Secret tragedy: the plane crashed on a kindergarten. Tragedies in the USSR that were forbidden to write about: a plane crash on a kindergarten and children burned alive at school The disaster occurred on May 16, 1972

Childhood crushed by the sky

On May 16, 1972, in broad daylight, a plane crashed into a kindergarten in the city of Svetlogorsk. The teachers, who were having lunch at that moment, did not get up from the tables, 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 were to blame for everything, in whose blood they allegedly found alcohol.

"MK" found eyewitnesses and victims of the tragedy, who spoke after more than forty years of silence.

Photo of the deceased kindergarten group. On the right - the teacher Valentina Shabashova-Metelitsa (died), on the left - the head teacher 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 terrible tragedy are buried, two women are bustling about.

“I have a brother here,” says one. - Burnt alive. Are you from Moscow? Tell me why until now our tragedy is either not written at all, or they write nonsense? I once read that, they say, 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 fell asleep after that. Not true! In fact, many decided to give birth again and called the newborns the names of the dead children.

Women and the priest of the local temple give us "addresses, passwords, appearances." For some reason, they are sure: now all the victims and eyewitnesses will tell how it really happened.

So, on May 16 it was clear and calm in Svetlogorsk. At about 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 cut down the top of a tall birch. One of the first to see him was a few vacationers who found themselves that day in the park, and schoolchildren who had a physical education lesson at the city stadium.

“We were returning to our school along a forest path that went past a kindergarten,” recalls a former student of one of the schools, Nikolai Alekseev. - Seeing the plane falling on our heads, we were dumbfounded with horror, someone tried to escape. "Stop!" our teacher shouted to us. Rising as if 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, swept over our heads.

The first random victims that day were high school students Tanya Yezhova and Natasha Tsygankova. The girls were approaching the kindergarten, when suddenly ...

“There were a few meters left before the kindergarten, as we were doused with burning vapors of aviation fuel,” recalls Tatyana Yezhova, whom we met at the site of the tragedy. - We didn’t even have time to understand anything, as in an instant our hair, clothes, shoes flared up on us. We were in severe shock from fright and unbearable pain. Not a soul around, and we are alone in the middle of the street, engulfed in flames ...

And the plane continued to rush to the kindergarten, hidden in massive spruces. The kindergarten was considered departmental (from the Svetlogorsk sanatorium), and, as usual, it had all the best: from the conditions for the stay of children to the salary of the staff. The official position of the parents fully justified the status of this institution: the head of the police, the head of the traffic police, the first secretary of the Komsomol city committee, an employee of the Svetlogorsk court, the head physician ...

Returning from a walk, the children sat down in their places in anticipation of dinner. The dining room was filled with the aroma of hot soup. The cook Tamara Yankovskaya probably, as usual, slowly walked between the tables, watching that the pupils ate neatly, slowly, and correctly held the spoons.

Looking out the window, the teacher Valentina Shabashova-Metelitsa saw her son Andrey. On 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, I’m running to my mother for a minute? ..” Andrey asked. Valentina ran out to meet him. Mother and son just hugged...

In the next moment, the building of the kindergarten was shaken by a monstrous blow. Having lost both planes and the landing gear during the fall, the halved fuselage rammed the second floor at high speed, burying everyone under its debris. Aviation fuel, which flared up from the impact with renewed vigor, swallowed up all living things in its flame in a matter of seconds.

Next to the flaming ruins of the kindergarten, the cockpit of an airplane was lying on the road. In it, clinging to the steering wheel, sat a dead pilot. The co-pilot lay on the road. The wind either knocked the flames off him, then fanned them with renewed vigor.

“Nobody even poured a bucket of water on him,” recalls an old woman who lived next door. It was impossible to get close to him.

Diagram of the accident site, compiled by eyewitness Valera Rogov.

Identification error

It seemed that no one could survive in this hell. And yet, not everyone died. The kindergarten nanny Anna Nezvanova then escaped a terrible death, wiping the windows from the side of the street with a rag. The blast wave threw her a few meters to the side. Hardly coming to her senses, Anna Nikitichna rushed to the burning ruins. There, under the ruins of the kindergarten, was her son Vanya. A woman mad with grief, trying to get a child, almost died in the fire herself ...

That day, for various reasons, three pupils did not go to kindergarten. Irina Golushko had 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 a kidney disease,” recalls Oleg Saushkin, who was then six years old. — I remember that at some point the whole hospital began to fuss. Everyone began to run, cars drove somewhere, confusion and signs of some distant horror reigned in the eyes of the hospital staff. And already my mother, with tears in her eyes, a little later, told about what happened in my kindergarten ...

“The day before, my tonsils were removed, my mother and I were on sick leave,” says Olga Korobova. - Sitting at home was an unbearable torment for me. On 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 rumbled so hard that the ground shook. By the way, my mother worked in that garden as a nanny. 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 of the tragedy.

“In 1972, I was already in the first grade,” says Valera. — I had a dream last night. I clearly see the faces of my children from the kindergarten, engulfed in flames. Some unusual fire - a real torch. The next morning I woke up in a cold sweat. I told my mother what I saw. We did not attach any importance to this then, but I went to school with a severe headache. Somewhere around noon, I went to the kindergarten - and ... In general, I was one of the first at the scene of the tragedy. People rushed around, not knowing what to do, people who came running to help. Somewhere in the bushes, turning the soul inside out, a burnt dog howled, howled terribly...

“It was lunchtime when all this happened,” recalls a former employee of the Svetlogorsk police department (in 1972, an inspector of the OBKhSS, police lieutenant) Leonid Baldykov. At that very moment I was at home having dinner. My house was only a hundred meters from the kindergarten. What we saw when we got there shocked us, adults, strong men. A wall of raging fire and an unbearable fumes from burning fuel that spread over the asphalt from a broken tank ...

Almost simultaneously, police squads, firefighters, military personnel of neighboring military units and sailors of the Baltic Fleet arrived at the crash site. In a matter of minutes, a triple cordon was set up. Armed soldiers, tightly clasped by the hands, barely restrained the unfortunate mothers, who rushed to where their children died in a terrible fire. Somehow managed to push them to a safe distance.

“My uncle, midshipman Valentin Konstantinovich, was in the first row of the cordon,” recalls Oleg Saushkin. - According to him, the officers, midshipmen and sailors, who were standing near the destroyed kindergarten, got the most. Many, including himself, had their vests torn to shreds, their faces were covered in abrasions from women who were trying to break through the system, distraught with grief ...

Along the road, on the soot-blackened lawn, the military laid out white sheets. Immediately, rescuers began to lay the remains of children extracted from under the ruins on them. Many, unable to stand 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, someone was hysterical…

In order for the special transport to be able to park and pick up the remains of the dead, rescuers and firefighters had to pull a pile of bricks and mangled fragments of the aircraft in different directions from a narrow street. The asphalt was covered with numerous furrows, more like bleeding wounds. Immediately soldiers appeared with canvas stretchers. Two strong fighters carried the charred body of the pilot next to Valera Rogov. Then - another, third. Someone grabbed Valera's hand. The boy turned around and saw tearful women who, pointing at the smoking ruins, shouted to him: “Why are they there, and you are here ?! You were supposed to be with them! Your mother was told that you were with them!..”

State of emergency

A state of emergency was introduced in the resort Svetlogorsk for 24 hours. Residents were forbidden not only to leave the city, but even to leave their homes. The electricity and telephones were turned off. The city froze, people sat in dark apartments, as if in shelters during the war. In the evening, police squads and combatants were on duty on the coast: there was a fear that one of the relatives of the dead 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 turns out later, were taken to a landfill on the outskirts of the city. For a long time, burnt children's books and toys, parts and items of military ammunition will be found in its vicinity ...

As soon as the last loaded car left the city, the place where the day before there was a kindergarten was leveled, overlaid with sod on scorched earth. In order to hide the traces of the tragedy from prying eyes, it was decided to break a large flower bed in that place.

- By morning, the garden seemed to have never existed - a flower bed blossomed in its place! Andrey Dmitriev recalls. Many parents could not believe their eyes then. The scorched earth was cut off, the turf was laid, the paths strewn with broken red brick. Broken and burnt trees were cut down. And only a sharp smell of kerosene. The smell lingered for another two weeks...

The consequences of the Svetlogorsk tragedy were horrendous: 24 (and not 23, as official sources say) 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 him on the ship. In response, he asked not to bury his daughter in a mass grave, but to wait for him. Because the girl was not taken into account ...

Garden workers Tamara Yankovskaya, Antonina Romanenko, and her friend Yulia Vorona, who accidentally came to visit that day, were taken to a military hospital with severe burns. In addition to their relatives, KGB officers visited them in the hospital every day, 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 the Svetlogorsk-1 railway station. On the day of the funeral, traffic was limited on the roads connecting the regional center with Svetlogorsk. At the same time, diesel trains carrying passengers from Kaliningrad to the resort town were cancelled. The official version is an urgent repair of access roads, the unofficial one is to minimize the publicity of all the circumstances of the plane crash. Despite the temporary restrictions associated with mourning events, according to eyewitnesses, more than seven thousand people gathered at the cemetery on the day of the funeral.

At the funeral, KGB officers forbade taking pictures and exposed the films of those who did it. But a few pictures were still taken by the relatives of the victims. Photo from personal archive

Quiet investigation

No criminal case was opened on the fact of 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 posts.

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 forbade burying the pilots at the Svetlogorsk cemetery next to "their victims." For the same reason, in the general list of those who died in the plane crash, there was no place for the eight names of the crew members in the chapel.

The priest of the local temple keeps some archival documents relating to the tragedy. But the main thing is that dispatchers, flight mechanics, 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 has nothing to do with it.

There were other versions, sometimes absurd. Someone argued that the pilots were poorly prepared for the mission. They did not forget about the nudist girls sunbathing on the beach (and this was in 1972, but at a temperature of plus 6 degrees!), Which the pilots allegedly tried to make out during the next descent over the sea. They wrote that the crew allegedly took off without permission. In fact, the reason was in the altimeter ...

“The Scandinavian neighbors closest to us have repeatedly attempted to violate air borders,” says one of the employees of the 263rd separate transport aviation regiment (the one that belonged to the crashed plane). 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 in the area of responsibility of Soviet radar stations of the coastal tracking system by the naval aviation of the Baltic Fleet. And on that fateful day, the An-24 (tail number 05) went on a mission with the crew of Captain Vilor Gutnik. On the eve of the flight, on command from above, the altimeter from the Il-14 was rearranged on the An-24. The performance of the instrument has not been properly verified. No one then could have imagined how the altimeter would behave on a new aircraft.

According to legend, the crew of Captain Gutnik was supposed to play the role of a conditional target, that is, an intruder aircraft. In the field of view of the locator, the target aircraft had to climb, move away, then drop sharply in order to get out of the control of the "all-seeing eye". When descending, turn right and left to outwit the station operator. Gutnik conscientiously did what was required. The operator was informed every minute of the flight altitude, and he made notches on the tablet, informing the crew of board 05 whether the target was visible or not. At the lowest altitudes, the locator did not see the target: the plane went out of its field of vision. 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 a thick fog over the sea.

The first collision with an obstacle occurred at the 14th minute 48th second of the flight. 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 - no more than 85 meters.

In the declassified case, the scheme clearly traces the entire path of the fall 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 a little ... How? The fact that the inhabitants of a vast country will finally see for themselves how everything really happened.

On May 16, 1972, the An-24T aircraft was supposed to fly over the 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 Kos, 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. Crossed the coastline near Zelenogradsk, headed for Cape Taran. And then he disappeared from the radar.

At 12.30 the pupils of the Svetlogorsk kindergarten, 24 kids, the youngest of whom was only two years old, were sitting in the dining room waiting for dinner. Then a plane appeared from the sea from a dense fog.

He caught a tall pine tree, cutting down its top, broke off half of the wing, losing pieces of skin, flew, descending, another two hundred meters and fell right on the garden building.

The first victims were high school girls, whose way home from school ran just past the garden. Seconds before the crash, they were doused with burning vapors of aviation fuel. “We didn’t even have time to understand anything, as in an instant our hair, clothes, shoes flared up on us. We were in severe shock from fright and unbearable pain. There is not a soul around, and we are alone in the middle of the street, engulfed in flames ... ”one of them said in an interview decades later.

The impact of the jet fuel ignited with renewed vigor, turning the kindergarten into a flaming torch. Nearby lay the cockpit of the aircraft, in it, clinging to the steering wheel, sat a dead pilot. The body of the second was thrown onto the road.

“We stood and watched how this colossus, having circled the stadium and almost hitting the Ferris wheel in the park with its wing, collapsed on the kindergarten! We were horrified by what had happened, it seemed that this simply could not be! Residents were forbidden not only to leave the city, but even to leave their own homes. The electricity and telephones were turned off. It was very scary. The city froze, we sat in dark apartments, as if in shelters during the war, ”recalled an eyewitness, at that time a high school student.

Scheme of the accident site, compiled by eyewitness Valera Rogov

Moskovsky Komsomolets/mk.ru

The city spent the next 24 hours in a state of emergency. Breaking through the crowd of mothers who were not remembering themselves from grief, rescuers removed the bodies of children burned alive - or rather, what was left of them - from under the rubble of the kindergarten. Residents were forbidden to leave their homes, electricity and telephone communications did not work, police and combatants were on duty on the coast - in case one of the relatives of the victims decides to drown themselves.

The next morning, in place of the ashes, there was a large flower bed, 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 electric trains were canceled in the city on the day of the funeral and traffic was limited on the roads connecting the regional center with Svetlogorsk, thousands of people came to see the children on their last journey. The crew members and passengers were buried in the cemetery in Kaliningrad, with the exception of one, whose body was taken home by his wife.

A picture of a group of kindergarten students with teachers, taken in early 1972. From the archive of Maria Kudreshova

oldden.livejournal.com

No criminal case was initiated into the crash. A commission urgently flew from Moscow to Svetlogorsk to conduct an investigation. It was assumed that the problem was in the failure of some device. The members of the commission interviewed everyone who was involved in the flight, deciphered the data from the black boxes and, obviously, came to some kind of conclusion, but they did not convey it to the general public, limiting themselves to the vague wording "poor training and flight management." As a result of the investigation, about forty servicemen lost their posts.

Meanwhile, among the inhabitants of Svetlogorsk, a variety of versions were walking, converging only that the pilots were to blame for the crash. Someone claimed that the examination found alcohol in the blood of the pilots, someone - that the pilots saw the girls who were sunbathing naked on the beach and went down to get a better look at them.

Against the background of 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 the documents, photographs and other data provided to him by the former commander of the Air Force of the Baltic Fleet, Lieutenant General of Aviation Vasily Proskurin, notes that the black boxes recorded at the moment of collision with an obstacle: the altimeter showed a height of 150 meters above sea level. In fact, from the foot of the steep bank to the top of the pine 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, which showed that the altimeter gave an error of up to 60-70 meters.

Now, at the crash site, 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.”

“A prayer service is held there every time, and then everyone goes to the cemetery, a prayer service is held there. And every time the military comes, they bring wreaths, flowers every year ... It’s already a tradition, ”one of the mothers whose child died in the disaster said in a TV show dedicated to the tragedy. What happened forever united the parents, causing them to gather annually at the chapel for the past 45 years.

On May 16, 1972, at about 12:30, the An-24T aircraft of the naval forces of the Baltic Fleet of the USSR, flying to fly over radio equipment, crashed in bad weather conditions, catching a tree. After a collision with a tree, the damaged aircraft flew about 200 meters and crashed on the building of a kindergarten in Svetlogorsk. 34 people died in the crash: all 8 on the plane, 23 children and 3 employees of the kindergarten.

The kindergarten of the resort town of Svetlogorsk was filled with cheerful children. ringing voices. Dinner time came, the kids returned from a walk. And suddenly - a giant shadow covered the sky, a monstrous blow was heard, a flame shot up. In the opening of the collapsed wall, engulfed in flames, two kindergarten workers jumped out. The tenth-graders of the local school walking along the street were covered with heat ... It happened at 12.30 on May 16, 1972.

Eyewitnesses of the tragedy will tell: in the morning it was clear and warm, but then a thick fog fell over the sea. From there, from the direction of the sea, from the fog came the rumble of turbines. Then an airplane appeared over the steep bank, hooked on a tall pine tree, cut off the top, broke off half of the wing and, with a decrease, losing parts of the skin, flew another two hundred meters and crashed onto the kindergarten building. Twenty meters from the crash site, a lonely old woman lived in a house. This house is still intact...
The regional party authorities, the command of the Baltic Fleet urgently arrived at the scene of the tragedy, examined, photographed, and took away the remains of the dead. During the night, sailors from a nearby unit removed the wreckage of the aircraft, dismantled the ruins, cleared the territory and even laid out a flower bed on the site of the former kindergarten. A severe veto was imposed on information about the tragedy. Naturally, rumors and speculation immediately began to circulate around Svetlogorsk. A small resort town was shocked by the tragedy that claimed twenty-three children's lives. Under the ruins, the kindergarten cook Tamara Yankovskaya also died, and two more workers, Antonina Romanenko and Valentina Shabaeva-Metelitsa, died of burns in a military hospital.

Military pilots, crew members of the crashed plane - captains Vilorii Gutnik and Alexander Kostin, senior lieutenant Andrey Lyutov, warrant officers Nikolai Gavrilyuk, Leonid Sergienko, senior inspector pilot lieutenant colonel Lev Denisov, senior engineer lieutenant colonel Anatoly Svetlov were buried at the city cemetery in Kaliningrad. The body of the right pilot, senior lieutenant Viktor Baranov, was taken to his homeland 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 flew out of 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. In the air regiment, the commission passed through the "sieve" a detailed survey of all aviators. When the "black box" data was received a few days later, it became clear that the technique 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 brought to the general public, and the inhabitants of Svetlogorsk for many years blamed the pilots for what happened.

Until now, on the anniversary of the tragedy, representatives of the aviation of the Baltic Fleet come to the Svetlogorsk cemetery to honor the memory of the dead, meet with relatives of the victims of the tragedy, who now know the true cause of the disaster. Every year on the ninth of May, on the birthday of the commander of the AN-24, Captain Vilorii Gutnik, fellow soldiers of the deceased crew gather at the city cemetery of Kaliningrad. A chapel was erected on the site of the tragedy.

But in the local press, no, no, and there are articles where the authors question the professionalism of the crew. Say, he did not cope with his task due to unfavorable flight conditions: a high incoming coast, sudden fog, ignorance of the weather on the route. The supposedly "drunk" factor also worked: a belated reaction of the crew members (possible influence of alcohol). One of the authors even spread ridiculous rumors about the desire of the crew to take a closer look at the nudist girls sunbathing on the beach (and this was in 1972, but at a temperature of plus 6 degrees!). They wrote that the crew allegedly took off without permission ....
What really happened on May 16, 1972? Versions and eyewitness accounts had to listen to a lot. But I will be based only on official documents. As for the professionalism of the crew, the act of investigating the crash of the AN-24 plane does not call it into question: by that time, Captain Gutnik's flight time had amounted to about five thousand hours. Yes, and colleagues speak of him as a high-class pilot.

Reserve Lieutenant Colonel Vyacheslav Kuryanovich:

After graduating from the flight school, Vilor Ilyich Gutnik underwent retraining at the Ryazan Training Center. Then he trained in civil aviation. He flew as a co-pilot in the Yakut squadron. Gained experience flying long and extra long distances there. In 1965 he became an airship commander in our unit. I flew with him for a year and a half as a navigator. Gutnik was considered one of the best pilots in our regiment...

Reserve Lieutenant Colonel Vladimir Pisarenko:

Vilor Ilyich was a pilot of the highest class. Literate,. disciplined, very scrupulous in everything. And the whole crew was his strongest. The same navigator, Captain Kostin. He was older than the commander. 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 catastrophe contain the conclusion of a pathologist, which completely denies such an assumption.

I carefully studied (many thanks for the help to the former commander of the BF Air Force, Lieutenant General of Aviation Vasily Proskurin) all documents, photographs, drawings, eyewitness accounts, radio communications, etc. It turns out that 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 - Spit (landing) - Chkalovsk (landing) - Khrabrovo (landing).
From the report of dispatcher Ensign Mikulevich: "Upon the arrival of Captain Gutnik at the KDP, I took from him a certificate stating that the crew could perform the task for health reasons. And I signed the flight sheet with a landing on the Spit."

An-24 took off from Khrabrovo at 12:15. The general flight control was carried out by the operational duty officer of the aviation command post, Lieutenant Colonel Vaulev, who also gave permission to complete the task. Having gained altitude, the plane reached a point in the Zelenogradsk region, "attached" to it and went to Cape Taran. Then he made a U-turn over the sea to reach the given bearing. A thick fog was already over the sea.

The collision of the aircraft with an obstacle occurred at 14 minutes 48 seconds of flight. At the same time, black boxes were recorded: the altimeter showed a height of 150 meters above sea level. In fact, from the foot of the steep coast to the top of the pine tree is no more than 85 meters. In the case there is a scheme for the destruction of the aircraft. “The commander lacked some fractions of a second,” Vasily Vladimirovich Proskurnin says bitterly. “Coming out of the fog, he understood everything and pulled the rudders towards himself. Alas, the An-24 is not a fighter.” In the diagram, up to centimeters, a plane crash is recorded after a collision with a pine tree on the seashore. And it seems almost mystical after a horizontal fall of a corkscrew on 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-considered decision to replace the altimeters from the IL-14 to the AN-24. No one has checked how they will behave on the new aircraft. The first victims of this ill-conceived decision were the Svetlogorsk children and Gutnik's crew. Subsequent experiments showed that the altimeter, rearranged from the Il-14 to the An-24, gave an error of up to 60-70 meters.

The promulgated version of the disaster: unsatisfactory organization of preparation and control of this flight. On the fact of the tragedy in Svetlogorsk, no criminal case was initiated. The result of the investigation was the order of the Minister of Defense with two zeros, according to which about 40 military officials were removed from their posts.

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 Baltic Sea were covered with a veil of silence. Albeit with a great delay, but finally the public accusation was lifted from the crew, which itself became a victim of erroneous cabinet decisions.

April 6, 2018, 09:11

Trajectory of death

At the Svetlogorsk cemetery near the mass grave, where the victims of that terrible tragedy are buried, two women are bustling about.

I have a brother here, says one. - Burnt alive. Are you from Moscow? Tell me why until now our tragedy is either not written at all, or they write nonsense? I once read that, they say, 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 fell asleep after that. Not true! In fact, many decided to give birth again and called the newborns the names of the dead children.

Women and the priest of the local temple give us "addresses, passwords, appearances." For some reason, they are sure: now all the victims and eyewitnesses will tell how it really happened.

We returned to our school along a forest path that went past a kindergarten, - recalls a former student of one of the schools, Nikolai Alekseev. - Seeing the plane falling on our heads, we were dumbfounded with horror, someone tried to escape. "Stop!" our teacher shouted to us. Rising as if 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, swept over our heads.

The first random victims that day were high school students Tanya Yezhova and Natasha Tsygankova. The girls were approaching the kindergarten, when suddenly ...

There were a few meters left before the kindergarten, as we were doused with burning vapors of aviation fuel, ”recalls Tatyana Yezhova, whom we met at the scene of the tragedy. - We did not even have time to understand anything, as in an instant our hair, clothes, shoes broke out on us. We were in severe shock from fright and unbearable pain. Not a soul around, and we are alone in the middle of the street, engulfed in flames ...

Looking out the window, the teacher Valentina Shabashova-Metelitsa saw her son Andrey. On 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, I'm running to my mother for a minute? .." - Andrey asked. Valentina ran out to meet him. Mother and son just hugged...

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.

Diagram of the accident site, compiled by eyewitness Valera Rogov.

Identification error

And I ended up in the hospital with a kidney disease, - recalls Oleg Saushkin, who was then six years old. - I remember that at some point the whole hospital began to fuss. Everyone began to run, cars drove somewhere, confusion and signs of some distant horror reigned in the eyes of the hospital staff. And already my mother, with tears in her eyes, a little later, told about what happened in my kindergarten ...

My tonsils were removed the day before, my mother and I were on sick leave, ”says Olga Korobova. - Sitting at home was an unbearable torment for me. On 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 rumbled so hard that the ground shook. By the way, my mother worked in that garden as a nanny. 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 of the tragedy.

In 1972, I was already in the first grade, says Valera. - I had a dream last night. I clearly see the faces of my children from the kindergarten, engulfed in flames. The fire is some kind of unusual - a real torch. The next morning I woke up in a cold sweat. I told my mother what I saw. We did not attach any importance to this then, but I went to school with a severe headache. Somewhere around noon, I went to the kindergarten - and ... In general, I was one of the first at the scene of the tragedy. People rushed around, not knowing what to do, people who came running to help. Somewhere in the bushes, turning the soul inside out, a burnt dog howled, howled terribly...

It was lunchtime when all this happened, - recalls a former employee of the Svetlogorsk police department (in 1972 - an inspector of the OBKhSS, 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, adults, strong men. A wall of raging fire and an unbearable fumes from burning fuel that spread over the asphalt from a broken tank ...

My uncle, midshipman Valentin Konstantinovich, was in the first row of the cordon,” recalls Oleg Saushkin. - According to him, the officers, midshipmen and sailors, who were standing near the destroyed kindergarten, got the most. Many, including himself, had their vests torn to shreds, their faces were covered in abrasions from women who were trying to break through the system, distraught with grief ...

For the rest of my life, I remembered that terrible howl that shook the air, recalls Valery Rogov. - People were crying, screaming, sobbing, someone was hysterical...

State of emergency

By morning, the garden seemed to have never existed - a flower bed blossomed in its place! - Andrey Dmitriev recalls. - Many parents did not believe their eyes then. The scorched earth was cut off, the turf was laid, the paths strewn with broken red brick. Broken and burnt trees were cut down. And only a sharp smell of kerosene. The smell lingered for another two weeks...

The dead children and teachers were buried in a mass grave in the cemetery, not far from the Svetlogorsk-1 railway station. On the day of the funeral, traffic was limited on the roads connecting the regional center with Svetlogorsk. At the same time, diesel trains carrying passengers from Kaliningrad to the resort town were cancelled. The official version is an urgent repair of access roads, the unofficial version is to minimize the publicity of all the circumstances of the crash. Despite the temporary restrictions associated with mourning events, according to eyewitnesses, more than seven thousand people gathered at the cemetery on the day of the funeral.

At the funeral, KGB officers forbade taking pictures and exposed the films of those who did it. But a few pictures were still taken by the relatives of the victims. Photo from personal archive

Quiet investigation

The Scandinavian neighbors closest to us have repeatedly attempted to violate air borders, - says one of the employees of the 263rd separate transport aviation regiment (the one that belonged to the crashed plane). - 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 in the area of responsibility of Soviet radar stations of the coastal tracking system by the naval aviation of the Baltic Fleet. And on that fateful day, the An-24 (tail number 05) went on a mission with the crew of Captain Vilor Gutnik. On the eve of the flight, on command from above, the altimeter from the Il-14 was rearranged on the An-24. The performance of the instrument has not been properly verified. No one then could have imagined how the altimeter would behave on a new aircraft.

In the declassified case, the scheme clearly traces the entire path of the fall of the aircraft and the destruction of its structure. But eyewitnesses of the events drew their own map. They say that maybe this will help heal their wound a little ... How? The fact that the inhabitants of a vast country will finally see for themselves how everything really happened.

Now many are trying to prove that there were no catastrophes in Soviet times, trains did not go off the rails, ships did not sink and planes did not fall. It is understandable - in the USSR all these facts were hidden, along with the Soviet disasters, the names of their victims were also forgotten ... For example, no one remembers that in 1976 a plane crashed on a residential building in Novosibirsk ... 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 the kindergarten on May 16, 1972.
Architects A.Arkhipenko, Yu.Kuznetsov
If you are in Svetlogorsk - visit it ...

May 16, 1972 At about 12:30 pm, the An-24T aircraft of the naval forces of the Baltic Fleet of the USSR, flying to fly over radio equipment, crashed in bad weather conditions, catching a tree. After a collision with a tree, the damaged aircraft flew about 200 meters and crashed on the building of a kindergarten in Svetlogorsk. 34 people died in the crash: all 8 on the plane, 23 children and 3 employees of the kindergarten.

Reserve Lieutenant Colonel Vyacheslav Kuryanovich:

Reserve Lieutenant Colonel Vladimir Pisarenko:

Valery Gromak, Kaliningrad