The final squadron briefing came at 0830. It was a precise military formation rather than a friendly chat. Major Kuchkov spoke personally to each pilot, both chiding and urging him to concentrate on improving his skills.
We pulled on our G-suits and drew our helmets at 0845, just before conducting our walk-around inspection of the aircraft parked outside on the squadron apron. The maintenance officer in charge of that aircraft always accompanied us to answer any questions we might have about the condition of the machine. These guys had been up and working even longer than we had. In their black coveralls, greasy berets, and neckties splattered with hydraulic fluid, they always had a mournful, harassed look about them. But they were all graduates of first-rate engineering academies and were good at their work.
By tradition, takeoff came precisely at 0900. This was more than just an empty ritual. By insisting on an exact takeoff time, a regimental commander could be sure all the complex, interrelated elements necessary for a successful flight, from pilots’ briefings to maintenance procedures, would be completed in proper sequence.
Because the training circuits were near the base, the first sortie was usually over by 0940. We ate a second breakfast after this first flight and held a quick debrief with the flight leader and the GCI officers to make sure the flight and ground controllers had no communications problems. Takeoff for the second flight of the day was usually around 1020, with the same postflight debriefing at 1100. We took off on our third flight by 1140 and had our final formal debrief an hour later.
Lunch was always a good meal. But we did not linger at the table. At 1300 we normally had a postflight analysis with our immediate training officer and began planning the next day’s flying. The fellows needing extra work then flew a training sortie with an instructor in a two-seat aircraft.
In theory we were required to carry out some kind of political work, which included writing in our personal political essay book for an hour or two each week. But most pilots found this irksome and often stuck a flight manual inside the cover of a Marxist-Leninist text. About this time I discovered a handy expedient. I had dutifully copied out a tract essay on the virtues of the proper Communist officer and submitted it to the squadron’s zampolit soon after I had arrived at Vaziani. He gave it high marks. Then, on a hunch, I resubmitted the same essay the next week in my spring binder, changing only the title page. Again he praised this work. From then on, I just revamped the same tired old essay, always adding a new title sheet. So much for the “keen interest” all zampolits were supposed to show in the pilots’ political development.
Like all good Air Force leaders, Major Kuchkov recognized that we could only take the stress of such intense training for so long. He was extremely well organized and made sure we had regular physical training and sports events. He organized passionately played soccer tournaments, which certainly took our minds off the strain of flying. Kuchkov also held Saturday small-arms practice on an outdoor range as a substitute for sports.
Air Force fighter pilots in a combat regiment were just as keen gamblers as their military forebears, the cavalrymen of the czar’s Hussar regiments. We bet on chess, cards, billiards, and even pistol marksmanship. One of our favorite games was “Watches.”
The fellows in my squadron introduced my group of young lieutenants to the game one bright spring Saturday afternoon.
“Here,” Captain Shalunov said, hanging his personal aviator’s wristwatch from a nail on the pistol-range target. “Take your chances, one ruble per bullet.”
Aviators’ wristwatches were probably the best timepieces made in the Soviet Union and worth a lot of money. But the captain believed we were either too poor to risk hitting it or were just plain bad marksmen.
I waited while the other guys bought a few chances. They all missed. After Shalunov had retrieved his watch, I hung my own up and challenged my fellow lieutenants to have at it for only a ruble per shot. After I had earned an easy nine rubles, I turned to Firefly, who was beginning to puff with frustration.
“Hang on,” I told him, “I’ll be back in a minute with a grandfather clock.”
Watches became one of my favorite games of chance. If my watch were hit, I’d have to replace it at my own expense before I flew again, but a watch was a very small target at twenty-five yards range. And someone with the guts to risk his watch repeatedly could win fifteen or twenty rubles on a good afternoon.
Such traditions, of course, cemented our loyalty to the Air Force through a proud and genuine sense of esprit de corps. Russian pilots are very superstitious. We had no aircraft or dormitory rooms numbered 13. Young lieutenants quickly learned never to use the word posledniye, “last,” when describing the final flight of the training day. Instead, all Air Force personnel, pilots and ground crew alike, said “ultimate” flight, krainiye.
Our other main diversion, of course, was drinking. When we completed an intense training cycle and were not scheduled to fly for several days, the squadron’s pilots would usually gather for a party in the regimental banya. As junior officers, we were responsible for organizing the zakuski, typically the kind of small dishes served with beer. And the older pilots brought the beer.
At dinners celebrating someone’s promotion, we usually toasted with excellent Georgian cognac. Often the second toast of the party was the standard za bezopasnost, “safe flying,” to honor men killed in accidents or in combat in Afghanistan.
We always stood around the table when toasting. The man offering the toast touched his glass, about halfway down from the rim, on the table edge and said, “Kontact".
Each of us in turn repeated the gesture, saying, “Yest, kontact,” as if we were a flight of Kobra pilots lined up on a grassy strip during the Great Patriotic War.
The man making the toast would then reply, “Ot vinta,” the command for the ground crew to clear the prop and start engines.
We would all then hoist our glasses, with our elbows at a precise ninety degrees from our torsos, exhale loudly, and drain the cognac.
But these parties became increasingly rare events as we dug into our serious training schedule. The weather on this eastern Georgian plateau held good through the spring and summer of 1984. And we were soon flying three or four sorties a day, four times a week. This meant our wake-up time was shifted from 0530 to 0400. As we were required to get at least eight hours sleep a night, we were usually in bed immediately after dinner. The pace was exhausting, but no one complained. As always, Colonel Rinchinov had been right: Young fighter pilots loved flying more than anything else. We would have gladly flown seven days a week, if Air Force regulations had permitted.
And as the pace of training got tougher, we broke the stress with practical jokes and humor. Just before pulling on our G-suits every morning, someone would always crack a new joke that would keep us laughing until we climbed into our aircraft.
One day, during a particularly rough training cycle, Boris Bagomedov, the usually serious Dagestani, had us practically rolling on the tarmac.
“All right,” he said with his hoarse accent, “what’s the difference between an American, an Israeli, and a Russian pilot? An American pilot jumps in his cockpit and sits on a thumbtack.” He plucked at the seat of his flight suit to extract the imaginary tack. “‘Shit! What the hell is this?’ So he throws the tack out and gets on with his job.
“An Israeli pilot climbs into his F-16,” Boris continued, repeating the same gesture. “He cries out in pain, pulls out the tack, looks at it, and sticks it in his pocket. ‘This may be useful someday,’ he says.”