydraulic, communications, and other systems were put on blocks and stands for mechanical, electronic, metallurgical, and photographic analysis, the specialists experienced a succession of surprises and shocks.

My God! Look what this thing is made of! Why, the dumb bastards don’t have transistors; they’re still using vacuum tubes! These engines are monsters! Maybe the Sovs have a separate refinery for each plane! Jesus! See these rivet heads sticking out, and look at that welding!

They did it by hand! Hell, the pilot can’t see a thing unless it’s practically in front of him! This contraption isn’t an airplane; it’s a rocket! Hey, see what they’ve done here! How clever! They were able to use aluminum! Why didn’t we ever think of that? How ingenious! It’s brilliant!

The data Belenko supplied in response to the first quick queries also seemed surprising and, at first, contradictory.

What is the maximum speed of the MiG-25?

You cannot safely exceed Mach 2.8, but actually we were forbidden to exceed Mach 2.5. You see, at high speeds the engines have a very strong tendency to accelerate out of control, and if they go above Mach 2.8, they will overheat and burn up.

But we have tracked the MiG-25 at Mach 3.2.

Yes, and every time it has flown that fast the engines have been completely ruined and had to be replaced and the pilot was lucky to land in one piece. (That fitted with intelligence the Americans had. They knew that the MiG-25 clocked over Israel at Mach 3.2 in 1973 had landed back in Egypt with its engines totally wrecked. They did not understand that the wreckage was inevitable rather than a freakish occurrence.)

What is your combat radius?

At best, 300 kilometers [186 miles].

You’re joking!

I am not. If you use afterburners and maneuver for intercept, you can stay up between twenty-two and twenty-seven minutes at the most. Make one pass, and that’s it.

We thought the range was 2,000 kilometers [1,240 miles].

Belenko laughed. That’s ridiculous. Theoretically, if you don’t use afterburners, don’t maneuver, and stay at the best altitude, you can fly 1,200 kilometers [744 miles] in a straight line. But in practice, when we were ferrying the plane from base to base, we never tried to fly more than 900 kilometers [558 miles] without refueling. Check it out for yourself. I took off from Chuguyevka with full tanks and barely made it to Japan. You can calculate roughly how far I flew and how much fuel was left when I landed. (The point was convincing. Although Belenko expended fuel excessively during the minutes while at sea level, he used afterburners only briefly and otherwise did everything possible to conserve. Even so, of the 14 tons of fuel with which he began, his flight of less than 500 miles consumed all but 52.5 gallons.)

What is your maximum operational altitude?

That depends. If you carry only two missiles, you can reach 24,000 meters [78,740 feet] for a minute or two. With four missiles, 21,000 meters [68,900 feet] is the maximum.

What is the maximum altitude of your missiles?

They will not work above 27,000 meters [88,580 feet].

Then you cannot intercept the SR-71 [the most modern U.S. reconnaissance plane]!

True; for all sorts of reasons. First of all, the SR-71 flies too high and too fast. The MiG-25 cannot reach it or catch it. Secondly, as I told you, the missiles are useless above 27,000 meters, and as you know, the SR-71 cruises much higher. But even if we could reach it, our missiles lack the velocity to overtake the SR-71 if they are fired in a tail chase. And if they are fired head-on, their guidance systems cannot adjust quickly enough to the high closing speed.

What about your radar?

It’s a very good radar. Jam-proof. But it cannot distinguish targets below 500 meters [1,640 feet] because of ground clutter.

A MiG-25 cannot intercept a target approaching below 500 meters then?

It cannot.

Maneuvering. Tell us about maneuvering. How many Gs can you take in a turn?

If the tanks are full, there is so much weight in the wings that they will rip off if you try more than 2.2 Gs. Even if you’re almost out of fuel, anything above 5 Gs is dangerous.

The Americans were stunned. Why, you can’t turn inside even an F-4!

You can’t turn inside anything. It’s not designed to dogfight.

Partially because the leaks to the press emanated from sources that had concentrated on individual facets of the aircraft rather than on the plane as a whole, published reports about what was being discovered in Japan were confusing and also contradictory.