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First Sting, russian painting
Summary
First Sting, Oil on Canvas.
In 1979, the Soviets invaded Afghanistan to protect its new socialist puppet government. The US along with the vast majority of nations condemned this Soviet attempt to extend its colonial domination. The Mujahedin, Afghan rebels fighting Soviet occupation, were ill-equipped to defeat the far superior Soviet forces. Initially hoping to tie Moscow down in a prolonged war of attrition, the US provided the Mujahedin with only limited support.
President Reagan championed the idea that if the Mujahedin forces actually defeated the Soviets in Afghanistan, the broader impact would be to stem future global communist aggression. By 1985, America’s attrition strategy gave way to a more aggressive approach intended to inflict a humiliating defeat on the Soviet Union.
The most audacious move was a 1986 decision to supply the Mujahedin with heat-seeking, shoulder-launched Stinger antiaircraft missiles. These missiles turned the tide of the war by giving Afghan guerrillas the capability to destroy their most dreaded enemy weapon in the rugged Afghan battlefield—the Soviet Mi-24D helicopter gunship. The first three Stingers fired took down three gunships. Rebel morale soared overnight. Devastating Soviet losses mounted. A Soviet retreat was within sight.
In 1988, President Gorbachev announced his intention to withdraw Soviet forces from Afghanistan. The last Soviet soldier left in February 1989. Foreign Minister Shevardnadze later lamented, “The decision to leave Afghanistan was the first and most difficult step. Everything else flowed from that.” This view implied that the Soviet defeat in Afghanistan led to the eventual fall of the Berlin Wall and collapse of the Soviet Union.
First Sting depicts the turning point in the Afghan war with the first of many shoot-downs of Soviet helicopter gunships by Mujahedin fighters armed with Stinger missiles.
It’s common to describe the Hind as a “flying tank,” but “flying infantry fighting vehicle” is more accurate. Inventor Mikhail Mil’s initial mock-up of the V-24, which would become the Mi-24, had a resemblance with the U.S. Army’s UH-1 Huey of the Vietnam era. A flying infantry fighting vehicle was a pretty radical concept—and at first, the Soviet Defense Ministry was reluctant to back the project. But Mil won over the ministry with key features: two flight crew in tandem under a “greenhouse” armored canopy and glass, accommodation for eight fully armed troops, a gun, plus rockets and guided missiles. The design of the Mi-24 is based on a conventional pod and boom, with a five-blade main rotor and three-blade tail rotor. It has retractable tricycle nose-wheel landing gear. Considerable attention was given to making the Mi-24 fast. The airframe was streamlined, and fitted with retractable tricycle undercarriage landing gear to reduce drag. The first mass-produced variants, Mi-24A and Mi-24B had significant shortcomings due to inadequate rockets. In 1973, the Shturm-V rockets were ready and the first example of the definitive Hind appeared. With its superior range, flight speed, and accuracy, the semi-automatic-guided Shturm allowed the Mi-24 to excel in the close air support role. The Mi-24V went into production in 1976, and around 1,400 examples of this and the export Mi-35 rolled off the assembly line in the decade that followed. Mi-24P was a Mi-24V with a rapid-firing twin-barrel 30-millimeter gun mounted on the starboard side of the forward fuselage instead of the four-barrel gun turret. The new version entered production in 1981 and also yielded the Mi-35P export equivalent. For customers with the money, Russian Helicopters offers the Mi-35M with night and all-weather capability and modern air-to-ground and air-to-air guided missiles. As a combination of armored gunship and troop transport, the Mi-24 has no direct NATO counterpart. Besides protecting helicopter troop assaults and supporting ground actions, the Mi-24 also protected convoys, using rockets with flechette warheads to drive off ambushes; performed strikes on predesignated targets; and engaged in "hunter-killer" sweeps. Hunter-killer Mi-24s operated at a minimum in pairs, but were more often in groups of four or eight, to provide mutual fire support.
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