When it became clear at the beginning of September that the Croatian MiG-21s would no longer take part in the Perešin commemoration at Gornja Stubica on the 15th of the month, an open day at Graf Ignatievo appeared on the agenda. Of course no MiG-21 would fly there any more either, but at the last event of this kind two years earlier two aircraft had been in the static display. As the event was also to celebrate 20 years of Bulgaria in NATO and 35 years of the MiG-29 in Bulgaria, chances were good that – as two years earlier – President and former commander Rumen Radev would attend, which would give the author the opportunity to present him with the second edition of his book with the cover picture from the air-to-air shooting 2015. So after a lecture at the Freundeskreis Luftwaffe in Dresden, the author drove to Munich airport to fly from there to Sofia and then drive on to Plovdiv.
On collecting the rental car in Sofia came the bad news: L-39 crashed during training, both pilots dead and event cancelled. Rumen Radev, by the way, had already been on site the day before the event, had flown in an American F-16 and actually wanted to attend the following day. Thus probably the last opportunity for a meeting during his term of office passed, and all that remained for the author was a visit to the museum at Krumovo, already visited many times before, before setting off on the repeatedly delayed journey home with a Lufthansa that has arrived at low-cost airline level.
The following photo report is limited to the exhibits relating to the MiG-21.
