1972 Svetlogorsk Antonov An-24 crash

A Soviet Navy Antonov An-24 aircraft crashed into a kindergarten building in Svetlogorsk in Kaliningrad Oblast in the Soviet Union on 16 May 1972. The crash killed all eight people aboard the plane and 25 to 27 people on the ground, most of them children at a kindergarten.

Flight

The aircraft took off from Khrabrovo Airport outside Kaliningrad at approximately 12:15 on 16 May 1972 with eight people — a crew of six and two passengers — aboard. Sources provide different descriptions of the nature of the flight. Some describe it as a 15-minute weather research flight along the Baltic Sea coast of the Soviet Union with two weather researchers aboard as passengers, while others indicate that the flight conducted radio tests related to meteorological research at an altitude of 3,000 to 4,000 m, and that in either case the aircraft was on descent for a return to Khrabrovo Airport at the time of the crash. However, other sources claim that the plane was carrying its two passengers to the village of Kosa, where they were to inspect radio equipment. Still other sources provide a more detailed flight plan, stating that the An-24T was to take off from Khrabrovo Airport, fly over Zelenogradsk and Cape Taran, land at the airfield at Kosa, then fly on to the Kaliningrad Chkalovsk naval airbase, where it would land before returning to Khrabrovo Airport; these sources also claim that the flight was to take place at an altitude of approximately 500 m. In 2012, a retired Soviet Navy officer who claimed to have served in the 263rd Independent Transport Aviation Regiment at the time of the crash, Mikhail Slobodchikov, told the Kaliningrad newspaper Novye Kolesa that the An-24T flight was made in response to recent unauthorized incursions into Soviet airspace by foreign aircraft, and that as a way of determining how the foreign aircraft were achieving this the An-24T had to fly the mission at very low altitudes even in poor weather conditions to test the ability of Soviet radar stations to detect it, although a local historian of the Svetlogorsk area, Vladimir Voronov, has dismissed Slobodchikov's account because of a lack of evidence in official records of any Soviet effort to investigate aircraft incursions in the region at the time.

After climbing, the An-24T approached a point near Zelenogradsk, locked onto it, and headed toward Cape Taran. To maintain its assigned bearing, it then made a turn over the Baltic Sea and pilot-in-command Captain of Aviation Viloriy Gutnik informed ground controllers that he was descending from 500 metres (1,640 feet) to 150 metres (490 feet). Less than 15 minutes after takeoff the aircraft crossed the coastline and entered a bank of dense fog which prevented the crew from seeing the ground. Despite the lack of visual meteorological conditions, the crew decided to continue the flight under visual flight rules rather than use instrument flight rules. Without realizing it, the crew descended to a dangerously low altitude in the fog.

With the altimeter indicating an altitude of 150 m, the plane's right wing struck a pine tree on a steep, upward-sloping bank along the seashore at an altitude of 42 m; some sources state that the distance from the base of the steep bank to the top of the pine tree was no more than 85 m. Gutnik apparently sighted the rising terrain at the last second and attempted a sharp pull-up, but too late to avoid striking the tree. The collision, which occurred 14 minutes 48 seconds after takeoff, sheared off the top of the tree and about half of the wing, causing the plane to go out of control and veer off course. The descending An-24T remained airborne for less than 30 seconds after striking the tree; one eyewitness reported that after the plane hit the tree, he saw it circle the Svetlogorsk city stadium and narrowly miss the Ferris wheel in an amusement park, avoiding it by only a few metres. The plane hit more trees and bushes, its tail hit the ground, and it crashed nose-first at high speed into the second floor of a kindergarten building in Svetlogorsk about 200 m from the pine tree it initially struck. It hit the school at about 12:30 while the children in the building were at lunch. On impact, the plane's fuselage crashed in a small garden and broke up, the wings and landing gear detached, and the cockpit section came to rest on a road adjacent to the building. The building collapsed, burying its occupants under rubble. The plane had taken off with a full load of aviation fuel which ignited, starting a fire which engulfed the wreckage of the building within seconds. The fire consumed the plane's wreckage and the school building.

The crash killed all eight occupants of the plane. Gutnik's body was found in the cockpit section still clutching the controls, and the body of Senior Lieutenant of Aviation Viktor Baranov, the copilot, was found on the road.

Confusion exists as to the number of people killed on the ground. According to some sources, 27 people — 24 children and three adults — were in the school building. All 24 children — ranging from two to seven years old — and three adults died in the crash bringing the accident's death toll to 35. Other sources claim that 22 children died in the tragedy, but agree with the other sources that the crash killed all eight people aboard the plane and three adults at the school, for a total of 33 dead.

Confusion also exists as to the identities of the adults killed and injured at the school. One source states that two adults escaped the burning rubble through an opening in a collapsed wall. Some sources identify the dead adults as two teachers and a cook. One source specifically identifies them as Tamara Yankovskaya, a cook who died in the building, and two other staff members, Antonina Romanenko and Valentina Shabayeva-Metelitsa, who later died of burns in a military hospital. Another source identifies the adults as staff members Tamara Yankovskaya and Antonina Romanenko and Romanenko's friend Yulia Vorona, who had dropped by the school to visit that day; this source states that all three suffered severe burns and were taken to a military hospital, where Romanenko quickly died without regaining consciousness and Yankovskaya died six months later, but Vorona survived. Yet another source describes the surviving adult as a nanny who was washing windows at the school at the time of the crash and whose daughter died in the building.

Among the children enrolled at the school, the only survivors were three children who stayed home from school that day. Another child, a six-year-old boy enrolled at the school but kept home that day because of an ear infection, was walking home from a doctor's appointment with his grandmother when they passed the school and he saw his mother, who worked as a teacher at the kindergarten, in the building; he rushed into the building to see her just as the plane struck and was killed, and his body was the last to be recovered from the rubble.

Two high school girls walking past the building at the time of the crash were enveloped in aviation fuel vapors and suffered serious burns when the vapor ignited, engulfing them in flames and setting their hair, clothes, and shoes on fire; they suffered painful burns, but survived. Had the plane crashed in the nearby amusement park, casualties probably would have been much higher.