Childhood crushed by the sky
On May 16, 1972, in broad daylight, kindergarten ik in the city of Svetlogorsk a plane crashed. The teachers, who were having lunch at that moment, did not get up from their tables, and the children did not return to their toys. 35 people died in that nightmare.
For many years, everyone was silent about the Svetlogorsk tragedy, including those who lost loved ones. Until now, even encyclopedias indicate the wrong number of deaths, and it is believed that the dead pilots, in whose blood alcohol was allegedly found, were to blame for everything.
"MK" found eyewitnesses and victims of the tragedy who spoke after forty years extra years silence.
Photo of the deceased kindergarten group. On the right is teacher Valentina Shabashova-Metelitsa (died), on the left is head Galina Klyukhina (she was not at work that day). Photo from personal archive
Trajectory of death
At the Svetlogorsk cemetery near the mass grave where the victims of that war are buried terrible tragedy, two women are fussing.
“I have a brother here,” says one. - Burned alive. Are you from Moscow? Tell me, why are they still not writing about our tragedy at all, or are they writing nonsense? I once read that, supposedly, after the disaster there was a mass suicide in the city. That parents committed suicide, unable to bear the pain of loss. I also read that many people drank themselves after this. Not true! In fact, many decided to give birth and named newborns after the names of dead children.
The women and the priest of the local temple give us “addresses, passwords, appearances.” For some reason we are sure that now all the victims and eyewitnesses will tell how it really happened.
So, on May 16 in Svetlogorsk it was clear and calm. At approximately noon, an An-24 aircraft of the 263rd Air Transport Regiment of the USSR Baltic Fleet appeared on the horizon. He went around the stadium, almost hitting the Ferris wheel in the park, and with his left plane he cut down the top of a tall birch tree. Among the first to see it were the few vacationers who found themselves in the park that day, and schoolchildren whose physical education lesson was ending at the city stadium.
“We were returning to our school along a forest path that went past the kindergarten,” recalls former student one of the schools Nikolai Alekseev. “When we saw the plane falling on our heads, we were dumbfounded with horror; someone tried to run away. “Stop!” - our teacher shouted to us. Standing rooted to the spot, we froze in place. We stood and watched as this uncontrollable colossus, dousing us with the heat of its turbines and losing altitude, flew over our heads.
The first random victims that day were high school students Tanya Ezhova and Natasha Tsygankova. The girls were approaching the kindergarten, when suddenly...
- Before kindergarten There were a few meters left when we were doused with burning vapors of aviation fuel,” recalls Tatyana Ezhova, with whom we met at the scene of the tragedy. “We didn’t even have time to understand anything, when in an instant our hair, clothes, and shoes flashed on us. We were in severe shock from fear and unbearable pain. There is not a soul around, and we are alone in the middle of the street, engulfed in flames...
And the plane continued to rush towards the kindergarten, hidden in the massive spruce trees. The kindergarten was considered departmental (from the Svetlogorsk sanatorium), and, as usual, it had all the best: from the conditions of the children’s stay to the salaries of the staff. The official position of the parents fully justified the status of this institution: chief of police, chief of the traffic police, first secretary of the city committee of the Komsomol, employee of the Svetlogorsk court, chief physician...
Having returned from their walk, the children sat down in their places, waiting for lunch. The dining room was filled with the aroma of hot soup. The cook, Tamara Yankovskaya, probably, as usual, slowly walked between the tables, making sure that the students ate carefully, slowly, and held their spoons correctly.
Looking out the window, teacher Valentina Shabashova-Metelitsa saw her son Andrei. That day the boy was walking with his grandmother Nina around the city. Near the kindergarten Nina Sergeevna met a neighbor. We stopped to chat. “Grandma, should I run to mom for a minute?” asked Andrei. Valentina ran out to meet him. Mother and son only had time to hug...
The next moment, the kindergarten building was rocked by a monstrous blow. Having lost both planes and the landing gear during the fall, the fuselage was halved high speed rammed the second floor, burying everyone under its rubble. Aviation fuel, which flared up with renewed vigor from the impact, consumed all living things in its flames in a matter of seconds.
Next to the burning ruins of the kindergarten, an airplane cabin lay on the road. A dead pilot sat in it, clutching the steering wheel. The co-pilot was lying on the road. The wind either knocked the flames off it or fanned it with renewed vigor.
“No one even poured a bucket of water on him,” recalls an old woman who lived next door. “It was impossible to get close to him.”
A diagram of the accident site drawn up by eyewitness Valera Rogov.
Misidentification
It seemed that no one could survive in this hell. And yet, not everyone died. Anna Nezvanova, a kindergarten nanny, escaped a terrible death by wiping the windows on the street side with a rag. The blast wave threw her several meters to the side. Having barely come to her senses, Anna Nikitichna rushed to the burning ruins. There, under the ruins of the kindergarten, was her son Vanya. A woman, distraught with grief, trying to get her child, almost died in the fire...
On that day various reasons Three pupils did not go to kindergarten. Irina Golushko suffered from the flu shortly before the tragedy. On May 16, her mother was going to take her to kindergarten, but changed her mind.
“And I ended up in the hospital with kidney disease,” recalls Oleg Saushkin, who was then six years old. “I remember that at some point the whole hospital began to bustle. Everyone started running, cars were driving out somewhere, confusion and signs of some kind of distant horror reigned in the eyes of the hospital staff. And my mother, with tears in her eyes, a little later, told about what happened in my kindergarten...
“I had my tonsils removed the day before; my mother and I were on sick leave,” says Olga Korobova. “Staying at home was an unbearable torment for me. That day my mother gave up: “Okay, let’s get ready for kindergarten.” We quickly got dressed and just opened the door when there was a strong explosion. It thundered so hard that the ground shook. By the way, my mother worked as a nanny in that garden. It turns out that God saved her from a terrible death.
He also saved Valery Rogov, a graduate of this kindergarten. And not just saved, but warned about the tragedy.
“In 1972, I was already in first grade,” says Valera. — Last night I had a dream. I can clearly see the faces of my kindergarten children, engulfed in flames. The fire is somehow unusual - a real torch. The next morning I woke up in a cold sweat. I told my mother about what I saw. We didn’t attach any importance to it then, but I went to school with a severe headache. Around noon I went to the kindergarten - and... In general, I was one of the first at the scene of the tragedy. People rushing around, not knowing what to do, came running to help. Somewhere in the bushes, turning my soul inside out, a burnt dog howled, howled terribly...
“It was lunchtime when all this happened,” he recalls. former employee Svetlogorsk Department of Internal Affairs (in 1972 - OBKhSS inspector, police lieutenant) Leonid Baldykov. “At that very moment I was at home, having lunch. My house was only a hundred meters from the kindergarten. What we saw when we got there shocked us, grown-up, strong men. A wall of raging fire and unbearable fumes from burning fuel that spread across the asphalt from a broken tank...
Almost simultaneously, police, firefighters, and military personnel from neighboring countries arrived at the scene of the disaster. military units and sailors of the Baltic Fleet. In a matter of minutes, a triple cordon was set up. Armed soldiers, tightly clasping hands, barely restrained the unfortunate mothers rushing to where their children died in a terrible fire. Somehow we managed to push them to a safe distance.
“In the first row of the cordon was my uncle, midshipman Valentin Konstantinovich,” recalls Oleg Saushkin. - According to him, the officers, midshipmen and sailors who stood near the destroyed kindergarten suffered the most. Many, including himself, had their vests torn to shreds, their faces were covered in bruises from the women, distraught with grief, trying to break through the ranks...
Along the road, on the soot-blackened lawn, the military laid out white sheets. Immediately, rescuers began to place the remains of children recovered from the ruins on them. Many, unable to bear it, closed their eyes and turned away. Someone fainted.
“For the rest of my life I remembered that terrible howl that shook the air,” recalls Valery Rogov. “People were crying, screaming, sobbing, some were hysterical...
In order for special vehicles to park and pick up the remains of the dead, rescuers and firefighters had to drag away a pile of bricks and mangled fragments of the plane in different directions from a narrow street. The asphalt was covered with numerous furrows, more like bleeding wounds. Soldiers immediately appeared with canvas stretchers. Two strong fighters carried the burnt body of the pilot next to Valera Rogov. Then - another, a third. Someone grabbed Valera's hand. The boy turned around and saw tear-stained women who, pointing their fingers at the smoking ruins, shouted to him: “Why are they there, and you here?!” You should have been with them! They told your mother that you are with them!..”
State of emergency
A state of emergency was declared for 24 hours in the resort Svetlogorsk. Residents were forbidden not only to leave the city, but even to leave their houses. Electricity and telephones were cut off. The city stood still, people sat in dark apartments, as if in shelters during the war. Since the evening, police and vigilantes had been on duty on the coast: there was a fear that one of the relatives of the victims would decide to drown themselves. Work to clear the rubble and search for the bodies of the dead continued until late at night. The remains of the ruins, as it later turned out, were taken to a landfill on the outskirts of the city. More for a long time in its vicinity they will find burnt children's books and toys, parts and items of military ammunition...
As soon as the last loaded car left the city, the place where the kindergarten had stood the day before was leveled, covering the scorched earth with turf. In order to hide the traces of the tragedy from prying eyes, it was decided to plant a large flowerbed in that place.
“By morning, it was as if the garden had never existed—a flowerbed had bloomed in its place!” - Andrey Dmitriev recalls. “Many parents didn’t believe their eyes then. The scorched earth has been cut away, turf has been laid, and paths have been strewn with broken red bricks. Broken and burnt trees were cut down. And there was only a sharp smell of kerosene. The smell lasted for another two weeks...
The consequences of the Svetlogorsk tragedy were terrifying: 24 (and not 23, as stated in official sources) pupils, one kindergarten teacher and 8 crew members were burned alive. Where did another child come from? It turned out that one of the girls was the daughter of a sea captain. A sad telephone message was sent to his ship. In response, he asked not to bury his daughter in mass grave, but wait for him. That’s why the girl was not taken into account...
Garden workers Tamara Yankovskaya, Antonina Romanenko and her friend Yulia Vorona, who happened to come to visit her that day, were taken to a military hospital with severe burns. In addition to their relatives, KGB officers visited them daily in the hospital, ready for any help in exchange for silence. Unfortunately, Romanenko died quickly without regaining consciousness, Yankovskaya died six months later, and Vorona survived.
The dead children and teachers were buried in a mass grave in the cemetery, not far from railway station Svetlogorsk-1. On the day of the funeral, traffic on the roads connecting the regional center with Svetlogorsk was limited. At the same time, diesel trains carrying passengers from Kaliningrad to the resort town were cancelled. Official version- urgent repair of access roads, unofficial - minimizing publicity of all the circumstances of the plane crash. Despite the temporary restrictions associated with mourning events, according to eyewitnesses, over seven thousand people gathered at the cemetery on the day of the funeral.
At the funeral, KGB officers forbade taking photographs and exposed the films of those who did so. But the relatives of the victims still managed to take a few photographs. Photo from personal archive
Quiet Consequence
No criminal case was opened regarding the plane crash in Svetlogorsk. They limited themselves only to the order of the Minister of Defense, in accordance with which about 40 military officials were removed from their positions.
And even then the main version appeared: the pilots were to blame, in whose blood alcohol was allegedly found. For this reason, relatives of the dead children and kindergarten staff prohibited burying the pilots in the Svetlogorsk cemetery next to “their victims.” For the same reason, in the general list of those killed in the plane crash, there was no place for eight names of crew members in the church-chapel.
The priest of the local temple keeps some archival documents concerning the tragedy. But the main thing is that dispatchers, flight mechanics, and pilots of that same detachment came here. Many confessed... What did they say? The secret of confession does not allow him to tell. But he is sure: the crew had nothing to do with it.
There were other versions, sometimes absurd. Some argued that the pilots were poorly prepared for the mission. They didn’t forget about the nudist girls sunbathing on the beach (and this was in 1972, and at a temperature of plus 6 degrees!), whom the pilots allegedly tried to see during their next descent over the sea. They wrote that the crew allegedly took off without permission. In reality, the reason was the altimeter...
“Our closest Scandinavian neighbors have repeatedly attempted to violate air boundaries,” says one of the employees of the 263rd Separate Transport Aviation Regiment (the same one to which the crashed plane belonged). “In some cases they succeeded.” And these were by no means military aircraft. Sports class, single-engine, low-flying, driven by amateur pilots. To find out how foreign pilots crossed the border without hindrance, the Soviet command decided to conduct test flights by the naval aviation of the Baltic Fleet in the area of responsibility of the Soviet radar stations of the coastal tracking system. And on that fateful day, the An-24 (tail number 05) with the crew of Captain Vilor Gutnik set off on a mission. On the eve of the flight, on command from above, the altimeter on the An-24 was moved from the Il-14. The performance of the device has not been properly tested. No one then could have imagined how the altimeter would behave on the new aircraft.
According to legend, the crew of Captain Gutnik was supposed to play the role of a conditional target, that is, an intruder. In the field of view of the radar, the target aircraft was required to gain altitude, move away, and then descend sharply in order to escape the control of the “all-seeing eye.” When descending, turn left and right to outsmart the station operator. Gutnik conscientiously did what was required. The operator was informed of the flight altitude every minute, and he made notes on the tablet, informing the crew of board 05 whether the target was visible or not. At the lowest altitudes, the radar did not see the target: the plane left its field of view. That is why it was not possible to notice the danger. The crew kept in touch with the shore until the last second, but there was already dense fog over the sea.
The first collision with an obstacle occurred at the 14th minute 48th second of the flight. The flight recorders recorded altimeter readings: 150 meters above sea level. In fact, from the foot of the steep bank to the top of the birch tree is no more than 85 meters.
In the declassified case, the diagram clearly shows the entire path of the crash of the aircraft and the destruction of its structure. But eyewitnesses of the events drew their own map. They handed it over to us for publication in MK. They say that maybe this will help heal their wound at least a little... How? The fact that the inhabitants of a huge country will finally see for themselves how everything really happened.
On May 16, 1972, the An-24T aircraft was supposed to fly over radio equipment. The flight plan was as follows: the plane was supposed to take off from Khrabrovo airport in Kaliningrad, fly over Zelenogradsk, Cape Taran, land at the airfield of the village of Kosa, from there go to the airfield of the village of Chkalovsk, and from there return back to Kaliningrad. The flight was supposed to take place at an altitude of about 500 meters.
At 12.15 the plane took off and headed towards the sea. I crossed the coastline near Zelenogradsk and headed for Cape Taran. And then he disappeared from the radar.
At 12.30, the pupils of the Svetlogorsk kindergarten, 24 children, the youngest of whom was only two years old, were sitting in the dining room waiting for lunch. Then a plane appeared from the sea from the thick fog.
He caught a tall pine tree, cutting off its top, broke off half of the wing, losing pieces of the skin, flew, descending, another two hundred meters and crashed straight onto the kindergarten building.
The first victims were high school girls, whose way home from school ran right past the garden. Seconds before the crash, they were doused with burning vapors from aviation fuel. “We didn’t even have time to understand anything, when in an instant our hair, clothes, and shoes flashed on us. We were in severe shock from fear and unbearable pain. There’s not a soul around, and we’re alone in the middle of the street, engulfed in flames…” one of them said in an interview decades later.
The impact caused the aviation fuel to flare up with renewed vigor, turning the kindergarten into a flaming torch. The cockpit of the plane was lying nearby; a dead pilot was sitting in it, clutching the steering wheel. The body of the second one was thrown onto the road.
“We stood and watched as this colossus, having gone around the stadium and almost hitting the Ferris wheel in the park with its wing, crashed into a kindergarten! We were horrified by what happened, it seemed that this simply could not happen! Residents were prohibited not only from leaving the city, but even from leaving their own homes. Electricity and telephones were cut off. It was very scary. The city stood still, we sat in dark apartments, as if in shelters during the war,” recalled an eyewitness, then a high school student.
Diagram of the accident site drawn up by eyewitness Valera Rogov
"Moskovsky Komsomolets"/mk.ruThe city spent the next 24 hours in a state of emergency. Breaking through a crowd of mothers unconscious from grief, rescuers removed the bodies of children who had burned alive—or rather, what was left of them—from under the rubble of the kindergarten. Residents were forbidden to leave their houses, electricity and telephone communications did not work, police and vigilantes were on duty on the coast - in case one of the relatives of the victims decided to drown themselves.
The next morning, on the site of the ashes there was a large flowerbed, as if there was no garden here.
Burnt trees were cut down, scorched earth was cut out, and fresh turf was laid in its place.
The children and the kindergarten workers who died with them were buried in a mass grave not far from the Svetlogorsk-1 railway station. Although trains in the city were canceled on the day of the funeral and traffic on the roads connecting the regional center with Svetlogorsk was limited, thousands of people came to see off the children on their final journey. The crew members and passengers were buried in a cemetery in Kaliningrad, with the exception of one, whose body was taken home by his wife.
A photograph of a group of kindergarten students with teachers, taken at the beginning of 1972. From the archive of Maria Kudreshova
oldden.livejournal.comNo criminal case was initiated into the disaster. A commission urgently flew from Moscow to Svetlogorsk to conduct an investigation. It was assumed that the problem was a failure of some device. The commission members interviewed everyone involved in the flight, deciphered the data from the black boxes and, obviously, came to some conclusion, but it was not conveyed to the general public, limiting itself to the vague wording “unsatisfactory preparation and flight management.” As a result of the investigation, about forty military personnel lost their positions.
Meanwhile, various versions were circulating among the residents of Svetlogorsk, all agreeing that the pilots were to blame for the crash. Some claimed that the examination found alcohol in the pilots’ blood, others that the pilots saw girls sunbathing naked on the beach and lowered themselves to get a better look at them.
Compared to the version with naked girls, the assumption that the crash occurred due to a malfunction of the altimeter looks quite plausible.
Journalist Valery Gromak, referring to documents, photographs and other data provided to him by the former commander of the Baltic Fleet Air Force, Lieutenant General of Aviation Vasily Proskurin, notes that the black boxes recorded at the moment of collision with an obstacle: the altimeter showed an altitude of 150 meters above sea level. In fact, from the foot of the steep bank to the top of the pine tree there was no more than 85 meters.
On the eve of the flight, according to Gromak, an altimeter was installed in the An-24 from the Il-14, but no one checked how it would behave on another plane. Only after the disaster were tests carried out that showed that the altimeter gave an error of up to 60-70 meters.
Now at the site of the crash there is a chapel erected in 1994 with a sign: “The temple-monument in honor of the icon of the Mother of God “Joy of All Who Sorrow” was built on the site of the tragic death of a kindergarten on May 16, 1972.”
“They hold a prayer service there every time, and then everyone goes to the cemetery and holds a prayer service there. And the military come every time, bringing wreaths, flowers every year... It’s already a tradition,” one of the mothers, whose child died in the disaster, said in a television program dedicated to the tragedy. The incident united the parents forever, becoming the reason for their annual gathering at the chapel for the past 45 years.
Now many are trying to prove that Soviet time There were no disasters, trains did not derail, ships did not sink and planes did not crash. This is understandable - in the USSR all these facts were hidden, along with the Soviet disasters the names of their victims were forgotten... No one, for example, remembers that in 1976 a plane fell on a residential building in Novosibirsk at night... The disaster in Svetlogorsk is better known .
Temple - Monument in honor of the icon of the Mother of God "Joy of All Who Sorrow" was built on the site of the tragic death of a kindergarten on May 16, 1972.
Architects A. Archipenko, Y. Kuznetsov
If you are in Svetlogorsk, visit it...
May 16, 1972 At about 12:30, an An-24T aircraft of the naval forces of the USSR Baltic Fleet, flying to fly over radio equipment, crashed in difficult weather conditions, hitting a tree. After a collision with a tree, the damaged plane flew about 200 meters and crashed onto the building of a kindergarten in Svetlogorsk. 34 people died in the crash: all 8 on the plane, 23 children and 3 kindergarten employees.
The kindergarten in the resort town of Svetlogorsk was filled with cheerful people. ringing voices. It was time for lunch and the kids returned from their walk. And suddenly - a giant shadow covered the sky, a monstrous blow was heard, and flames shot up. Two kindergarten workers jumped out into the opening of the collapsed wall, engulfed in fire. The heat hit tenth-graders from a local school walking down the street... It happened at 12.30 on May 16, 1972.
Eyewitnesses of the tragedy will tell you: in the morning it was clear and warm, but then fog lay over the sea like a dense veil. From there, from the sea, the hum of turbines came from the fog. Then a plane appeared over the steep bank, hit a tall pine tree, cut down the top, broke off half of the wing and, as it descended, losing parts of the skin, flew another two hundred meters and crashed onto the building of a kindergarten. Twenty meters from the crash site, a lonely old woman lived in a house. This house is still intact today...
The regional party leadership and the command of the Baltic Fleet urgently arrived at the scene of the tragedy, examined it, photographed it, and took away the remains of the victims. Overnight, sailors from a nearby unit removed the wreckage of the plane, dismantled the ruins, cleared the area and even planted a flowerbed on the site of the former kindergarten. Information about the tragedy was severely vetoed. Naturally, rumors and speculation immediately began to circulate around Svetlogorsk. A small resort town was shocked by a tragedy that claimed twenty-three children's lives. The kindergarten cook, Tamara Yankovskaya, also died under the ruins, and two more workers, Antonina Romanenko and Valentina Shabaeva-Metelitsa, died from burns in a military hospital.
Military pilots, crew members of the crashed plane - captains Vilory Gutnik and Alexander Kostin, senior lieutenant Andrei Lyutov, warrant officers Nikolai Gavrilyuk, Leonid Sergienko, senior inspector-pilot Lieutenant Colonel Lev Denisov, senior engineer Lieutenant Colonel Anatoly Svetlov were buried in the city cemetery in Kaliningrad. The body of the right pilot, senior lieutenant Viktor Baranov, was taken home by his wife.
A commission to investigate the causes of the disaster, headed by the Deputy Minister of Defense for Armaments, Colonel General - Engineer Alekseev, urgently left Moscow. He was accompanied by many high military officials. The found “black boxes” were sent for decryption, suggesting that the disaster occurred due to the failure of some device. The commission put all the aviators through a “sieve” into the air regiment. When the “black box” data was received a few days later, it became clear: the technology had nothing to do with it. Having worked through all the versions, the commission finally came to a single conclusion. But this conclusion was not communicated to the general public, and for many years the residents of Svetlogorsk blamed the pilots for what happened.
Until now, on the anniversary of the tragedy, representatives of the Baltic Fleet aviation come to the Svetlogorsk cemetery to honor the memory of the victims and meet with relatives of the victims of the tragedy, who now know the true cause of the disaster. Every year on May 9, on the birthday of the AN-24 commander, Captain Vilory Gutnik, fellow soldiers of the deceased crew gather at the Kaliningrad city cemetery. And a chapel was erected at the site of the tragedy.
But in the local press, no, no, and even articles appear where the authors question the professionalism of the crew. They say that he did not cope with his task due to unfavorable flight conditions: a high approaching bank, sudden fog, ignorance of the weather on the route. The “intoxicating” factor allegedly also worked: the delayed reaction of the crew members (possible influence of alcohol). One of the authors even circulated ridiculous rumors about the crew’s desire to take a closer look at nudist girls sunbathing on the beach (and this was in 1972, and at a temperature of plus 6 degrees!). They wrote that the crew took off allegedly without permission....
What really happened on May 16, 1972? We had to listen to a lot of versions and eyewitness accounts. But I will be based only on official documents. As for the professionalism of the crew, the act of investigating the AN-24 plane crash does not call it into question: Captain Gutnik’s flight time by that time amounted to about five thousand hours. And his colleagues speak of him as a highly qualified pilot.
Reserve Lieutenant Colonel Vyacheslav Kuryanovich:
After graduating from the flight school, Vilor Ilyich Gutnik underwent retraining in Ryazan training center. Then I interned at civil aviation. He flew as a co-pilot in the Yakut air squadron. There I gained experience in long- and ultra-long-distance flights. In 1965 he became commander airship in our part. I flew for him for a year and a half as a navigator. In our regiment, Gutnik was considered one of the best pilots...
Reserve Lieutenant Colonel Vladimir Pisarenko:
Vilor Ilyich was a pilot of the highest class. Literate,. disciplined, very scrupulous in everything. And his entire crew was the strongest. The same navigator, Captain Kostin. He was older than the commander in age. A very competent navigator. He came to us from Novaya Zemlya, where he flew in the most difficult conditions.
As for the “beer factor”, the materials of the investigation of the disaster contain a pathologist’s conclusion that completely denies such an assumption.
I carefully studied (many thanks for the help to the former commander of the Baltic Fleet Air Force, Lieutenant General of Aviation Vasily Proskurin) all the documents, photographs, drawings, eyewitness accounts, radio communications records, etc. It turns out that back on March 13, 1972, the commander of the Baltic Fleet Air Force, Colonel General Aviation S. Gulyaev approved the flight plan. According to it, the flight on May 16 was supposed to take place along the route Khrabrovo-Zelenogradsk - Cape Taran - Kosa (landing) - Chkalovsk (landing) - Khrabrovo (landing).
From the report of the dispatcher, Warrant Officer Mikulevich: “Upon Captain Gutnik’s arrival at the control post, I took from him a certificate stating that the crew could carry out the task due to health reasons. And I signed the flight sheet with a landing on Kos.”
The An-24 took off from Khrabrovo at 12:15 p.m. General supervision of the flight was carried out by the operational duty officer of the aviation command post, Lieutenant Colonel Vaulev, and he also gave permission to carry out the mission. Having gained altitude, the plane reached a point in the Zelenogradsk area, “attached” to it and went to Cape Taran. Then he made a turn over the sea to reach the given bearing. There was already a dense fog over the sea.
The plane collided with an obstacle at 14 minutes and 48 seconds of flight. At the same time, the black boxes recorded: the altimeter showed an altitude of 150 meters above sea level. In fact, from the foot of the steep bank to the top of the pine tree there is no more than 85 meters. In the case there is a diagram of the destruction of the plane. “The commander lacked some fractions of a second,” Vasily Vladimirovich Proskurnin says bitterly. “Coming out of the fog, he understood everything and pulled the controls towards himself. Alas, the An-24 is not a fighter.” The diagram shows down to centimeters the plane's fall after a collision with a pine tree on the seashore. And it seems almost mystical after a corkscrew falls horizontally onto a kindergarten...
Why did the altimeter lie? It turns out that on the eve of this flight, the Navy Air Force made, as is now clear, an ill-conceived decision to replace the altimeters from the IL-14 to the AN-24. No one checked how they would behave on the new plane. The first victims of this ill-conceived decision were the children of Svetlogorsk and the crew of Gutnik. Subsequent experiments showed that the altimeter, moved from the Il-14 to the An-24, gave an error of up to 60-70 meters.
The published version of the disaster: unsatisfactory organization of preparation and control of this flight. No criminal case was opened into the tragedy in Svetlogorsk. The result of the investigation was an order from the Minister of Defense with two zeros, according to which about 40 military officials were removed from their positions.
In 1972, it was not customary to widely cover the details of accidents and disasters, especially those that happened in the military department. And the circumstances of the tragedy that occurred in a small resort town on the shores of the Baltic Sea were covered with a veil of silence. Although very late, the public charge against the crew, who themselves became the victim of erroneous office decisions, has finally been dropped.
Valery Gromak, Kaliningrad
This plane crash, which occurred in May 1972, was kept silent for three decades. Then, in broad daylight, a military plane crashed onto a departmental kindergarten in the resort Svetlogorsk. The tragedy, which was immediately classified, claimed the lives of 35 people overnight. And the place where the ill-fated kindergarten stood was razed to the ground overnight and a flowerbed was laid out there.
May 16, 1972 seemed like an ordinary day in the sleepy resort of Svetlogorsk, except that on that day it was more foggy than usual over the Baltic seaside. Pupils of the departmental kindergarten of the Svetlogorsk sanatorium returned from a morning walk and were getting ready for lunch.
The kindergarten building was a cozy two-story mansion, in which there were only 25 children. Many residents of the city in those years wanted to place their child here, but it was not easy: this children's institution was considered a "thieves' institution." The official position of the parents fully justified the status of the kindergarten: chief of police, chief of the traffic police, first secretary of the city Komsomol committee, employee of the Svetlogorsk court, chief physician...
Photo of the deceased kindergarten group. On the right is teacher Valentina Shabashova-Metelitsa (died), on the left is head Galina Klyukhina (she was not at work on the day of the disaster)
Around noon, an An-24T military transport aircraft took off from Kaliningrad Khrabrovo airport to check and set up radio equipment. In those years, cases of illegal penetration of private aircraft from capital countries into the territory of the USSR became more frequent. There were similar incidents in the Kaliningrad region, so the local command decided to check the coastal tracking system.
An-24T aircraft in flight
At approximately 12:30 the An-24T fell into thick fog over Svetlogorsk. He was flying at an unacceptably low altitude, and on a steep bank in the resort area his wing caught the top of one of the pine trees and shattered into pieces. After the impact, the massive plane weighing 21 tons flew another 200 meters and crashed onto the building of the Svetlogorsk kindergarten, completely destroying the second floor.
The first victims of the tragedy were two high school students Tanya Ezhova and Natasha Tsygankova, who were walking near the kindergarten: even before the collision with the building, the plane doused them with aviation fuel vapor. The girls instantly caught fire, but still managed to survive.
Fuel poured out of the crashed car, kerosene caught fire, a kindergarten was engulfed in flames, and the aluminum skin of the plane burned like paper. Of those who were in the building, only two people survived. The disaster claimed 35 lives: 6 plane crew members, 2 passengers, 24 children and 3 kindergarten employees were killed.
A state of emergency was declared for 24 hours in the resort Svetlogorsk. Residents were forbidden to leave their homes and their electricity and telephones were cut off. When the work of clearing the rubble and searching for the bodies of the dead was completed in a few hours, the place where the kindergarten had previously stood was razed to the ground and a small park was built in its place.
The dead children and teachers were buried in a mass grave in a cemetery, not far from the Svetlogorsk-1 railway station. To reduce publicity to zero, on the day of the funeral, trains were canceled and traffic on the roads connecting Kaliningrad with Svetlogorsk was limited. But despite this, about 10 thousand people gathered at the cemetery that day.
At the funeral, KGB officers forbade taking photographs and exposed the films of those who did so. But the relatives of the victims still managed to take a few photographs.
Photo from personal archive
No criminal case was initiated into the disaster. The case was investigated as “top secret” and its materials were never published. There were many rumors about the reasons for what happened: residents of Svetlogorsk blamed the pilots for everything, claimed that the examination found alcohol in their blood, and even that the pilots noticed nudists on the beach and descended to get a better look at them.
The most plausible assumption seems to be that the crash occurred due to an altimeter malfunction. On the eve of the flight, an altimeter from the Il-14 was installed on the An-24, but no one tested how the device would work on another aircraft. Only after the disaster were tests carried out that showed that the altimeter gave an error of up to 60–70 meters.
Now at the site of the crash there is a chapel erected in 1994 with a sign: “The temple-monument in honor of the icon of the Mother of God “Joy of All Who Sorrow” was built on the site of the tragic death of a kindergarten on May 16, 1972.”
