Orion Intercept

June 3, 2013, French Mirage intercepts a Russian Ilyushin Il-20 "Coot-A" ELINT over the Baltic Sea. 

The Russians and the Europeans are always playing cat and mouse games with surveillance aircraft. Sometimes they get pretty close to each other.

Norwegian AF P-3B Orion. Compare tip of lower left blade of closest prop with tip of upper right blade.

    On the 13th of September 1987 a Norwegian AF P-3B Orion flying over the Barents Sea was intercepted by an Soviet Su-27 flown by Vasiliy Tsymbal at an altitude of 13,000 feet. The Orion was from Andøya Air Base, the Su-27 was from Kilip-Yavr Air Base.
    The Orion is an American four engine propeller driven aircraft used for electronic surveillance and anti-submarine operations. The Su-27 is a Russian supersonic jet fighter. At 13,000 feet, the air is breathable, barely. AOPA says "Sure, everyone knows that you have to use supplemental oxygen if you fly more than 30 minutes at cabin pressure altitudes of 12,500 feet or higher. That at cabin altitudes above 14,000 feet pilots must use oxygen at all times."

Model of Su-27 Flanker - 'Red 36' - as flown by Lt Vasily Tsymbal by Flankerman
Note the damaged tip of the left tail fin.

    Tsymbal made a couple of close passes without incident. The third time he went below the Orion. When he pulled away, the tip of one of his two vertical stabilizers hit the prop of the Orion's outboard starboard engine, breaking an eleven centimeter long piece off of the tip of one of the blades. The broken piece punched a hole in the Orion's fuselage which caused it to lose pressurization.
    None of the crew were injured and the Orion made it safely back to Banak Air Base.

Brazilian Orion

    Since this was an outboard engine it was a real fluke that the piece that broke off hit the fuselage. If it was going to hit the plane it would have been much more likely for it to hit the inboard engine, but it would have been much more likely to fly off and not hit anything at all.
    When the prop lost the tip of one blade it would have become unbalanced and started vibrating horribly. Fortunately the crew was able to shut the engine down and feather the prop, otherwise things could have gotten much worse.

Andøya Air Base (Blue), Banak Air Base (Orange), both in Norway, and Kilp-Yavr Air Base (Red) in Russia. The black, wavy line is an approximation of the Arctic Circle.

Andøya has shown up in this blog more times than I expected.

Update July 2020 replaced embedded map because Google lost it. Bad Google.