How a defecting Soviet pilot showed the US the MiG-25 was a paper tiger
And no, this story doesn't involve Clint Eastwood.
http://www.autoblog.com/2016/09/07/defecting-soviet-pilot-mig-25-paper-tiger/The Cold War was a scary time. Yeah, we know, we didn't actually need to remind anyone of that. But part of the reason it was so terrifying is because of stuff like the Soviet Union's MiG-25. While it was a high-speed interceptor, it was less than useless in a dogfight and didn't have enough range to make much difference. But the West didn't know that.
After a series of encounters that at one point showed a mysterious fighter screaming over the Mediterranean at a reported speed of Mach 3.2 while flying at 63,000 feet, the US believed the Soviets had built some kind of monstrous super fighter. Until a Soviet pilot defected 40 years ago, yesterday. The BBC has the story of Flight Lieutenant Viktor Ivanovich Belenko and the mysterious MiG-25....
