Quoted Text
Quoted Text
Quoted Text
The Viggen made a "half-roll" 500m over the ocean.
You mean a split S?
A Split S is impossible for a Viggen at 500 ft. He probably just rolled inverted and the Soviet pilot lost the plot.
Swedish pilot-lingo commonly uses the word "halvroll" instead of Split-S. The Soviet pilot could have misjudged the situation based on the assumption that the Viggen could not perform this kind of maneuver at such a low altitude so he may have thought "If he can do I can do it too" so he followed along and then he died.
A Split-S is indeed impossible for a Viggen at 500 feet but now we are talking meters and 500 meters is 1640 feet
pdf in Swedish about the incident:
https://www.flygtorget.se/illustrationer/fil_20110110093819.pdftranslation (with some minor mistakes) by Mattebubben
found at
https://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?p=2601647"DEADLY DRAMA ABOVE THE BALTIC SEA.
In the Summer of 1985 a soviet Su-15 crashed in international waters of the coast of Liepāja in Latvia.
Now 25 years after the tragic incident, Viggen Pilot Göran Larsson is able to tell what really happend that day.
The Pictures where taken with Larssons own handheld camera and where taken when one of the Su-15s linked up with him during the first encounter (of the day)
And it shows a SU-15TM with the code Yellow 36.
(now onto the main text in the article)
The Cold war had moments when things became hot.
The incidents along the borders between the East and the West were many and included plenty of incidents over the baltic sea,
The strip of water that in communist propaganda was known as The sea of peace.
For the Alliance free Sweden, With its location right between the two it was natural to have a strong presence
(in the baltic) both to guard its neutrality and to gather information.
On sunday the 7th of July 1985 Millitary command South sent an order to the Standby Reconnaissance division (Martin Red)
Stationed at the F-13 base at Bråvalla just off the town of Norrköping.
Naval Units of the Warzaw Pact where conducting an exercise in the Southeastern part of the baltic sea and the First Division of F-13
was given the mission to keep an eye on the fleet. (First Divison at the F-13 "Fighter wing" was Reconnaissance and was nicknamed Martin Red and the Second Division was made out of Fighters and was called Martin Blue)
This type of mission was for its time a relatively common affair.
But this mission was fated to be one of the more Dramatic ones.
Martin Red 03 (third aircraft of the red division) was a SH-37 that is the Ocean Reconnaissance / Strike Variant of the Viggen.
The Aircraft Took of from the main base with Captain Göran Larsson as Pilot.
After about 35 Minutes of flight Larsson came in contact with the Ships of the exercise just short distance outside Soviet Territorial Waters.
(Sections made out of Quotes From the Pilot starts and ends with - )
-The Russian met me instantly.
A Pair of Su-15TMs (Nato Code Flagon F) made up the welcoming party.
I Focused on identifying the northern section of ships.
It was spread out with a few kilometers between the different units (ships).
So there was a bit of turning.
One of the russian stayed with me while the other stayed back slightly (Larsson reports)-
Meetings with foreign aircraft above the Baltic sea were not uncommon.
But to have them following closley for a prolonged period while at the same time trying to gather information and photograph as a part of the
Reconnaissance mission could be both strenuous and and annoying.
Larrson made a number of manuvers but the russian showed no tendency to want to leave the swedes wingtip.
Larsson got out his handheld camera and photographed his companion, A Flagon F with the Id marking Yellow 36.
The Warsaw Pact exercise contained a large number of ships spread over a large area.
To Document them all on a single slight proved hard,
so Larsson decided to split the task into two flights.
He returned to the homebase to refuel.
Turnaround went quickley and effectivley.
Larssons second Reconnaissance flight started late on the afternoon.
The Aircraft was still "Martin Red 03", and was unarmed and equipped with a Reconnaissance camera on the right belly pylon. (Cheek/belly pylon)
-The second flight started silent since he wanted to avoid having company.
Those on the other side listend to our radio traffic and could through that calculate when we took off.
After reaching the ocean i got down to 150m.
I had neither Radar or Radio transmitting.
I crossed Gotland in line with Slite (town on the northeastern coast of Gotland)
and just outside swedish territorial waters i turned to a direct easterly heading.-
The Flightpath then followed Latvias and Lithuanias coats towards south and southwest.
From Groundcontrol Larsson was once again notified that Russian fighters again had started from Vaiņode in Latvia.
Just before 1800 Göran Larsson made a Radar run on the naval base at Liepāja (using his Radar to map the port and ships).
After that he Turned North to finish the documentation of the ships in that section.
Radio Communication with ground controll was impossible due to the low altitude and long distance.
It was therefore routine to have Swedish fighters at high altitude close to Gotland.
They acted as Relay stations / overwatch and could act as backup if needed for missions like these.
And thats where the warning came from: "Fighters Northeast, distance 50 kilometers".
About 3 minutes later the soviet interceptors arrived.
The 54th Fighter Regiment used the same two Su-15s that had been used to watch him earlier that day, but this time their roles where changed.
-It was the nr.2 that came up and joined me this time.
We spun around some but then i needed som space to work.
I thought he should give up and that this dancing would have to end-.
To understand what then took place its time for a short presentation of the actors.
The Viggen was for this period a potent and manuverable combat aircraft.
And the Ocean Reconnaissance SH 37 variant was perfect for a mission like this.
And here the plane was also in the hands of a skilled and experienced pilot.
Larsson knew his aircraft well and how he far he could push it.
Thats the key to success when it comes to pushing man and machine to the limit.
The Su-15 Flagon F was a Twin engine interceptor mainly designed for high altitude interception of bombers flying at high altitude.
The Flagon was still dangerous in other situations but its preformance was in no way optimised for low altitude dogfights.
From encounters with Su-15s above the baltic the swedish airforce observed that the Flagon F normally carried full weapon loads made out of 2 radar guided and 2 ir guided missiles
and sometimes including a cannon gunpod on the belly pylon.
Larsson told of a large amount of turning on low altitude loops and barrel rolls.
And at all time the russian pilot remained in open formation about 50m away.
Finally the swede decided to get rid of his stubborn follower.
- I started a Split S maneuver at about 500 meters of altitude.
The speed was between 550-700 km/h and the G-load was high-
When Larsson completed the maneuver and leveled out at about 100meters altidue ha saw in his mirrors how the russian pilot instead of
realising his airplanes limitations surprisingly attempted to follow him in the split S manuver.
Unable to save his aircraft he continued towards the ocean surface.
-I saw him coming with the nose high and falling with wind vortices coming from his wings.
He hit the water about 200 meters behind me.
I could not see a parachute or ejection.
The water plume was followed by an explosion and a massive fireball.
the four live missiles likely enhanced the effect.
The Tragedy was a fact.-
Larsson quickly decided to abort the mission and to get back to base as quickly as possible.
He turned northwest and started accelerating as quickly as possible and reported the situation to ground controll.
-When i turned towards Gotland i saw the other Su-15 at about 5 kilomiters away.
He was turning towards me.
I activated the afterburner and accelerated to mach 1.1 or about 1 350km/h.
I tried to stay at 50 meters but it became harder and harder as the aircraft started to buffet at speeds above mach 1 at this low altitude.
When my RWR reported that the russian had locked me up i turned off the afterburner and tried to turn to see behind me but i was unable to due to the high speed-
The swedish fighter pair that had acted as radio relay above Gotland turned southeast to assist their colleague and to make their presence known.
The russian pilot abandoned the chase after a minute or two and returned to the scene of the accident.
Its not hard to understand Larssons worry over the results of his involvement to this incident.
Even during the return to the homebase he was thinking of how to formulate the report of the incident.
It was important to not be to generous when it came to details on how everything happend. (dont understand that line but did my best in translating it =P )
He started by writing a report that was routine for observations of foreign aircraft.
personnel from the millitary section of the intelligence service then interviewed him about the incident.
He was also called to the Cheif for the southern flight command (head of the airforce units stationed in southern sweden)
to report the chain of events.
Even if some manuvering was not out of the ordinary when it came to encounters with foreign combat aircraft the directives was that it should be avoided if possible.
So in order to not give away the character of the advanced flying that had preceded the incident a more "neutral" version of the incident was
chosen for the public reports/interviews.
When Larsson was called to the commander before the interviews he was told we are just gonna say what we came here to say we dont want a circus out there.
After the incident the Radar stations reported that the remaining Su-15 had stayed in the area of the crash
for about 40 minutes before returning to base at vainode.
Search and rescue from both the naval and airforces of the warsawpact nations in the area conducted a search of the area during that evening and the following 2 days.
During the following week soviet aircraft at several times sent up aircraft to intercept foreign aircraft (both nato and swedish aircraft)
but at no time did they go into close contact and it seemed like they deliberately stayed at a distance of about 30km.
It allso appears that it was not untill the 12th of July (5 days later) that Su-15s resumed normal interception mission again after the incident.
The accident was noted by swedish media.
The then commander of the swedish airforce General Sven-Olof Olson said sweden could only commiserate (think thats the right word) what had occured.
Other then that there was no contact between sweden and soviet about the incident.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
There is the translation.
Are also a few pictures in the PDF both photos taken from the cockpit by the pilot of the Viggen aswell as some other pictures / charts.
I think the Translation came out ok but boy is it more difficult and takes longer then one might expect xD.
Please point out mistakes in the translation and misspelling so it can be corrected. "
