these giant cargo planesâ fuselages regularly cracked under the stress of spinning round and round in circles tighter than the plane was ever designed to attempt, and in almost all surviving aircraft, fatigue cracks, fissures, and holes began to open up on engine skins.
Potentially fatal leaks appeared. Rivets groaned, then popped. Parts began to fall off. And aviators began falling from the sky. On November 26, 1984, the same guerrillas weâd evaded with Mickeyâs astonishing piece of dive-bombing were camped in Kabulâs Missile Alley. Only on that particular day, the pilot wasnât quick enough, didnât climb high enough, didnât corkscrew tightly enough. A rocket-propelled grenade smashed into the starboard wing of a Candid laden with cigarettes, notepaper, and ballpoint pens for the troops garrisoned there. Any other time, the plane would still have been able to land without too much of a problem. But this Candid had flown in one too many tight circles and dives. The fuselage was crisscrossed with invisible stress cracks like the rips in the inner seams of your jeans. So that day, as the plane rolled sideways, it simply imploded, disintegrating into metallic powder in midair. Not only did the crew not have time to send a distress signal; they didnât even have time to cry out. For weeks afterward, farmers, kids, and soldiers were finding Russian-made ballpoint pens, cheap writing pads, and packets of army-issue cigarettes strewn across the countryside.
Always resourceful, the Soviet air forceâs technicians and ground crew developed a method of riveting on metal patchesânever enough to solve the problem, never pretty, never meant to be permanent, but just enough to keep the plane from splitting at the seams from all the diving and twisting.
But these planes are also remarkable in a lot of other ways. Not least in the way they owe their current capabilitiesâeven a lot of their featuresâas much to the crews who fly them, customize them, cannibalize and adapt them as to the designers and workers of the Ilyushin and Antonov companies.
Mickey remembers more ad hoc, and certainly less official, ways of souping up his planeâs capabilities with the nostalgic affection of the man remembering decorating his first home. The wells for escape equipment, radar, even parachutes and the air-to-ground flares fired during takeoff and landing to fool heat-seeking missiles, were often hollowed out and stripped bare, their contents sold off separately either unofficially or with the connivance of superiors out in the field. On the one hand, says Mickey, that meant no escape equipment, which was badâbut then, you never knew if that stuff was any good anyway, because there had been a lot of problems reported with it, so âWeâd been warned not to bet our lives on it.â Yet the upside was good enough to make even the prospect of taking on missiles and mountain ranges look like a reasonable risk to take.
The point of these modifications, along with knock-throughs and strip-downs applied to almost every other nook, cranny, and belly space, was to turn the Candid into the perfect deep-cover mule for whatever you wanted to take from A to B at the armyâs expense. The ploy exceeded the cargo teamsâ highest hopes: It was so effective, even among army checks, precisely because a lot of these spaces werenât even there on the initial design blueprints or paperwork. By the time your commanding officer discovered youâd ripped out the escape chutes to make space for a few extra tons of rugs, jewels, Stolichnaya, and bullets, went the saying, youâd probably be too dead to court-martial anyway. In truth, shrugs Mickey, his commanding officer was almost always part of the whole dealâthe safest way to make sure you werenât thwarted by any of the other officers.
The most profitable journeys, he says, came when you were carrying bulky but light items in
Potentially fatal leaks appeared. Rivets groaned, then popped. Parts began to fall off. And aviators began falling from the sky. On November 26, 1984, the same guerrillas weâd evaded with Mickeyâs astonishing piece of dive-bombing were camped in Kabulâs Missile Alley. Only on that particular day, the pilot wasnât quick enough, didnât climb high enough, didnât corkscrew tightly enough. A rocket-propelled grenade smashed into the starboard wing of a Candid laden with cigarettes, notepaper, and ballpoint pens for the troops garrisoned there. Any other time, the plane would still have been able to land without too much of a problem. But this Candid had flown in one too many tight circles and dives. The fuselage was crisscrossed with invisible stress cracks like the rips in the inner seams of your jeans. So that day, as the plane rolled sideways, it simply imploded, disintegrating into metallic powder in midair. Not only did the crew not have time to send a distress signal; they didnât even have time to cry out. For weeks afterward, farmers, kids, and soldiers were finding Russian-made ballpoint pens, cheap writing pads, and packets of army-issue cigarettes strewn across the countryside.
Always resourceful, the Soviet air forceâs technicians and ground crew developed a method of riveting on metal patchesânever enough to solve the problem, never pretty, never meant to be permanent, but just enough to keep the plane from splitting at the seams from all the diving and twisting.
But these planes are also remarkable in a lot of other ways. Not least in the way they owe their current capabilitiesâeven a lot of their featuresâas much to the crews who fly them, customize them, cannibalize and adapt them as to the designers and workers of the Ilyushin and Antonov companies.
Mickey remembers more ad hoc, and certainly less official, ways of souping up his planeâs capabilities with the nostalgic affection of the man remembering decorating his first home. The wells for escape equipment, radar, even parachutes and the air-to-ground flares fired during takeoff and landing to fool heat-seeking missiles, were often hollowed out and stripped bare, their contents sold off separately either unofficially or with the connivance of superiors out in the field. On the one hand, says Mickey, that meant no escape equipment, which was badâbut then, you never knew if that stuff was any good anyway, because there had been a lot of problems reported with it, so âWeâd been warned not to bet our lives on it.â Yet the upside was good enough to make even the prospect of taking on missiles and mountain ranges look like a reasonable risk to take.
The point of these modifications, along with knock-throughs and strip-downs applied to almost every other nook, cranny, and belly space, was to turn the Candid into the perfect deep-cover mule for whatever you wanted to take from A to B at the armyâs expense. The ploy exceeded the cargo teamsâ highest hopes: It was so effective, even among army checks, precisely because a lot of these spaces werenât even there on the initial design blueprints or paperwork. By the time your commanding officer discovered youâd ripped out the escape chutes to make space for a few extra tons of rugs, jewels, Stolichnaya, and bullets, went the saying, youâd probably be too dead to court-martial anyway. In truth, shrugs Mickey, his commanding officer was almost always part of the whole dealâthe safest way to make sure you werenât thwarted by any of the other officers.
The most profitable journeys, he says, came when you were carrying bulky but light items in
Similar Books
