Chapter 3

      We were the first to take off. After achieving flying altitude I turned the aircraft towards the Komandor Islands. Leaving the last bit of dry land belonging to the Soviet Union far behind, we turned towards the American border. My battle mission included verifying the anti-aircraft defenses of the potential enemy. At a distance of two hundred miles from Attu Island I began the descent. At an altitude of one hundred and fifty feet and a speed of six hundred knots, we headed towards the enemy islands. When we had approached to within one hundred miles of them I saw a pair of fighters. Our little war game had ended. Our aircraft had been detected and, theoretically, shot down. But we did not consider ourselves to be losers. After all, six minutes before, my navigators had worked out the training launch of missiles against the American air force base. The three-ton miniature plane, breaking away from the pylon of my aircraft, would reach a height of sixty thousand feet, and from there, would come down on the Americans almost vertically, scattering the concrete squares of their runway for hundreds of feet around.

      The fighters rushed past us, turned sharply, and hung over the left and right wings of my aircraft. The pilot of the leading fighter saluted me and made a sign for me to open the bomb compartment. I reduced the flight speed and transmitted his request to my navigator. When the green light glowed to show that the “bomb compartment is open”, I gave the American pilot the thumbs up. He understood this international gesture correctly. He slipped beneath the fuselage and, having convinced himself that, as usual, our bomb compartment was empty, he took his place above the left wing.

      Escorted by the American aircraft, we reached our cruising altitude and flew about an hour together. Then I waved at the fighter pilots and took a course towards Kamchatka. The pair of F-15s accelerated, and, catching up with us, rolled and banked away.

      That’s it, I thought in relief. My first battle assignment has been successfully completed. I called out to anyone who cared to listen, “Let’s get the hell out of here!”

      The nervous tension subsided and I began to relax, even daydreaming about the leave I had just completed…..

      Two months before, having received my leave ticket from the hands of the chief of staff, the whole crew and I had left for Vladivostok. After that our paths diverged. My crew flew off to their relatives, while I settled into a hotel with the romantic name “Dawn of the East.” The object of my attention was the discotheque of the medical school. After two weeks of drinking bouts with the students, and having slept my way through the entire physical therapy department, I unexpectedly encountered a point-blank refusal from a future physician to spend a charming night of love in a dark place. This took the wind out of my sails to such an extent that I couldn’t think of anything else except the woman who had turned me down.

      “How could that be?” I reasoned. “To say ‘no’ to me, to a naval pilot? I haven’t ever heard that word before from women, and, most importantly, I don’t want to hear it now.” But the beauty turned out to be more stubborn and certainly smarter than I. As a result, by the middle of my leave we were married. There was one more factor that had influenced my hurried decision – her father was the head of the Pacific Coast Defenses, and although he had no connection to aviation, he nonetheless bore the proud title of rear-admiral, a rare commodity in the Pacific fleet….

      I heard the navigator report: “Commander, we’ve reached the descent point.”

      “Roger that.” I pushed the control column forward, lowering the nose of the aircraft while simultaneously slowing the engines’ revolutions per minute to idle. It immediately became much quieter in the cabin. Looking over at the co-pilot, I noted his bored stare, his thoughts elsewhere. Ice floes are only so interesting and that only lasts a while. The poor fellow really did not have much to do, true to this assignment. Ahh, the life of a commander. My thoughts returned to Vladivostok and my new wife.

      The second half of my leave was taken up with our honeymoon. The speed of our wedding left no room for vacation planning and the approaching winter term did not leave my wife even a week of free time. So it was my parents-in-law that came up with the solution. They took up residence in the posh hotel downtown, giving us free reign in their home. We spent almost the whole time in bed, alternating reading Olga’s lectures with practical exercises in more profound and all-inclusive study of human anatomy. We devoted special attention to the differences in structure between the male and female bodies. And although we did not make any great new discoveries, pleasure from the process of studies was obtained on both sides. The pleasant memories brought a smile to my face…

      “Commander, the screen of my on-board radar has gone out!” The voice of the navigator brought me back to stark reality. It’s odd that the sound is coming to me directly, and not through the headset of the aircraft communication system. I looked at the instrument panel. There were more than thirty instruments on it, but I was interested in only two of them – those that indicate the revolutions per minute of the left and right engines. The pointers of both of them vibrated, indicating autorotation, a stall. I checked fuel flow. Nothing! “Shut off all electrical devices!” I yelled to the two navigators and the co-pilot. Then, I looked at the engine control levers and immediately our circumstance became clear. Eight minutes prior, commencing the descent from thirty thousand feet, shifting the engines from cruise to idle, I must have pulled them a bit further, into the stop position. Without having verified the instrument indications, my aircraft had descended smoothly to ten thousand feet. During that time the working aviation equipment and most of all the powerful on-board radar had completely discharged the batteries.

      I pressed the “air start” button for the third time without effect. On the older model of the TU-16 there was no “lock flight idle” to prevent the unhindered shift of the control levers through their full range. And, engulfed by my pleasant recollections, I had turned off both engines by mistake.