Soviet Jets Part II

In this installment, we join Alec and his happy-go-lucky friends just as the thick-necked security guard has swung back the heavy door, allowing them entrance to a world of strange, hulking machines …

And lo, we beheld before us a smorgasbord of Soviet air power: Deflated tires, detuned rockets, smashed-in canopies, old leather seats littered with beer cans and bird shit. Rotors sagging under their own weight, the helicopters hunched in pucker-lipped silence like grandmothers over their walkers. The red stars painted on their sides had been washed down to the initial layer, resembling more closely a zit-faced kid’s still-sticky models than the actual air machines of of the other world power. Rocket pods grimaced at us from beneath cutaway wings like overgrown, roid-raged cheese graters.

Engorged on the passion of the moment, the glint of ancestral battle lust in our eyes, we gave free freign to the greedy, kid-on-Christmas-morning impulses that suddenly arose from within, straddling rockets, swinging apewise into cockpits and gleefully pounding control panels as we counted down to liftoff.

Then the real fun and games ensued, namely an Ultimate Frisbee match across the razor’s edge field of jet wings.

And ladies and gentleman, up next for your viewing pleasure this evening, the Siberian twins with their boisterous backflip and cartwheel routine!

And for the day’s final crescendo, a sunset like blood and milk …

Gettin’ your kicks on Soviet jets

Moscow’s Khodynka Field is famous as the place where well over a thousand people were trampled to death at the coronation of Tsar Nicholas II in the panic that followed the rumor there might not be enough beer for those assembled there (damn, that rumor still incites widespread panic even today). There’s not much there now except for a parking lot … and a strange assemblage of Soviet military hardware.

Listen up, kids — this kind of thing doesn’t happen in America or Europe: A completely unsupervised collection of Soviet air power, Hinds and MIGs, relics that once hunted down Afghani goat-herders now at your disposal for war games and stupid pictures.

We approached with slight trepidation, in light of the hulking military hardware, sitting silent like a more sinister version of the elephant graveyard in “The Lion King.” Suddenly, we heard the ping of bullets hitting metal as a tween in fatigues unloaded his clip in a burst of automatic fire …

Turns out they were just playing a little strikeball around the old helis. We asked this bright-eyed youth how we might enter the compound. Then thick-necked security guard, roused from his vodka- and salted fish-induced stupor, ambled up to the fence.  After a fair amount of grimacing and hushed conversation, he beckoned us inside, to a world of wonders …

To be continued …