Word: mig
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...camouflaged MiG-23 interceptor of the Syrian air force took off from a base near Damascus last week, flew on a training mission to the Golan Heights, then dropped to 164 ft. and zoomed straight into Israel. It landed on a civilian airstrip at Megiddo, 57 miles north of Jerusalem, where its pilot, Major Mohammed Bassem Adel, 34, asked for political asylum. At a press conference last week, he said he had defected because "I would like to live in a democratic state...
...since 1966, when an Iraqi landed in central Israel, had an Arab pilot defected to Israel. Embarrassed Syrians claimed engine trouble had forced the plane to land. The MiG was equipped with new electronics that Israeli intelligence officers were eager to inspect, and Adel seemed willing to tell all. But Jerusalem was still not happy. News that the MiG had flown undetected over Israel for seven minutes stirred a public storm of anger, and Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin promised "a thorough investigation...
Talk about automatic pilot. When two American F-15 jets rose to intercept an alien aircraft that was entering West German airspace at 9:42 a.m. last Tuesday, they encountered an empty Soviet MiG-23 fighter. Flying at an altitude of nearly 40,000 ft., the plane was without a pilot, and its canopy was gone. For fear of creating lethal falling debris, officials of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization refrained from ordering the craft shot down and instead told the U.S. pilots to escort it out to open sea. But the MiG ran out of fuel near the Belgian...
...Embarrassed Soviet officials later explained that the MiG's pilot had ejected shortly after takeoff from Poland's Kolobrzeg air base, in the mistaken belief that his aircraft had lost power. The plane flew on automatic pilot for 1 hour and 37 minutes, covering 560 miles before falling out of the sky. Soviet officials promised to pay for "physical and moral damages" caused by the mishap...
...attempted coup began when rebel officers seized the Defense Ministry. Major General Haile Giorgis Habte Mariam, the Defense Minister, refused to join the revolt and was killed. There were reports of MiG-21s and helicopter ( gunships screeching over the capital and of tanks and armored personnel carriers converging on the ministry. Meanwhile, in Asmara, the northern provincial capital and Ethiopia's second largest city, Mengistu's Second Army, some 150,000 strong, was in mutiny. In sympathy with the rebellion, the Eritrean People's Liberation Front announced a two-week cease-fire in its 27- year-old war of secession...