Soviet Jet Fighter Brushes Norwegian Patrol Plane

A Soviet jet fighter brushed against a Norwegian patrol aircraft in international airspace over the Barents Sea on Sunday, damaging one of the Norwegian plane’s four engines, Defense Ministry officials said.

No one was injured in the incident. The Norwegian craft, a propeller-driven Orion P-3B reconnaissance plane, landed safely. The Soviet jet, a Sukhoi 27, one of Moscow’s most advanced fighters, flew off with no apparent damage.

Norwegian Foreign Minister Thorvald Stoltenberg protested to the Soviet ambassador in Oslo, Alexander V. Teterin, and asked him to explain the incident.

Maj. Gunnar Mjell, a spokesman for the Norwegian defense staff, said that the country’s aircraft patrol the Barents Sea several times a week and are often shadowed by Soviet fighters, although at a distance. “But this one acted totally out of character,” Mjell said.

“He came and stayed very close for some time, then disappeared and came back again to come even closer. He then touched the Orion with his twin tail. We cannot see that it could have been anything other than deliberate,” he said.

In a communique, Norway said that pieces of propeller from one of the Orion’s engines had been sheared and embedded in the plane’s fuselage.

It said one of the Orion’s engines had to be shut down.

The communique said the plane was 48 nautical miles from the nearest Soviet territory. The incident occurred off the Kola Peninsula, home to the Soviet Union’s northern fleet and the base for what is believed to be the world’s largest concentration of nuclear weapons.