Holy crap. A 787 with those low hanging engines. WOW. Offloading a cargo hold with a forklift brings back memories. That’s old school. Those people have to know what they’re doing or they will seriously damage a plane.
The good old days; getting 4 or 5 crew behind 463L pallets loaded with nuclear warheads and launching them from the C-141 ramp onto the waiting arms of a 10k forklift. 
(Note to reader: this is forbidden and if I had been looking in that direction during the operation, I, as a safety officer, would have immediately stopped the practice). Sometimes I had to have the situational awareness of a WWE referee to get anything done.
Git 'er done!
An important, albeit utterly unofficial DoD motto.
BTDT have the ribbons to prove it.
My apologies if I mentioned this before about the ME-262 but if you look in the front of the engine there is a pull handle about the size of a lawn mower start handle. Yes, that’s exactly what it is. A pull start to a 2 cylinder piston engine that is used to start the jet engine.
Did they think the bears hauled off the engine, wings, and tail assembly and then stripped out the interior?
Nope; vultures did it. Scavengers gonna scavenge.
Viktor Belenko has died:
I have a book about him on my shelf. His personal story and what we learned from his MiG-25 were really interesting. I always laugh thinking how he must have startled the bejeezus out of the Japanese - landing his fighter at a civil airport and then firing warning shots in a reflex action to keep the airplane safe.
Soviet-era Russian men don’t have a great life expectancy even when they spend much of it in nicer environments.
I met him once. Story here:
A long time ago, in an industry far far away from aviation, I worked with a number of people who had left the Soviet Union. They all seemed to go through a similar process, but how they ended up varied.
It was a lot like that Robin Williams movie Moscow on the Hudson. We would take them to a supermarket for the first time and they would seem alternately baffled and suspicious that it was some sort of propaganda tool. “No no, take me to REAL store.” They all tried to bribe police officers if they were pulled over while driving, and most had very harsh views on homosexuality.
We found they either tended to flourish in the new freedom they experienced, or were scared and unable to cope (to say nothing of just being in a new country and not speaking the language). And there were a lot of drinking problems, irrespective. So if Belenko made it to age 76 I’d say that’s not bad, considering.
In skimming through the book today I laughed again at some of the information that came up in the debriefing. One conversation went like this:
US Agent: What’s your max speed in the MiG 25?
Belenko: Mach 2.5
Agent: We clocked one in Egypt going over Mach 3.
Belenko: Oh yes, that guy. You can do that ONCE.
I read his book, “MiG Pilot”. It was really good. I liked the part where after he defected he thought the grocery store he was shown was propaganda, a ‘Potemkpin store’ because he couldn’t believe that such varieties and quantities of food were just available for anyone to buy.
His defection broke the spell of the MiG-25 being this super advanced machine. It wasn’t all that.
This. Western defectors to the SU had the same challenges. It truly was a Stranger in a Strange Land scenario far more so than today.
I deeply admire the bravery needed to unequivocally and irreversibly turn your back on everything you find familiar. The process that took you there from “ordinary citizen” has got to be horrific. To say nothing of the crash engagement awaiting you on the other side.
that was quite a plane in it’s day. Powerful engines, powerful radar
It could reach Mach 3.2 but that would damage its engines so it had to fly slower (still fast though) and it did not have look-down, shoot-down radar.
Yeah. Largely a one-trick pony which was mostly a Potemkin village. Not really much a a dangerous weapon system at all.
But the USA whipped itself into a frenzy of fear over the damned thing. How much that was cynical exploitation by the industrial half of the military-industrial complex and how much was intelligence agency fear mongering is still very much an open question.
And not one either side is keen to examine further. Allow no light in upon the budgetary gravy train magic.
I heard the MiG-25 was fast, but couldn’t maneuver… making it virtually useless in the real world.
Yes but it comfortably flew at Mach 2.5 and had a good climb rate. It . It wasn’t an F4 Phantom but was also not something to be ignored.
They likely feared US development of supersonic bombers.
It was an interceptor only (chasing bombers). It was never meant as an air-to-air fighter (although I am sure the Soviets were happy to let the US think it could do that too).
Mistakes were made:
They collided midair and one crashed into the water while the second landed safely at Essendon airport with two people – including off-duty Qantas captain Joanne Mein – on board.
The business was created for the TV documentary Any Fool Can Fly, which is yet to air, according to the show’s website.
I can’t tell if the surviving plane was piloted by a student, but the one that crashed had an experienced pilot.