Photo: ZSU

Photo: Australian War Memorial collection

HISTORY

Blood-stained selfie

Since we mentioned the Iranian drones

let’s recall an incident briefly mentioned

in the previous part. Details about the

case which occurred on Saturday October 12 near the city of Vinnytsya when the

Ukrainian AF lost a Mig-29 surfaced only

recently. The fighter was hit by a debris

from Shahed-136 drone just shot down

and the pilot had to eject. A month later

the photograph of the pilot with blood on

his face was published and a little later his

whole story. At that time there was another wave of the Russian rockets and drones headed towards the Ukrainian cities.

The defenders dispatched Mig-29 fighters

against them. One of them was flown by

Major Vadym Vorochylov from 204th Brigade of the Tactical Aviation. His call sign

was Karaya. Those of you who are familiar

with the name Erich Hartmann do not need

further explanation on the call sign. Voroshylov had chosen it in 2014. The Ukrainian

citizens however gave him the nickname

Ghost of Vinnytsya. Contrary to Ghost of

Kiev this is a real person.

He treated his airplane as a living thing.

Talked to it and touched it so as it worked

as best as possible. His favorite was the

aircraft with bort number 10 which he flew

on about 20 combat missions and always

could rely on it. On that fateful day Voroshylov woke up at 4 am due to the air sc-

January 2023

ramble. The pilot from his unit destroyed

two Shahed in the south of Ukraine of the

first mission. Voroshylov flew the next mission. He shot down three Iranian drones

and returned to the base without any problems.

At dusk however another wave of raids

came in. Major Voroshylov took off from

the frontline airfield in the south of Ukraine

and headed towards Vinnytsya area. He

started to scan for targets and first he destroyed a drone. Then he launched a missile against another one. The drones generate rather weak thermal trace therefore

they had been attacked at relatively short

distance. So, when Voroshylov hit his fifth

drone on that day its debris hit his Mig-29

fighter as well. “It broke my windshield

and destroyed the aircraft nose” said the

pilot later. “I was not seriously wounded but the blood from my facial cuts got

into my eyes and impaired my situational

awareness. My first though was that I did

not want to eject. I saw the lights of some

Photo: ZSU

ber 11 Iranian Secretary of State admitted

the drones deliveries with the caveat they

had been done a longer time before the

outbreak of the war and the quantity was

small. According to the Ukrainians it is

another lie since the large-scale deployment of the Iranian drones in Ukraine was

confirmed by many photographs, wrecks

of the shot down aircraft even captured,

almost intact crashed UALs.

The Australian soldiers in shop up forest near Passchendaele, 1917.

This pilot shot down 5 drones in a day. He should

also be credited with two cruise missiles.

Photo: ZSU

Shot up trees near Bachmut, 2022.

Vadym Voroshylov in the Mig-29 cockpit.

INFO Eduard

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