In World War II Soviet fighter pilots boasted of a maneuver called taran, i.e., ramming an enemy plane when ammunition was exhausted and parachuting out. In the absence of reliable witnesses of such tactics, Western air-force men were apt to suspect the Russians of "shooting a line." Last week a startled group of Westerners saw a Soviet pilot perform the taran and live to lie about it.
Inhabitants of the Austrian village of Pamhagen on the Hungarian border were just finishing lunch when four MIG jets came screaming across into Austria from Hungary. The two planes in front, bearing Hungarian air-force markings, were being pursued and fired upon by the two planes in the rear, bearing Russian markings. Suddenly one of the Hungarian planes banked to turn, and the leading Russian plane collided with it. The Hungarian plane crashed and exploded with the pilot at the controls. The Russian plane also crashed, but its pilot came floating down to earth by parachute. Picked up by Austrian police, the Russian pilot identified himself as Captain Nikolai Konoklov, a veteran of the Soviet air force. Calmly and confidently he told his story: he had been ordered to intercept two unidentified planes flying over Hungarian territory. The collision was an accident.
Captain Konoklov's story did not stand up to the evidence of the crashed planes, and scores of eyewitnesses who had seen the Russian seemingly maneuver his plane into the Hungarian and, seconds before the crash, hit the air in his ejection seat. Taxed with this evidence, Konoklov admitted, just before stepping back into Hungary, that he and his wing man had been chasing two escaping Hungarian pilots and, failing to shoot one down, had rammed it. The second Hungarian plane apparently got away, but where it landed (whether in West Germany or Yugoslavia) was one of the week's best-kept secrets.
For Austrians the incident dramatized the length to which their Chancellor Raab will go in see-no-evil neutrality. Why, asked Vienna's Bild-Telegraf, should a Russian who has violated Austrian terri tory, fought an air battle over it, and shot down an escapee, be surrendered with such promptness and readiness? Chancellor Raab had no good answer.