I didn't say anything to Jackie. She was already paranoid about the Russians, worrying they would kidnap me if they found out who I really was. I thought she was nuts, but Floyd had planted that seed by remarking to her that he was surprised the Air Force had allowed me to go. I knew too much as a test pilot and TAC squadron commander. "Goddamn it," she said, as a couple of Russians in uniform approached our airplane in the wind and rain "I'm not gonna let you out of my sight." But the next day we flew into Moscow, and as soon as we landed Jackie was swept up in flowers and formal welcomes and whisked away. The rest of us had our passports taken away. They also took away our airplane; we wouldn't see it again until we left the country three weeks later. Meanwhile, the Russians made such a fuss over her, and she kept all of them hopping by changing schedules and adding dinners and receptions, that it was easy for me to go unnoticed, while passing myself off as her hired copilot.
I forget how many countries sent delegations to the convention, but she entertained them all. When she ran short of money, she wired her New York bank to send more via the American embassy. Those poor gals in her entourage could have used ten more in help because Jackie fired off as many phone calls, cables, and letters daily as our embassy down the street. Being a perfectionist, Jackie was stuck in the wrong country. The Russians did things their own way, and she was usually hopping mad. I'd try to get her mind on other things.
One day as we were leaving the hotel I teased her: "Hey, Jackie, did you know you had bow legs?"
She stopped in her tracks. "I do!"
"Yeah, I m surprised I never noticed it before." There really was nothing wrong with them, but for days afterwards I'd crack up seeing her sneak looks at her legs.
The Russians found out who I really was at their official banquet at the Kremlin. All their aviation honchos attended, and I sat across from Colonel Mikoyan, their chief test pilot, whose brother Arem designed the MiG, and whose father Nikolai was Soviet foreign minister. Ol' Sergei Mikoyan overheard somebody say "Mr. Yeager, please Pass the vodka," and perked right up. "Yeager,' he said, "the test pilot?" I admitted it gladly because up to then Russia had been a boring experience, mostly tagging around after Jackie, and I almost welcomed being kidnapped if it would be interesting. Mikoyan became very animated and pointed me out to the people with him. He introduced me to Andrei Tupolev, their famous bomber designer, and said, "We must meet and have a long talk."
The Russians sent a car for me the next day, and we met at an ice-skating hippodrome, not far from the Kremlin. There was a conference room upstairs with Kvass, their bottled soft drink, next to each chair at a large table. There were two guys with Mikoyan, "colleagues," he said. I noticed that every fifteen minutes one or the other of those two would get up to go to the bathroom-changing the tape in their recorders.
I was amazed at how much Mikoyan knew about me, even that I had test flown the MiG 15 at Okinawa. I told him, "Yeah, when I dove that thing, I sure wished you people had learned about a moving tail." He laughed. "My God, you actually dove in it? Anytime that nose dropped, my heart would stop."
It was interesting for me to learn how little flying time their test pilots logged compared to someone like me, who flew anything and everything all the time. Their total flight time wasn't a tenth of mine. But ol' Mikoyan was surprisingly knowledgeable about our new airplanes and their systems. He knew, for example, that I was leading a squadron of F-100s and began pumping me about its range and performance, and I told him only what had already appeared in Aviation Week. He was really eager to learn whatever he could about the F-104, our Mach 2 fighter the so-called missile with a man in it, and the sumbitch actually knew that I had done the military test flying on it. I said, "Colonel, as long as I'm in your country, how about giving me a ride in your new MiG 21?" He laughed. "Colonel, I will do it if you give me a ride in your 104."
At one point, he became very confidential and asked me what we were doing about trying to solve the problem of engine compressor stalls-shock waves forming inside the engine, causing flameout. The way he asked it was clear that they hadn't solved it, and I wasn't about to tell him that our engineers had. I just looked mournful the way he did. When I left I kind of searched myself to make sure my own pocket wasn't picked, that I hadn't accidentally told him something valuable. I was sure I hadn't, and those two tough-looking guys with him did not seem very pleased.
I never did get to ride in any of their military airplanes, but Tupolev and Mikoyan staged a dinner in my honor, and many of their top pilots and brass attended. Pilot talk is pilot talk the world over, and a lot of those guys had flown against the Germans in World War II, using our lend-lease airplanes. We had given them the good ol' P-39, the airplane I had trained in, and which, alone in our squadron, I had really enjoyed. So, we swapped P-39 stories, and they were delighted that I had flown hundreds of hours in an airplane they loved. They sure as hell didn't think we had sent them a dog.
Jackie had a half-promise that we could fly out of Russia via Siberia, over the Aleutian chain into Alaska. She wanted to end up at her California ranch and that route would save us three thousand miles. But as the time came to leave, the Russians changed their minds. Jackie was a tough old tiger, and she snarled and snapped at a couple of high-ranking Soviet generals to the point where I got nervous. Civilians just don't yell at generals and call them idiots. I grabbed her and took her aside and whispered, "Shut up, damn it, before they fly you to Siberia, not over it." But they did give her permission to fly out via Rumania. By then, I think, they were just glad to see the back of her. When we got to the airport, the KGB were crawling all over our airplane. They even took off some outside panels-looking for stowaways, I guess. They never did find my film and cameras.
A few days later I got some great shots of a MiG base as we were letting down over Sofia, Bulgaria, and that evening, I met most of those MiG pilots at the home of one of our embassy people. That's when I learned that a drunken diplomat is a bigger pain than hemorrhoids. Our guy laid on the vodka to loosen the Russians, but succeeded only in hammering himself and became obnoxious. He told the Russians, "I've seen you guys fly, and you're really not much. Colonel Yeager can take on six of you at once and wax you right out of the sky." Those Russian pilots plonked down their glasses and left without saying so long. I didn't blame them. Jackie was livid and I'm sure she complained about the diplomat's performance as soon as she got back. The guy was a fool, and a potentially interesting evening was ruined.
The next day was Jackie's turn to play the fool. She almost got herself clapped in prison. She wanted to fly on to Turkey, but the Bulgarians and the Turks are not exactly kissing cousins. Both countries prohibit direct flights, and the Bulgarians told her, "You can't go into Turkey from here. They won't permit it." Jackie picked up the phone and got a call through to the Turkish air force Chief of Staff, a pal of hers, and said, "Will you please tell these idiots that I can come into your country from anywhere?" Unfortunately, the Bulgarian air marshal understood English well enough to know that being called an idiot was not something he'd take from his wife, much less a rich American woman. If the guy had been carrying a pistol, I really thought Jackie would've been blasted. The air marshal snarled at her, "Madam, you have exactly one hour to leave this country. And you will fly via Yugoslavia." I got us the hell out of there.