Where is Matthias Rust's 172?

[Squawk7777]

Always wondered! What did the Russian, errr Soviets do with it? Did they scrap it? Put it on display (can't think of any suitable title :D ) or return it to Germany?

As far as I know general aviation was almost non-existant in the former east-bloc countries during the cold war. So what happened to it? Did it become a personal transport plane for somebody?

("I can't think in feet and knots!")

7 7 7 7

[Moneyshot]

Can't answer your question but it's just occurred to me that although Mathias was a very silly boy to do what he did, this must go down as quite a heroic and skillful feat. I'm surprised that he did not get more recognition. Love to know what happened to his aeroplane. And did he ever get out of jail?

[PaperTiger]

Still crazy after all these years.....

http://www.mathiasrust.com/englisch/indexe.htm

Damn, this is good shlt I'm smokin'.

[Nightrider]

the aeroplane was returned to Germany after some time...Rust returned as well and later he worked in a hospital where he attacked and harrassed a nurse with a knife. He was sentenced and it went quiet around his whereabouts.

[newswatcher]

I have found at least one claim that this aircraft is somewhere in Japan, possibly in a private museum.

As to Mathias himself, in an article in the Guardian (21/4/2001):

"Mathias Rust, the daredevil teenage pilot who gained world notoriety for landing his single-engine Cessna plane in Moscow's Red Square in 1987, returned to the spotlight this week after years of obscurity when a German court convicted him of shoplifting.

Rust was fined £3,300 for the theft last November of a £60 cashmere pullover from a Hamburg department store, in what the judge condemned as a "brazen act".

It marked a new low in the life of the 33-year-old aviation enthusiast who was feted in the west after flying across 500 miles of some of the most heavily guarded parts of the Soviet Union in May 1987 on what he described as a "mission of peace". He was lauded too for his outlandish attempts to broker a peace deal with Soviet leaders.

Curious onlookers gathered outside the court in Pinneberg, close to Hamburg, this week to catch a glimpse of the man who, on a national border guards' holiday, landed his aircraft on the bridge behind St Basil's cathedral before taxiing on to the cobbles of Red Square next to Lenin's mausoleum.

His stunt led to the resignations of both the Soviet defence minister and the air marshal in charge of air defence command.

The judge in this week's trial paid tribute to the German, dubbed the teenage Red Baron, and said he had put on his best tie on the occasion of having "such a prominent person with international court experience" in the dock.

The conviction was the latest disaster to befall Rust since his flying feat. In 1991 he was sentenced by a Hamburg court to two-and-a-half years in prison for stabbing a student nurse who had refused to kiss him at the hospital where he was doing his civil service.

"It was then the truth emerged that he really was crazy," wrote the Hamburger Morgenpost.

Rust was given a lenient sentence for the stabbing because of the traumatic 432 days he had already served in a Russian labour camp for his flying escapade.

He was released early and later returned to Moscow, where he tried and failed to rekindle the attention he had received years before.

False rumours of his death had begun to emerge from Moscow when he reappeared suddenly in 1996 in a court near Hamburg. Although he had allegedly made a fortune from his aviation exploit, he was filing for bankruptcy, claiming he could not pay the costs of a newspaper libel trial he had lost.

Less than five months later, his money problems were apparently solved when he converted to Hinduism and got engaged to the daughter of a rich Indian tea merchant.

Rust now lives in Berlin with his wife, works in a grocery store and thinks often of his Russian adventure.

"It was as if I had reached beyond the borders of reality," he told Stern recently. "It was a once in a lifetime experience."

He no longer flies, however.

"They took my flying licence away and in order to get it back I have to prove that I'm not round the bend," he said. "I'm just not willing to do that."

[DamienB]

Hero my rosey rear. I thought it was common knowledge he was a loon of the highest order. Flying gawd knows how many miles into Russia in a Cessna at the height of the cold war being Exhibit 1 in that particular case of course!!