MIG Jet Came So Close He Could See Crew’s Faces, Freed Pilot Says

Mathias Rust, the young West German who landed his light plane near Moscow’s Red Square, said a Soviet MIG fighter came so close to his plane during his daredevil flight that he could see the crew’s faces, the Mail newspaper reported Saturday.

Speaking in an interview published by the newspaper, Rust described how the MIG circled his Cessna plane twice in Soviet airspace during his May, 1987, flight.

“Then I was frightened, all right. The MIG came so close I could see the crew’s faces. For all I knew a heat-seeking guided missile might be the next thing,” Rust said in the interview.

“I would have followed them if I had been told to. But they just looked at me twice and then flew off,” Rust said, adding that he could not understand why he was not intercepted.

The Soviet Union released Rust, 20, on Wednesday from Moscow’s Lefortovo Prison, where he had served little over a quarter of a four-year sentence for malicious hooliganism and violation of flight and border laws, and put him on a plane to West Germany.