List of Cold War pilot defections - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Soviet pilots also defected and the most famous involved defecting with the most advanced jet fighters at the time, including:
* On October 9, 1948, Piotr Pirogov and Anatoly Barsov defected by flying their Tu-2 bomber from the USSR to Linz, Austria, where they were granted asylum by the American occupational authorities. Barsov later returned to the USSR a year later.
* In 1961, a disappointed Soviet pilot flew his Sukhoi Su-9 interceptor to Abadan, Iran. Only very sketchy details about this incident are known even today, but the plane and the pilot were quickly picked up by officers of the Foreign Technology Division (FTD) of the United States DoD. After being disassembled within 24 hours the Su-9 was transported to the USA, while the pilot followed shortly after.
* On May 7, 1973, Lieutenant Yevgeny Vronsky, flew his Sukhoi Su-7 from East Germany where he was stationed, to West Germany. The aircraft, which was damaged during the landing, was returned.
* On September 6, 1976, Lieutenant Viktor Belenko defected with his Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-25 to Hakodate, Japan. After being inspected by the Foreign Technology Division of the USAF, the Mig-25 was released to Japan who then returned it in pieces to the Soviet Union.
* On May 20, 1989, Captain Alexander Zuyev defected with his Mikoyan MiG-29 to Trabzon, Turkey. In his autobiography Fulcrum: A Top Gun Pilot's Escape from the Soviet Empire (ISBN 0-446-51648) Zuyev reported that the USSR quickly did a deal with the Turkish government upon his defection, and the MiG-29 was returned to the Russians. According to Zuyev himself, the first words he said as he stepped out of the cockpit after his successful defection were, "I will be an American!". He was shot in the escape and was airlifted out of Turkey by a U.S. C-130 that same night, to Ramstein AB. He shared many stories with the crew that are later expounded upon in his book.