On the Fourth of July 1989, two American F-15 pilots on alert in the Netherlands were scrambled to intercept an intruder crossing into NATO airspace. What they found was a real Soviet fighter, deep over Western Europe — with no one flying it.

It became one of the strangest and saddest episodes of the entire Cold War: the ghost flight of a pilotless MiG.

The pilot who left too early

That morning, Colonel Nikolai Skuridin took off in a MiG-23M from Bagicz air base near Kolobrzeg, Poland. Seconds after lift-off, at only about 150 metres, the afterburner cut out and he saw smoke. Convinced the engine had failed and the jet was going down, he ejected.

He was wrong. Lightened by the loss of the pilot and heavy ejection seat, the MiG stopped descending, pitched up, and climbed away on its own. Its engine settled at reduced power, its autopilot held a steady heading, and the unmanned fighter set off west at around 170 knots — straight toward NATO.

“No pilot!”

The MiG crossed Poland, East Germany and into West German airspace at 35,000 feet. USAF Captains J.D. Martin and Bill Murphy of the 32nd Tactical Fighter Squadron — the “Wolfhounds” at Soesterberg — were launched to intercept. When they slid into formation, they realised the canopy and the pilot were simply gone.

Ground controllers refused to believe it. As Murphy recalled, the pilots had to repeat the impossible report over and over — a canopy-less, seatless, pilotless Flogger cruising through NATO’s heart — before anyone on the ground accepted what they were hearing.

A terrible ending

As the MiG finally ran its tanks dry near 40,000 feet, it began a shallow descent toward the French-Belgian border. The Eagle pilots were even cleared to shoot it down — but only if that would cause less harm than letting it fall. They judged it would come down short of the city of Lille, in open country, and held their fire.

The MiG glided down in an eerily perfect gear-up attitude and struck a house in Bellegem, near Kortrijk, Belgium. Inside was 18-year-old Wim Delaere, who was killed. A Soviet fighter had crossed a continent on its own and taken an innocent life at the end of it.

Colonel Skuridin, who had ejected believing his aircraft was doomed, was devastated when he learned what it had done.

The incident laid bare an uncomfortable truth of the late Cold War: a genuine Soviet fighter had penetrated NATO airspace, been intercepted by its best interceptors — and there was still almost nothing anyone could safely do about it.

Sources: Steve Davies & Doug Dildy, F-15 Eagle Engaged (Osprey); Wikipedia (1989 Belgium MiG-23 crash); The Aviation Geek Club; War History Online.