“WHEN YOU KNOW WHAT YOU ARE DOING, IT IS NO LONGER INVISIBLE”: Đorđe shot down a bomber during the NATO aggression and became a hero! (PHOTO)

Đorđe Ivanov did not plan to be a pilot. As a young man, he wanted art, brushes, and canvas, but a twist of fate led him to a military high school, and then to the cockpit of a fighter jet. Destiny would have it that he became one of the people who participated in shooting down the “invisible” F-117 bomber, a symbol of Western military power, during the NATO aggression.

–There are no invisible planes. When a target enters your space and when you know what you are doing, it is no longer invisible. At that moment, I was not thinking about NATO or what that aircraft represented. I was looking at the task in front of me and doing what I was trained for. Everything else came later. The most important thing for me was to return alive. There is no room for panic in pilots, and in the most difficult moments, you must remain calm – Đorđe told the RINA agency.

During his career, he flew the MiG-21, broke the sound barrier, and climbed to altitudes of about 21,000 meters. Death was close to him several times, and he experienced the most dramatic moment when his plane ran out of engine power over the Adriatic Sea.

–When the engine goes silent, the silence becomes louder than any alarm. That is when you realize how life can fit into a few seconds – he recalled.

In 1999, Ivanov showed that one can fight against a superior enemy with wit as well. He made full-scale model aircraft that NATO bombed, while the real MiGs remained hidden and preserved.

What Đorđe does today

After everything, he returned to what he originally loved. Today he is an icon painter, a man who, instead of planes, “paints the sky” in churches across Serbia and abroad. His life remains a testimony that the path from war to faith can be quiet, dignified, and deeply human.

–God blessed me to do what I love my whole life. I used to fly, today I paint, but I am always on the same path – says Đorđe Ivanov.