51 pilots have died in the last 58 years

The fall of the last MiG-21 of the Serbian army ended the service of one of the most famous aircraft in world history in the Serbian Air Force.

During the 58 years of service, a total of 51 pilots were killed, including two pilots who died last Friday near Mali Zvornik.

The MiG-21 ranks second on the blacklist of victims. Most of the pilots, 57 of them, were killed by F-84G Thunderjet bombers from 1953 to 1974.

SFRY acquired 261 MiG-21s in the period from 1962 to 1986. For 58 years, the MiG-21 was part of the fighter squadrons at Batajnica, Bihac, Pristina and Pula airports. The profession of a pilot involves risks. Accidents occurred in a variety of circumstances.

Most of the pilots died peacefully and two did not return from combat missions in 1991/92. 41 aircraft of this type were lost in disasters, that is, 15.7%, not counting war losses. There were 31 single-seater catastrophes and 18 pilots died in 10 two-seaters. In the accidents, 42 pilots jumped and landed with a parachute, and five jumped from the plane that was hit by the Croatian armed forces.

The stats with Thunderjet are even blacker. Disasters occurred in 24.68% of a total of 231 aircraft of this type in the Yugoslav Air Force. The first pilot died in 1954 and the last in 1970. In some years, up to 7-8 Thunderjet pilots died.

The first fall

The first MiG-21 aircraft was lost on June 20, 1964, when a 24-year-old lieutenant from Batajnica 204 Regiment, Zdravko Stanić, took off to accelerate to a speed of Mach 1.5-1.6 at an altitude of 13,000. meters. When you turned on the afterburner it reported that it had technical problems. The plane crashed and the pilot lost his life. The cause of the accident was never established.

At the time, aviation officers were expected to shake off and take responsibility.

In front of the pilots, the Commander of the Air Force and Air Defense, General Viktor Bubanj, openly said that the cause of the catastrophe was poor training and poor preparation, and that he was personally the culprit. He then said that the culprits and their subordinate commanders were up to the commander of the squad that Stanic belonged to.

The first pilot to use the seat to jump was Lieutenant Dušan Đenić of the 204th Regiment, who lost control of the plane on October 15, 1969, during night interception training. The curiosity is that Đenić had an accident on landing six months earlier in 1969 and got out of the cockpit, but the plane was completely destroyed in the fire.

Seats on early variants of the single-seater MiG-21F-13 and two-seater MiG-21U were known to be notoriously inefficient. On paper, the minimum height in horizontal flight to use the SK system was 100 m.

An unusual solution was to jump with the cockpit cover at speeds over 700 km / h to protect the pilot from drafts. At lower speeds, the pilot first dropped the cockpit cover and jumped. And some of the pilots died due to the low altitude at which they jumped out of the plane or hit the cockpit deck.

That is why in the MiG-21 disaster statistics, most of the victims, up to 22 pilots, were in the first generation of that aircraft. Later variants had a KM-1 seat that was more reliable and could be used at altitudes of 0 m to 20,000 m and instrument flight speeds of 130 to 1,200 km / h.

Losses in war

Seven MiG-21s were lost in the civil wars of 1991 and 1992. Six were shot down and, on the one hand, it will not be clear forever if the pilot flipped the plane during the action, that is, he had an accident or was hit.

However, Captain First Class Zlatko Nuspahić jumped on September 19, 1991 and was killed either by the low altitude of the plane at the time he pulled the seat lever or by fire from the seat. Croatian infantry to which he was exposed.

On May 2, 1992, Captain 1st Class Slobodan Medic’s plane was hit in action on the bridge over the Sava near Slavonski Brod. His colleagues saw the parachute, and the Croatian side assures that it did not jump. He has been on the Missing in Action list for a long time because his remains were never released.

Five MiG-21 pilots jumped and landed without major injuries. Four pilots spent some time in captivity and one was taken by helicopter to his airport.

The number of accidents dropped in the 1990s, but the number of pilots also dropped dramatically. Accidents also occurred more frequently in proportion to the time spent in the air.

The latest MiG-21 disaster

The last domestic MiG-21 catastrophes before the current tragedy occurred in 1994, when two pilots died.

On June 1, two pilots with a MiG-21bis took off from Ponikve airport for a night interception.

There was a collision and Lieutenant Siniša Sladojević was killed, and First Class Captain Srećko Jeremić, who was struggling in the rest of his plane with great difficulty, pulled the KM-1’s seat handle and jumped.

On August 24 of the same year, Captain Nenad Šakotić left Ponikva for the last flight. He jumped low, between 30 and 50 m, but only escaped by stabilizing the parachute and stayed in the seat and died.

The last fatal accidents occurred in 1998. From then until September 25, no more such aircraft were destroyed in the accident.

(Kurir.rs/www.balkansec.net)

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