Our new G-suits had larger constricting inflatable air bladders on our thighs and abdomen to protect us more effectively from blackout during maneuvers than our L-29 suits had. This was good news because we’d been told our testicles could be damaged during high-G turns and banks. But cadets also believed that pulling a certain amount of Gs made you a better lover because your blood pooled in the “vital organs” of the lower body. The new KM-1 ejection seat was more powerful than the L-29’s, and had a powerful, solid-fuel rocket that could save your life at zero altitude in the event of a flameout on takeoff. The instrument panel of the MiG-23 was crowded with electronics, including a radar sight for the 23mm GSh cannon-pod, air-to-air missiles, and a weapons-release panel for bombs and ground-attack rockets. The cockpit also had a Sirena 3-M radar-threat warning system and a SRZO Information Friend or Foe radar-interrogation system. And the TP-23 IRST actually displayed data on a clear Plexi-glas head-up display (HUD) above the instrument panel.
If these complexities were not enough, management of the afterburning R-29 turbofan was a demanding task. An afterburner, we learned, could virtually transform the aircraft into a piloted rocket. But learning to control the variable-geometry wings through all the power-setting regimes of the flight envelope proved incredibly difficult for some students, even during ground school. The wings had to be swept back at least thirty-three degrees for transonic flight, but forty-five degrees was the standard setting. If you forgot this requirement and accelerated to 0.8 or 0.95 Mach in the denser air below 9,000 feet with your wings unswept, a sudden, dangerous “overswing” could occur, which caused rapid, alternating negative and positive Gs. The plane quickly became uncontrollable. In 1980 an instructor and student from Armavir were killed in just such a sudden overswing accident.
Naturally, for high-Mach flight, the full-rear wing sweep was necessary. This meant we had to learn to handle the throttle, the wing-sweep hydraulic lever beneath the throttle quadrant, and the control stick simultaneously — while also using the weapons system electronics and the radio. And, of course, the wing had to be in the full-forward position for landing. Clearly, even some of my group of fifty talented L-29 pilots were not yet up to this challenge.
Captain Bogorotsky believed in long flying days while the weather was good. Within two weeks I was handling my own takeoffs and landings. The takeoffs were no problem because of the generous lift of the upswept wings and the powerful engines. But landing the MiG-23 was never easy. The landing airspeed was high, 140 knots, much faster than the L-29. So you had to judge your flare altitude and speed on the landing threshold with precision. If you landed with too much airspeed, you might experience a dangerous condition known as the “progressive goat.”
The overly springy landing gear exacerbated this problem. In any aircraft the actual flare maneuver was a near stall. But if you flared too fast and slammed down your nose gear, the MiG-23 would bounce back into the air in a nose-high attitude, at which point the inexperienced pilot would instinctively jam the stick forward and bring the nose gear back down to the runway. This was the start of the “goat.” The nosewheel would slam down hard, and the aircraft would bounce again, this time higher, with the nose pitched even more steeply. The bounce and pitch back would progress, with the nose dropping and bouncing back more sharply on each cycle. By the fifth bounce, the tail keel would drag, killing the last of the airspeed. The plane would stall off on one wing, fall onto its belly, and explode. And, unfortunately, even our advanced ejection seat would not save a pilot at zero airspeed.
We read accident reports of both Soviet and foreign students, Cubans, Angolans, and North Koreans, who all experienced a progressive goat landing. Several of them had been killed. I was determined to avoid this potential trap.
I soloed in the MiG-23 on September 15, 1981. This was quite an accomplishment, considering I had been grounded for one month that summer as punishment for being caught in town, AWOL in civilian clothes. If I hadn’t been in the advanced MiG-23 program, I probably would have done time in the guardhouse. But my deputy squadron commander, Major Nurokmiyetov, knew that, for me, being grounded was worse punishment than being chased by the guardhouse dogs. When I turned in the rags I had substituted for my real clandestine set of civvies, the major shook his head, realizing he had been taken. He had seen me in town before, but ignored the infraction because I was dating the daughter of his former flight instructor. Now he had to follow regulations and confiscate my civvies. “I’ll never believe that you actually wore this shit,” he said, fingering the old tennis shoes and warm-up suit I surrendered. My first American “Levi’s” jeans and nice shirt were safely hidden at the apartment.
After I soloed on the MiG-23, my attitude toward life in the Air Force changed. I was twenty years old and had been given the responsibility of flying this powerful combat aircraft. We flew now several times a week and spent long hours in the classroom studying basic individual and formation air-combat tactics, designed to prepare us to counter known NATO combat maneuvers such as “yo-yo” ambushes from high or low altitude and high-G barrel-roll attacks.
At this time, several of my friends became candidate members of the Communist Party, a mandatory apprenticeship of at least one year before they could be considered for full membership. If you were a candidate, you had to watch your behavior; reprimands or a stretch in the guardhouse could kill your chances for Party membership, which, in turn, could stifle your career as an officer. I preferred to wait until after graduation to become a candidate member. That way I could still take chances sneaking off to town to see girls, and all I risked was the guardhouse.
Over the next year I mastered the Crocodile. While some cadets were still dreading every landing approach, I and a few others were practicing instrument-landing-system approaches. As I had anticipated, the members of my crew were near the top of our class. We had all conquered the terrible goat by learning to judge our flare attitude accurately before chopping the throttle.
During our combat training in 1982, we learned to fly with a wingman in a para two-plane formation. We all knew where this training was leading us. The war in Afghanistan had become a protracted test of wills between the Soviet Union and the imperialists — treacherously supported by the Chinese. When we graduated in October, we would probably be sent to an advanced combat-training regiment and then on to Afghanistan. So we concentrated on the deadly serious and complex business of flying a high-performance aircraft. My earlier romantic illusions about the life of a fighter pilot were tempered by reality. You simply did not hop into the cockpit of a jet fighter and roar off into the sky to do battle like a Hussar on his horse. Modern combat aviation was more a science than adventure.
Now my working days revolved around the mundane but essential problems of mission planning: fuel consumption, optimum climb angles, tactical navigation, multichannel radio communications, radar sights, and formation maneuvers. We also were given the additional complication of learning to evade surface-to-air missiles (SAMs) and antiaircraft artillery (AAA), just to make life more interesting. It was engrossing work, but it was not the mindless excitement I had once envisioned.
Then one morning I woke up in my comfortable two-man room in the upperclassmen’s dormitory and realized I was about to graduate and be commissioned as a pilot lieutenant in the Soviet Air Force. I had passed all my final written and flight exams. The only unfinished business was our graduation party, the actual graduation ceremony, and, of course, the matter of my assignment.