Viktor Belenko, 76, defected with MiG
On a clear late summer day in 1976, a plane popped up on the radar just off the coast of the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido. It had been flying a mere 100 feet off the water, low enough to avoid detection. Now, suddenly, it climbed up to 20,000 feet. Clearly, the pilot wanted to be seen.
The aircraft flew toward the southwestern port city of Hakodate. It circled the airport twice, then prepared to land. The plane, identifiable now as a Soviet fighter jet, nearly collided with a 727 airliner as it touched down. It plowed past the end of the tarmac, blew out its front wheel, and came to a stop not far from a busy highway.
As ground crews rushed toward it, the plane’s canopy opened. A sturdy blond man emerged with a gun and fired two shots in the air to warn onlookers away. When authorities arrived, he climbed down to meet them.
His name was Lieutenant Viktor Belenko. He was there to defect, he said, along with his jet, a supersonic interceptor called a MiG-25. The plane had stoked fear among Western militaries for years. Now, thanks to Lieutenant Belenko, they had a pristine specimen to examine. George H.W. Bush, then the director of the CIA, called the incident an “intelligence bonanza.”
Lieutenant Belenko, who went on to settle in the United States, died Sept. 24 at a senior living center near Rosebud, a small town in southern Illinois. He was 76. His son Paul Schmidt said his death, which was not widely reported at the time, came after a brief illness.
Lieutenant Belenko was the flower of communist youth. Born into proletarian poverty, he had worked himself up through the career and party ranks to become a member of the country’s elite Air Defense Forces, a separate branch from the Soviet air force that was charged with defending the motherland from attack.
But along the way he became disillusioned with the Soviet system. He had been promised material rewards for his hard work; instead, despite his elite status, he felt he was being treated like an expendable cog in a creaking war machine.
He kept his doubts to himself — so much so that in the early 1970s he received the choicest of assignments: to train on the MiG-25, one of the Soviets’ newest weapons.
He had plotted his escape for months, waiting until he and his squadron went on an unarmed training mission over the Sea of Japan, putting him close to freedom and rendering his colleagues unable to stop him.
After he landed, Japanese officials handed Lieutenant Belenko and his plane to the Americans. The plane was dissected and analyzed before being returned, in pieces, to the Soviets, a few weeks later. Lieutenant Belenko received asylum, then flew to the United States to be interviewed.
Viktor Ivanovich Belenko was born Feb. 15, 1947, in Nalchik, a Russian city in the foothills of the Caucasus Mountains.
His father worked in a factory, his mother on a farm. Even by Soviet standards, they had very little money. But Viktor applied himself to his studies and to his Communist Party activities, becoming a member of the Young Pioneers, a youth group that trained future party members.
He had little idea about life in America, except that it had to be better than what he encountered in the Soviet Union.
Congress passed an act in 1980 to give Lieutenant Belenko citizenship. Eager to escape attention, he took the surname Schmidt and moved around often, mostly living in small towns across the Midwest.
His marriage to Coral Garaas ended in divorce. Along with his son Paul Schmidt, Lieutenant Belenko leaves another son, Tom Schmidt, and four grandchildren.