Fortunately, the forced splashdown of a Soviet passenger plane onto a river within the Leningrad boundaries, which took place in August 1963, did not become a tragedy - only the liner itself suffered in this accident.
Thanks to the pictures of a bystander, the whole world learned about the unusual plane crash.
Refusal after refusal
The Aeroflot passenger liner Tu-124, which flew from Tallinn to Moscow on August 21, 1963, was practically new - the aircraft of this brand in the Soviet Union began to be produced only in 1962. That early morning, there were 44 passengers and 6 crew members aboard the carcass. It is reliably known that the future Patriarch of All Russia Alexy II was among the passengers.
Almost immediately after takeoff, the crew discovered that the front landing gear had not fully retracted. I had to sit down, but Tallinn airport did not accept because of the fog. The dispatchers sent the Tu-124 to the Pulkovo airfield. At Pulkovo, they prepared to meet the board, which was to sit on the dirt road. Such a landing can provoke a fire, so the crew under the command of V. Ya. Mostovoy began flying around Leningrad at a low, half a kilometer, height to generate fuel.
Meanwhile, aircraft flight engineer Viktor Tsarev tried to manually straighten the landing gear through a slot cut in the cockpit floor, but to no avail. Flight attendant Aleksandra Aleksandrova transferred the cargo from the nose of the liner to the tail of the aircraft in order to facilitate the impact of the Tu-124 bow during landing.
During the next circle over the northern capital, the plane suddenly failed one of the two engines. According to the readings of the fuel gauge, there was enough fuel to Pulkovo, but now it was necessary to fly to the airfield not to the district, but straight through Leningrad. In the sky over Smolny, the Tu-124 stopped working the second engine, and for some reason the fuel gauge showed "0", although a few minutes ago it was "200 liters".
Promotional video:
Happy splashdown
The crew did not have time to think. The only way out in this situation is to land on the Neva. By a happy coincidence, the crew included a pilot with experience in landing aircraft on water - co-pilot V. G. Chechenev. Previously, he served in the naval aviation. The crew commander gave control of the airliner to him. The flooding was successful. None of those who were present were injured. Not even a single bottle of the four crates of the then scarce beer that the Tu-124 transported was not broken.
Descending over the Alexander Nevsky bridge under construction, the plane frightened the workers to death, some of them even jumped into the river. As soon as the liner touched the water, the ill-fated landing gear was torn off, and the Tu-124 itself stopped 50 meters from the railway bridge.
Again, by a lucky coincidence, a tugboat was found near the landing site of the passenger liner, which was floating a log raft down the Neva. The river tractor towed the Tu-124 to the shore, the passengers and crew members on the rafts went ashore. A few minutes later, the plane sank.
Analysis of the flight
Many onlookers gathered to watch the incident. They filmed the landing of the liner on film. The police who cordoned off the place of emergency dispersed the audience, took away the cameras and forced to expose the film. But one of the witnesses of the incident, Yuri Tuisk, managed to save the footage. Then his photographs got into the Soviet and foreign media.
At first, they wanted to shift all the blame for the plane crash onto the crew - they say, they did not check the fuel gauge. The assumption that the fuel gauge was clearly defective initially was not even considered. However, after the publication of this whole story in the media, including foreign ones, the authorities changed their anger to mercy - the pilots were presented for awards. True, the matter did not come to the very awarding - the commander and navigator of the Tu-124 were only allocated separate apartments (before that they lived in communal apartments). After the August plane crash, the crew never flew with the previous composition.
The sunken plane was lifted from the bottom of the Neva and immediately written off. Only the cockpit remained of it, which was used for a long time as a simulator at the Kirsanov Flight School. The rest was sent for scrap.