When the Soviet Navy Lost 16 Admirals in a Single Accident: The Tu-104 Crash at Pushkin

Video from the channel Paper Skies about Tupolev Tu-104, linked on its Above Ten Thousand entry. Duration: 24:29. Language: English. Video type: Documentary.

The video reconstructs the accident of 7 February 1981 at the Pushkin military airfield. A Tupolev Tu-104 of the Pacific Fleet's 25th Naval Aviation Division crashed seconds after takeoff. All 50 people on board died, including 16 admirals and generals and the fleet commander, Admiral Emil Spiridonov.

The Pacific Fleet's commanders were returning to Vladivostok after an annual meeting in Leningrad. The aircraft was airborne for about eight seconds and came down 1,500 m from the end of the runway; the tanks, filled for the long trip, burned for an hour. At first an enemy attack was suspected, and Pacific units were put on alert. An internal sabotage was investigated afterward, and suspicion even fell on Vice Admiral Rudolf Golosov, the fleet's chief of staff, who had not boarded because he was visiting his daughter. The video places the case within the history of the Tu-104: its production ended in 1960 and civil aviation retired it after a crash near Moscow in March 1979, but the military kept its aircraft.

The aircraft's commander, Lieutenant Colonel Anatoly Inyushin, had more than 8,000 flight hours, almost 6,000 of them on the Tu-104. The Ministry of Defence's official conclusion, released almost two years later, was that the aircraft took off 40 km/h below the required speed. According to Golosov's book, the flight recorder showed 185 km/h instead of 220, an angle of attack far above the prescribed 6 degrees, and no pressure on the control horns. Drawing on the testimony of General Viktor Sokerin and of Golosov, the video explains the accident as follows: the aircraft was overloaded with poorly stowed personal purchases, which shifted the centre of gravity backward. On top of that, two rolls of printing paper weighing about 500 kg each, left unsecured, rolled toward the rear during the takeoff run. The aircraft's nose rose on its own and it stalled. Among the dead were 44 Navy servicemen and 6 civilians, including Spiridonov's wife. The accident was classified. The widows received official notification in 1997, and in 1998 the inscription on the monument in Leningrad was completed. The video also includes a long digression on consumer goods shortages in the USSR.