Air and Space Magazine, October, 1995

Lieutenant Colonel Manfred Skeries, 52, an intense but polite man with a hard, lined face, joined the East German air force in 1959 as a glider pilot. By the time of reunification he was a full colonel and chief of fighter-bombers. Like most officers in the East German air force, he had been a member of the Communist party. "Of all the problems of coming together, in my opinion, the biggest were ideological," he says. "First in coming to terms with the recognition that our own system and ideology had collapsed, and with that the economic and political systems.

"It was a system I had explained and defended to the troops," he continues, "as an officer of the [National People's Army] responsible for the political development of my subordinates. And that can only work when your heart and soul stand behind it. Now to understand that that was not right was the biggest problem. And it took me two or three years to understand.

"A secondary problem is the new social system, free democracy with travel, everything that comes with democracy. With distance I can see that we've gone from a dictatorship to a democracy, and it's naturally very difficult."

One odious legacy from the old system, the East German Ministry of State Security, or Stasi, returned to haunt several of the pilots. In January 1992, Germany opened literally millions of Stasi files to the public. Among the unpleasant revelations: Seven of the pilots in Fighter Wing 73 had informed for the Stasi, which was widely known for its destructive intelligence activities. A letter was sent to each pilot informing him of the allegations, and within days all seven were gone.

The Stasi outings had a demoralizing effect on the eastern pilots. "We had long discussions about it," says Captain Ronald Triegel. "Best friends for years didn't know that the other had been informing the Stasi. There was every reaction imaginable, ranging from disappointment up to anger."

Some of the western pilots expressed understanding. "If I had been a [National People's Army] pilot and the Stasi had said 'You have to work for us,' probably I would have done the same," says Captain Georg Pepperl.

The easterners also had to contend with western "know-it-alls," commonly referred to as besser Wessis. "We used to have problems at the beginning," says Colonel Klaus-Peter Stieglitz, the swashbuckling wing commander and a westerner. "More than a few western officers came to East Germany like conquerors, tried to manage everything, always had the best perspective, and could tell everyone how to run their business--and that was not the correct way. In very extreme cases, we pulled them out and brought them back to West Germany."

"There are Wessis who have their noses in the air," says Sergeant Mario Baenz, an easterner. "There are others whom you can have a good relationship with."

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But the superior attitude of the besser Wessis hasn't been entirely eradicated, at least in the cockpit. Former East German pilots were required to teach the intricacies of flying the MiG-29 to several top western pilots, who then turned around and retaught the easterners--many of whom had been flying the airplanes since they were acquired in 1988 and had even served as instructors. "It was a crazy situation," says Triegel. "To be trained by western guys was a little strange. But I couldn't change the situation. If I didn't show the proper attitude, I could be kicked out."

"They couldn't fly as well, and they could not handle the aircraft the way we thought was necessary," Stieglitz says of the easterners, with a tone suggesting that he still wrestles with the ghost of besser Wessi. "They did not fly the MiG-29 the way it could be flown, because they used a concept that did not use all its capabilities. We are flying the MiG-29 in a much broader fashion than they used five or six years ago."

To head the retraining program, the Luftwaffe chose one of its best pilots: Lieutenant Colonel Wolfgang Michalski. He developed a program of over a dozen increasingly difficult flights to help him evaluate whether the eastern pilots were capable of adapting to a western system.

"Nobody really understood why we--as the new guys--would train them on the MiG-29," says the breezily friendly Michalski, who is squadron commander. "They said: 'We know it much better because we've flown it for years'--of course not knowing that our way of flying was totally different. I heard that opinion several times. But in the air I showed them"--he pauses to chuckle--"the hard way. Although I had far fewer hours on the MiG, I was just better."

The easterners had been trained under a more rigid system in which the pilots were constrained from taking individual initiative, relying instead on standardized maneuvers and on directions from the ground. "Their actual maneuvering was more canned than we are used to," says Michalski. "We have different set-ups for aerial combat, for air-to-air maneuvering, close-in maneuvering. Within those you can maneuver as you like, whatever's tactically sound. Whereas they had more or less prescribed maneuvers which they flew. The attacker's task was basically to maintain that position or eventually come in for the shot."

For eastern pilots who were used to having their every move choreographed by ground controllers, it was not easy to adapt. "Nobody's helping him from the ground, telling him there's a target," says Michalski. "Nobody's telling where to turn to, where to go, what to switch for and stuff like that. He would be lost almost immediately in space."

Despite his experience flying MiG-15s, -17s, and -21s before being trained on the MiG-29 in Kazakhstan in 1987, Manfred Skeries is quick to acknowledge he had a lot to learn. "The philosophy with flying was so different," says Skeries, who now serves as deputy wing commander. "Fighters--from ground to employment to landing--were permanently under [ground] control. It was always centrally controlled."

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