THE SOVIET–ISRAELI WAR, 1967–1973succeeded Malashenko as the advisers’ chief of staff, listened sympathetically to the
63rd’s pleas for enhanced protection. He assigned one of the new Shilkas to each of
the Foxbats, which were housed in the corrugated-iron sheds used previously by the
Tu-16s (later they were moved to underground concrete shelters).
The Foxbats were painted with EAF markings, but the substandard paint obtained
for the purpose would burn off from the heating at peak speed and expose the more
durable red stars. The pilots came under enormous stress, and would be soaked with
sweat under their G suits—one explanation for their relatively large number in pro-
portion to the aircraft. The cockpit canopy too “got so hot that it could not be
touched and the glass would begin to melt.” This had required the design of a cooling
system based on pure alcohol; periodic changes of this fluid would soon provide the
crews at Cairo-West with occasions for revelry. Also, “a problem arose about heat-
resistant bombs and missiles. It was solved quickly and thank goodness, our interna-
tionalists did not have to use the new developments”—another confirmation that the
RBs were armed and prepared to attack Israeli targets.
Once assembled, the MiG-25s were to be tried out by test pilot Vladimir
Gordienko, who had put them through their trials at the Gorky factory. However, a
hitch was caused by the Soviets’ penchant for secrecy. “We learned suddenly,” Baevsky
recalled,
that the Eg yptian SAM crews defending the base had never seen a MiG-25, and showing
them one either in flight or in pictures was not approved. ... Every takeoff and landing had
to be protected by our MiG-21s, and SAM crews had to be warned that “unidentified”
planes flying in these formations must not be shot at.Finally, the SAM crews around the field were replaced by a Soviet brigade, whose
headquarters now doubled as the Foxbats’ command post. When in November 1975
the Soviets were reported as “delivering Foxbat aircraft to the Libyans,” Sadat was
skeptical: “when four Foxbats were stationed in Eg ypt, the Soviets never let the
Eg yptian pilots near them.”^12
Gordienko made the first test flight on 26 March, six more within a week, and a
total of nineteen test flights on the 63rd’s four planes.^13 But before he had even begun,
the secrecy was blown: Baevsky was called from Moscow to explain “who had autho-
rized flights and how a photo, supposedly of our plane in air, got into a local [Cairo]
newspaper with the plane’s specifications.” In this photo, it was labeled “Foxbat” and
ascribed a speed of Mach 3.2—well over its top velocity at the time. “My reply was
brief: ‘We have not yet flown; the photo was evidently made during the demonstra-
tion at Domodedovo on 9 July 1967.’”
Still, it took a while for the 63rd’s arrival to register with US or Israeli intelli-
gence—or for their governments to admit it. It was only on 24 March that the daily
reports in the Western press about the flow of Soviet munitions to Eg ypt first listed
“crates of unidentified equipment” as part of “an accelerated Eg yptian campaign to