35 years ago, in January 1979, a Soviet plane crashed in Antarctica for the first time in the history of the exploration of the White continent. After a long investigation, the cause of the disaster was classified, and they tried to forget about the tragic incident as soon as possible.
Only a couple of phrases were reported on the Vremya program: in the area of the Soviet Antarctic station Molodezhnaya, the crew of Vladimir ZAVARZIN crashed. Of the five crew members, only one survived - navigator Alexander KOSTIKOV.
Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Kostikov himself called the editorial office of the Express newspaper and offered to meet - he decided to share everything that had become painful over the past years. He asked to call himself simply - San Sanych. A large 59-year-old man, with a heavy gait and scarring on his face. Then, in January 1979, none of the people who came to the rescue of the IL-14 that had collapsed from a 30-meter height could not believe that someone had survived inside.
- We arrived in Antarctica on December 18. In the Southern Hemisphere, there was a polar summer: minus 35 and the wind knocking down from your feet - so as not to be carried away, they moved, holding on to the ropes stretched between the buildings. On the 22nd our plane flew over and brought the ship Fujima out of the ice captivity, which was carrying cargo to the Japanese station - it is customary in Antarctica to help each other. If we only knew that very soon we would need help!
… The commander of the crew, with whom he flew as a navigator in Siberia, suggested that 24-year-old Sashka Kostikov go to Antarctica for six months. The graduate of the Moscow Topographic Polytechnic has already managed to work in serious places. On Novaya Zemlya he took part in nuclear tests, conducted geophysical exploration in Svalbard, in Central Asia, at the BAM. But hearing the words of the commander, Sashka doubted - his wife Natasha was expecting a child. And then he waved his hand: "I'm going!" - I wanted to test myself in extreme conditions, and at the same time earn extra money.
We met the New Year with a friendly company. We went to the bathhouse, sat down at the table. When the disaster struck two days later, the members of the commission were all asking if the crew was drunk. But no matter how drunk - on holiday polar explorers relied on a bottle of vodka for five, and you can't get drunk from it. As a cultural program, they played the film "The Dawns Here Are Quiet" - the men, torn from home, revisited the scene 15 times where the girls wash in the bath.
Promotional video:
Having slept off, the crew began to get ready for the mission. There was a 10-hour flight, the tanks were filled to capacity.
The sky was gloomy that day, but the weather was quite normal. Everyone who happened to be near the airfield at that time noted: the plane took a long and hard acceleration - the runway was going uphill. Finally it broke away, and when it rose to a height of 30 meters, a huge snow-vortex column rose from the ground along its course. The upward air flow was so strong that the plane instantly landed on the wing with an edge and crashed.
Commander Volodya Zavarzin died instantly - he hit his head on the "horn" of the steering wheel. Flight mechanic Viktor Shalnov fell onto the central control panel and died in an all-terrain vehicle on the way to the station. The co-pilot, Yura Kozlov, was thrown onto the steering column and died a few hours after the crash. Border operator Garif Uzikayev was taken to the medical unit in critical condition. Half of his face was crumpled, a radio station that fell on him broke his chest. Navigator Kostikov was pulled out of the wrecked cabin by the last - the last one, as the pilots say. The head is covered with blood, the legs are broken. Everyone thought he was not a tenant either.
Recruitment in New Zealand
The tragic incident at Molodezhnaya was reported to Moscow. Immediately at an emergency meeting of the Politburo, it was decided to take the wounded - Kostikov and Uzikayev - to New Zealand. The plane for transportation was provided by the Americans: the Hercules C-130 was equipped with runners for takeoff from a snow-covered airfield and wheels for landing in the subtropics. Ten hours later, the plane landed at an airfield near the hospital in the city of Dunedin.
- I open my eyes - a very plump, dark-skinned woman is sitting in front of me, - says San Sanych. - I got scared and said: "Am I in Africa?"
The care for the Soviet polar explorers was excellent - the maintenance of the injured in the hospital cost $ 100 a day. But Uzikayev could not be saved, while Kostikov had to spend almost two months there and endure five operations. The jaw was assembled in pieces, the bones of the orbit were restored, like a puzzle. A pin was inserted into the thigh of one leg, the other was plastered.
“I vaguely remembered what happened at Molodezhnaya,” says Kostikov. He didn't even know what to tell the people who came to his hospital. And he refused offers to stay in New Zealand. After all, his pregnant wife was waiting for him at home.
Before leaving, the hospital staff bought him children's clothes as a gift, and on February 22, 1979, he returned to Moscow. At home, it turned out that the tragedy in Antarctica is not worth remembering. Members of the investigation commission came to Kostikov a couple of times to find out the circumstances of the death of the crew. But no help was offered. They hinted to him: it would be better if he stayed with his comrades in Antarctica forever. Not far from the place of their death, the polar explorers erected an obelisk of white marble, and at the Donskoy cemetery in Moscow, where capsules with soil from the scene of the tragedy were buried, a stele appeared in memory of the brave conquerors of the South Pole.
The pilots were buried near the crash site
Classified investigation
The investigation commission found that Zavarzin's crew acted competently. But what happened on January 2, 1979? Experts have put forward a version: the plane was picked up by a sudden change in strength, speed and direction of the wind, which happens in local latitudes, but nothing is known for certain. The case was classified, and they took a nondisclosure agreement from Kostikov. Then he did not understand what he could divulge.
Only in the late 90s, having met with the guys who were in those days at Molodezhnaya, did I hear the abbreviation UFO and the story that his plane collided with a flying saucer. By that time, by the way, the polar explorers had already acquired an international term for such incidents: the crew was "caught" by Antarctica. The mysterious force that members of many expeditions have had to face is destructive and inexplicable.
Secret war with aliens
Julian Assange has pledged to release documents on clashes between US military forces and aliens in Antarctica. According to the founder of Wikileaks, one of the incidents occurred on June 10, 2004. The command of the military and space forces has announced an alarm in connection with the appearance of a flotilla of UFOs, taking off from the bottom of the southern seas in Antarctica. Dozens of unknown objects were heading for Mexico.
The United States raised fighters into the sky and activated all air defense systems. After that, the "plates" sank to the bottom of the ocean. Experts say UFOs pose an immediate threat when they emerge from under the water, creating waves that can interfere with ocean traffic and flood cargo and other ships. This is what experts explain a number of recent shipwrecks.
The Lost Expedition
The most mysterious episode in the exploration of Antarctica is considered the collapse in 1947 of a scientific expedition of the US Navy under the command of Rear Admiral Richard BERDA. This famous polar explorer was the first to fly over the South Pole in 1929 and returned with an amazing story, almost repeating Obruchev's "Plutonium". Byrd's plane on its way to the Pole allegedly penetrated through a "hole" into the inner part of the planet, where it was met and taken back by some flying machines.
He was publicly ridiculed, but in 1946 he was appointed head of a very strange, but largest-scale expedition to Antarctica in the entire history of the exploration. Byrd, who was personally overseen by Defense Secretary James Forrestal, received a colossal naval force. The armada included aircraft carriers, cruisers, support ships, tankers, and submarines.
Everything went according to plan, tens of thousands of aerial photographs were taken. But suddenly, two months later, in February 1947, the expedition, designed for six months, hastily leaves the shores of Antarctica. Upon his return, Byrd appears before members of the Extraordinary Commission of Inquiry in Congress. He reports on the attack of "flying saucers", which "… emerged from under the water and, moving at great speed, caused significant damage to the expedition." Part of the armada from that "scientific expedition" really did not return, the ships simply quietly disappeared from the Navy register.
The work of the commission of inquiry after the first meeting was classified. Minister Forrestal and Admiral Byrd, diagnosed with depression, were placed in a heavily guarded psychiatric clinic. A year later, the minister fell out of the window of the ward, and Byrd was discharged. Soon he died in his sleep from a heart attack at home.