The 18-year-old who landed a Cessna in Soviet-era Moscow's Red Square
ginandtacos.com
ginandtacos.com
Everybody who knows Russia and its military easily understands why nobody was able to take a decision, why the plane was several times lost from the radars, mistaken for something else, the target tracking codes assigned inside the airspace defense system to the plane matched and mismatched with other airborne targets / objects in the airspace.... It is a very good luck (which God sends to drunks and children :) that that day in that chaos no other planes were shot down ... :) (google for "Ukrainian missile Sibur Tu-154 2001" - how it happens when luck is missing)
He flew a Cessna 172, which is an all-aluminum four-seat aircraft. It's not fabric-covered as the article describes, nor is it the size of a Ford Fiesta. And 172's cruise speed is ~120 kph, which is considerably faster than a Fiesta as well.
(a typo?) ~120mph, about 200kph. Cruise is supposedly 110 knots, although I've yet to fly one that was happy at that; more often about 105 knots IME.
My Fiesta was special, though; I had broken a key off in the starter switch, so I had to remove the switch entirely (fortunately the theft-proof bolts had vibrated loose, probably at 180 kph). Crossing the Swiss border once while starting the engine with a screwdriver caused a very, very unamused reaction.
The outside rearview mirror had also rusted off. I was stopped by the Polizei once and he sternly informed me that I needed a rearview mirror - I told him I did: it was in the back seat. He laughed, but said that unless it was mounted on the car, the car didn't conform with its definition. (No, really, that's the way German law works.) I promised him I'd buy a new one the next day, and he waved me on. And I did, too.
All in all, the adventures of a redneck in Europe can be fun to recount.
http://www.nytimes.com/1989/07/05/world/pilotless-soviet-jet...
They never did mention it explicitly, but the official Soviet news back then were full of thinly veiled innuendos that it was "for Rust".
My father was a Soviet tank forces officer at the time. When they were given a brief of the incident in the morning, he remarked "this surely must be zampolit at work" (a deputy political officer, CPSU hand in the army). Dad got reprimanded for that right in place, by, well, another zampolit.
So some days after, the pilot was identified as deputy political officer to the airforce division commander. He forgot to turn out afterburn after the take off, misread that as engine failure, shat his pants and ejected.
"Bogey is too slow to intercept, permission to get out and walk?"
"Rust tarnishes Soviet ring of steel"