We're flying in two of the Antonov-2 (333k .mov) "corn planes." The An-2 is a twelve- seat, single engine canvas biplane that went into production in 1947. More than 20,000 have been manufactured, making it the world's most common aircraft. In Russian they call it kolkhoznik, little collective farmer, or kukuruzhnik, little cornhusker. Aeroflot had 2,500 in service when it went kaput.
The trip is Shane's brainchild, something he came up with two years ago when the Russian arctic opened to foreigners just as the Aeroflot machinery for getting there broke down. For a long time it looked as though it would never happen. Then he met Gleb Shestakov, a brilliant young Russian currency trader in London with lots of blat who fixed him up with the former cosmonauts and jet jocks of the Federation of Lovers of Aviation, run by ex-cosmonaut Igor Volk. I won't bore you with the ups and downs, the snags and detours inevitable to business on capitalism's hottest new frontier, but the pieces fell in place one by one, and at last it looks as though it may happen. Or it may not. That's about as good as it gets.
- The Russians are a bunch of retired jet jocks and test pilots, none of them with any English, looking forward to a fishing trip. Tonight, we drank with two Yevgenis, Lakhmatov and Otryabennikov. "Never in my life did I think I might be eating little snacks and drinking little drinks with Americans," said Lakhmatov. "Always I thought I would shoot them." Senior pilot Otryabennikov, the Russian chief, smiled, downed a beer, and opened another. "Yevgeni likes his beer," he explained, "and anyway I don't think we fly tomorrow." Igor Zhdanov, who flew in Vietnam, showed us how a Russian test pilot ejects: pulling a long face full of fear and resignation, crossing himself, and gripping the rails. One of the mechanics had brought along his fifteen year old nephew Alyosha, who told us the make of every car we saw: Moskvitch, Volga, Lada, Zil, Chaika, Zhiguli.
The Westerners are Shane and me, cinematographer Dan Gillman of Hollywood (which excites the Russians, who call it "Gollvood"), Brits Ron Davies of the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum and photographer Marc Bryan-Brown, plus currency trader Gleb Shestakov of London, and his Moscow partner, Dennis, who interprets for us.
Next: The Pit of Siberia
