Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - The Highly Improbable Flight of Mathias Rust

Episode Date: December 21, 2021

Subscribe to the podcast!  https://podfollow.com/everythingeverywhere/ In 1987, a German teenager and novice pilot named Mathias Rust set out on a two-week flight where he visited several countries in Europe.  What was remarkable about the flight wasn’t the age of the pilot or the distance he traveled. The reason people still remember it was where he ended up.  Learn more about The Highly Improbable Flight of Mathias Rust and what happened in its aftermath, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. -------------------------------- Associate Producers: Peter Bennett & Thor Thomsen   Become a supporter on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/everythingeverywhere   Discord Server: https://discord.gg/UkRUJFh   Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/everythingeverywhere/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/everywheretrip Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/EEDailyPodcast/ Website: https://everything-everywhere.com/everything-everywhere-daily-podcast/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In 1987, a German teenager and novice pilot named Matthias Rust set out on a two-week flight where he visited several countries in Europe. What was remarkable about the flight wasn't the age of the pilot or the distance he traveled. The reason people still remember it is where he ended up. Learn more about the highly improbable flight of Matthias Rust and what happened in its aftermath on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Do you ever climb into bed ready to sleep only to have your mind start racing the moment your head hits the pillow?

Thoughts bouncing around, replaying the day, or jumping up, jumping ahead to tomorrow. That is exactly why Catherine Nikolai created Nothing Much Happens. Each episode is a gentle, cozy bedtime story where, well, nothing much happens. No drama, no tension, nothing you need to follow closely. Just soft narration, calming repetition, and soothing sensory details designed to help your mind slow down and your body relax. It's not about entertainment, it's about rest. And millions of listeners around the world use it every night to quiet their thoughts and finally fall asleep. If you've ever struggled to shut your brain off at night, this might be exactly what you've been missing. You can listen to

nothing much happens wherever you get your podcasts. Episodes are every Monday and Thursday. 1987 was a pivotal year in the Cold War. Marl Reagan was in the waning years of his presidency, and the new Soviet general secretary was Mikhail Gorbachev, who still didn't have a solid grip on power. Both sides were still at a very high level of tension and alert, with thousands of missiles pointed at each other, and soldiers on watch 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. And, and six days a year, looking to detect the slightest intrusion of sovereign airspace. This was the state of the world when Matthias Rost was 19 years old. He lived in the small town of Wiedel in West Germany,

which was located on the Elbe River just outside the city of Hamburg. He had taken an interest in flying and had taken flying lessons to become a pilot. He had logged 50 hours of flying time, which was just enough to get a pilot's license, but not really enough to be considered an experienced pilot. In May of 1987, Matthias told his parents he wanted to do a tour of Northern European in countries to log more experience towards getting his professional pilot's license. It was an ambitious project for someone still in his teens and with only 50 hours of flight experience,

but it wasn't totally crazy either. He rented a small Cessna aircraft from a local flying club that had the back seats taken out and replaced with fuel tanks to extend the range of the plane. On May 13th, he set out and did exactly what he said he was going to do. From Hamburg, he first flew northwest to the Faroe Islands, which are located roughly midway between Scotland and Iceland. From there, he continued to fly northwest to Reykjavik Iceland. Here he visited the Hofdei House, which was where Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev had met the year before. From Iceland, he flew to Bergen, Norway, and then to Helsinki, Finland. He had been on his

flying trip for a little over two weeks at this point. He had now doubled his flying time to 100 hours, and had flown several challenging routes over open water. On May 28th, at 1221 p.m., he left Helsinki and told flight control that he was heading to Stockholm. However, he didn't go to Stockholm. About 20 minutes into his flight, once he passed the Finnish city of Numela, which was northwest of Helsinki, Matias turned the plane to the left and started heading east. As he left the Helsinki air control area, he thanked the air controllers and then turned off his transponder and communications. Matias was going to Moscow. The idea of flying to Moscow had been in the back of his mind ever since he started the trip. He had proven he could fly the distance from the earlier stops in his trip,

and his plane had enough fuel. However, until the last minute, he had a lot. However, until the last minute, he he didn't really know if he was actually going to follow through with the plan. He envisioned making some grand gesture in the name of World Peace, where he and his plane would create, quote, an imaginary bridge from west to east. When the Finnish air control lost track of him, they initially thought that he must have crashed. The Finnish Coast Guard was sent out, and they actually found an oil slick in the water, which they assumed was caused by his plane, but they could find no other evidence of crash. Matthias and the Cessna kept heading towards Soviet airspace over the Baltic Sea.

I should note that it was only five years previously that the Soviets shot down a Korean Airlines passenger jet full of people for violating their airspace. The Soviets didn't usually mess around. And in this case, they knew he was coming. The Soviet air defenses clearly saw him on their radar. The Soviet 54th Air Defense Corps, which managed the surface-to-air missiles in the region, was the first to start tracking him. They tried to identify the aircraft by using a military IFF system. An IFF stands for Identify Friend or foe, but his plane wasn't responding to it. Two MIG-23 jet fighters were sent to intercept the plane. They reported that the plane looked like a Yak-12, which was a Soviet training aircraft, that sort of kind of looked like a Cessna. The fighters asked permission to engage the aircraft, but their

request was denied. They actually flew alongside the Cessna and had to lower their landing gear in order to fly slow enough to look inside. It turns out they tried to contact him via radio, but they were using higher frequency military bands, which Matthias didn't have in his plane. Matthias briefly dipped down to a lower altitude to avoid icing on his wings and was lost by Soviet radar. He reappeared in a different Soviet air control zone, and luck was on his side. There had been a plane crashed the day before. Radar operators assumed that he was a rescue helicopter and people who identified the plane thought it was a Soviet training aircraft. The funny thing was, his plane had a West German identification number on the side, as well as a West

German flag. He eventually made it all the way to Moscow. His first plan was to land inside the Kremlin, but given the walls of the Kremlin, he could be arrested and the whole incident covered up. So he decided to land right in Red Square. He circled several times trying to get people to clear out so he could land, but nobody was moving. So he decided to land on the Bolshoi-Maskvorese-Rexe bridge, which is right next to St. Basil's Cathedral. His landing couldn't be hidden. A British doctor in Red Square managed to capture it on video. And it was clear. clearly seen by people in the American embassy. When the plane came to a stop, he was surrounded by people, some of whom asked him for his

autograph. When they asked him where he was from, they were shocked when he told them, West Germany. According to Rost himself, quote, people were smiling and coming up to shake my hand or ask for autographs. There was a young Russian guy who spoke English. He asked me where I came from. I told him I came from the West and wanted to talk to Gorbachev to deliver this peace message that would help Gorbachev convince everyone in the West that he had a new approach, end quote.

The event became international news almost instantly. A teenager flying a small civilian aircraft managed to land in Red Square right in the heart of Moscow. It would have been the equivalent of a Cuban pilot landing a plane on the mall in Washington, D.C. Needless to say, Matthias Roust was arrested and sentenced to four years in prison for, quote, hooliganism, for disregard of aviation laws, and for breaching the Soviet border. He was released after 14 months. Most people who heard the story at the time thought of it as an obfuscary. and quirky incident. A few days later after it was reported, the new cycle was on to something

else. However, to the Soviet military and other international military observers, it was anything other than a quirky incident. A 19-year-old German had embarrassed the vaunted Soviet air defense system. The flight became the excuse Gorbachev needed to clean house in much of the Soviet military. Many Soviet military leaders were hardliners who were resistant to Gorbachev's reforms. Days after Matthias Rus' landing, the Soviet minister of Defense Sergei Sokolov and the head of Soviet Air Defense Forces, Alexander Kuldenov, were both sacked. Within weeks, hundreds of other officers had been fired or replaced. It was reported to have been the largest purge of military personnel since Stalin. For a while, locals in Moscow

called Red Square Cherameteva 3. The joke is that Cheritiva 1 and 2 are local airports. After Roos released and returned to Germany, he wound up in trouble with the law several times. In 1989, he stabbed a female co-worker who rejected his advances and was in prison for 15 months. In 2001, he was arrested for shoplifting and in 2005 for fraud. His pilot's license was revoked when he returned to Germany, and he has never flown since. As for the plane, it was sold to a Japanese group, and in 2008 it was returned to Germany. Today, it is on display at the Deutsche Technique Museum in Berlin. The Perestroika and Glasnos reforms ushered in by Gorbachev played a vital role in the last years of the Soviet Union.

Those reforms which played a huge part in the collapse of the Soviet Union were in no small part helped along by a Cessna flying West German teenager. Everything Everywhere Daily is an airwave media podcast. The associate producers are Thor Thompson and Peter Bennett. Today's review comes from listener CMA8 over at Apple Podcasts in the United States. They write, thank you. What an amazing thing. Freaking amazing.

Well done. Come to New York City and dinner's on me. Thank you. Please keep making these and make as many as you can. Well, thank you very much, CMA 8, or should I say, Country Music Association 8, or maybe it's Cleveland Museum of Art 8. As long as people keep listening, I'll keep making them. And by the way, I'll be in New York and Midtown Manhattan from January 25th to January 28th. And I like steak. Remember, if you leave a review or send in a question, you two can have it read on the show.