In Mathias Rust’s neat, two-bedroom apartment outside Berlin there are no mementos, no photographs, no framed newspaper headlines — nothing to indicate that, for a few short weeks 18 years ago, he was the most famous pilot in the world. On May 28, 1987, Rust took off in a small Cessna from Helsinki, Finland, turned southeast toward the border of the then-Soviet Union, and flew 450 miles into the center of Moscow, landing next to the Kremlin Wall.
Rust’s stunt was an international sensation. Newspapers all over the world splashed photos of his 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.
The political backdrop made his exploit even more sensational. No one knew it yet, but the Cold War was winding down. Gorbachev was pushing glasnost and perestroika. He and U.S. President Ronald Reagan were in the middle of delicate arms negotiations.
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 met Gorbachev. But within days of Rust’s landing, the Soviet defense minister and the Soviet air defense chief were sacked. A wide-ranging firing of military leadership followed. Within a year, Reagan and Gorbachev would sign a major nuclear arms reduction treaty. Within two and a half years, the Berlin Wall would come down. Within five years, the Soviet Union would disappear.
Today Rust, 37, seems the same earnest, idealistic young man he was 18 years ago. Though he has not piloted a plane since 1987, and in fact has spent many years trying to distance himself from his famous flight, the memory is fresh. “It seems like it happened yesterday,” he said. “It’s alive in me.”
Genesis
As Rust remembered it, two things preoccupied him during his high school years in Hamburg: flying and Nuclear Armageddon. Not long after his seventeenth birthday in 1986, Rust joined a flying club. Between his job as a data processor at a local mail-order 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 boiling point in the Cold War when Europeans felt Ronald Reagan’s bellicose anti-Sovietism put them at risk. “There was a real sense of fear,” Rust said, “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, but the Reagan-Gorbachev summits in Geneva and Reykjavik were bitter disappointments. Reykjavik in particular, because Gorbachev had boldly proposed the elimination of all strategic weapons, but Reagan refused to give up his Strategic Defense Initiative (“Star Wars”) ABM system, so no deal was reached.
Rust felt a chance had been squandered. He felt Reagan’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 by a Soviet MiG, after the airliner strayed into Soviet airspace near the Kamchatka Peninsula. 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 said. “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 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. So 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 inspiration of his plans. But more to the point, Rust said, “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.”
Rust’s Hamburg flying club owned four aircraft, one of which was a Cessna Skyhawk. The four-seat, single-engine plane had a full complement of radios and navigation equipment for instrument flight. More importantly, 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 to 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 said. There was no point in telling them his true intentions, Rust said, 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 said, “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 said. “I might freeze, but I wouldn’t drown.” 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 ludicrous, but they do show that, as crazy as Rust’s flight might seem, he wasn’t suicidal.
“Just a turn to the left”
From Uetersen Airfield outside Hamburg, Rust took off on May 13 at 10:51 am. 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, in 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 the site of the Reagan-Gorbachev summit. “It was locked,” Rust said, “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 Bergen, 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, it was something he had to do. No, it was crazy. Yes. No. Yes. No… He could not make up his mind.
“The whole flight had a huge question mark,” Rust said. “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?”
Rust spent a restless night the evening of May 27. The next morning, he still was unsure. “I just decided to go through my pre-flight routine,” he said. “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. He got breakfast. He drove to Malmi airport. He got the airplane fueled, paid his fees, and checked the weather. A briefing officer later said Rust had 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 said. He then checked in with customs, did his final pre-flight inspection of the aircraft, and buckled himself into the pilot’s seat.
At about 12:21 pm, 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.
Rust recalled that he was about to reach his first waypoint, when, “all of a sudden, I just turned the plane to the left. 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, controllers reportedly tried and failed to contact Rust. At about 1 pm, Rust’s plane reportedly disappeared from their 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 pm, 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 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. [Most of what is known about the Soviet reactions to Rust’s flight is from an April 2001 article by retired general Volter Kraskovsky in Nezavisimaya Gazeta.]
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 pm 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 comprised an impressive network of radars, missile batteries and anti-aircraft artillery, backed by hundreds of fighter-interceptors.
After crossing the coastline near the town of Kohtla-Jarve, Estonia, he climbed to his planned 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 said, “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 does in fact look very similar to a Cessna. The plane, the pilot said, was white with a dark stripe along its fuselage.
Not long after first being seen by the Soviet fighter pilot, Rust descended to avoid some low clouds. For a brief period, his blip disappeared from Soviet radar screens. Once the weather cleared, Rust climbed back to 2,500 feet, and reemerged on radar screens. The commander of the radar center ordered two more fighter-interceptors to investigate.
Nearly two hours into his flight, Rust said 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 said, “was coming at me very fast, and dead-on. And it went, whoosh! Right over me.
“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?” 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, in the corner of his eye, below and to the left, a MiG-23 fighter-interceptor. It was pulling up beside him. Designed to fly at over 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.
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 his 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.
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, it was clearly of West German origin. The official account has it that the pilot never found anything. But Marshal Sergei Akhromeyev, chief of staff of the Soviet armed forces, admitted in 1990 that the fighter pilot’s commander either did not believe his pilot’s report or did not think it was significant, thus the information was never passed up the chain-of-command.
Since the fiasco surrounding the KAL 007 tragedy, strict orders were given that no hostile action be taken against civilian aircraft without orders from the highest level of the Soviet military. As it happened, at this time 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.
From UFO to Friend
By 3 pm, the weather had improved. The rain stopped, and Rust climbed back to an altitude of 2,500 feet. 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 to 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 pm 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 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 pm, Rust crossed radar sectors near Lake Seliger, a popular summer retreat near the town of Ostashkov, about 230 miles from Moscow. As the radar return for Rust’s plane popped up on a new set of radar screens, controllers 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. 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 his plane’s signal 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 seeing 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.
“Let it be birds”
But as radar controllers continued to track the unidentified target, an amazing conference call took place. As Michael Dobbs related the episode in his book, Down with Big Brother, based on a 1992 Pravda account, the generals argued about what to do and about what was flying around up there.
“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 higher-ups are going to badger everybody? They’re going to say, ‘If you saw a plane, then look for it.’”
Reznichenko’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, Alexander Ivanovich, you’re so contradictory,” said Brazhnikov, exasperated. “Two minutes ago you said it couldn’t be a weather formation. You made a decision. 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.
Meanwhile, from Rust’s viewpoint, his flight was going flawlessly. The weather had improved, and, despite overcast skies, 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 some chocolate.
Moscow Center
Forty miles outside Moscow, Rust flew through 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 States’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 expanding the system, creating two more rings at a distance of 25 nautical miles and 45 nautical miles. “It’s big,” said 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 tiny, slow-flying Cessnas.
Just after 6:00 pm, 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 approached the city, his investigators later told him, radar controllers suddenly realized something was terribly wrong. Passing near Sheremetyevo Airport, the Cessna crossed the path of a departing Lufthansa flight, causing it to be diverted.
But it was too late. Not only was there no one around with the authority to make a decision, there was simply very 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 later put it, “to just let it happen.”
Rust removed his crash helmet and began to search for Red Square. Moscow had no skyline of glittering office towers. The only structures breaking the relatively flat horizon were Stalin’s hulking “Seven Sisters,” which rise up like giant wedding cakes topped with red stars. Unsure of where to go, Rust headed from building to building, first 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 said. Then, as he flew toward the Leningrad Hotel, he saw it: the distinctive crenelated wall of the Kremlin. Turning toward it, Rust began a descent from about 500 feet and started looking 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, 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 was a large construction crane. Rust pulled up quickly, just missing it.
“My leg was shaking like mad,” Rust said, “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 and the Hotel Rossia, was a roadway leading into the square from a bridge crossing the Moscow River. The bridge [Bolshoy Moskvoretsky 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. Suddenly, he noticed a car in front of him, traveling in the same direction. It must have already been on the bridge when the police blocked traffic. It was an old Volga. As Rust overtook it, he looked over and saw the old man driving it wearing a look of utter disbelief. Rust hoped the man wouldn’t panic and lose control of the car, endangering them both.
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 Red Square, in front of Lenin’s Tomb. But St. Basil’s Cathedral was surrounded by a small fence, with a chain strung across, blocking his path. As he taxied around, he 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 his 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 pm, 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.
Nothing happened. Rust was alone.
Beautiful Hooliganism
He had expected his plane to be stormed by armed troops and KGB agents. But all around the square, people seemed nervous or stunned, not sure what was going on. Some thought Rust’s plane might be Gorbachev’s private aircraft. Others thought it all might all be part of a movie production, or perhaps some sporting event. Once they realized both the plane and pilot were foreign, and that whoever was at the controls had just pulled off one of the most magnificent exploits they had ever witnessed, they drew closer.
“A big crowd had formed around me,” Rust recalls. “People were smiling and coming up to shake my hand or ask for autographs.”
There was much chatter, but little communication. Rust spoke no Russian and most of the crowd spoke no German or English. A young man approached Rust, a street artist who sold paintings to tourists waiting in line at Lenin’s Mausoleum. He spoke English, and, after determining that Rust did as well, he approached.
Rust explained that he had flown from the West and that he wanted to talk to Gorbachev, that he had a goodwill message to deliver to the Soviet leader. He wanted to show the world that Gorbachev was a man of peace.
The young man told Rust he could not help arrange a meeting with Gorbachev, but he was happy to act as an interpreter, fielding questions from the growing crowd.
Rust went on to explain how he had flown from Helsinki, how, after he crossed the border, a Soviet interceptor had pulled alongside him, looked him over, and then let him continue.
The crowd could hardly believe what they were hearing. “They all wanted to talk to me,” Rust said. “One woman came up and gave me a piece of bread.” The young artist explained to Rust that he had just received a special gift. He said it was a Russian custom to give a new friend a piece of bread.
“Now,” he told Rust, “you have a new friend.”
Everyone was smiling. The atmosphere was festive.
Among the onlookers were many in army uniforms, cadets from a nearby academy. But they were just part of the crowd. One cadet approached Rust and told him that, while he admired his courage and initiative, Rust should have applied for a visa and made an appointment with Gorbachev. The cadet then thought for a moment, saying of course that such a request would have been refused.
“Instead of putting him in prison,” said another onlooker, “they should give him a medal, not Hero of the Soviet Union, just Hero.”
One old man complained that the young man was crazy, that the plane could have “landed on their heads.”
Another man denounced the stunt as “hooliganism,” saying “there are laws, after all.” But, the man then added. “it was beautiful hooliganism.”
Though Rust may not have seen them, KGB agents were nearby. As he chatted with onlookers and waited for the inevitable, plainclothes agents moved through the crowd, interviewing people and confiscating cameras and notebooks. A British tourist traveling with a group happened to have a video camera, and taped one of Rust’s passes. The man hid the camera under his jacket and snuck it back onto his tour bus. After smuggling the camera out of the country, he sold the tape to a television network.
Nearly a half-hour had passed. A large, black ZiL drove up. Seeing the car, Rust thought that the KGB had finally arrived to take him away. Out of the car stepped an enormously tall, powerfully built man wearing a dark blue overcoat. Medals covered his chest and he wore a dress military cap. He strode forward, trailed by his deputies, waving the crowd aside and stepping right up to Rust. The huge man then began speaking in Russian. Through his makeshift interpreter, Rust learned that the man was Police Commissioner of Moscow. The commissioner said he had gotten a call just a few minutes before from one of his policemen, saying that an aircraft from abroad had landed in Red Square. He said he couldn’t believe it, that he figured his men were pulling his leg, so he came over to see for himself.
He then asked to see Rust’s passport. After examining it, he handed it back.
“Very fine, you are a West German citizen, but where is your visa stamp?”
Of course, there wasn’t one.
“Oh that will be a very confusing matter to be solved.”
He then offered Rust some cigarettes. Rust told him he didn’t smoke.
“Oh, you don’t smoke. Well then, would you like some vodka?”
Rust said he didn’t drink, either.
“What is this? You don’t smoke. You don’t drink. I hope you at least like sex.”
Rust said he had no problem with sex.
“Well, I can’t offer you a woman right now,” joked the commissioner. “Maybe later.”
Rust could not believe it. “I expected to be quickly surrounded by police. I expected more hostility. After all, these were the first Russians I had ever met. I was surprised at how warm and friendly they all seemed.” He had grown up thinking Russians were all gruff and unfriendly. “I never would have expected this warmth.”
More than an hour passed before a pair of army trucks carrying soldiers arrived. They leapt out of the trucks and began clearing the crowd, which had grown to about 200. Many, however, did not want to leave, and began to complain. The soldiers started shouting at them and, holding their rifles against their chests, began shoving them roughly aside. Other soldiers started putting up metal barricades around the plane.
With the crowd dispersed, Rust was left with just a few officers. At around 8 pm, three men in plainclothes approached. One was younger, perhaps 30 years old, and the other two were 45-50 years old. The younger man acted as interpreter, speaking to Rust in German. He asked to see Rust’s passport. The older man looked it over but didn’t say anything. He handed it to the third man, telling Rust they needed to keep it for a while. Rust was asked if he was carrying any weapons. No. Could they look inside the aircraft? Sure. After peering through the glass, they asked Rust to open the plane. Because Rust had covered all his baggage with a blanket, they asked if Rust would pull back the blanket to show them. They then asked him for the keys, and directed him to a small sedan parked nearby. Don’t worry, Rust was told, they would take care of the plane.
Rust was driven to a beige-colored building, an unimposing structure that looked as if it could be an apartment block or a minor governmental ministry. The car pulled up to a security gate. The front gate opened. The car drove in and stopped. The gate closed behind it and another gate opened. The car drove into a small yard and parked. Rust was escorted from the car and taken inside.
He had arrived at Lefortovo prison, the notorious complex used by the KGB to hold political prisoners. Among its more recent residents at that time were the dissident Natan Sharansky and American journalist Nicholas Daniloff. The prison and interrogation center would be Rust’s home for the next 14 months.
Confusion and Speculation
Military analyst John Pike was at the U.S. embassy in Moscow on business, he recalled, when he looked out the window and saw a small airplane circling over Red Square. “Gee, that’s peculiar,” he thought. “There’s no private aviation in the Soviet Union. Hell, there’s no private anything.”
Valery Boldin, Gorbachev’s chief of staff, said he was in his office at the Kremlin when he, too, looked out and saw the small plane circling over the square. But he thought nothing of it, as recently a number of helicopter and airplane flights over the city had been authorized to shoot footage for historical and documentary films. When, a short time later, he got a call from the Interior Ministry saying that a German sports plane had landed next to the Kremlin, he could not believe it, so he demanded confirmation.
Word spread quickly through the city. An American journalist working in Moscow received an excited call from a Soviet friend asking if it was true that a foreign plane had landed in Red Square. It seemed impossible, the journalist thought, but he decided to have a look for himself, “just for the hell of it.” Sure enough, at the base of St. Basil’s Cathedral, cordoned off by barriers and guarded by militiamen, was a small airplane. The reporter went up to one of the guards and asked what kind of plane it was. Without a trace of irony, the officer answered, “What plane?”
The landing quickly became the fodder of jokes. U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union Jack Matlock was hosting a reception at his residence, Spaso House, when he learned of Rust’s landing.
“Have you heard? They’ve renamed Red Square.”
“Really. To what?”
“Why, Sheremetyevo III, of course.”
German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher confessed to reporters in Bonn that, “I laughed my head off” when told of the landing. Officially, however, the West German government was more coy. Spokesman Friedhelm Ost told reporters the landing must have been a mistake. “It appears this involves a pilot who has made a mistake in navigation.”
TASS, the official Soviet news agency, waited a full day before issuing a statement, an indication of the level of confusion and embarrassment the landing had caused within the highest levels of the government. The following day, Soviet television read the statement on its evening news program, but it was buried deep into the show, the last item before the sports report. The statement simply said that a small plane from the West had intruded into Soviet airspace 120 miles west of Leningrad and that the plane had landed in Moscow — without specifying exactly where.
In Hamburg the next morning, Rust’s parents, his mother Monika and father Karl-Heinz, were at home. Karl-Heinz had had taken the day off in order to enjoy a long weekend. Around 9:00 pm, the phone rang. It was Mathias’ flight instructor, Rüdiger Heise. “Did you hear anything about this German guy who landed in Moscow last night?” asked Heise. No, answered Rust’s parents, they had not watched the television news. After telling them what he knew, Heise asked, “You don’t think it’s Mathias?”
“No,” answered Monika. “I just talked to him the other day. He was about to fly back from Helsinki.”
About two hours later, Rust’s name was released.
“Oh God,” Monika said, “it’s true.”
Almost immediately, their phone started ringing. Journalists descended on their house. Why did he do it? Did they know about it in advance? Who helped him?
Rust’s parents had nothing to say. Desperate for news of their son, they got on the phone. They called the Defense Ministry in Bonn. Directed to a public affairs officer, they asked what he knew about the German plane landing in Moscow.
“What! A German aircraft landed in Moscow? My God! What military unit? What type of aircraft? A fighter? A helicopter?”
No, it was a private aircraft, Rust’s parents explained.
“Well, that’s none of our business,” the officer said. “We have nothing to do with that!” He hung up the phone.
Next they called the Foreign Minister’s office. A spokesman told them they were in touch with the German embassy in Moscow and were trying to find out the details for themselves. The embassy would call them when they had more information.
The story was front-page news around the world, but with little official information available, reporters struggled to describe what had happened, and why. Most assumed that Rust must have hedgehopped his way across Soviet territory, flying low enough to evade Soviet radar. Some figured he must have followed rail lines linking Leningrad to Moscow. One newspaper printed that Rust did the stunt on a bet, another that he did it to impress a girl. Yet another said he dropped leaflets calling for the release of Rudolf Hess, the nonagenarian Hitler lieutenant, from jail. Pravda wrote that Rust was a patsy in an international plot: he was supposed to be shot down and killed in order to provoke an international incident.
Some experts said the landing pointed to the vulnerability of Soviet air defenses to bomber or cruise missile attacks. A few realized the whole thing was simply a fluke, and that, militarily, the landing meant nothing. “It must have been a Stealth Cessna,” joked one U.S. Air Force official. Another diplomat said he was actually encouraged the Soviets didn’t shoot Rust down, as they had four years earlier with KAL 007. He speculated that perhaps it was an indication of improved relations.
Soviet citizens took great delight in Rust’s stunt. After all, for years the Soviet military had been practically immune to criticism, and had grown accustomed to treating the general public in a haughty, high-handed manner. Many were only too glad to see the military brass brought down a notch or two.
But it was no laughing matter for the Soviet military. That night, while the city enjoyed a massive fireworks display that lit up the sky for – irony of ironies – Border Guards Day, Soviet authorities considered how to treat this crisis.
Gorbachev Takes Charge
Stepping down from his plane at Vnukovo airport after flying back early from a Warsaw Pact summit, Gorbachev greeted his Politburo colleagues with the usual smiles and comradely bear hugs. But his eyes were filled with anger.
Gorbachev led the Politburo members and Central Committee secretaries into a small room off the terminal’s reception hall. “It’s a national shame,” he fumed. “This is as bad as Chernobyl” [the 1986 nuclear power plant disaster].
The Soviet leader had, until this point, been careful to avoid any direct confrontation with his military commanders. Instead, he hoped he could achieve large-scale cuts in military expenditures by successfully negotiating arms reductions with the West. But that was about to change. Gorbachev’s wife Raisa smelled a conspiracy, staged by the military to embarrass her husband and damage his standing in the eyes of the public and foreign leaders.
Gorbachev’s chief of staff, Valery Boldin, said the Rust affair permanently hardened his boss’s attitude toward the military. “Now he was filled with savage hatred for them and never forgave them for their little ‘joke’,” Boldin wrote. From then on, Boldin said, Gorbachev took every opportunity to denounce the military.
“They have disgraced the country, humiliated our people,” Gorbachev said of his commanders. “But fine, at least everyone here, and in the West, will know where power lies. It is in the hands of the political leadership, the Politburo. This will put an end to gossip about the military’s opposition to Gorbachev, that he’s afraid of them, and they’re close to ousting him.”
After an hour and a half, the group emerged. Gorbachev, flushed and glowering, grumbled, “Politburo meeting tomorrow at eleven,” and walked to the car.
The Investigation
At around 9 am the next morning, the guards woke Rust up and brought him back to the investigation center. In a routine that would delineate his life for the next three weeks, Rust was questioned for eight hours, breaking once when he was returned to his cell for lunch, usually some porridge or bread.
The questioning was very repetitive: Are you sure you didn’t do this with anybody? Did you drop off anybody en route? Did you bring anything in with you? Did you throw anything out of the plane?
Given the level of planning put into the flight, and the number of apparent coincidences and lucky breaks that Rust benefited from, the investigators could not believe this was the work of one man, much less an idealistic boy. In their mind, Rust had to be part of a larger plot.
Take the date itself, May 28, Border Guards Day. Many speculated Rust chose that day thinking the border would be more lightly defended, or perhaps to maximize the embarrassment it would cause the military.
“I heard about that afterwards,” Rust said. “I said, ‘I’m a West German. How should I know about your holidays?’ It was just a lucky circumstance. I didn’t know.”
His interrogators pulled out the maps Rust used. They pointed to the airfields and navigation frequencies and told him he must have obtained them from the CIA or the German military. They asked him whom he had contacted. “I told them, ‘No, I didn’t contact anyone from the German government or the CIA.’” Rust said. “I just filled out the order form from the German company and I received them in the mail to my home.”
So they sent the maps to the Soviet consul general in Hamburg. The consul general was then asked to place an order for the same maps from the same company. Sure enough, the consul general received them in the mail just as Rust had. The investigators then returned to Rust and said, “Yes, we know you are telling the truth.”
The plane itself was put on the back of a flatbed truck and hauled to a hangar at Sheremetyevo Airport, where it was broken down completely. The investigators found the plane’s emergency locator transmitter, a beacon device required on most general aviation aircraft. It activates automatically after a crash, to assist search and rescue crews trying to locate the wreck. Not knowing this, the investigators told Rust they believed he installed the device to send a signal to someone so they could follow where he was going.
“That’s not so,” Rust said. “The device is required as a safety precaution.” But the investigators did not believe him. Later on, they returned and said to Rust, “Yes, you were right.”
Rust’s investigators showed him photos of Bolshoi Moskvoretsky Bridge. In the photos were many sets of wires stretched out across the bridge, each about two meters apart. They asked Rust how he could possibly land with so many wires in his way. Perplexed himself, Rust explained that when he landed he could only see three sets of wires. Upon further investigation, the Soviets learned that the morning Rust landed a public works crew had removed all the wires for maintenance purposes, replacing them all the day after Rust landed – another bizarre coincidence.
“You must have been born in a shirt,” investigators told Rust, using a Russian expression to say he was lucky.
On June 23, the investigation was completed. Shortly afterward, Soviet prosecutors charged Rust with illegal entry, violation of flight laws and “malicious hooliganism.” Rust pleaded guilty to all but the last charge. There was, he argued, nothing malicious in his intentions.
A Quiet Coup
By long-standing tradition, Politburo meetings took place every Thursday on the third floor of the government building in the Kremlin, beginning at the stroke of 11:00 am. The large conference hall, located directly above the office once used by Stalin, was a gloomy room dominated by a large table covered in green felt. Perpendicular to this table was the chairman’s table, on which rested an inkstand, a clock, a bell and a control panel for a series of maps hidden behind a movable wall. The seating arrangement was based strictly on status and seniority.
Anatoly Chernyaev, Gorbachev’s chief foreign policy advisor, recounted in his memoir, My Six Years with Gorbachev, the events of May 30 Politburo meeting.
Gorbachev opened the meeting with a scorching attack on “the complete helplessness of the Defense Ministry, which still has to explain this extraordinary incident to the Party and the people.” Gorbachev then sat stone-faced as Defense Minister Marshal Sergei Sokolov and Air Defense Chief Alexander Koldunov tried to explain through their aides how the world’s most vaunted air defense system managed to allow a deluded boy to fly straight into the heart of Moscow.
General Ivan Lushev, deputy defense minister, told the gathering that Rust presented a situation military planners had never prepared for and which they could never have predicted. The elaborate radar and anti-aircraft systems, he said, were designed to intercept military aircraft, not slow-flying small planes at low altitudes. If anything, he argued, Rust proved the system did work. He was picked up and tracked on radar. Fighter-interceptors were sent aloft. It was simply a fluke he was allowed to proceed unchallenged.
No one bought it. As a growing chorus of Politburo members stood to voice their opinion, Gorbachev sat scowling at his defense ministers. Finally, he took the floor.
Exactly how Rust managed to get through the country’s supposedly impregnable air defenses didn’t really matter, Gorbachev said. The real issue was leadership and accountability. The problem was an army whose top leaders were “apprehensive of the party’s turn toward perestroika and the new thinking.” He demanded stronger leadership at the defense ministry “to increase the military establishment’s sense of political responsibility.” Then, turning to defense minister Sokolov, he said, “I don’t question your personal integrity, Sergei Leonidovich, but under the present circumstances, if I were you. I would resign at once.”
Sokolov, a former tank commander and a hero of the Great Patriotic War against the Nazis, looked shaken. He stood at attention and resigned on the spot. Gorbachev did not hesitate to accept the resignation “on behalf of the Politburo,” adding that it would be announced as a retirement, sparing Sokolov total public humiliation. After a 15-minute break, Gorbachev returned and announced the appointment of Dmitry Yazov, a little-known general whom Gorbachev had plucked from the Soviet Far East earlier that year and appointed deputy defense minister in charge of personnel. In picking Yazov, Gorbachev bypassed dozens of more senior officers, violating the pecking order and long-standing tradition, but gaining a defense minister whose loyalty was assured (at least until the August 1991 coup, when he would side against Gorbachev as a member of the State Emergency Committee).
Also fired was Air Defense Chief Koldunov. The Politburo statement released for the television news that evening was unusually harsh, saying that Sokolov and Koldunov “had shown intolerable indecision and lack of concern” during the incident, which testified to the “serious shortcomings” in the air defense forces in general.
In subsequent days and weeks, the “Rust Massacre,” as it came to be called, would see about 150 officers brought to trial. Hundreds of others were fired or forced to retire. By the end of 1988, in addition to Sokolov and Koldunov, all deputy ministers but two, all the first deputy chiefs of the General Staff, the commander and the chief of staff of the Warsaw Pact forces, all the commanders of the groups of forces and fleets, and all military district commanders had been changed.
The swiftness of Gorbachev’s actions stunned many. Gorbachev had, noted career diplomat Anatoly Dobrynin, “accomplished a quiet coup.” For this, Rust should be awarded, one senior official added only half-jokingly, the Order of Lenin – the nation’s highest decoration.
More important than the replacement of specific individuals, analyst John Pike said, was the change Rust’s flight precipitated in the public perception of the military. The myth of Soviet military superiority had been punctured, and with it the almost iconic reverence the public had held for the military. One former Soviet colonel described walking around in uniform in the city where he was stationed and sensing the feeling of scorn by ordinary civilians. After all, the Soviet public had made enormous economic sacrifices to support the military-industrial complex.
For decades, Pike said, Soviet citizens had been led to believe “the West was poised to destroy them and that ... if they let their guard down for an instant they would be obliterated.” It was this logic that perpetuated the Cold War. Now, Pike said, “the challenge was how do you turn it off? How do you turn it off without things flying apart.” Gorbachev had talked about changes in the military, changes that hinted the Soviet Union could let down its guard without being destroyed by external forces. Letting Rust land, Pike argues, “was an initial test of that hypothesis.”
In retrospect, Gorbachev was right. External forces would not destroy the Soviet Union. Ultimately, the main threat would come from within.
As it became increasingly clear that Rust had acted alone, some in the leadership urged Gorbachev to put Rust on a plane and send him home with but a scolding.
Gorbachev responded to this idea furiously at a Politburo meeting after the investigation was completed. “What is this? So he wanted to meet me? Many people meet with me… No, it was a clear provocation! We took 150 officers and generals to court, discharged the minister of defense. Maybe we shouldn’t have? And now we’re to tell him ‘go on, fly home.’ No, democracy does not mean weakness. He broke the law three times, and so by those laws must be punished. The investigation is finished, right? Let’s have a trial then. Everything as it should be. The law said one to ten years. The court will decide. And then we’ll see.”
Trial and Aftermath
On September 4, 1987, after a three-day trial, a panel of three judges found Rust guilty of all charges and sentenced him to four years at Lefortovo Prison. The prison, though starker and more restrictive than a labor camp, ensured Rust’s safety. He spent his time there quietly and was afforded special privileges: He was allowed t
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