“Gentlemen, if I could have your attention.”
Irv’s pilots and senior maintainers were gathered in the briefing room of the base headquarters building, next to the Groom Lake mess hall. On the front wall behind Irv were dusty green chalkboards, and through the long side windows the men could see the fire station and the original U-2 aircraft hangars, built nearly 20 years earlier. A large communal coffee urn burped quietly in the corner, and most of the men held a Styrofoam cup in their hand.
Their informal posture and easy confidence lent a ragtag uniformity to the group. They were wearing a mix of flight suit colors and coveralls, reflecting their various military and civilian backgrounds. Haircuts varied from tight brush cuts through to the ponytails and beards of the civilian maintainers and Lockheed contractors. Irv’s hair was thinning on top but flowed over the tops of his ears and into full black sideburns.
He pointed to Kaz and Sascha, sitting in the front row.
“You’ve no doubt heard the scuttlebutt that the Russian pilot of our newly acquired MiG-25 might be joining us here at the Ranch. I’m happy to report that those rumors were true, and he’s here with us today, and for the next few weeks.”
Over lunch, Irv had quizzed Sascha about his flying background, and now he beckoned the Soviet to come stand beside him while he summarized it for the group.
“He’s a combat veteran, a top test pilot holding several world records, and he did much of the developmental work on the Foxbat and other Soviet fighters.”
The room was quiet as each man closely inspected the Russian pilot facing them. Normally, any Soviet would be treated as a nonspecific but hated enemy. The crowd was reserving judgment.
Thompson had briefed Irv on the CIA’s ground rules, and he laid them out now for the team. “No need to get into the politics of why he’s with us, or what our spooks in Washington’s plans will be for him in the future. For now, we have daily access to the rare asset of a deeply experienced MiG flier. I want us to squeeze everything we can out of the opportunity, while at the same time welcoming a newcomer into our little flying club.”
Irv smiled. “Let me introduce Colonel Alexander Abramovich. Call sign, Grief.”
There was an uncomfortable tension when no one spoke in response to the introduction. Grief’s eyes flicked around the room, making contact.
Irv continued. “Alexander is still learning English, so the USAF has thoughtfully provided an interpreter.” He nodded towards Bill Thompson, who raised his hand and waved. No need to announce that he was CIA.
“We also have Navy Commander Kaz Zemeckis with us, acting as our MiG pilot’s liaison with Washington. Zemeckis is no slouch either, a Pax River test pilot, currently detailed to NASA.”
Kaz half turned in his chair and nodded at the group.
“My plan is to tap all of Abramovich’s expertise. He’ll be in one of the offices out at the Red Hat hangar for full-time engineer access, as we finish jet reassembly and get into the engine and taxi tests. For the pilots, he’ll be evaluating and helping rewrite our systems books and checklists, as well as available for any of your questions that come up. We’ll get him kitted out and flying back seat in the T-38 chase plane ASAP.”
Irv smiled again. “Zemeckis, Abramovich and Bill Thompson here are already set up in their trailers, but they have a lot to learn about Ranch life. I’m counting on you to indoctrinate them on our little slice of Americana, starting tonight.” There were matching smiles around the room. Men had been living and working at Groom Lake long enough for it to have developed a distinctive lifestyle. And since funding came through largely unseen black sources, the spending on keeping the troops happy could get lavish.
Irv turned to the Soviet. “You have anything you want to say?” Thompson quickly stood to translate for the group.
Sascha spoke in measured Russian. “Thank you, Colonel Williams. It is very good to be amongst pilots again, after all the intelligence debriefings.” He shrugged. “I’m ready to go flying.”
The strangeness of the situation echoed in a protracted silence. The foreign sound of the Russian words clashed starkly within this purposefully secret corner of America. Kaz decided to help break the ice by asking a fighter test pilot question. “Sascha, why don’t you tell the group about your record-setting altitude flight in the MiG-25?”
The Russian shrugged again. “It was not a complicated flight. We stripped the jet of everything it didn’t need, to save weight.” He smiled slightly. “I even took my winter jacket off and emptied my flight suit pockets.”
He closed his eyes, picturing the cold Moscow day.
“We loaded just enough fuel for the flight profile, and I took off into a good wind, staying in full afterburner. I pulled up immediately into a big half-loop, leveling off at ten kilometers, accelerating straight ahead to just under Mach 3. Then I pulled back at three g to set seventy degrees nose high, and just let it climb.”
He paused. The room was silent as the men imagined what the power of that flight profile would have felt like.
“When the air got too thin, I shut the engines down to keep them from overheating. Eventually I peaked out at a little over thirty-seven kilometers.” He repeated the math conversion that he’d done for Kaz. “Over 120,000 feet.”
There were whistles of amazement. A few of the test pilots had taken a rocket-powered F-104 to nearly that height, but this Soviet flight had been done using regular, air-breathing engines—in a jet like the one that was being reassembled in their hangar.
One of the pilots asked, “When you shut the engines down, did the cockpit hold pressure?”
Grief nodded. “I was wearing a pressure suit, as usual, but the engines kept”—Thompson stopped him, to confirm the correct word—“windmilling, enough to spin the compressor and hold cabin pressure.” He decided to add a boast. “The MiG-25 regularly flies at 25,000 meters—80,000 feet. It needs a good pressure system.”
A second pilot raised his hand. “How did the jet behave in the very thin air?” The USAF had had to install small hydrogen peroxide thrusters on the wingtips and nose of the rocket-powered F-104 to allow the pilots to keep it from tumbling.
“Like a truck. The big twin tails were enough to keep it flying straight.”
Kaz looked around the room. Now, instead of suspicion on these faces, he saw engaged curiosity. Irv caught his eye and nodded as the group peppered the Soviet with ever more detailed questions. Some of them were going to be flying this airplane and had realized that his experience was invaluable.
When the questions started getting too specific, Irv raised his hand.
“Guys, we don’t need to solve all the problems right now. This afternoon we’ll get our pilot set up at the hangar, and tomorrow morning we’ll do a detailed walkaround of the new jet together.”
He pointed out to Kaz and Grief the men he’d put in charge of the various tasks such as checklist development and aircraft systems manual writing. He singled out a pilot with a flattop haircut and dark complexion, seated in the front row. “George, once we get these two settled, I want you to brief them on the local flying area and procedures.”
Captain George Claw nodded. He was a USAF test pilot and had flown at Edwards and Groom Lake for several years. “Will do, Boss.”
Irv looked around the group, and then at the Russian. “Good to have you amongst us, Alexander. We’ve got ourselves a new jet to fly. Let’s all get at it.”
Late that afternoon, Kaz, Grief and Thompson sat in a small room at the Red Hat hangar. The walls were papered with topographic and airspace maps, and George Claw was pointing to a government drawing of the Groom Lake facility itself, spread on the table in front of them.
“Field elevation here is 4,500 feet. It gets very hot in the summer, so we have an extra-long runway to allow for the thin air.” He tapped the center of the paper. “The main part, next to the base here, is concrete. But as soon as we get to the edge of the lakebed itself, the runway transitions to asphalt, poured on the salt pan.” He spread his fingers along the map to show the extent. “The concrete’s 8,600 feet long, with a 5,500-foot extension on the lake. So, 14,000 feet total available, one of the longest runways in the world.” He looked at Thompson. “Is he okay with feet and miles?”
Grief nodded without waiting for the translation. Numbers were just numbers.
Claw pointed at the Groom Lake salt flat itself. “The lakebed serves as an emergency landing strip too. It’s what initially got the attention of the Army Air Forces when they set up shop here and on other lakebeds as auxiliary airfields during the war.”
“Which war?” Grief interrupted.
“World War II,” Claw answered. When Thompson translated it as “the Great Patriotic War,” Grief nodded at the more familiar Soviet name.
“Even though it’s a desert, we occasionally get rain, and then the low part of the lakebed, here”—he indicated the center of Groom Lake—“gets too wet to land on for a while. But the edges stay dry and hard.” He glanced at Grief, who nodded.
Claw stood and walked to a wall map. “This is the flying area.”
It was a typical topographic rendering, with brown shading for dry areas, green-blue for wetter valleys, and yellow for urban buildup. Las Vegas was a yellow blotch to the south, with a pale-green finger following the Pahranagat Valley up to the east. In the center was a black square surrounding the white circle of Groom Lake. Narrow contour lines showed the elevation changes, getting closer together near cliffs and steep valleys. The jagged hills surrounding Groom Lake stood out clearly.
Claw pointed at the central black square. “This is Restricted Area 4808A, our little piece of the big 4808 flying area that covers most of the Nevada Test Range. We call it the Box. For obvious reasons.” He pointed to the left, where cross-hatching on the map marked other oblong squares. “Those are R-4807 and 4806, and we need special clearance from Nellis Control to fly in there.”
He reached towards the large pie-shaped area that covered the right half of the map. “That’s the MOA.” He pronounced it mo-ah. “The Military Operating Area, our main flying airspace. In there we’re cleared supersonic with no altitude restrictions, right down to the surface, and up to outer space.” Claw smiled at the Russian. “Or at least as high as your MiG-25 can get us.”
Grief got up and approached the map, peering closely at small numbers printed in various locations. “Those are frequencies?” he asked, with Bill translating.
Claw nodded. “Yep. We use UHF and VHF.” He glanced at Thompson. “Ultra High Frequency and Very High Frequency.” He looked back at Grief. “In the MiGs I’ve flown, you have UHF only.” He raised an eyebrow.
“Yes, we use UHF for radio communications,” Grief confirmed. “In the MiG-25 we also have HF for long-range when needed. Our civilian airliners use VHF.”
“Same here,” Claw answered. “But since we’re so close to Vegas, there’s lots of civilian traffic skirting the edge of our airspace, so we use both in the jets that have it.”
The Russian ran his finger across the wall chart, tracing the blocky, irregular crosshatched outline of the R-4808 airspace to the southwest. “This is your nuclear test range?”
The question startled Kaz, Claw and Thompson. Nobody had mentioned the true purpose of the area west of Groom Lake. But on reflection, no real surprise that a Soviet MiG-25 pilot would know about it.
Kaz answered, “Yes.” As a postdoc analyst in electro-optical sensing in Washington, he’d studied the Soviet equivalent nuclear range via space-based photographs. “Similar to your facilities in Semipalatinsk.”
Grief looked back at him, expressionless. Semipalatinsk was not publicized or well-known, even in the Soviet Union.
Points taken by both men. Strange new world.
George Claw reached into a wooden tray by the door and pulled out two stiff, pale-blue pages, postcard-sized, covered with dense printing, and handed them to Kaz and Grief. “These are the pilots’ frequency and airspace summary sheets, for when you go flying.”
Kaz scanned the names and numbers, flipping the card over to see the condensed map on the other side. It had been a while since he’d flown in an operational test unit, and he was looking forward to it. “Thanks,” he said. He looked up at their host. “Claw is an unusual family name. Where’s it from?”
George Claw smiled. “I think part of the reason Irv asked me to brief you on the local area is that I’m originally from near here.” He pointed at the upper-right corner of the wall map. “My family is native to the southwest, up towards Four Corners. The Navajo people. My dad served as a code talker in the war.” His smile broadened. “The Japanese could never figure out what messages my dad and the others were passing on the radio. He was a Marine, and their work helped take Iwo Jima.”
Grief had been looking closely at the summary card, comparing it to the wall chart, ignoring the side conversation. Thompson, sensing his distraction, had ceased to translate.
Now Grief turned to Claw, pointing at a sequence of numbers on the card, and then back at the wall. “You have a frequency wrong.”
The American frowned, and then looked back and forth, comparing. “Heck, you’re right. We must have transposed those two numbers.” To Grief, he said, “Impressive you caught that.”
Grief nodded, once. He took flying seriously, expected accuracy and loathed incompetence. Small mistakes killed test pilots.
Kaz thought, not for the first time, It would be a mistake to underestimate this man.
He glanced at his watch. “George, how about we go see the other MiGs, and any other planes Sascha and I might have a chance to fly in while we’re here?”