Originally Posted by NickLappos
Gorgan described the look of the reactor area as he approached after dark, having been scrambled with his baby, the massive Mil 26. He saw a shimmering beam of blue light extending upward from the exposed reactor core playing on the low clouds like some eerie Hollywood opening. He told me that the radiation in the cockpit was so bad that the digital watches on their wrists stopped. Once he told his CP to turn off the TV tube in the center console because it was so very bright and his CP told him, "It has never been on!" On the first few missions, they got sunburned on the backs of their legs and derriers due to the radiation piercing the aluminum of the aircraft, so they sat on lead sheets afterward. Greschenko paid with his life, having succombed to Lukemia after a struggle with transplants and treatment in the US (organized by my friend Cap Parlier, the project pilot on the Apache.) Gorgan gave me a bottle of Russian Plum Brandy which was reputed to help flush the body of radiation - I still have it, in rememberance. It has a tiny cartoon of an atom on its inscrutable Russian label.
That is about the most humbling thing i have ever heard.
Mart