[A]Mathias Rust: GA flight in to Red Square

Sac Arrow

Touchdown! Greaser!
Joined
May 11, 2010
Messages
20,262
Location
Charlotte, NC
Display Name

Display name:
Snorting his way across the USA
I don't actually remember this making the news when it happened. 18 year old German pilot Mathias Rust pilots his C150 in to Moscow, and lands on a bridge near Red Square. The Soviet government was less than amused by the incident.


It is interesting watching the modern Russian propaganda mill's take on the incident.

 
I remember it happening, and it was all over the news. Lots of embarrassed people in the Soviet military back then.
 
Must've been living under a rock, it was all over the news.

You don’t realize how much beer Sac has had since then.
 
They need to hang the gyrocopter that landed on Capitol Hill next to Mathius' Cessna.
 
I always love the charge of "malicious hooliganism." I suspect I might have been guilty of that one on a time or two.
 
I always love the charge of "malicious hooliganism." I suspect I might have been guilty of that one on a time or two.

I remember it clearly. I've always wondered if the CCCP criminal code actually contained that offense or if it was created just for Rust.
 
Amusingly, I was in Russia on a student trip in 1975. Some of the girls didn't pack light and occassionally needed assistance from one of the boys to get their luggage into an overhead rack or something. The standard joke was to ask, "What do you have in here? Red Square?" As we were leaving the Soviet Union in the town of Brest (now Belarus again), one of the guys (not me), lifted a suitcase up onto the customs table for one of our chaperones and asked her that question. She was the only one who had her bags searched. I was a bit nervous as I actually did have a loose corner of a paving brick from Red Square in my bag.

Brest is an interesting place because it is where the railroad gauge changes from the Soviet 5' to the western 4' 8". Any through trains have to have their trucks changed at that point.
 
Amusingly, I was in Russia on a student trip in 1975. Some of the girls didn't pack light and occassionally needed assistance from one of the boys to get their luggage into an overhead rack or something. The standard joke was to ask, "What do you have in here? Red Square?" As we were leaving the Soviet Union in the town of Brest (now Belarus again), one of the guys (not me), lifted a suitcase up onto the customs table for one of our chaperones and asked her that question. She was the only one who had her bags searched. I was a bit nervous as I actually did have a loose corner of a paving brick from Red Square in my bag.

Brest is an interesting place because it is where the railroad gauge changes from the Soviet 5' to the western 4' 8". Any through trains have to have their trucks changed at that point.

I don't remember the details, but in the early to mid '80s my dad was traveling to Russia for a scientific conference and was the cause of a lengthy train delay related to his papers. In the end they allowed the train to continue.

The change in gauge is actually a plot point in the novel Babylon Berlin.
 
Your Soviet visa was just stapled to your passport. When you leave they remove it, leaving no trace other than some staple holes that you were there. I convinced the border guy to stamp something in my passport as a souvenir. It probably says "This end up" or something similarly nonsequitor.
 
Rust's misadventure was a huge boon for then Soviet President Gorbachev. He used it as an excuse to do the largest purge of the military since Stalin. Most of those purged were off course opposed to Gorbachev's reforms.
 
Rust's misadventure was a huge boon for then Soviet President Gorbachev. He used it as an excuse to do the largest purge of the military since Stalin. Most of those purged were off course opposed to Gorbachev's reforms.

A political staple everywhere. Never let a crisis go to waste.
 
Your Soviet visa was just stapled to your passport. When you leave they remove it, leaving no trace other than some staple holes that you were there. I convinced the border guy to stamp something in my passport as a souvenir. It probably says "This end up" or something similarly nonsequitor.

I remember my first visit to Israel. They asked if I wanted my passport stamped. I knew that having the stamp would prevent me from entering certain countries and I told the lady at passport control to stamp mine as any country that didn't want an Israeli stamp was a country I didn't care to visit. The option, as I found out later, was that they would stamp a piece of paper and place it in the passport, leaving no evidence.

My original passport, from 1971, as a full page devoted to a country that no longer exists - the DDR. East Germany. Needless to say, that one is a souvenir that I won't lose.
 
I remember my first visit to Israel. They asked if I wanted my passport stamped. I knew that having the stamp would prevent me from entering certain countries and I told the lady at passport control to stamp mine as any country that didn't want an Israeli stamp was a country I didn't care to visit. The option, as I found out later, was that they would stamp a piece of paper and place it in the passport, leaving no evidence.

My original passport, from 1971, as a full page devoted to a country that no longer exists - the DDR. East Germany. Needless to say, that one is a souvenir that I won't lose.

I spent quite a bit of time on border patrol on the West German side. The SOFA agreements on border activity had some very interesting rules. For example, the wearing of helmets and body armor were forbidden and considered an offensive action, even though carrying locked and loaded assault rifles were not. If we were to be captured on the DDR side of the border (it's easy to get on the wrong side, not all of the border is well marked) we were not allowed to talk to the East Germans. Only the Soviets.

There is a pretty good movie, based on a true story of two families who escaped East Germany via a home made hot air balloon. Having talked to many defectors, and for that matter just observing over the wall on high ground, the account of life in the movie was fairly accurate. It's called Night Crossing.
 
My original passport, from 1971, as a full page devoted to a country that no longer exists - the DDR. East Germany. Needless to say, that one is a souvenir that I won't lose.
Yep, we came back through Berlin on the same trip. I've been to a few countries that don't exist in the same form including E/W Germany, Russia, Ukraine, Rhodesia, and Hong Kong. Last time I was in South Africa, they were still in the throws of apartheid.
 
Haters gotta hate. It was a hell of a long time ago....

Come on, you weren't old enough back then to have senior dementia yet.

I remember it happening but I wasn't a pilot when it happened so I didn't pay it a whole lot of attention.
 
Rust's misadventure was a huge boon for then Soviet President Gorbachev
Matias himself has been a bit at loose ends. Journalists who interviewed him in '87 described him as "psychologically unstable and unworldly in a dangerous manner."

After he returned to Germany, he was performing his community service (required of all young Germans) working in a hospital. He asked a female coworker for a date, she said no, so he stabbed her... she barely survived. It's telling that he wasn't criminally prosecuted, but committed to a psychiatric hospital.

Since then, he's been arrested a couple of times for shoplifting. Rust recently described himself as a professional poker player and analyst at a Swiss investment bank... The bank was surprised to discover he considered himself their employee.

Paul
 
Back
Top