A Soviet MiG without a pilot crossed half of Europe - what happened in 1989?

Over the history of recent decades, one can count a huge number of aviation provocations involving the West against the Soviet Union. Take even the scandalous event with the landing of Matthias Rust on Red Square.

Despite this, the European government itself claims that they would not tolerate such an unauthorized incident on their territory. Be that as it may, the Soviet ship MiG-23M was still able to freely get straight to Belgium.

How a Belgian farmer almost died

It all started on July 4, 1989. Probably, a lonely farmer for a long time could not believe his luck when something prompted him to leave his own home in the early morning. It was at that moment that a MiG-23M fighter jet hit his country house.

Then the Belgian authorities could not answer the question: where did the Soviet fighter come from in their airspace. Moreover, after examining the incident, the pilot was not on the plane. Even more surprising is the fact that the plane flew several thousand kilometers, crossed at least two NATO countries that had air defense installations and went unnoticed.

The European community was frightened in earnest. After all, no one knew what could be on board the "dead" fighter and what threat to expect next. It turns out that those countries through which the ship flew saw a flying Soviet object, but were afraid to take action against it.

Forced measures

Later, an independent examination confirmed that the pilot was still on the ship, but he had to eject near the town of Kolobrzeg in Poland. Pilot 1st class Nikolai Skuridin was at the helm. Suddenly, during the planned flight, there was a loud explosion, after which the fighter began to gradually decline. The pilot reported the current situation to Earth, to which he received an answer to immediately eject. As expected, Skuridin took the ship towards the sea and successfully left it. According to all calculations, the plane was supposed to fall unhindered into the Baltic Sea.

A detachment of search aircraft was sent to the alleged crash site. Those, in turn, not finding the fighter on the spot, decided that he had already drowned and reported this to the authorities.

Ghost rider

But, as it turned out, everything was different. The fighter did lose altitude for some time, but then he was able to rehabilitate himself, level off and move on autopilot to Belgium. He managed to automatically respond to "friend or foe" signals, fly through Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium. The aircraft was discovered, and two F-16s flew to meet it. Having overtaken the Soviet ship, the interceptors were shocked, because there was no pilot on it! The assumption was the following: the Soviet Union is testing the latest secret device, which may be a weapon of mass destruction. Frightened by the unknown, the planes returned to base empty-handed.

Therefore, the MiG so easily crossed part of Europe, and had already flown to the French border, as the fuel began to run out. The plane crashed. The government of European countries immediately turned to the USSR for an explanation of such an incident .

The government of the Soviet Union did not deny it, pleaded guilty and paid the Belgian side 685 thousand dollars. The authorities of the country did not interfere with the Soviet wars being able to withdraw the remains of the legendary fighter. Domestic representatives confirmed that the afterburner of the engine was turned off.

Despite such a strange story, Air Marshal Shaposhnikov spoke about the line of MiG-23 fighters in the best way, adding that he met such a case for the first time.

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