Landings Presents: News by GA News & Flyer

Face To Face
By Michael K. Magnell

During the winter of 1982-83 I found myself back in Northwest Alaska, where I had worked as a bush pilot from the early to mid-1970s. That particular winter was a slow period for Los Angeles-based Western Airlines, with whom I had been employed as a pilot since 1976. A leave of absence was easy to obtain.

Once back in bush planes, and flying out of Nome, I began to feel comfortable and soon settled in. What I did not realize, however, was how political relations with the Soviets had deteriorated since the 1970s.

That winter I was doing a lot of flying out to Little Diomede Island in the Bering Strait, right on the Soviet border. The Siberian island of Big Diomede is only 2-1/2 miles from U.S. Little Diomede. In fact, the border runs between the two islands, which at that spot on the globe is synonymous with the international dateline.

The Bering Strait in the winter is a prime example of the arctic at its harshest and coldest. The region is usually very windy, and chill factors often reach -100°F. Under those conditions, exposed flesh can begin to freeze in less than a minute. My first flight out to Little Diomede in 1972 resulted in frostbite on the tip of my nose.

Although the land is harsh and cold, the people there are warm and friendly. Little Diomede has one village of about 150 residents who are among the most hospitable people I have ever met.

There is no runway on either Little Diomede or Big Diomede. The islands actually are little more than rocks protruding from the middle of the Bering Strait. Fixed-wing aircraft only land there during winter, when the Bering Sea is frozen. That means runway location is at winter's discretion. You land wherever Mother Nature leaves a smooth area, as huge pressure ridges of cement-hard ice form all over the Bering Strait.

Sometimes our ice runway would form right in front of the village; other years it would be way out on the border, which meant a bumpy snow-machine ride back to Little Diomede.

The bush pilots would rely on the Eskimos to check runway conditions, as large cracks would form and snow would fall, meaning sometimes a Cessna 185 on skis would serve as a substitute for a larger Cessna 207 on wheels.

I was flying from Nome to Little Diomede that winter of 1982-83 because I liked flying out there, and most of the other pilots preferred flying elsewhere. That could have been due to the 15-minute flight from the end of the mainland to Little Diomede over the ice-covered Bering Sea, with sometimes huge leads of open water or numerous polar bears roaming the ice looking for something to eat. A single-engine bush-plane flight over those conditions can seem somewhat precarious.

I was making a lot of flights to Little Diomede that winter, as we had the mail contract for the island, and everything going there in the winter goes by bush plane.

A typical flight from Nome to Diomede would take about an hour and 15 minutes each way. You would fly up the coast from Nome to Wales on the western tip of the Seward Peninsula. From Wales you would pick up a heading of 270° and if the weather wasn't bad (it was most of the time) you would see Little Diomede at 12 o'clock in 15 minutes. If there was no sighting, it was time to turn back or risk hitting the island.

In those days we had nothing by which to navigate. No Loran or GPS or weather radar in the planes, and no land-based navigation at Diomede either.

An airplane compass was all we used, and since they all read differently, we would write down the heading that last worked for each bush plane flying between Wales and Little Diomede. You would see a bunch of numbers on the left door post by the pilot's head (265°, 285°, 275°, etc.). Somehow, seeing those scribbled numbers in the cockpits always reminded me of the truck-driving job that put me through college in California.

As early April rolled around, and the open water leads in the Bering Strait became larger, it was almost time for the Eskimos on Little Diomede to begin walrus hunting in their skin boats. That particular spring the Fish & Game Department decided it wanted to monitor the hunt from Little Diomede. They hired me to fly four of their personnel to the island.

As luck would have it, the day of the charter flight was clear and gorgeous. I lined up the 207 on Runway 27 for takeoff from Nome. The wind was calm, and the flying conditions were great. It was like riding a magic carpet with a fabulous view below. Visibility was limited only by the human eye. Approaching the tin-city Wales area, I could see the western tip of the Seward Peninsula, plus both Diomede islands and mainland Eastern Siberia.

Hidden away on the Soviet side of Big Diomede, the Russians maintained a military garrison. Atop a peak that could be seen from U.S. Little Diomede, they manned a small lookout cabin. As I approached the islands, the fish-and-game personnel asked for a close look at Big Diomede.

I knew it was technically illegal to fly across the border, and I knew Big Diomede was only 1-1/4 miles across. I also knew that in the 1970s we would fly across and wave at the Soviets, and they would wave back.

So I agreed to give the fish-and-game guys a close look. As I flew by, with the lookout cabin passing by my right wing, my passengers began to laugh. Apparently a Soviet in the cabin had grabbed a flare gun to shoot towards us, but instead tripped and nearly shot himself in the foot.

About that time, however, one of my passengers in the rear of the plane shouted, "Russian helicopter on our tail!" I looked back with shock. There was a huge turbine-powered Soviet helicopter, dripping with rockets and missiles. Bearing down on us at a high rate of speed, it looked like a gladiator tank in the sky, waiting to do battle. I knew I could not outrun it, so I immediately went to METO power and headed for the border. Was I ever glad it was only 1-1/4 miles away, because I'm still convinced that pilot would have dropped our Cessna 207 if the wreckage would have fallen into Soviet territory.

I was totally bewildered by this hostility. Once back in Nome I had it explained to me why the Soviets were suddenly so testy. During the early '70s, I was told, the Cold War had eased up during the Nixon and Ford administrations. By the '80s, however, President Reagan was expanding U.S. military might and calling the Soviet Union an evil empire.

At the time, not too many people in the Lower 48 believed this story of mine, but just months later the Soviets shot down a Korean Air Lines 747 passenger jet. It wasn't a huge surprise to me.