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On July 4, 1989, NATO radar operators spotted a slow-flying Russian fighter plane approaching the border between East and West Germany. Two American fighters based in the Netherlands were launched to see what was up with the intruder and soon reported that it wasn't an intruder at all. It was just a Russian MiG-23, cruising the skies ... without a pilot.

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"Mother Russia's never found pilots overly critical to the whole 'flight' thing."

This was a disastrous situation, not because it meant that poltergeists had finally learned how to use advanced weapons, but because it meant that this speeding hunk of metal full of explosive materials was inevitably going to crash land somewhere. And, it was already flying over a populated part of Belgium. So how in the hell did things even get to this point? Because of a pilot who gave up on the mission way too easily.

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That pilot was Colonel Nicolai Skuridin, who you wouldn't think would spook easily, considering that he was 1) a fighter pilot and 2) Russian. But shortly after takeoff, Skuridin's sense of fearlessness was tested when he heard a loud bang accompanied by a loss of speed and a sudden lack of jet-type noises coming from the jet fighter he was piloting.

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"Before I start this bad boy up, could you give me a little refresher on like ... how to fly it, and stuff?"

Now, he had a right to be nervous -- he was less than 500 feet above the ground. It might seem counterintuitive, but higher is better. If your fighter plane is going to have this kind of trouble, you're a lot better off having 25,000 feet between you and the ground, since it gives you a lot more time to think through your options. Still, you'd think Skuridin could have stuck out the situation for a few seconds, especially since he had to consider where his roaring machine full of explosives would wind up if he wasn't behind the stick to guide it.

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Instead, he ejected, floating safely to the ground. Then he watched as his perfectly fine plane soared off into the distance without him, presumably attempting to complete her mission without that yellow-bellied pilot who had been weighing her down. The noise Skuridin heard was not, in fact, an exploding engine, but an afterburner failing. A startling noise, but in no way fatal to the aircraft. A simple check of the jet's instrument panel would have revealed that the plane was perfectly flyable, and that abandoning it would basically turn it into an unguided missile.