Poll Shows Teen-Ager Flying High Back Home : ‘Rusty the Pilot’ a Hero in W. Germany

Mathias Rust, the lanky, teen-aged loner who landed a rented plane in Moscow’s Red Square last week, has been hailed as a hero in West Germany.

Newspapers thrilled over the daredevil flight of “Rusty the Kremlin pilot,” and one poll claimed he had captured the hearts of 88% of the people.

Reporters have been sent to see the double-bunk bed in the room he shared with his brother, counted the parakeets in the family home near Hamburg and interviewed the girls who never dated the shy 19-year-old.

“He’s not my type at all. He’s so withdrawn. Of course, I told him to shove off,” said Jessica, 17.

“Mathias was always a complete outsider. He got mad easily. I can’t see him with a girlfriend,” said Petra, 19.

Another classmate told Bild Am Sonntag newspaper that he recalled drafting a letter with Rust to the rights group Amnesty International listing nations with human rights abuses, adding, “He has a sense of justice.”

Another Hamburg youth recalled: “He once said he wanted to do something great. He said, ‘I want to master the world.’ ”

No one here seemed to care why Rust braved Soviet air defenses to fly his single-engine Cessna into Red Square. One newspaper reported that he “just wanted to talk to Russians.”

“Finally, somebody has succeeded in stealing the show from (Soviet leader) Mikhail S. Gorbachev. It was high time,” said Munich’s daily Merkur. “The flight will go down in aviation history,” said the Straubinger Tagblatt.

The Hamburg Morgenpost called Rust’s adventure “the stuff of films.” Others compared Rust to World War I “Red Baron” Manfred von Richthofen and to American aviator Charles Lindbergh.

West Germany’s main evening news program showed 90 seconds of film, shot by an unknown amateur, of Rust’s plane circling the Kremlin domes, swooping in to land, then taxiing up to the Kremlin Wall. The West German network bought the film from NBC, who obtained it from the amateur photographer.

Rust was shown standing in the midst of a group of excited Russians, signing autographs and answering questions.

“After one hour after (leaving) Helsinki, I had a short contact with a jet of the Russian air force,” he told a questioner. He did not say whether the contact was visual or by radar.

The official Soviet news agency Tass has stated that two fighter planes were dispatched and flew twice around Rust’s plane.

The young pilot remains in Soviet hands, and what will be done with him is not clear.

Valentin Falin, former ambassador to West Germany and now head of the Novosti press agency, told the Hamburg Morgenpost in Moscow that Rust may be tried but probably will be freed shortly.

“For one thing, we will thank him for pointing out the gaps (in air defenses),” Falin said.