The engines of a Soviet reconnaissance aircraft roared in the sky above the South Atlantic, taking off on a mission from the airfield in Fedotovo near Vologda. Behind them was the Cuban airfield of Jose Marti, then the Angolan airfield in Luanda. The target was the island of Saint Helena. A small piece of land, famous for the resounding fall of Napoleon. A symbol of the inevitably tragic end of any claim to world domination. Now there is a NATO base here – another such claimant. The Vologda pilots have the task of photographing it. But time after time they are haunted by some kind of weather mysticism – on the sunniest day, a cloud hangs over Saint Helena, hiding the island from the lenses. What unknown natural forces protect Napoleon’s “punishment cell”? There was much to think about during these flights.
This was told by Alexander Ivanovich Desyatov, who served in the Separate Long-Range Reconnaissance Aviation Regiment of the Northern Fleet Air Force. From 1966 to 1989, Major Desyatov, taking off from the airfield in Fedotovo, furrowed the skies over the Atlantic. The regiment was unique; there were only two of them in the entire Soviet Union, the second in the Far East. Each of these regiments controlled virtually half the planet. Fedotovo reconnaissance aircraft also flew over the Indian Ocean. Now we have to talk about this in the past tense; in 1993, the regiment ceased to exist. The reconnaissance aircraft that Desyatov flew (TU-95RC) were removed from service and sent for scrap…
They flew into the Atlantic over neutral waters, through the north, along Greenland. As a rule, there were two aircraft, each with a crew of 12 people. Their main targets were anything that floated. The pilots carried out location and radio reconnaissance, if necessary, they would descend and begin “photo shooting” the target. Once, the crew, in which Major Desyatov flew, managed to spot the newest American aircraft carrier during sea trials. The characteristics of this ship were a secret even for NATO partners, but the Soviet General Staff learned a lot about it from the very first time it went to sea. Fedotov’s aerial reconnaissance aircraft identified large naval groups of a potential enemy, new models of weapons of foreign fleets. The most important task was to study the possibilities of a covert exit of any significant NATO forces to combat areas.
Alexander Ivanovich has been to Cuba and Angola many times. Now we are thinking about what our military needed in these countries that are hopelessly far from Russia. Back then, officers did not ask themselves such questions, they simply followed orders. And now… Before our eyes, NATO has subjugated the entire world, no longer hiding its claims to world hegemony. At one time, only the Soviet superpower could resist these plans for world domination. And how it resisted. Thanks to its friends. Of course, some Kremlin old men were most concerned with the idealistic illusion of the expansion of the socialist camp, but there was another meaning in this. In order not to allow Russia to be turned into a doormat for American boots, they needed support bases all over the world – ports, airfields.
Poverty of the Country of Diamonds
Fedotov’s reconnaissance aircraft first landed in Luanda in 1977. Over the next 13 years, the regiment’s aircraft carried out 330 reconnaissance flights over the South Atlantic from the Angolan airfield. Based on the information obtained by our pilots, the Soviet government made the most important military and diplomatic decisions. Just look at the aerial reconnaissance of a large naval group of the British Navy deployed in the Falkland Islands area in 1982.
However, Major Desyatov remembers Angola completely differently than Cuba. It was a different world, alien and incomprehensible. In general, this African country remained a mystery for the Soviet people for a long time. Its riches (oil, gold, diamonds) were legendary, and the capital of Angola, Luanda, looked like a fairy-tale city on postcards – another piece of colonial paradise. It quickly turned into hell as soon as the colonizers were driven out. Angola gained independence from Portugal in 1974, and five years later it was already a completely ruined country. Previously, the Portuguese squeezed all the juices out of the blacks, but they fully maintained the entire infrastructure. The Angolans, who did not know how to do anything themselves, paid a very high price for freedom.
Desyatov had seen enough of the devastation: high-rise buildings with non-working elevators, piles of abandoned vehicles. If the engine of the newest car wouldn’t start, it was simply taken to the dump, although there might be a breakdown that could be fixed in a minute, but they didn’t even try to open the hood. Our people ate only what was brought from the USSR. First, all the food disappeared from the Angolan stores, and then the stores themselves disappeared as unnecessary.
As for socialism, even the rulers of Angola had a very vague idea about it. They had no time for “building a just society.” The attitude of this country towards the Soviet Union was like the behavior of a naughty girl who first ran away from nasty adults and now whined: someone has to feed her.
Our people understood all this perfectly well, but the position of a superpower obliged them: the port and airfield in Luanda, given over to the Soviet military, allowed them to control the entire South Atlantic. Airplanes with stars on their wings cut the sky over NATO bases, blocking the routes of American ships, ruining Western plans for the creeping conquest of the planet.
Soon a civil war broke out in Angola: the ruling MPLA party was opposed by the terrorist organization UNITA, financed by the West. UNITA was actively advancing. At any moment, the “partisans” could appear in Luanda. Alexander Desyatov recalls this turbulent time: “Shooters in the city showed where they could shoot from. At night, barrels were rolled out onto the landing strip to prevent landing troops from the air. There was a large landing ship and a submarine in the port, with whose crews we communicated. One naval officer told me that during his watch he periodically threw grenades overboard to prevent any unnecessary scuba divers from swimming there. Saboteurs were constantly expected. Our sailors lived on ships and almost never went into the city.”
Aleksandr Ivanovich recalls that contacts between Soviet officers and Angolans were not welcomed. Such communication could well have destroyed the beautiful constructions of our propaganda about “brotherly assistance to the freedom-loving people of Angola.” Brothers… Once Desyatov spoke in Luanda with a correspondent from Izvestia, who had traveled all over Angola. The journalist had seen enough… The savagery of the tribes living in the center of this “fairytale country” far exceeded our ideas about primitive society.
Even the security of our airfields consisted exclusively of Cubans who fought on the side of the Angolan government. The Cubans were closer in development to the Russians. There was no direct ban on Soviet officers communicating with the local population, but it was almost impossible to communicate with them. The pilots sometimes went ashore and helped the natives who lived in the coastal village pull the seine. They communicated with the black fishermen using gestures, and it was easy to divide the catch: the Angolans took the edible fish for themselves, and the Russians took the exotic but inedible specimens. Then each pilot tried to make a stuffed pufferfish for himself as a souvenir. It is very beautiful, but incredibly prickly. Like Angola itself…
