Chernobyl disaster remembered - Tony Cunnane's Afterthoughts

Written on 17 March 2011

Like almost everyone around the world I imagine, I’ve been watching the TV coverage of the Japanese earthquake, tsunami and nuclear power station tragedies – and  especially today’s images of helicopters pouring water onto the ‘leaking’ reactors. There is little I can add to what has already been said and written but I thought you might like to read a short anecdote from my time with the Royal  Air Force Red Arrows when, in 1991 just a few days after the Soviet Union had been broken up, I met a very senior Russian Air Force General who had had a very special role during and after the Chernobyl accident.

In the late-1980s, 2-star General Nikolai Timofeyevich Antoshkin was Commander Kiev Military District and he was in the Ukraine throughout the Chernobyl affair. The Chairman  of the Kiev Military Division State Commission had summoned General Antoshkin on 26 April 1986, the day of the Chernobyl accident, and had told him, "Everything depends on you, the military. The crater in the damaged reactor must be sealed with sand."  What was not clear was the answer to several important questions. What was the  level of radiation above the reactor? Could men work there safely? How could they be protected?

"Antoshkin flew himself several times around the reactor in his helicopter", reported an article in Krasnaya Zvezda  (Кра́сная звезда́, literally "Red Star"), the official newspaper of the Soviet Ministry of Defence, a copy of which was given to me  by a visiting Russian officer to RAF Scampton in 1991 who knew I could speak Russian. "The general convinced himself there was only one way to deliver the sand – to hover over the crater at a height of 200 metres, open the helicopter doors, glance  into the throat of the crater and aim the sand into it. Dosimeters in the area had gone off the end of the scale. Antoshkin and his crews dropped 50 tons of sand on the first day alone and soon he had 60 of his helicopters operating over Chernobyl."

On the morning of 1 May 1989, just four days after receiving his orders, General Antoshkin had reported back to the Chairman of the State Commission that the reactor had been  sealed. The General then went home to see his wife but it’s reported that she barely recognised him. In those five days he had, apparently, shed tens of kilograms of weight. It took six months for his blood count to return to normal. Some months  later he was made a Hero of the Soviet Union and promoted to Lieutenant General. It was only then that General Antoshkin and his wife and two children were able to move out of the cramped single-roomed apartment provided for a two-star general by the Air Force and into a rather larger apartment.

When the Russian Air Force jet formation aerobatic team the Russian Knights (Russkiye Vityazi - Русские Витязи) came to the UK in 1991 to visit the RAF Red Arrows, they were led by General Antoshkin, by then Commander of the Russian Air Force. To everyone’s amazement, and not least our own Commander-in-Chief, General Antoshkin climbed nimbly down from the single seat of the leading SU-27 fighter-bomber and greeted our Commander-in-Chief, Air Marshal Sir John Thomson, warmly.

"Russian fighter pilots do not fly in transport aircraft", he said in excellent English, beaming broadly at the assembled VIPs and media.

What a splendid sound bite to start the visit!