104 blacksmiths. Brief curriculum vitae

The prototype aircraft "104" developed by Tupolev Design Bureau first flew June 17, 1955 from the Moscow airfield in Zhukovsky. So began the factory tests of the machine, which by the fall of that year turned into a TU-104 jet airliner - the third in the world, the second put into operation and the first in the USSR.

Tu-104

When creating the first Soviet jet liner, Tupolev Design Bureau took as a basis the TU-16 bomber (the “104” aircraft even once carried the TU-16P - “passenger” index) to reduce resources and time spent on the overall development of the structure. Thus, the task of training flight personnel was also facilitated, and they also saved on ground maintenance and repair equipment.

Tu-16

As one of the arguments in favor of creating such an aircraft, Alexei Tupolev cited the possibility of flying at high altitude, “above the weather,” while propeller-driven passenger aircraft, which had a small ceiling, suffered mercilessly from the chatter. But it was there that the first jet liner was waiting for a new, as yet unknown danger.

Over the entire history of operation, 37 cars suffered serious accidents - 18% of the total number of vehicles produced. It should be noted that the “104th” behaved better in flight than its English competitor “Comet” of the company “De Havilland” (23% of lost cars), who had an unhealthy habit of falling apart in the air due to fatigue loads in careless designed fuselage.

The first regular flight TU-104 made September 15, 1956. The Aeroflot crew on the plane with the tail number USSR-L5438 completed the first flight from Moscow to New York along the route passing through London, Keflavik and Goose Bay. The air liner stayed 13 hours 29 minutes. And on September 15, 1956, the Moscow-Khabarovsk TU-104 flight with tail number USSR-L5413 began regular operation of jet engines.

But from the very beginning of flights on the new airliner, an unpleasant surprise awaited the pilots. During further operation during the flight of the TU-104, for no apparent reason, it sometimes suddenly threw up, after which it lost control, fell into a tailspin and began to dive. Pilots called this effect "pickup." After the "pickup" made itself felt, the best scientists and testers were involved in the study of this phenomenon. Several institutes have dealt only with this problem.

Harold Kuznetsov participated in these tests as a test pilot of Aeroflot. He constantly argued with his superiors, convincing that the car did not have enough elevator to get the car out of the dive. On Tupolev believed that the "pickup" had other reasons, ignoring the opinion of a civilian pilot. Meanwhile, the country's prestige was at stake.

Harold Kuznetsov

Khrushchev liked the TU-104 so much that he decided to make his visit to the UK in 1956 on it. But because of the above problems, he was hardly able to dissuade him from this. The Soviet delegation went to London in a cruiser. But in order to prove Soviet technological superiority (the British Comet rival TU-104 did not fly because of a series of mysterious disasters), Khrushchev ordered the TU-104 to be driven to London.

The arrival of the Soviet airliner, according to the British press, produced an effect comparable to the landing of a UFO. The next day, a second TU-104 flew to London, with a different number. In British newspapers, a message appeared that it was the same plane, and the “Russian priests” “repainted the numbers on their experimental aircraft.” “Russian priests” are Russian pilots dressed in all black. The chief designer Alexei Tupolev was offended, and, firstly, he ordered the pilots to allocate funds to put on something fashionable and not black, and the next day, March 25, 1956, send three TU-104 at once to London, which was done. It was a triumph - because at that time no other country in the world had active jet passenger airliners. After the liners returned from London to Moscow, Tupolev personally greeted the crews.

Andrei Tupolev (left), Alexander Arkhangelsky (second left) and the crew commander of the TU-104 aircraft, returning from London, Anatoly Starikov (center right)

Two years later, Harold Kuznetsov represented the TU-104 in Belgium, and after returning from Brussels he was arrested by KGB agents. The reason for his arrest was an absurd case. Before flying to Brussels, the TU-104 was shown to the country's leadership. Kuznetsov turned the plane during taxiing, and a hat was blown off from a member of the Politburo Shepilov. Organizational conclusions followed immediately - a decision was made to punish the commander after returning from the exhibition. As a result, Kuznetsov was removed from his post and was appointed co-pilot for a period of six months. During this time, he was engaged in test work at Aeroflot.

In October 1958, Kuznetsov returned to work as a line pilot on the TU-104. He again became a commander. By this time he was 35 years old, he alone raised a daughter. Harold had many friends who called him a "musketeer." In 1957, a new flight attendant, Alla Maklakova, appeared in Harold's crew.

And this is the conductor Alla Maklakova. Harold is divorced and has one daughter. Everyone knows that he is in love with Alla. Therefore, they often fly in the same crew ...

Meanwhile, the problem with the TU-104 aircraft tossing has not gone away. Despite all the efforts of designers and testers, the problem of the liner with the "pickup" was not solved. The first warning signal was a flight accident on May 16, 1958, when the Czechoslovak TU-104, following at an altitude of 12,000 meters, fell into the zone of thunderstorm activity. Almost immediately, both engines turned off. The plane began to crash and only at an altitude of 4000 meters the crew was able to subjugate a car, start one engine and land at a military airfield near Prague.

A month later, on June 22, TU-104A, following the Irkutsk-Khabarovsk flight at an altitude of 12,500 meters, fell into a powerful upward air flow and was at an altitude of 13,500 meters, from where it began to randomly fall to an altitude of 11,500 meters. After the “stall” and loss of altitude, the crew commander pilot Polbin managed to bring the plane into horizontal flight. Two prerequisites, it seemed, were supposed to make thinking both the leaders of Aeroflot and the leaders of the aviation industry. But that did not happen.

Unfortunately, I did not have to wait long. The first disaster occurred in the area of \u200b\u200bBirobidzhan. In August 1958, the TU-104A, following the Khabarovsk-Irkutsk flight, at an altitude of 10,800 meters in perfectly clear weather threw an ascending rush of air to a height of 12,000 meters. The commander of the ship, pilot Bykov, could not only cope with the “rebellious” machine, but also transmit to the ground about what had happened. A month later, the plane of the pilot Zhelbakov threw from a height of 9000 meters to 11500 meters.

Prophetic photo. They are about to depart. Less than a month left ...

Two months later, another disaster occurred. He should not have flown to Beijing; the plan included the name of another pilot, Anatoly Gorbachev. But Kuznetsova himself asked a friend for a replacement, and Gorbachev did not want to refuse a friend.

October 17, 1958 Tu-104 with tail number CCCP-42362, managed by the crew of Harold Kuznetsov, performed the flight Beijing-Omsk-Moscow. The salon consisted mainly of foreign citizens - a delegation of Chinese and North Korean party functionaries.

The weather in Moscow was bad, at the Gorky alternate aerodrome, too, and after the passage of Kazan the dispatcher ordered to turn around and follow Sverdlovsk suitable for landing. During a U-turn at an altitude of 10,000 meters, the aircraft most likely fell into a zone of strong turbulence and there was a “pick-up” - a spontaneous uncontrolled increase in the pitch angle by the crew. The plane, as it were, “stood on its hind legs”, went up from the train, gaining an additional two kilometers of altitude, lost speed, fell on the wing and went into a tailspin.

The crew did not understand what was happening. However, there was no time for guesswork. Commander Harold Kuznetsov knew exactly only one thing - it was necessary at all costs to level the car. Together with the co-pilot Anton Artyomov they completely gave the helm away from themselves, but nothing came of it. They lacked elevators.

After the plane suddenly threw up, he also suddenly rolled over on his back and began to go into a tailspin. Devices are out of order. Understand where the earth and where the sky was impossible. In the cabin weightlessness came. Not obeying the rudders, the TU-104 instantly switched to uncontrolled diving. Almost vertically, developing supersonic speed, the liner rushed to the ground. At the end of this dive, TU literally demolished several telegraph poles along the railway track. From the impact, the fuselage broke in half. The remains of the crew and passengers were subsequently rescuers found in a radius of almost two kilometers.

As the State Commission later established, the fall lasted two minutes. But already from a height of thirteen kilometers, Kuznetsov began to scrupulously transmit to the ground what was happening with the car. I transmitted it myself: at the helm of the TU-104 there was a special button connected to a microphone. Radio operator Alexander Fedorov duplicated these messages. Communication continued almost until the collision with the ground. The commander’s last words were: “Farewell, dear ones. We are dying. ”

The plane crashed in the Vurnarsky district of Chuvashia. Killed 71 passengers and 9 crew members.

The information transmitted from the board in distress turned out to be truly invaluable. Prior to this, none of the thoroughly conducted investigations involving experts from the Main Directorate of the Civil Air Fleet, the State Research Institute, the Tupolev Design Bureau, and the Air Force have failed to shed light on the causes of the mysterious TU-104 accidents. Everything was attributed to the so-called “human factor”. At one analysis, after hearing the complaints of the flight crew on the behavior of the aircraft, the offended Tupolev threw up in his hearts: “This is not a bad airplane, you don’t know how to fly on it!”

The points over the “i” were placed by Harold Kuznetsov. As an analysis of the information received thanks to him showed, the plane fell into a giant upward flow of air. The fact that this is possible at such a sky-high, over nine kilometers, heights, none of the creators of new aircraft and did not suspect. Indeed, in piston machines, the “ceilings” were incommensurably smaller. And so the designers claimed: jet engines will fly "over the weather."

That was before that tragic evening. Harold Kuznetsov’s crew was doubly unlucky. Not only did he fall into the vertical air stream, he was at its very epicenter. After performing several simulation flights, specialists were able to determine the parameters of this stream. Its length was 9-13 kilometers, width - almost 2, thickness up to 6 ... The speed was also huge - 300 kilometers per hour.

Urgently, designers began to search for ways to deal with a formidable natural phenomenon. “Ceilings” were reduced, the design was modernized, recommendations were made on the alignment of aircraft. Bitter experience helped create other aerodynamic forms that successfully resist air currents. In particular, the designers of the new IL-B2 intercontinental airliner came up with a special “tooth” on the front edge of the swept wing of the aircraft. Thanks to him, even having got into a powerful vertical stream, the IL independently lowered its nose.

After that, the TU-104 aircraft carried passengers for another three decades, and although there were no disasters (after all, about 200 aircraft were built and flew) - their reasons were already different. TU-104 has for a long time become the main passenger aircraft of Aeroflot: for example, in 1960, a third of passenger air transportation in the USSR was performed on TU-104. Over the 23 years of operation, the TU-104 fleet transported about 100 million passengers, spending 2,000,000 flight hours in the air and completing more than 600,000 flights.

A considerable merit in this belongs to Harold Kuznetsov and his crew. Here are their names:

Kuznetsov Harold Dmitrievich - PIC instructor

Artyomov Anton Filimonovich - FAC

Rogozin Igor Alexandrovich - co-pilot

Mumrienko Evgeny Andreevich - navigator

Veselov Ivan Vladimirovich - flight engineer

Fedorov Alexander Sergeevich - flight attendant

Smolenskaya Maya Filippovna - flight attendant-translator

Goryushina Tatyana Borisovna - flight attendant

Maklakova Albina - flight attendant

Worthy life. A worthy death met ... And many lives saved in the future.

It made its first flight in 1949 and entered into passenger operation in May 1952, 4.5 years earlier than the Tu-104.

The operation of Comet 1 was stopped in April 1954 after the death of four aircraft, of which two died due to (unclear at first) technical reasons.

Of the four dead Comet 1, one plane died due to the fault of the crew that drove the plane into stall mode, setting the angle of attack at too high during take-off. Another plane died in a storm, which no passenger plane that could exist could survive.

However, two aircraft died for technical reasons, the nature of which was unclear.

The Prime Minister of England Winston Churchill ordered to stop the passenger flights of the Comet.

The aircraft was subjected to long-term fatigue tests at the booth, equivalent to approximately 3,000 flights, which established the cause of the two accidents that occurred: Comets died due to fatigue cracking of the skin resulting from stresses due to pressure drops inside the cabin and outside. After the crack arose, it developed very quickly and an explosive decompression of the cockpit occurred - part of the skin was pulled out from the cockpit at full speed, which led to the death of the aircraft. Cracks occurred primarily near the sharp corners of the instrument window in the roof of the front of the aircraft (and contrary to the design documentation, the plant did not glue the window, but fastened it with piercing rivets, which created stress and rudimentary micro-cracks in the vicinity of the rivets).

The investigation established new standards for calculating the strength of high-altitude aircraft. In addition, the windows of all aircraft after the Comet experiment make round, not rectangular.

After the problem became clear, the Comets rebuilt and drove for three years on trials and in the air force before allowing passenger operation again.

The Tu-104 was put into passenger operation without really testing the aircraft before the aircraft was properly debugged and the necessary stability and controllability characteristics were obtained. In flight at a sufficiently high altitude and speed close to supersonic, the aircraft experienced longitudinal instability, and in flight at high echelons the margin of angle of attack before stall was small. This created the conditions for a breakdown in a tailspin, which happened twice, resulting in the death of more than 200 people - before the aircraft was finally properly tested and finalized.
http://nvo.ng.ru/history/2008-06-06/11_tu144.html

However, unlike England, in the USSR the Tu-104 was not decommissioned due to these disasters.

Tu-104. The last words of the pilot Kuznetsov.

Pickup is a phenomenon of longitudinal instability of an aircraft overload in the area of \u200b\u200bsome flight modes. An upward flow can provoke a plane entering the area of \u200b\u200bthe indicated modes, then the plane loses stability. Tu-104 inherited from Tu-16 stability problems at large angles of attack.

The problem was solved by increasing the stabilizer and changing its angle.

It is noteworthy that:

the Soviet government did not stop the passenger operation of the Tu-104 until the cause of the disasters was clarified;

Tupolev rejected the opinion of pilots that the Tu-104 stabilizer is too insufficient for reliable control of the aircraft; the pilots did not want to listen;

during a meeting in Vnukovo of pilots and Aeroflot representatives and representatives of the Tupolev Design Bureau dedicated to discussing the causes of Tu-104 "pickups" and catastrophes, Tupolev told the pilots: "you don’t know how to fly correctly";

when the pilots got up to honor the memory of the dead crews with a minute of silence, the hall rose, the presidium also rose, one Tupolev remained sitting, then collected papers and left the meeting in silence by the standing people.

* * *

A small touch of the “spirit of the times”: Tu-104 pilot Harold Kuznetsov was arrested and taken to the KGB to Lubyanka for the fact that when he deployed the plane, bringing him to taxiing, from Comrade. Shepilova blew off his hat.

At the end of the fifties, several mysterious accidents happened to the first-born of jet technology - Tu-104 aircraft: in flight, it seemed, for no reason, the car began to behave like a furious mustang. Why? The question remained unanswered until October 1958, when it was decided by the pilot Harold Kuznetsov. True, the price of truth was too expensive - life.

October 17, 1958. About 21 hours. Tu-104, which was led by commander Harold Kuznetsov, confidently went at a given level. The Beijing-Moscow flight was nearing completion. Omsk remained behind, where was the last intermediate landing. In the salons, except for the measured rumble of engines, sleepy silence gradually settled. Although the passengers this time turned out to be mostly noisy people: youth delegations from China and Korea flew to the Komsomol congress, but they were gradually overwhelmed by tiredness from the long road.
“Kazan has passed,” the navigator Yevgeny Mumrienko reported.
And from Kazan to the house is just a stone's throw. A little more - and they will be accepted into their "embrace" by the dispatcher of the Moscow air zone ...
- There is a heavy fog in Moscow. I forbid landing, ”the commander suddenly heard the dispassionate voice of the air traffic controller at Vnukovo airport.
You will not say anything - a surprise. Go to the emergency? But not one of the nearest airdromes, either in Kazan or in Gorky, was suitable for the firstborn of jet technology. Wrong runways. Sverdlovsk remained. So, a one-hundred and eighty U-turn?
“Please accept us,” Kuznetsov is once again associated with the “land.” - I can land the plane. I guarantee.
This is now the commander in a similar situation can make a final decision. But then he did not have such a right. And the dispatcher did not want to take risks. He was implacable:
- Return to Sverdlovsk. Tu-104 slowly, as if reluctantly, began to turn around ... And then something happened. It was as if someone's invisible giant hand grabbed the car with an iron grip and threw it up sharply. Moreover, the power of this throw was so powerful that the multi-ton colossus, like a balloon torn from hands, shot up immediately ... for more than two (!) Kilometers. Have you ever seen the "cobra" that test pilots do on the Su-37? The car seems to be sitting on its tail, and its nose is raised high. So the Tu-104 was almost in the same position. And all this - not even in a matter of seconds. Fractions of a second.
The plane was shaking like a fever. Lead severity piled up overload. The crew did not understand what was happening. However, there was no time for guesswork. It was compressed until the moment. The commander knew exactly only one thing - it was necessary at all costs to level the car. Together with the co-pilot Anton Artyomov they completely gave the helm away from themselves. Nothing worked out. The elevators were simply not enough. It's like a door that you are trying to swing open wide, and it is made in such a way that it can only open halfway ...
The battle with the insidious, but most importantly, unknown enemy still continued when he again showed his unbridled burrows. If the plane had just suddenly flung up, now it is just as suddenly thrown down. Not obeying the rudders, the Tu-104 instantly went into an uncontrolled dive. Almost vertically, developing supersonic speed, the liner rushed to the ground ... When, before colliding with it, a little more than two kilometers remained, Harold Kuznetsov, overcoming unimaginable tension, made his last efforts to translate the car into a shallow planning. Alas. "Tu" literally demolished several telegraph poles along the railway track. From the impacts, the fuselage broke in half ... The remains of the crew and one hundred passengers were later found in a radius of almost two kilometers.
As the state commission established, this game with death lasted about two minutes. Not more.
When did Harold Dmitrievich realize that the plane was dying? Hard to say. However, what's the difference? Another thing is important: already from a height of thirteen kilometers Kuznetsov began to scrupulously transmit to the earth what is happening with the machine. Can you imagine? Like in a planned test flight! As if there was no this monstrous light show. "Altitude ... Speed \u200b\u200b... Roll ... And so moment by moment. I transmitted it myself: there was a special button connected to a microphone on the Tu-104 helm. Radio operator Alexander Fedorov duplicated these messages. Communication continued almost until the collision with the ground The last words of the commander were: "Farewell, dear. Dying. "
The information transmitted from the board in distress turned out to be not even worth its weight in gold, but truly priceless. Prior to this, none of the thoroughly conducted investigations, in which experts from the Main Directorate of the Civil Air Fleet, the State Research Institute, the Tupolev Design Bureau, and the Air Force participated, managed to shed light on the causes of the mysterious Tu-104 accidents. Design defects, technical problems? No, everything seems to be fine. Bad weather conditions? And you can’t complain about them. The so-called "human factor" remained. And bumps rained down on the heads of the pilots: they say that their lack of professionalism was to blame. It was difficult to object on the basis of the available data.
Points over the "i" placed Harold Kuznetsov. What did happen? As shown by the analysis of the information received, the plane fell into a giant ascending air stream. The fact that this is possible at such a sky-high, over nine kilometers, heights, none of the creators of new aircraft and did not suspect. After all, the piston machines "ceilings" were incommensurably smaller. And therefore, even venerable designers claimed: jet engines will fly "over the weather." Thunderstorms below. Neither to you fogs, nor rains. Turbulence? “Little things,” they said.
That was before that tragic evening. Harold Kuznetsov’s crew was doubly unlucky. Not only did he fall into a vertical air stream, he also found himself at its very epicenter. After performing several simulation flights, specialists were able to determine the parameters of this stream. Length 9-13, width - almost 2, thickness up to 6 ... No, not meters: the bill went for kilometers! Moreover, its speed was also huge - 300 kilometers per hour.
So, the errors were dispelled. Urgently, designers began to search for ways to deal with a formidable natural phenomenon. The ceilings were reduced, the design was modernized, recommendations were made on the alignment of aircraft. Bitter experience helped to create other aerodynamic forms that successfully resist air currents. In particular, the designers of the new IL-B2 intercontinental airliner came up with a special “tooth” on the front edge of the huge swept wing of the aircraft. Thanks to him, even having got into a powerful vertical stream, "Il" lowers its nose on its own ...

Harold Dmitrievich Kuznetsov

In 1958, a photojournalist of the American LIFE magazine Howard Sochurek, while touring the USSR, made a series of photographs of the crew of the Tu-104 aircraft. Surely he was allowed to photograph the best, "reliable" crew.

Interesting, with the aroma of the era, photo:

The Tu-104 aircraft is the pride of the USSR. Preparing for departure.

And this is the crew of the Tu-104. The crew commander is Harold Kuznetsov. Second on the right. Tall, handsome, lucky. To become the commander of the flagship Aeroflot at 35, to fly on international lines - it was a brilliant career! Next to him is conductor Alla. In less than a month they will die ...

G. Kuznetsov in the cockpit

Let's have a smoke! Good photo...

For some reason, right after the commander the porter goes ....

And this is the conductor Alla Maklakova. Harold is divorced and has one daughter. Everyone knows that he is in love with Alla. Therefore, they often fly in the same crew ...

Prophetic photo. They are about to depart. Less than a month left ...

October 17, 1958 (55 years ago!) Tu-104 with tail number CCCP-42362, managed by the crew of Harold Kuznetsov, operated the flight Beijing-Omsk-Moscow. The salon consisted mainly of foreign citizens - a delegation of Chinese and North Korean party functionaries.

In this situation, the crew did everything possible to save the aircraft. But the lack of elevator control did not allow to bring the car out of the lethal mode. Harold Kuznetsov knew that perhaps the situation was repeating, which led to a number of Tu-104 accidents, and the reasons for which were not found. He conveyed just a few words - “Grab”, “the stabilizer is not enough”, “we die, pass on to relatives”. The plane crashed in the Vurnarsky district of Chuvashia, a few tens of meters from the canvas of the Moscow-Kazan-Sverdlovsk railway, not far from the village of Bulatovo. Killed all 65 passengers and 9 crew members.

Information from the board in distress turned out to be invaluable. The fact is that during the years 1956-1958 several mysterious accidents have already occurred with Tu-104 aircraft. None of the thoroughly conducted investigations involving experts from the Main Directorate of the Civil Air Fleet, the State Research Institute, the Tupolev Design Bureau, or the Air Force have managed to shed light on their causes. Design defects, technical problems? No, everything seems to be fine. Bad weather conditions? And you can’t complain about them. The so-called human factor remains. And bumps rained down on the heads of the pilots.

The information transmitted was enough to find and fix the problem. The rules for aligning the aircraft were changed, the angle of the stabilizer was changed, and the elevator was modified. The maximum flight altitude has also been reduced. The propensity of the aircraft to "pickups" was greatly reduced.

After that, the Tu-104 carried passengers for another three decades, and although there were no disasters (after all, about 200 aircraft were built and flew) - their reasons were already different.

A considerable merit in this belongs to Harold Kuznetsov and his crew. Here are their names:

Kuznetsov Harold Dmitrievich - PIC instructor

Artyomov Anton Filimonovich - FAC

Rogozin Igor Alexandrovich - co-pilot

Mumrienko Evgeny Andreevich - navigator

Veselov Ivan Vladimirovich - flight engineer

Fedorov Alexander Sergeevich - flight attendant

Smolenskaya Maya Filippovna - flight attendant-translator

Goryushina Tatyana Borisovna - flight attendant

Maklakova Albina - flight attendant

Worthy life. A worthy death ...

And many lives saved in the future.

Alla Maklakova is buried nearby ...

"Russian Miracle" - so dubbed the first Soviet jet liner in the West. Nikita Khrushchev was so impressed by this aircraft that he even intended to make an official visit to London in 1956 on an experimental, non-production machine.
At the world exhibition "Expo-58" Tu-104 is awarded the main prize. However, few people realize that in fact, with the "Russian miracle" not everything was so smooth. Just at that time, mysterious incidents begin to occur ...
This film is about how, at the cost of his own life, the crew of Harold Kuznetsov helped designers and scientists to “bring” the plane, as well as about a real story known to theatergoers and moviegoers under the title "104 pages about love ...".

Brief curriculum vitae

Kuznetsov Harold Dmitrievich (August 1923, USSR - October 17, 1958, near Apnerka station, Vurnarsky district, Chuvash Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, RSFSR, USSR) - Soviet pilot, crew commander of the Tu-104A, crashed on October 17, 1958.

On October 17, 1958, the new Tu-104A with tail number CCCP-42362, controlled by the crew of Harold Kuznetsov, operated the Beijing-Omsk-Moscow flight. In the cabin was a delegation of Chinese and North Korean Komsomol activists.

Due to the bad weather in Moscow and at the alternate aerodrome, the Gorky dispatcher ordered to turn around and follow Sverdlovsk suitable for landing. During a U-turn at an altitude of 10,000 meters, the aircraft fell into a zone of strong turbulence and there was a “pick-up” - a spontaneous uncontrolled increase in the pitch angle by the crew. The plane went up from the train, gaining an additional two kilometers of altitude, lost speed, fell on the wing and went into a tailspin (for this reason, several Tu-104 plane crashes had already occurred for the same reason and no one could establish the cause).

In this situation, the crew did everything possible to save the aircraft. But the lack of elevator control did not allow to bring the car out of the lethal mode. Even when it became clear that the aircraft was doomed, the crew commander Harold Kuznetsov continued without panic, to clearly comment on everything that was happening and ordered the flight operator to broadcast his words to the ground (thanks to these comments, the necessary changes were made to the aircraft’s design, which in the future made it possible to avoid such disasters ) The plane crashed in the Vurnarsky district of Chuvashia, a few tens of meters from the canvas of the Moscow-Kazan-Sverdlovsk railway, near the village of Bulatovo. Killed 65 passengers and 9 crew members.