Antonov Design Bureau - Tony Cunnane's Life and Times

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Antonov Design Bureau

Also in the line up when we arrived at Borispol were a large number of other military personnel and a delegation from the Antonov Aircraft Design Bureau based at another airfield close to Kiev. The Antonov design team whisked the Hercules crew off almost immediately for a trip in the Soviet equivalent of the Hercules, an AN12 transport aircraft which they had specially flown in for the occasion.

Wing Commander David Guest, the Captain of the Hercules, spent much of the hour-long trip at the controls of the aircraft and he reported later that he found it unsophisticated compared with the Hercules. They flew 180 kms to the north of Kiev to take a close look at the still very hot nuclear power station at Chernobyl before returning to Borispol.

They then all moved from the AN12 to the Hercules for another familiarisation flight which ended with the Hercules’ speciality, a tactical short landing. The Antonov crew were most impressed.

In the meantime the Red Arrows pilots were airborne in an MI-8 helicopter for a survey of the display site at Chaika on the other side of Kiev. After that we were all taken to an air force briefing room to do some pre-flight planning for the air displays. The walls of the room were covered with charts and diagrams comparing the Soviet fighters with equivalent NATO fighters.

Whilst the diagrams had obviously not been put up for our benefit, no attempt was made to hide them. One of our pilots was caught surreptitiously trying to take a photograph of one of the posters while others clustered around him but one of the Ukrainian pilots merely smiled and indicated that there was no problem photographing anything we wanted - so I started taking my own photographs.

The data on the charts was accurate as far as it went and clearly showed the superiority of many of the NATO aircraft over their Soviet equivalents.

Eventually, just as everyone was beginning to feel rather tired and grubby, we boarded a fleet of luxury coaches for the long drive into Kiev city centre, with yet another police car with flashing lights leading the procession. Our hotel, the Libyed, was located right in the centre of Kiev, one of three major Intourist Hotels in the city. It was a fine hotel by any standards and would probably rate 3 or 4 stars from the AA or RAC.The two air displays by the Red Arrows took place at Chaika, a small grass airfield about 10kms NW of the city centre, used mainly by the Soviet equivalent of our Air Training Corps as a flying club and for model aircraft flying and go-kart racing. To get to Chaika from Borispol took the Red Arrows 7 minutes and involved flying at low level over part of a magnificent forest, past the enormous and imposing Mother Russia statue, across the river Dnieper and around the northern outskirts of the city.

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