Ingush ace 01. Part 2

By Vestnik Kavkaza

See part 1 http://vestnikkavkaza.net/articles/society/40228.html

Most of all Sulambek Oskanov loved the sky, especially in the moment of take-off when a pilot gets an additional portion of adrenaline merging together with an aircraft and feeling happiness because the plane obeys him. He made hundreds flights and always fulfilled aerobic flights perfectly.

“What we call “emergency in air” can turn into anything at all – broken equipment when one doesn’t know where, with what speed and at what height he flies; a broken engine’ a fire aboard and many other emergency situations. Pilot sometimes has few seconds for making a right decision, or even a second. This is a second between life and death,” Oskanov taught.

On February 7th, 1992, Sulambek had to fly one of the best fighters in the world MiG-29. It was a night flight to train a fight in clouds. Sulambek liked night flights: “A flight in the night sky is a charming picture of admiring the universe. You understand what is infinity and God’s world there.”

Oskanov set into an aircraft and started the engine, told the control center that he was ready for the flight. A commander of the control center responded: “O One, cleared for take-off. Have a nice flight!” Sulambek destroyed a maneuver enemy, reported that he fulfilled the task and came back to the airfield, but suddenly he earthed out. The pilot didn’t respond to the control center. The deputy commander of the center immediately gathered a council. When the aircraft fuel must run out, they still hoped that Oskanov ejected. Nobody could think the ace would fail…

Rescuing helicopters were searching for him the whole night. In the morning aircraft wrecks were found in 61 km from Lipetsk. According to the black box, the aircraft was in air for 2.5 minutes after earthing-out. The pilot tried to cope with the broken fighter, but the aircraft was losing altitude. Why didn’t the ace use a parachute and save his life? Oskanov could do it, but there was a residential area below him; and if the aircraft had crashed on a village, people would have died. Sulambek took the aircraft away. He was 49.