The Pushkin Airfield Disaster, 7th February 1981

It's 6pm on the 7th of February 1981, and a Tupolev Tu-104 is lining up to take off from Pushkin Airport near Leningrad in the Soviet Union. Aboard are 44 passengers and 6 crew, a total of 50 people. The aircraft's registration number is CCCP-42332, and it is intended to fly towards Vladivostok International Airport, with a stopover in Khabarovsk Novy Airport. 

Shortly after lining up on Runway 21, the Tu-104A commences its takeoff run. Nothing is particularly amiss, barring the snowy weather, however, after rotation (which is the act of lifting the aircraft off of the floor), something goes terribly wrong. The plane suddenly pitches up beyond the normal takeoff altitude and, eight seconds later, the plane stalls and enters a right bank. It continues to roll until the aircraft finally comes down towards 20 metres away from the departure end of the runway, inverted, and immediately bursts into flames. Of those on board, 49 are initially killed, with one survivor who later passes away whilst en-route to the hospital. 

In an instant, the Soviet Navy lost 4 times as many flag officers as they had done in the entirety of World War Two. 

Background

There was an annual operational mobilisation meeting of the leadership of every fleet of the Soviet Navy who were under the control of the Commander-in-Chief of the Navy, Admiral of the Fleet of the Soviet Union Sergei G. Gorshkov being held from February 1st until the 7th, 1981. On January 30th, the Pacific Fleet delegation took off from Vladivostok aboard a Soviet Military Tu-104, and they were planned to return on the 7th of February. 

By the time the 7th came, the training camp was coming to an end, and the Commander-in-Chief of the Soviet Navy summed up the results of the past year at a meeting of the fleet's leadership, and the men from the Pacific fleet were recognised as the best in all indicators of combat training. Because of this, the men of the Pacific Fleet were in high spirits and began to prepare to go home. Alongside this jubilation, Vice Admiral R. A. Golosov (Hero of the Soviet Union), with the permission of Commander Spiridonov, left on a separate morning flight to Severomorsk so that he could travel to visit his daughter. The rest of the Pacific Fleet travelled to the airfield at Pushkin. Around the same time, the aircraft was being loaded with approximately one and a half tonnes worth of printing paper, and a half tonne of cards, causing the plane to be overloaded. Further weight was also added by the officials and their spouses, who purchased scarce consumer goods whilst they were in Leningrad, such as groceries and even luxury items.

In the week that the Tu-104 had been stored at the airfield, the personnel on-site were tired because they had been clearing snow, guarding the plane and loading things into the belly of the plane, namely the luxury items and the consumer goods, such as televisions and groceries.

Before Takeoff

At around 5:40pm, the commanders begin to board the plane and take their seats. One of the most significant issues was that the commanders chose to sit in different seats to the ones they were assigned (since they crowded into the VIP cabin area) which contributed to a weight imbalance in the cabin. The pilot, Lieutenant Colonel Anatoly Inyushin (b. 09/06/1930) reported voiced his concerns about the total weight considering the printing paper and cards which had been loaded, alongside the seating issue, but this concern was ultimately overridden by the high-ranking officers aboard. Because of this, the aircraft's actual centre of gravity moved far beyond its safe limits. 

At around 6 o'clock, the plane begins its take-off roll down the main runway. There was light winter snow on the runway and a crosswind, but nothing which would cause major concern. Eyewitnesses reported that the plane took noticeably longer than usual to lift off the tarmac due to the excessive weight onboard the plane. 

The Crash

The aircraft finally rose from the runway and began its climb at approximately 6:01pm. Around three seconds later, the plane suddenly pitched upward, as the unrestrained rolls of printing paper (which were exceptionally heavy) rolled towards the tail of the plane, causing the centre of gravity to be forced further back. The pilots attempted to correct this, by pulling forward on their controls, but the aerodynamic forces rendered the nose-down elevators completely unresponsive. Two seconds later, around 50m in the air, the pitch of the aircraft caused it to enter a stall, and the plane began to roll sharply to the right.

"After picking up speed and not reaching about one-third of the end of the runway, the plane began to take off, but at an altitude of only about 50 metres, for some reason it immediately tilted to the right wing. [...] It turned out that the plane was falling." (Viktor Aleksandrovich Gamga)

8 seconds after the plane took off, it flipped upside down and slammed into the ground around 20m past the end of the runway. The debris from the crash were launched and landed as far as 1,500m away. Since the plane was loaded with 30 tonnes of fuel for the cross-continental flight, there was a gigantic explosion. This explosion caused a raging inferno that consumed the wreckage, which made rescue operations completely impossible, if anybody aboard had even survived anyways. Shortly after, crews on scene located a cockpit crew member alive in the snow, who had been thrown from the nose cone during the crash, but his injuries were too severe and he passed away whilst en-route to the hospital. 

"The fire lasted an hour and a half. The kerosense river flows, burns and immediately dies out - there was knee-deep snow there. Therefore, the main stream of fire soon receded, but the plane was extinguished for some time. There was no one left alive - the plane overturned, 30 tons of burning kerosene incinerated people. Only the crew of the plane was not burned - the pilots flew forward by inertia, into the snow, through the cockpit canopy and immediately died. The only one alive was pilot-technician from Sovgavan, Zubarev [referring to SLt. Valentin Zubarev (b. 13/02/1937)], who was travelling home from Leningrad. [...] He was shocked and couldn't say anything. Lord, there was nothing to say." (Viktor Aleksandrovich Gamga)

The first person to arrive on scene was General Anatoly Pavlovsky, who saw off General Georgy Pavlov, who he was friends with. 

"General Pavlovsky was already involved in extinguishing the fire together with employees of airfield services. The snow was melting and the fire was going away. [...] The first to be pulled out was Lenochka Moreva, the daughter of the Pacific Fleet communications chief Alexander Morev - she studied in Leningrad and was flying home from the holidays."  (Viktor Aleksandrovich Gamga)

Initial reactions

In the immediate aftermath of the crash, Soviet leadership assumed the disaster was a targeted decapitation strike by NATO, because the disaster wiped out almost every single member of the command staff of the strategically vital Pacific Fleet, including the Commander-in-Chief, Chief of Staff and Head of Naval Aviation, which made the Kremlin find that it was logically impossible to accept as a mere coincidence. The first hypothesis was that NATO had infiltrated the Pushkin airfield and planted an explosive device aboard the transport plane, however this was refuted by eyewitness testimony and the official investigation. Because of this belief, the Soviet Armed Forces were placed on maximum combat alert, fearing an invasion from the East by American troops, and the newly leaderless Pacific Fleet scrambled its warships and submarines out to sea in preparation for a direct engagement with the United States Navy in the Pacific. 

Investigation and Findings

The commission which was created to investigate the causes of the disaster was headed by Marshal Pavel Stepanovich Kutakov CBE, Commander-in-Chief of the Soviet Air Forces. The initial suspicion was that the control systems failed, but this eventually became one of several as further information was collected. The commission ultimately found that the positioning of the cargo, specifically the extreme weight towards the tail of the aircraft. This was reinforced by their finding that the pilot raised his concerns about the excessive weight and the fact that those concerns were then shut down by the admirals aboard the flight. It was also found that the aircraft took off several hundred meters before they should have done, meaning that the plane took off at a slower speed (185 km/h rather than 220) than it should have, which contributed to the stall. 

The beliefe that this was a NATO attack was also refuted by a few pieces of evidence. First, Pushkin airfield was heavily guarded and every personnel member who had access to the plane went through rigorous KGB and military verification, making the likelihood of a spy or sabotage very low. Furthermore, there was no evidence in the wreckage to prove that an explosion had happened, either between a suspected onboard bomb or a missile strike. This, paired with the official discoveries, forced the Kremlin (who were on high alert) to admit that the accident was caused by a lack of discipline and cargo imbalance, rather than an act of war.

The Survivor from the Passenger List

Click on the images below to access biographies on each of the admirals and generals. 

Select References & Further Reading:

• Geroi VMF 2014. Погибшие при исполнении воинского долга 7 февраля 1981 года. 

• Čech, M. Decimation of the Pacific Fleet Command. 

• Aviation Safety Network. Accident Tupolev Tu-104A CCCP-42332, 07 Feb 1981. Flight Safety Foundation.

• AirDisaster.ru. Катастрофа Ту-104А с командованием Тихоокеанского флота на аэродроме Пушкин. 

• Ministry of Defence of the USSR. Notice of the death of a group of admirals, generals and officers of the Pacific Fleet. 

• Vitko, A. V. 165th Red Banner Brigade of Surface Ships of the Pacific Fleet. Airbase Military Archive. 

• Chuhraev, E. M. The "secret" of the mass death of the Pacific Fleet Admirals: Eyewitness accounts of V. A. Gamga. VoenFlot Military Historical Review.

• Bureau of Aircraft Accidents Archives. Crash of a Tupolev TU-104A in Pushkin: 50 killed. BAAA-ACRO.

• New York Times, February 11th 1981. Top Soviet navy Officers Are Killed in Air Crash.

• Federal Air Transport Agency. Technical characteristics of the Tu-104 aircraft. Ministry of Transport of the Russian Federation. 

• Baghai, C. The Unspoken tragedy: A reflection on the Pushkin airfield disaster of 1981. Medium.

• Marakov, O. A sausage-filled jetliner crashed during the Cold War and wiped out almost the entire top command of the Soviet Pacific Fleet. War History Online.

• FedPress. The largest Pacific Fleet crash in Soviet History: How an entire command died in a Tu-104 plane crash near Leningrad. FedPress Regional News. 

• Maxim Editorial. Anniversary of the crash in which more top brass died than in WWII: The tragedy of the Tu-104 at Pushkin. Maxim Online. 

Header image: St. Petersburg. Serafimovskoe Cemetery, Memorial of the Military Pacific Fleet. Александров (2013). Image sourced via Public Domain.

Every effort has been made to trace the original creators of archival media; where unknown, items are credited by era and source.