THE SOVIET PRESENCE IS FORMALIZED AND EXPANDEDattack during the 1956 Suez–Sinai campaign; a specimen and/or operators would
have been prize trophies for the Soviets. No Russian claim has emerged that one or
both of these airmen were captured, but since such a claim was made in a later inci-
dent, this case also merits further research.^79
E. Cairo-West becomes a Soviet airbase
Two days later, the active-duty, late-model Soviet Air Force Tu-16s that Nasser had
requested landed at Cairo-West. Although this had not been the Soviets’ preferred
option for an overt air presence, they made the most of it. This time, the ten bombers
kept an intentionally high profile—keeping close formation “as in a festive flypast,”
which was indeed headlined in the West as “Russian H-Bombers over Cairo ... [for
the] First Time outside East Bloc.”^80 For the formation’s leader, the “legendary”
Lt-Col. Aleksandr Shmonov, this was by way of a homecoming : in 1962–3, he had
led a group of fifteen Soviet pilot-navigator teams stationed at Cairo-West who flew
bombing missions in Yemen and Saudi Arabia. In that little-noticed precedent for
direct Soviet intervention in a Middle East conflict, “the crews were mostly mixed.”
Their formation was sometimes commanded by then-Col. Husny Mubarak, a gradu-
ate of the Soviet pilots’ training center in Ryazan’.^81 A few days before Shmonov’s
squadron landed, Mubarak had been appointed head of the EAF Academy, and in
1969 he would be promoted to air force chief of staff. Soviet advisers who met him
in the coming years noted both his “almost-unaccented” Russian and his friendly
attitude, including personal gifts.^82
This time, journalists were invited to witness the Soviet planes’ arrival, including
Novosti’s Egorin, who recorded that General Riad delivered a welcoming speech.
Shmonov—by now an Honored Pilot of the USSR—responded, and “a formation of
our soldiers ... accompanied him with cheers of ‘hurrah!’” This guard of honor high-
lighted the changes that since June had effectively transformed Cairo-West into the
first of several Eg yptian airbases under direct and complete Soviet control—as Nasser
had promised. The visiting pilots were still impressed by the partial blackout at night
and the runway patched from Israeli bomb damage, with wrecked planes still visible
on both sides. But as Egorin noted,
our transports and other planes took off and landed at will. Not far from the runways
stretched military towns with their usual routines of reveille, morning calisthenics and so
on down to evening jaunts, when their marching song echoed over the Sahara: “here’s the
military post box number for you, my dear!”The Novosti writer also
happened to visit the area earmarked for our advisers’ quarters ... They acted as if at home,
and had hung up a banner [in Russian] over the entrance: “Excellence in preparation for
combat and in political action is your duty.” The internationalist colonels and soldiers were