Who heard this story in the late 70s? They tried not to mention such events. Today this is a pretext for an information bomb, but then all the same they were striving for "silence" in the media. Imagine how many programs from Malakhov were filmed today and how many posts bloggers would write on this topic.
What happened then and why?
In the early autumn morning of September 26, 1976 in the city of Novosibirsk, an aircraft crash occurred. The pilot of the West Siberian Civil Aviation Administration, 33-year-old Vladimir Serkov, made a deliberate collision of the An-2 aircraft with a five-story residential building.
Yes, it is intentional …
On Sunday morning, pilot Serkov made an unauthorized take-off on an An-2 plane (registration number USSR-79868) from one of the taxiways of the Novosibirsk-Severny airport. He was alone on the plane, there were no passengers. A few minutes later, An-2 appeared at the other end of the city in the area of Stanislavsky Square. For some time the plane circled over the city at low altitudes. He even shot down several television antennas on some buildings. At 0820, the pilot sent a light plane to a residential building located at 43/1 Stepnaya Street. As a result, the An-2 ram rammed the facade of the house between the third and fourth floors in the area of the staircase, breaking a hole in the wall about 2 m in diameter.
The aircraft engine flew through one of the windows directly into the bedroom of the residents. The remains of the tail and fuselage were left at the driveway (where it was). Aviation gasoline from broken fuel tanks splashed out and caused a massive fire. Serkov died when the plane hit the house, his head was blown off. Four residents of the house were also killed, some under the rubble, others crashed, jumping from the upper floors, fleeing from fire, or from burns. Killed: Galina Degtyareva, Alexander Tyapkin, Oleg Tyapkin and Yegor Pushhenko. 11 people were injured - 4 were severe, 5 were of moderate severity, 2 were light.
Initially, panic began, frightened tenants rushed out of their apartments and rushed about the yard. However, rather quickly, people from neighboring houses organized themselves and began to try to save people from the entrance, which was on fire. Soon they were joined by firefighters who arrived at the scene of the disaster. So, when the baby was thrown from the fifth floor, the people standing below could catch him. After 57 minutes, the fire was extinguished.
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As the investigation showed, the ram was deliberate. The pilot's personal motives were the reason for the attack. After a family quarrel, the wife left Serkov, taking their child with her. Tatiana settled in her parents' apartment. A young pilot (born in 1953) tried to make up, but his wife's parents turned his wife against her husband so much that she even refused to talk to him, to let her see her 2-year-old son Roma. When he came, Tatyana's father chased his son-in-law away. The final breakup occurred when the wife said she was ready to file for divorce. Vladimir and Tatiana were handed subpoenas for September 30. The divorce meant not only the end of the family, but also of a career - the young pilot was expecting a promotion: he had to pilot a large passenger liner.
Vladimir Serkov was distinguished by excellent piloting skills and was appreciated by his superiors. He was an educated man, an athlete, played football well, had the title of candidate for master of sports in artistic gymnastics. Despite his good personal characteristics and technical skills, Vladimir Serkov, apparently, was a morally weak person who could not withstand a difficult family drama. In addition, the investigation revealed diseases of the nervous system. He had an epileptic seizure in 1971 and twice received domestic head injuries. After that, according to his wife, he often complained of a headache. But Serkov carefully concealed his problems, fearing being removed from flight work.
On the last day before the ram, the residents of the house saw how Serkov took steps to measure the distance from the windows of the house to a large tree that grew directly opposite. The pilot wanted to send the plane to the apartment of his wife's parents, but he had to evade a large poplar, and the plane hit the entrance, which saved many residents from death. It should be noted that Serkov's relatives were not at home at that moment. Father-in-law and mother-in-law spent the night in another place. According to neighbors, they feared revenge by Vladimir Serkov, who repeatedly threatened them and allegedly even named the exact time when he would take revenge.
The commission investigating the causes of the accident concluded that the immediate cause of the emergency was Serkov's neuropsychic instability. The incident was facilitated by: 1) mistakes made by the command and control personnel of the Novosibirsk aviation enterprise, which did not pay enough attention to the study of the moral and volitional qualities of subordinates, their interests and inclinations, the situation in the family; 2) insufficient work among the personnel to increase vigilance, responsibility, to comply with the existing rules of the regime; 3) violations in the field of pre-flight medical control, poor study of the psychophysical characteristics of pilots; 4) violations in matters of pre-flight preparation, aircraft transfer and acceptance, etc.
Interestingly, 22 years before Serkov's ramming, another person made exactly the same attempt to attack a residential building and also because of family drama. In the same Novosibirsk, due to his wife's betrayal, the flight mechanic Polyakov hijacked the Il-12 plane. The flight mechanic planned to ram the apartment where, as he assumed, his wife and lover were cheating on him. Polyakov made several visits to the house. But he couldn't strike. It was deep night, and the glowing spots of the windows disorientated him, he could not determine what was needed. The authorities began negotiations with him on the radio, and the jealous man agreed to land the plane and surrendered. The verdict was rather lenient, he got off with three years in prison.
P. S. Here's what else they wrote on the Internet: “I heard this story in the early 90s from my school English teacher, who lived in this house in 1976. But from her words it was a little wrong, namely, that the pilot had normal relations with the father-in-law, but not with the mother-in-law, tk. it was she who added fuel to the fire, drove over the ears of his wife, etc. What is interesting, when I lived near this house in the 80s, I knew nothing about it, there were not even banal rumors in the yard."