An-12 crash near Nawabshah

The An-12 crash near Nawabshah was an aviation accident involving an An-12B transport aircraft of Soviet Naval Aviation that occurred on Saturday, 4 August (in some sources, 5 August) 1984, in the Nawabshah area (Pakistan), killing 24 people.

Crash

Aircraft 10232 was operating a transport flight from Asmara to its home airfield of Ostafyevo (Moscow, RSFSR) with intermediate refuelling stops in Aden (South Yemen), Karachi (Pakistan) and Tashkent (Uzbek SSR). On board were 9 crew members and 15 passengers; according to some data these were Il-38 crews, although according to other data the crews of the anti-submarine aircraft had been taken out of Eritrea a month earlier. The first two legs passed normally, and the An-12, having departed from Karachi, climbed to flight level 190 (altitude 19000 ft) and headed for Tashkent. The Pakistani controller warned that there was a thunderstorm on the flight route, but according to the official version, commander Podskrebaev decided that it did not pose a serious danger. 45 minutes after departure, contact with the crew ceased.

Flying at the assigned altitude, the An-12 flew into towering cumulus and cumulonimbus cloud, accompanied by severe turbulence and hail. This hail became the decisive factor when it punctured the radar antenna radome and the engine oil coolers. Because of the resulting holes, oil began to leak, so all four powerplants suffered a drop in power. The crew then, shutting down engines No. 1 and 3 and setting engines No. 2 and 4 to “flight idle”, decided to descend below the clouds and make an off-airfield landing. But during the descent the pilots lost control and exceeded the maximum speed. Combined with the high turbulence, this led to the aerodynamic loads on the airframe exceeding the design loads. The aircraft broke up in the air, after which it crashed in the vicinity of the Pakistani city of Nawabshah. All 24 people on board were killed.