Category: A Victory!
Flying an airplane is an acquired skill. The baseless claims of snooty aviators like me notwithstanding, piloting an aircraft is within the capabilities of most normal people. Taking off, flying about, and then landing safely is no great chore.
However, making that machine do exotic things or traversing enormous distances without running out of gas does take a little talent. Most of this talent is developed as the result of structured repetition and training. And then there was Matthias Rust.
Matthias Rust was born in June 1968 in Germany. At age eighteen, Rust took flying lessons and learned the rudiments of piloting a Cessna 172. As soon as he could solo, Rust struck out in search of adventure.
As a pilot myself, I really am impressed. With minimal experience, Rust took his rented Cessna all over the continent. For two weeks, he puttered across northern Europe, even venturing out over the ocean and landing in Iceland. I have flown for decades myself, and I would be slow to fly a single-engine airplane out over the frigid North Atlantic heading for some big honking island I couldn’t see. Regardless, Rust did just fine. Then, on 28 May 1987, Matthias Rust decided to take his aviating to the very next level.
This Guy Was Nuts…
When Rust undertook his fateful mission, he only had about 50 hours total flight time. He rented a Cessna 172P with German civilian registration D-ECJB and removed the spare seats.
These he replaced with extra fuel tanks. At around noon, Rust took off from Helsinki-Malmi Airport in Finland, claiming to be heading to Stockholm. Once airborne, he nosed his little airplane eastward and switched off his radios.
Finnish air traffic controllers were actually following his progress fairly closely. Rust’s plane fell off radar near Espoo, and ATC initiated a search. A Finnish Border Guard patrol boat found an oil slick, and divers were dispatched to search for what was left of the German teenager. Meanwhile, Matthias Rust was actually winging his way toward Moscow.
Soviet Air Defense Forces detected Rust and his Cessna just as they should have. The 54th Air Defence Corps requested permission to engage the little plane with surface-to-air missiles but was denied.
A pair of MiG-23 interceptors was launched and identified the plane as a target. They also requested permission to fire, but were denied. Apparently, at some point Rust actually landed someplace in Russia and, of all things, changed his clothes.
The Cessna popped in and out of Soviet air defense radars. He was alternately mistaken for a small civil aircraft and a military helicopter. Around 1900 that evening, Rust was finally flying over the city of Moscow.
A Grand Entrance
Rust’s plan, such as it was, originally had him landing on the grounds of the Kremlin. However, this seemed too isolated once he could recon the space, so he indexed to Red Square. He circled the square several times but decided there were too many pedestrians for him to land safely. He therefore elected to set down on the Bolshoy Moskvoretsky Bridge near St. Basil’s Cathedral.
Curiously, there would normally have been an impenetrable array of trolleybus wires draped across this space. However, these cables had been removed for maintenance that very morning. They were scheduled to be reinstalled the following day.
The German teenager landed without incident, taxied some 100 meters, and then shut down his airplane. Curious Russians greeted him warmly and asked for his autograph. It took a further two hours for Soviet authorities to arrest the kid.
Rust was convicted of hooliganism, whatever that is, and was sentenced to four years in a forced labor camp. However, he never quite made it to the camp. Rust remained in custody at the infamous Lefortovo prison in Moscow. He was released the following August as a goodwill gesture amidst a general thawing of relations between East and West.
The Aftermath
Lots of high-ranking Russians got fired for allowing a German teenager to land a Cessna in Moscow. Mikhail Gorbachev actually used this pretense to rid the Soviet military of several hardliners who were resistant to his peace overtures.
As a result, Rust inadvertently helped usher in the eventual fall of the Berlin Wall. Rust’s family sold his story to Stern Magazine for 100,000 DM. However, throughout it all, Mathias Rust never was quite right. Journalists of the time described him as, “Psychologically unstable and unworldly in a dangerous manner.”
Rust’s plane was eventually placed on display in Japan before ultimately finding a forever home in the German Museum of Technology in Berlin.
In November of 1989, a female co-worker spurned Rust’s romantic advances, so he stabbed her. This bought him a 15-month prison stay. He has since converted to Hinduism, become engaged to the daughter of an Indian tea magnate, and been convicted of shoplifting. In 2009, he was making his living as a professional poker player.
As of 2012, Matthias Rust worked for an investment bank and taught yoga on the side. He claimed at the time that he intended to form a yoga school in Hamburg. I was unable to ascertain whether or not he actually pulled that off. Sometimes reality is way weirder than fiction.
In the Belly of the Beast
I’m surprised, but pleased:
Second Amendment Advocates Score Victory In New Jersey
An initiative spearheaded by the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms (CCRKBA) and the New Jersey Firearms Owners Syndicate (NJFOS), with the robust backing of the National Rifle Association Institute for Legislative Action (NRA-ILA), has seen Englishtown, New Jersey, pass a resolution to refund the municipal portion of permit to carry fees to applicants.
This success marks the beginning of a concerted effort by the three organizations to replicate the refund resolution across the entire Garden State.
At the heart of this movement are New Jersey’s current permit-to-carry fees, which stand at $200. A significant $150 of this fee goes directly to the local municipality.
Critics argue that a negligible amount of these funds actually covers the administrative costs of issuing permits, strongly suggesting the fee is “strictly punitive in nature” and designed to discourage citizens from exercising their Second Amendment rights.
This is in New Jersey!
Americans love football. In fact, they love the gridiron game so much, they’re even ready to play (and watch) football in a combat zone. On January 1, 1945, American troops based in Italy did just that.
Now, this isn’t the story of some pick-up game played by a group of G.I.s during a brief respite in a rest camp or in some secluded area near the front. This is the story of the Spaghetti Bowl, a full-on, full-contact, football extravaganza with all the ceremony and celebration found with any major bowl game played on New Year’s Day.
The U.S. Army announced it and promoted it. Then, the German Luftwaffe heard about it, and threatened to find the stadium and bomb it. Teams from the US 5th Army and the US 12th Air Force played it. And by the time it was done, more than 25,000 officers and men enjoyed every block-and-tackle minute of it.
Really Away Games
As far back as 1918, football travelled with American troops when they deployed to Europe. As the ranks of the American Expeditionary Force (AEF) began to swell during the summer of 1918, football teams started to form at American bases in Western France. By the fall of that year, American football was played in front of sizeable crowds of enthusiastic Doughboys, dismayed French and British allies, and some confused German prisoners.
After the Armistice in November, American units began to move into Germany for duty with the Army of Occupation. By late January 1919, U.S. troops were playing football in divisional grudge matches in several locations in Western Germany. Photos show the teams equipped with proper uniforms, including leather helmets and pads of the era.
In those days, before the birth of National Football League, the jerseys were without numbers — and helmets were optional. Even so, goal posts were erected, fields marked with chalk, and gentlemen officers enlisted as referees. In one game near Coblenz in early 1919, a Signal Corps observation balloon was anchored near the corner of the field and a camera crew filmed parts of the game from on high. In another game, a balloon featured in the halftime entertainment as a daredevil U.S. Air Service officer jumped out, landing safely on the field by using an early parachute.
Including several aspects of the game we take for granted now, American football kicked off in Germany in the winter of 1919 — long before the first NFL regular-season game in Germany (November 13, 2022, as the Tampa Bay Buccaneers beat the Seattle Seahawks 21-16). American troops even took a football with them to Northern Russia during their intervention there in 1918-1919. Hazy photos show the boys blocking and tackling in the receding snow near Archangel in the spring of 1919.
By the time the United States entered World War II, football had grown into an American institution. The college game was dominant, but pro football was advancing as the NFL picked up steam. Football was quickly becoming America’s favorite pastime.
Once America joined the war and the draft was fully enabled, the U.S. military was populated with athletes — high school, college, and professional football players traded their leather helmets and jerseys for steel pots and fatigues, and their cleats for Army boots. But it wasn’t long before American football games broke out in some of the most unusual places. The Marines played football in Australia. The U.S. Army Air Forces played ball in China. The Army and Navy fielded teams in England, North Africa, India, Italy, and by the fall of 1944 Americans were playing football in France.
The large concentration of American troops in England and Ireland before the invasion of Normandy led to multiple teams and several knock-down, drag-out grudge matches. In November 1944 an Army versus Navy matchup (featuring a wide range of former college players) was played for the “European Championship” (called the “GI Bowl”) drew nearly 50,000 fans to a London stadium. Army won that game, but big-time football was just getting started in the ETO.
The Spaghetti Bowl
As the calendar changed to 1945, the war still raged in Europe. By January 1st, even as American forces were steadily pushing back the German counter-offensive in the Ardennes forest, the war was far from won. In Italy, the fighting was a slow, bloody slog in the mountains. Germany still needed to be beaten on multiple fronts, and it would take a maximum effort in the New Year. Keeping up morale was critical. American commanders in the MTO planned a football event to equal the annual New Year’s Day bowl games played stateside. The result was the iconic Spaghetti Bowl.
Despite maintaining the game’s specific location as a military secret, the event was still promoted, and G.I. fans were recruited and given brief leave to Florence to attend. Media reports noted that a German broadcast said the Luftwaffe called it “a great opportunity to bomb Florence”. P-38 Lightning fighters patrolled the skies overhead, in case the German air force decided to drop by. In the end, no Nazi aircraft made it to Florence for the game.
The AP’s Sid Feder wrote before the game, in a syndicated column coming from “Spaghetti Bowl Headquarters, Italy”:
“In a modern stadium that would make a lot of graduate managers back home green with envy, the Fifth Army “Krautclouters” and the 12th Air Force “Bridgebusters” today tangle in what is billed as the “first and last” Spaghetti Bowl game. The name of this town, where between 25,000 and 35,000 assorted soldiers and WACs are going to hold down benches is “unmentionable”, because Jerry hasn’t been invited — and isn’t wanted. It’ll be a battle of two undefeated clubs for the simple reason neither has yet played. It all started with a challenge the 12th Air Force tossed at the 5th Army…”
Teams were drawn up from the deep football assets of the 5th Army (the “Krautclouters”) and the 12th Air Force (the “Bridgebusters”), with proper uniforms provided. The Army team was coached by Lou Bush, who had starred for the University of Massachusetts, while the 12th Air Force was led by George “Sparky” Miller, who had played and coached at Indiana University. Both rosters were full of experienced players, many from major colleges and a handful with pro experience.
Captain for the Army team was former Philadelphia Eagles tackle Cecil Sturgeon. Ultimately, the star of the Spaghetti Bowl had pro football experience, but not in the NFL. John “Big Six” Moody had been an All-American at Morris Brown College, and had played professional football as recently as 1943. Moody played for the Los Angeles Bulldogs in the highly-regarded Pacific Coast Football League (1940-1948) — which featured black players while the NFL was segregated until 1946.
Moody, a 230-lb. fullback/linebacker was a powerful force throughout the game — scoring two touchdowns (one rushing, one on a long interception return) and kicked two extra points to lead the 5th Army in their 20-0 victory. A New York Times account of the game described Corporal Moody (of the 92nd Infantry Division) as a “one-man army”. After the war, Moody played for a short time with the Montreal Alouettes of the Canadian Football League. In 2022, he was inducted into the Black College Football Hall of Fame.
Conclusion
For the more than 25,000 U.S. troops in attendance (plus a few interested locals), the Spaghetti Bowl delivered everything one would expect from a stateside bowl game: there were two bands, several military vehicles were dressed up as parade floats (carrying cheerleaders and two bowl queens), Broadway performer Ella Logan was on hand to sing, Brooklyn Dodgers’ manager Leo Durocher gave a speech at halftime, and lovely majorette Peggy Jean twirled her batons. Meanwhile, the USO was on hand to provide coffee and donuts. By any measure, the Spaghetti Bowl was a successful operation for the U.S. military.
Five months later, five long and awful months, World War II in Europe would be over. G.I.s like John Moody would return home as winners, but their lives would be forever changed by the things they had seen and done. Football would continue to grow in popularity, reaching unprecedented levels of media exposure and fan interest with each passing decade. And for one afternoon, in the midst of a world war, in an ancient Italian city, a modern American gridiron tradition would play out to raise the morale of young men so far from home.
From Splendid Isolation:
If you’re anything like me, you’ll be wanting a cigarette after reading this lovely little story — even if like me you don’t smoke.
An intruder who used brass knuckles to beat against a front door and break a window just before midnight Friday in Missouri was shot multiple times by the homeowner and killed.
KFVS 12 reported that the homeowner, Austin Glastetter, was in the house with his wife at the time of the incident.
Glastetter told the suspect, 31-year-old John Fisher, that he was armed, but Fisher allegedly responded by saying, “You’ll have to kill me.”
Wait, wait, hold it in for just a minute…
Glastetter then shot Fisher multiple times.
And:
The Scott County Sheriff’s Office issued a release noting that deputies arrived on the scene to find Fisher deceased.
Smoke ’em if you got ’em…