during the cold war, a number of pilots from various nations (eastern bloc, western bloc, and non-aligned) defected with their aircraft to other countries.  ==afghanistan== * on november 24, 1960, a royal afghan air force pilot abdus samad fazli defected by flying his piper cub across the border to pakistan.http://www.skywar.ru/afwadef.html * on february 26, 1981, afghan air force pilot captain jamal ud din defected with his crew to pakistan on board a mil mi-8t helicopter numbered 285, during post-maintenance flight test from kandahar air base. * on november 20, 1983, captain mohammed nabi korinzay defected to pakistan with his sukhoi su-7bm fighter-bomber. the aircraft broke up during a crash landing on the runway at dalbandin. * on september 22, 1984, colonel haji fakir, flying an an-26 defected from afghanistan to miranshah air base, pakistan. * on june 28, 1985, the crews of two mi-24 hind-ds defected from afghanistan to pakistan. the helicopters were later transferred to the united states for evaluation. * on december 8, 1988, captain asadullah flying a mig-21 defected from afghanistan to miranshah air base, pakistan. * on july 3, 1989, captain mohammed hamid flying a mi-25 defected from afghanistan to kica air base, pakistan. * on july 6, 1989, afghan air force captain jan pahrand defected to pakistan with his sukhoi su-22m-4k fighter-bomber. ==algeria== *after the defection of the assyrian iraqi captain munir redfa, 3 mig-21f-13 and at least 6 mig-17f algerian pilots were captured by israel after landing their aircraft at israeli el-arish air base by mistake, one of the captured algerian pilots requested and was granted political asylum in the west, while the rest were repatriated. ==china==  a number of defections occurred from the people's republic of china, with most of its pilots defecting to the republic of china (taiwan). these include: *on january 12, 1960, the first pla defection occurred. yang decai (t:æ¥å¾·æ, s:æ¨å¾·æ), a planaf pilot from the 4th planaf division flew an mikoyan-gurevich mig-15 with serial number 6501 from luqiao (t:è·¯æ©, s:è·¯æ¡¥) air base to yilan county, taiwan. however, yang was killed when his aircraft crashed on landing. *on september 15, 1961, plaaf pilots shao xiyan (éµå¸å½¦) and gao youzong (é«ä½å®) flew an antonov an-2 from ji'ao county (t:è ç¸£, s:è¶å¿), shandong to jeju-do and reached taiwan on october 7, 1961. both pilots were personally interviewed by chiang kai-shek and rewarded 
Cold_War-related_lists Defection Lists_of_defectors Lists_of_pilots