Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
In commemoration of a legendary pilot, Three times awarded by a title and order of Hero of the Soviet Union Ivan Nikitovich KOZHEDUB
See, that's the thing. There is no place for neither orders nor shoulder strap on a flight jacket...
Sky loves something different.
FRIEND
FOE
Alert five get ready for scramble.
Two targets in our sector.
820, on position.
Scramble in combat formation, follow the leader.
815, scramble. Heading 270, proceed to CAP position.
815, copy.
Intrusion at zone eight.
Squacking negative.
Scrambling 820.
Targets separated.
820, proceed to the mountains, low altitude. Heading 210.
820, copy.
815, target on the left. Elevation 5, distance 10.
815, judy.
815, engage.
820, taget at low altitude.
Turn port to the canyon.
Roger.
820, target descending!
Target lost!
Detect unassisted.
In the canyon.
Judy. Distance 15.
820, cleared for attack.
Target heading from mountains descending. Distance 7.
Lock on!
820, after intercept approach to the beacon.
'Friend or foe' signal divides both equipment and people.
If you possess great fighting capabilities and try to keep order in the big space,
it is necessary to send a signal in order to know who is friend and who is foe.
This signal is transmitted by the ground station and the response comes from the airplane:
friend of foe.
The same could be said about people's attitude to aviation and to the life in general.
The man who came up to the sky always will be a friend there...
One can addict to the sky only once. There is no second attempt.
Odd people leave aviation. They never come back, never become real pilots.
Life forces them to resign, because the sky does not accept this sort of people.
When your comrade-in-arms, your friend flies side by side and covers back...
It's alway great if this friendship had started at the ground.
An airplane...
A machine which is capable to move in the air; looking like a bird.
But has nothing in common with a bird.
The bird is born to fly. It flies to live.
Building an airplane was not a mankind dream. The dream was to be able to fly.
A plane is just a tool built to enable people to fly. To fly faster than anybody else.
To outstrip others, to be invulnerable, to appear and disappear instantly
it has to be very beautiful.
Due to just purely technological reasons.
The less air resistance the better flies the plane,
speed is everything for it.
Every line, every lug, curve, edge of these machines
all are deliberately designed, all are not built coincidently but in full harmony with the nature.
As if the nature itself has endowed a fighter with such raptorial and irresistible attractiveness.
It is difficult to believe that anyone is still alive who was born
when an aircraft could not be seen in the sky...
Samolyot - an airplane...
Foreign languages usually use function-oriented word.
Russians as usually go their own way.
Flying carpet also contains 'samolyot'.
An artefact...
From a legend. From a fairy tale.
Pilots.
Celestials.
Ordinary guys.
But they can fly. It's impossible to explain and understand why.
Strong and healthy - others are not allowed by medical reasons -
they live short professional life like ballet dancers.
3000 hours in the air.
Only 125 days and nights.
And 25 years of military service.
To become a navigator, a flight engineer, a radio operator, a gunner,
for the fighter cockpit is designed for the only one...
The air fight - predistination of the fighters. To master it up...
To find the own way to win the air fight,
where neither ranks nor awards are not appreciated
where only ability to do anything (or a bit more) that your airplane is capable of really counts.
Angle of attack sensors... are normal.
Here... normal too.
A three full cycles before rendezvous with enemy descending to low altitude...
waiting as long as possiple...
A bit more...
He will go in the opposite direction and will lose me - he can't help losing me.
Flaps are normal.
Let's not be in a hurry.
The lock?.. Normal.
Rendezvous after the maneuver.
OK. Cleared for take off.
Whatever happens both the airfield and an airplane must be ready for take off.
Someone has calculated that every flight is supported by more than 40 of ground personnel,
without the right to make a mistake.
It is difficult to name them.
And if someone, for example, an airdrome canteen service or a weatherman,
do not worry about this flight as a part of their own job
they leave sooner or later.
Because the attitude to flight divides people to 'friends' and 'foes'.
What can be offered to a technician who worked for 14 hours
to make him be back to airfield again
except for the word 'must' which is so unpopular nowadays...
And they are back.
And curse their pilots during the flights.
Either for real reasons, or because it is a good sign.
My father is a former military. I have inherited his love to the army.
I entered to a military school, graduated from it...
While in the school I already knew what awaits me.
But I was not afraid of the future. Then I came to this air regiment.
We work 12-15 hours a day. It is difficult of course.
Very tough. Bad weather happens: rain, snow.
But I like this job, I do not plan to qiut. I love my work.
Like many of us pilots are superstitious.
Officially there are no suspertitions in aviation, of course.
Officially there are no suspertitions in aviation, of course.
But you never find an airplane with hull number '13' in any unit.
But pilots have their own signs besides 'civil' ones.
It is said that the whole history of aviation cofirms
that you must not fly on your own birthday.
Or when your wife is in a maternity hospital.
Or... Or many other assertions which are not possible to be confirmed or rejected.
That's the reason why every pilot has his own seat in the bus
what carries them to the apron and back.
A pilot not always keeps the seat, but usually does.
And pilots get on the bus not in random: there is a special unofficial procedure.
But it happens that those who always got ot the bus the seventh
suddenly is getting in the fourth.
A few days later - the second.
And then... Then he leaves the job.
He is not questioned or retained.
It's impossible to force one to fly.
Military settlement near the airfield lives according to the flight schedule.
It falls asleep together with pilots and wakes up together with them.
Pitots like to say their wives keep friends
only in full accordance with the battle formation:
in squadrons or in pairs.
While engines roar, while the air is tatterd by the airplanes,
military settlement is at ease.
Children sleep accostomed to the noise, life goes normal way.
The silence is a most awful thing here.
Most of settlement inhabitants works at the airdrome.
Some leave this work. Those who stay have no less relation to aviation than pilots themselves.
So, work at every airdrome position makes it possible to become a 'friend'.
The rest is on a person.
So, at work and at rest, a military settlement lives according to the flight schedule.
The schedule of everyday partings and meetings.
I have never been shoot down. And have not been wounded.
So, I was born with a silver spoon in my mouth.
That was at April 17, 1945. The dawn was approaching...
Me and Dmitry Titarenko flew for free-hunting near Berlin.
The westher was nasty, foggy, there was a strong haze.
We were watching sky closely in order to not miss an en... foe.
Suddenly we got under fire.
I dodged...
And outflanked them, as if I have retreated.
We were 'free-hunters'. We had special signs, red nose...
I counted them - forty airplanes, forty FW-190.
'What, Dima? Will fight?', I said to the wingman.
He said: 'Let's try'.
'Then stand firm, old chap!'
I notices one of them separated from the group.
'He'll drop the bomb and our soldier will not come back home', I thought
And I immediately attack him from above... And the last one is done; I say: '*** dead!'
Yes... The last time I cursed.
It is said that one become a pilot a few times.
First time when you come to a flight school.
Then after the first solo flight.
Then after the coping with the first emergency in the flight.
Everyone has his own steps on this stairs leading up, though.
Climb.
In pairs.
Target ahead. Distance 12.
Target is maneuvering!
Radar screen is blind.
Can't lock on.
Mad dog!
108, 207 missed.
In pair.
I'm 108. Target locked.
Fox one!
At zones 4, 12, 3 target was not found.
Searching.
Fighter's skills is not only an ability to show a nice flight
but an ability to work hard at the ground too.
To revise, to analyse, to learn.
And again, to revise, to analyse, to learn.
302, target climbing to 10, heading 70.
302. Judy.
Distance 25.
302, target on the right.
Lock on. Fox one.
Pilot has no such a limit, a moment, a condition
when he could say: 'enough, no more learning needed,'
that he have mastered up everything perfectly,
that he is a pilot prepared for any case.
From the experience of the air force, experience of every pilot we know
that as one joins the air force he starts to learn,
and keeps on studying until retirement.
And apparently he will finish studies only when he retires from the air service.
That's the reason why we say during the pilots training
that pilot must prepare his every flight as if it was the first one.
The believers always pray
Because all that happens in the sky
makes a man to look at the sky.
To see an aircraft, a flying artefact
because a human soul always leans to the God, ot the sky.
As we say when we look at the sky.
As we hear something happening in the sky we unintentionally look at the sky.
Nowadays, at the end of the century
there is no bad weather for the aviation.
the most sophisticated equipment on the ground and on board
can ensure the flight safety and almost blind landing.
Though it is worth remembering
that such words were said at the dawn of aviation era too.
Only times and equipment were different.
And then you understand that ultimately all depends on people.
But that is why all will be in proper order, will be just normal.
Because the friends are at airdrome.
Those fourty from support services which prepare the flight on the ground.
Every day before the flights the meteo airplane takes off.
Commander flies 'to get the weather'.
Ceiling 600, visibility in clouds 300-400,
no icing. Flights according to schedule.
The green light is on.