WEBVTT 00:00:06.253 --> 00:00:15.687 So it was like this: just before six o'clock I got the order to engage in combat. Although I received the codes, 00:00:15.687 --> 00:00:25.870 just as agreed, I simply couldn't believe it, honestly. Then they called me and 00:00:25.870 --> 00:00:32.169 the centre commander repeated the order in front of practically more than half of his staff. 00:00:32.169 --> 00:00:42.000 So most of his staff were there, I realised it was for real and that 00:00:42.000 --> 00:00:57.597 this was no joke. So off I went, at six, and at five past six I saw a small helicopter 00:00:57.597 --> 00:01:03.718 at a distance of about 2.5 km. I could guess, I knew it was some kind of 00:01:03.718 --> 00:01:10.953 Gazelle, but there are several types of Gazelles, not just one, not just the one that came down in Ljubljana, so 00:01:10.953 --> 00:01:16.861 I didn’t actually know what we were dealing with, but I tried t o shoot it down. The problem was 00:01:16.861 --> 00:01:26.348 that the hardware was not maintained and the electronics, if the contacts were bad, it does not work properly. 00:01:26.348 --> 00:01:33.208 And the missile didn't actually launch as it should, so I terminated the launch process. 00:01:33.208 --> 00:01:40.238 That was the first thing. When I was still in training to be a shooter, I worked as part of the technical team, 00:01:40.238 --> 00:01:47.091 so I had an idea of what went wrong. And then I would scratch the contacts, in fact I cleaned up 00:01:47.091 --> 00:02:01.442 those things, I replaced the energy source as it is single use in that missile, and in that moment 00:02:01.442 --> 00:02:06.000 when I stepped out of the tent that I had at the centre, these helicopters flew past, two of them 00:02:06.000 --> 00:02:14.467 arrived, first flying in parallel to the centre, at about 200-300 m as the crow flies. 00:02:14.467 --> 00:02:24.564 They were MI8 transport helicopters, transport landing for their own purposes and were seen to carry equipment, 00:02:24.564 --> 00:02:35.320 i.e. round launchers with air-to-ground missiles. On both sides. Both helicopters. Fully armed. 00:02:35.320 --> 00:02:42.394 I later learned that there was a third behind them. A couple of kilometres behind. 00:02:42.394 --> 00:02:53.685 One of the people who was then a TO intelligence officer with the tank unit at Brnik, 00:03:01.740 --> 00:03:10.071 It was supposedly a missile landing attack with special forces from Niš, who were supposed to unblock these units. 00:03:10.071 --> 00:03:17.313 But they had, as aviation usually has, primary and secondary points, targets. Their primary target was 00:03:17.313 --> 00:03:25.597 a tank unit, but since it had begun to grow dark due to bad weather, they decided 00:03:25.597 --> 00:03:37.340 to strike the secondary target. They informed Pleso that they observed the secondary target, it was a training centre 00:03:37.340 --> 00:03:42.246 and a settlement. The training centre was right next to us and the settlement, which means that if they hit the training centre, 00:03:42.246 --> 00:03:47.590 this would also mean more than half of the settlement of Ig would have been attacked. 00:03:47.590 --> 00:03:54.208 A person on duty at Pleso, a Serbian colonel, gave the order to attack the secondary target. And Pleso confirmed. 00:03:54.208 --> 00:04:01.733 So all these things are recorded and the recording exists, it was confiscated at Golovec in their centre. 00:04:01.733 --> 00:04:13.257 A person who heard this recording and who confiscated the recordings told me this because we were friends from our youth. 00:04:13.257 --> 00:04:24.437 It's the captain who broke into the centre and took it, he basically told me what they had found on the footage. 00:04:24.437 --> 00:04:34.125 Professionals, this means professional soldiers, got the order and confirmed it. In practice, this means that 00:04:34.125 --> 00:04:40.917 the order will be executed. Don't for a second think that they wouldn’t. There is constant talk of recruits. 00:04:40.917 --> 00:04:47.153 We haven't even seen any recruits, I'm not saying that maybe they weren’t there, but I think 00:04:47.153 --> 00:04:54.154 that they were exploited too much by the media, in order to appear as if they were untrained 00:04:54.154 --> 00:05:00.000 underdogs against well-trained TO, although they shouted at us TO members as the ones who had 00:05:00.000 --> 00:05:10.200 no clue about anything. They were in charge, and we clueless. Unfortunately for them, the truth came out, 00:05:10.200 --> 00:05:19.601 and things were not like they had portrayed. Basically, I saw helicopters flying past, I decided to shoot, 00:05:19.601 --> 00:05:28.290 because I saw that they were armed, that is, it is clear to me, the usual manoeuver is to fly 00:05:28.290 --> 00:05:34.097 past and then withdraw, but they headed in the direction of Ljubljana and then they turned back. 00:05:34.097 --> 00:05:44.727 In fact, when I prepared the missile for launch, I aimed at the leading helicopter, I let the missile follow the 00:05:44.727 --> 00:05:52.288 helicopter across Ig, I waited for it to move away from the houses, to avoid crashing down on them. Clearly, if it had turned 00:05:52.288 --> 00:06:01.326 around and opened fire, I would be forced to shoot sooner. But, I didn't have to since it only started to turn past Ig, 00:06:01.326 --> 00:06:06.000 forced to shoot sooner. But, I didn't probably also because when a missile 00:06:06.000 --> 00:06:14.681 attack is triggered, that is air-to-ground, no attacking units should be under it to attack 00:06:14.681 --> 00:06:25.082 on the ground at that time. That is, if you are above a settlement, you cannot know if some TO fighter is hiding in a house to shoot at you. 00:06:25.082 --> 00:06:29.549 So it was logical that it retreated above Ig; when it flew over the last houses above Ig, 00:06:29.549 --> 00:06:41.132 I fired a missile. It flew quite unconventionally. This type of missile usually zigzags a lot before it hits the target. 00:06:41.132 --> 00:06:53.219 This is because of the drunken goose system, it has one pair of wings just to guide it, as a result, it must rotate and thus correct its direction. 00:06:53.219 --> 00:07:05.098 A perfectly straight line is rarely achieved. In my case, it practically went almost entirely straight. 00:07:05.098 --> 00:07:14.607 First, it flew over the guard container, where the guards had just changed, that is the infantry guard for the outside 00:07:14.607 --> 00:07:21.347 centre protection, the new shift was in position; the old shift brought a crate of beer, they just 00:07:21.347 --> 00:07:31.005 started opening it and were preparing to drink, at that moment, the detonation was heard and the missile flew over the container. 00:07:31.005 --> 00:07:40.906 Mine. But they didn't know whether it was mine, or if it had flown in from the other side, they could not know. 00:07:40.906 --> 00:07:49.420 The speed is such that you don’t see it, it could be the other way around. The beer ended up on the floor, and they ended up with guns 00:07:49.420 --> 00:08:02.149 in their hands and in positions. The time to relax was gone. Basically, the missile flew very low since both helicopters 00:08:02.149 --> 00:08:11.239 according to the point where I stood, were practically in the horizon line. For the Russian missiles Strela 2M 00:08:11.239 --> 00:08:21.853 the minimum condition for launch is at 4% above the horizon, that is, you have to have an angle to avoid interference 00:08:21.853 --> 00:08:30.539 from the ground. Interference from the ground happens because earth warms up and emits heat, and this can interfere. Given 00:08:30.539 --> 00:08:37.801 that I was not quite in line with the earth, that is, the angle, even though it was somewhere around zero, 00:08:37.801 --> 00:08:52.465 was still within that point that made it possible to shoot. A little less known fact is that 00:08:52.465 --> 00:09:03.649 these anti-aircraft missiles can also be used to attack important targets on the ground; there are tricks how 00:09:03.649 --> 00:09:08.885 to prepare the missile to fly where you want it to go. Let's say a jeep, a vehicle and the like. Well, after I came to Ljubljana, 00:09:08.885 --> 00:09:12.644 someone had the idea to shoot at tanks, which is nonsense. A tank cannot be destroyed 00:09:12.644 --> 00:09:19.818 by such missile. You would not achieve anything; and other thing – which also applies to important targets – we were trained 00:09:19.818 --> 00:09:31.000 even for this type of shooting. This means that shooting at a zero point of the horizon, which is impossible under the basic instructions, 00:09:31.000 --> 00:09:44.455 in fact, is not quite impossible. But it's hard, you have to be really top-notch. Because of this, the missile flew very low, 00:09:44.991 --> 00:09:57.415 it flew practically a few hundred meters toward the helicopters, then it turned sharply upwards. It flew over the roofs of the entire village of Ig, 00:09:57.415 --> 00:10:08.057 let’s say 5–10 m above the roofs. The missile was actually unnoticeable and what was the problem? The Yugoslav army had its own 00:10:08.057 --> 00:10:16.716 observers probably in the settlement itself and given that it was such a non-standard trajectory, they didn’t know which missile shot the 00:10:16.716 --> 00:10:28.948 helicopter and which weapon it was that shot it down. Because the missile flew unusually given its type. 00:10:28.948 --> 00:10:43.830 The missile, after being fired, turned sharply upwards, made a couple of zigzags and hit the cockpit of the upper helicopter, 00:10:43.830 --> 00:10:44.330 the leader of the group. Interestingly, when I released the trigger, both helicopters showed me their tail, which means it should have 00:10:44.330 --> 00:10:59.673 hit the rear engines, but why did it hit the cockpit? Because the helicopter started to turn back. 00:11:00.450 --> 00:11:08.683 Why did it start turning? Because it had received an order to fire at the centre and at Ig. It needs, after taking a position, 00:11:09.044 --> 00:11:22.185 5 seconds at most to aim at the target and open fire. As a rough estimate, I was faster by 5–7 seconds and that was it. If I missed that 00:11:22.185 --> 00:11:35.602 window, missiles would already be flying at us. These are things which we analysed subsequently, there was even 00:11:35.602 --> 00:11:56.407 footage of the shooting, but someone decided that it should be erased. Strange. The point is 00:11:56.407 --> 00:12:06.459 that people today think of it like it is nothing special, you fired a missile and something happened. 00:12:06.459 --> 00:12:15.275 But you need to know something, we were TO members, we had our civilian life from which we were 00:12:15.275 --> 00:12:25.244 dragged into this war. We were not taught to be psychopaths and murderers, if you understand. So none of us 00:12:25.244 --> 00:12:34.724 came there to kill. We all hoped that there would be no war at all, to be quite honest. 00:12:34.724 --> 00:12:42.298 I think I can say without exception, people from the top and those lower down, we all hoped it wouldn’t get that far. 00:12:42.298 --> 00:12:55.594 It was crystal clear to me that a helicopter does not fly by itself, the MI8 transport helicopter, even if empty, 00:12:55.594 --> 00:13:09.261 has at least three crew members. It was crystal clear to me that if I shoot, I could kill someone. And in the moment 00:13:09.261 --> 00:13:16.858 when I decided whether to shoot or not, I was flooded with adrenaline, I was actually 00:13:16.858 --> 00:13:24.888 shaking like a leaf for a few seconds, because that was the moment of truth: yes – no, I could 00:13:24.888 --> 00:13:34.552 have decided any which way. When I decided to do it, then it was like I was in a training simulation, 00:13:34.552 --> 00:13:45.585 where we practiced shooting, and then I did it cold-bloodedly, as if it was part of the training simulation, not in war. 00:13:45.585 --> 00:14:00.189 People often don't understand what courage really is, you know, fear is normal, it’s a simple thing. 00:14:00.189 --> 00:14:10.825 Courage means to overcome fear, not the opposite. Who wins this fight? That's courage. Therefore, someone 00:14:10.825 --> 00:14:21.725 who today does not have the courage, who is overcome by fear, tomorrow can become the bravest person in another situation. 00:14:21.725 --> 00:14:31.767 This is not something given by God, to be brave or not, many things influence it. 00:14:31.767 --> 00:14:46.778 A lot of what we did required quite a bit of personal courage, we were aware of the possible consequences, we even 00:14:46.778 --> 00:14:55.293 thought staying in the woods for years and fighting like partisans, that is, a guerrilla fight, before 00:14:55.293 --> 00:15:07.735 the Yugoslav army withdraws from Slovenia. Luckily, things ended much easier, 00:15:07.735 --> 00:15:19.365 but I dare say that if there had been a massacre at Ig, we would have experienced the same fate as Croatia or Bosnia and 00:15:19.365 --> 00:15:28.897 the war would have dragged on for years. You know, there were young boys from all over Slovenia, recruits, their brothers and fathers 00:15:28.897 --> 00:15:37.878 they were in TO units throughout Slovenia. What would be the reaction if someone had killed their sons? 00:15:37.878 --> 00:15:45.593 To me, time stretched, literally. Those few seconds when the missile flew felt 00:15:45.593 --> 00:15:57.016 like several minutes. I prepared the missile for launch, released the trigger, that’s the so-called manual regime, 00:15:57.016 --> 00:16:09.090 when you can follow on the first knee, on the second knee you launch the missile, it means that it follows the target right from the barrel. 00:16:09.090 --> 00:16:21.200 It basically follows its warmth. When I pulled on the other knee, my training came through, I automatically 00:16:21.200 --> 00:16:28.800 pulled the barrel up because the missile at first drops down a little and only then it goes towards its target. So if I didn't do that, 00:16:28.800 --> 00:16:38.191 the missile would hit the grass. But I did this subconsciously, it was from my training, I didn't even think about it anymore, 00:16:38.191 --> 00:16:52.078 it all went by itself. Because I shot from the hill, the missile started relatively low, the engine exhaust 00:16:52.078 --> 00:17:06.000 literally blew me 3–5 m back. It threw me back. The glasses I was wearing at the time, 00:17:06.000 --> 00:17:20.378 I still have them at home, they're full of specks, burnt gunpowder that flew out. It could have ruined my eyes, 00:17:20.378 --> 00:17:28.481 glasses are used in such shooting because you may get hurt otherwise. The missile went over the container first, 00:17:28.481 --> 00:17:48.499 then it flew over the entire village of Ig, 5–10 m above the roofs, it flew over the chimney of someone who was burning wood, but such a small 00:17:48.499 --> 00:18:05.306 disturbance does not affect the missile, the electronics system ignores such things. It made a few zigzags and came vertically up 00:18:05.306 --> 00:18:20.575 in front of the cockpit of the lower helicopter, a colleague told me that the recording sounded like 00:18:20.575 --> 00:18:25.600 the lower pilot yelled “ra”, he probably wanted to say “raketa”, but before he could utter the word, it was 00:18:25.600 --> 00:18:34.764 the end, the upper one had already been hit. A couple of zigzags and a hit directly into the cockpit, the helicopter turned into a 00:18:34.764 --> 00:18:43.569 fire ball, a little mushroom, much like an atomic bomb, though not the same thing, then it started falling 00:18:43.569 --> 00:18:51.856 into the main propeller of the lower helicopter, fragments flew around as the two were relatively close. 00:18:51.856 --> 00:18:57.352 The two of them were far enough apart, but when they started to turn back, they came closer and that's when 00:18:57.352 --> 00:19:04.891 the upper one was hit, so that according to my information the lower one was damaged, too. 00:19:04.891 --> 00:19:12.760 This helicopter fell like a rock into the Barje marsh. So after the order was confirmed, 00:19:12.760 --> 00:19:22.736 one helicopter was shot down, another damaged. If you lose a third or more of your equipment and people 00:19:22.736 --> 00:19:34.441 at the beginning of the attack, before you actually strike, the tactic says to withdraw. Later I was told about 00:19:34.441 --> 00:19:41.809 what happened to the colonel on duty at Pleso who ordered this; allegedly, a general came to the centre 00:19:41.809 --> 00:19:56.202 with military police, took his military rank away and drove him away. There was nationalism and soloing. 00:19:56.202 --> 00:20:08.096 It’s hard to say that the attack against the centre, beside being a secondary target, was well prepared 00:20:08.096 --> 00:20:16.501 and organised, as it was mainly an ad hoc campaign, which, if successful, would make the colonel a great hero of the 00:20:16.501 --> 00:20:31.062 Yugoslav Army; since it failed, he was probably imprisoned. Sometimes you risk and you win, sometimes you lose. 00:20:31.062 --> 00:20:41.076 Interestingly, after that story we told with the radioman last night about numerous full-range TO units, 00:20:41.076 --> 00:20:53.508 in fact, high-altitude reconnaissance planes flew high above us the whole morning. I believe that without this story, the centre 00:20:53.508 --> 00:21:05.003 would have been attacked in the morning. After they made sure that there was no missiles there, they would execute an attack. 00:21:05.003 --> 00:21:16.009 Then they found that anti-aircraft technology was there, and the shock was even worse. I was asked during the war and after it 00:21:16.009 --> 00:21:22.255 what this helicopter was shot down with, and they didn’t believe it was really with 2M Strela, they were sure 00:21:22.255 --> 00:21:32.544 that it was shot down with some more advanced tool. They get information about patriots, then about a strange 00:21:32.544 --> 00:21:42.335 missile trajectory and a helicopter crash after they made sure that there were no missiles there; put yourself in their skin, 00:21:42.335 --> 00:21:52.434 their intelligence was a terrible mess. They didn’t really know what was going on. Do you know how 00:21:52.434 --> 00:22:02.444 they solved this after the shooting? A 10km circle, height 15km, airspace blockage. We had de facto liberated that part of the 00:22:02.444 --> 00:22:11.874 airspace with this shooting down. Then no one flew over there any more. Strictly blocked. It was set up by 00:22:11.874 --> 00:22:19.136 the Yugoslav Army itself, as they did not know what shot down the helicopter and how, things were so unusual 00:22:19.136 --> 00:22:29.739 after all the reports that nothing was clear to them anymore. Does TO have anything else in stock? They were afraid of 00:22:29.739 --> 00:22:39.228 Armbrust launchers, which are nothing special, even Russian Zoljas are more dangerous, they were scared, because it was an unknown weapon. 00:22:39.228 --> 00:22:48.000 They knew that weapons were smuggled into Slovenia. But not exactly which ones. 00:22:48.000 --> 00:23:01.151 It is easier today to analyse what happened so long ago, but actually things went pretty well for us. There were some 00:23:01.151 --> 00:23:07.937 very successful campaigns, including the warehouse, certain 00:23:07.937 --> 00:23:16.446 blocked columns at Brnik…then also some things like the sloppiness of the Yugoslav Army when their tanks 00:23:16.446 --> 00:23:35.357 overturned in ditches. There was a lot going on. There is a saying in the world: fortune favours the brave. 00:23:35.357 --> 00:23:49.325 Our entire war can be embodied in this saying. We had enough courage not to wait, not to procrastinate, 00:23:49.325 --> 00:23:52.920 Dilly-dallying would have cost us the country we have today.