Tu-16 crash at Travyany airfield

The Tu-16 crash at Travyany airfield was an aviation disaster involving a Tu-16A military aircraft that occurred on 24 May 1974 at Kamensk-Uralsky (Travyany) airfield.

Chronology of events

On landing the aircraft touched down not on the concrete but on the unpaved surface (it undershot the runway).

At 13:55 local time, while performing a training flight in daytime in simple weather conditions, during the approach to land at Travyany airfield the aircraft touched the ground with its wheels, thereby falling short of the runway. After the tail section struck the ground, the tail unit and the bomb bay broke off, the crew cabin cracked along the nose landing gear strut, and after the impact the aircraft was thrown 50—80 metres above the surface of the runway. In the air it began to flip over its nose; when the aircraft crashed near the runway, it continued to flip over by inertia and exploded.

Aftermath of the crash

Of the six people on board the aircraft, four were killed (O. A. Groshev, S. Chudinov, S. Litkevich, navigator-instructor Captain Pospelov); two people in the tail of the aircraft (gunnery commander Praporshchik Zhizhin, gunner-radio operator Private Fillipov) were injured but survived.