Not exactly a shining moment for the Soviet air defense system, which shot down KAL 007 four years earlier.

The Notorious Flight of Mathias Rust
Ronald Reagan was president, there was still a Soviet Union, and a 19-year-old pilot set out to change the world

By Tom LeCompte
AIR & SPACE MAGAZINE | SUBSCRIBE
JULY 2005

N A MILD SPRING DAY IN LATE MAY 1987, military analyst John Pike was at the U.S. embassy in Moscow on business when he looked out the window and saw a small airplane circling over Red Square. Gee, that’s peculiar, thought Pike. There’s no private aviation in the Soviet Union. Hell, there’s no private anything.

The aircraft belonged to West German teenager Mathias Rust—or, more accurately, to Rust’s flying club. In a daring attempt to ease cold war tensions, the 19-year-old amateur pilot had flown a single-engine Cessna nearly 550 miles from Helsinki to the center of Moscow—probably the most heavily defended city on the planet—and parked it at the base of St. Basil’s Cathedral, within spitting distance of Lenin’s tomb. Newspapers dubbed the pilot “the new Red Baron” and the “Don Quixote of the skies.” The stunt became one of the most talked-about aviation feats in history. But it was politics, not fame, that motivated Rust...

Complete article:

https://www.airspacemag.com/hi...athias-rust-7101888/

While less detailed, this article includes a map of his route plus photos of him in Red Square:

https://rarehistoricalphotos.c...as-rust-moscow-1987/

I wander what happened to him for doing that?

Thanks for posting this. A very interesting read. I’d forgotten all about this.

Silent

quote:

Originally posted by limblessbiff:
I wander what happened to him for doing that?

Raging nutbag.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathias_Rust

Gorbachev used this incident to send hundreds of senior military officers to count trees, in the largest purge since Stalin.

He got most, but not all of the hardline communists, as evidenced by the attempted coup that brought Brother Boris to power.

Never heard of this. I was only 8 at the time, so that's probably why. Very interesting story. Thanks for sharing.

Thirty five years ago Saturday:

https://theaviationgeekclub.co...-moscows-red-square/

We've been trying to visit Moscow (with Viking River Cruises) since 2020. The first two years it was canceled by covid, now it's the Ukraine conflict. It's unlikely we'll visit there in the near future.

I definitely remember this. Yeah Rust was a nutbag but landing a C172 in Red Square is F-ing legendary.

Yeah, just anybody fly the Gateway Arch.

Red Square would have been a lot more fun!

I was reading last week some historians think this was the snowball that started the avalanche that ended the USSR.

May 28, 1987. Here's yet another article.

https://simpleflying.com/mathi...bridge-landing-1987/

quote:

Originally posted by limblessbiff:
I wander what happened to him for doing that?

According to the article linked in the OP, he was taken away by the KGB, tried and convicted of "illegal entry, violation of flight laws, and “malicious hooliganism” " and sentenced to four years.

Served about a year then Gorby released him as a goodwill gesture in 1988.

quote:

Originally posted by sig2392:
I was reading last week some historians think this was the snowball that started the avalanche that ended the USSR.

That and Gulf War I

Read that the Soviets were utterly shocked and panicked by how fast we moved and how technologically advanced we were and they realized they were screwed if they ever had to go toe-to-toe with us in Europe.

I recall this incident pretty well, was in 8th grade and recall the confusion when this guy just landed right out of the blue near Red Square.

That would have been like a Soviet paratrooper landing right on top of the Washington Monument.