Have you heard about the "Miracle on the Hudson"? After the release of the film, this incident was called the first successful landing of a huge passenger plane on water. But few people know that back in 1963, Soviet pilots showed fantastic piloting skills and landed a Tu-124 on the Neva River in the very center of Leningrad. How it happened, we will tell you now.
On August 21, 1963, an Aeroflot Tu-124 passenger plane was flying from Tallinn to Moscow. There were 45 passengers and 6 crew members on board, a total of 51 people. The crew commander was Viktor Mostovoy, a 30–year-old pilot who had already had 11 years of flight experience. Victor began his career at the age of 19 as a co-pilot and became a commander at the age of 25. The co-pilot, Vasily Chechenev, was a little older, he was 34 years old. It was not the first time the pilots had flown together. Also, the crew members were: navigator Viktor Tsarev, flight mechanic Viktor Smirnov, flight attendant Ivan Beremin, flight attendant Alexandra Alexandrova.
The flight was scheduled to depart at 8:55 a.m. There is thick fog at Yulemiste airport, but experienced pilots are at the controls, so the flight is not difficult. Immediately after takeoff, the flight mechanic of the crew discovers that the front landing gear of the aircraft has not been completely removed. The crew tries several times to re-remove the rack, but it is completely jammed. Later, a ball bolt was found on the runway, which secures the landing gear. When the commission investigated this incident, other Tu-124 aircraft were checked for the serviceability of the front landing gear. Another 7 aircraft revealed the same structural and manufacturing defect – a cracked bolt. Fortunately, they did it on time and no one else had to use an emergency landing.
In such situations, according to the instructions, the plane returns back to the departure airport, but there was heavy fog in Tallinn, so the dispatchers send the board to the Leningrad Pulkovo airport. While the plane is flying to Leningrad, the crew is trying to cope with the broken landing gear. After all, without it, landing can lead to human casualties. The flight mechanic breaks through the fuselage skin and tries to forcibly release the jammed front landing gear, but nothing comes out. The crew is preparing for an emergency landing.
By this time, all services at Pulkovo airport had been notified and prepared: firefighters and medics were waiting for an emergency landing of the aircraft. In flight practice, landing without a front landing gear is quite possible, because it accounts for only 10% of the weight of the aircraft. The runway is sometimes covered with special fire-fighting foam, the aircraft lands on the rear landing gear, and, as it slows down, the nose smoothly descends and slides along the runway. Professionalism and coordinated actions of the crew often make it possible to avoid casualties and gently land the aircraft even without the front landing gear.
By 11 o'clock, the liner flew up to Leningrad, the dispatchers asked the crew to fly over the runway at the airport to assess the condition of the front landing gear. The pilots completed this task, and airport officials confirmed that the landing gear is in a semi-retracted state and an emergency landing cannot be avoided. Now it was necessary to work out all the fuel – these are safety measures against severe fire and explosion. According to calculations, there was still 2 hours of fuel left, and the plane began to fly around the city of Leningrad at an altitude of 500-600 meters.
The low altitude contributed to faster fuel production. The crew commander asked flight attendant Alexandra to transfer all cargo from the front trunk to the rear of the aircraft – this makes an emergency landing safer. Alexandra coped with the task, and the passengers of the plane did not even suspect anything. At 12:10, the plane was making the 8th circle over the city, the fuel sensor showed 750 liters - this should have been enough to fly to Pulkovo airport, but then the left engine suddenly fails. The dispatcher instructs the pilots to take a shortcut and fly directly over the city center. At the time of the flight over Smolny, the Tu-124's second engine fails.
Later, the pilots claimed that this happened due to incorrect readings of the fuel sensor, it just ended. In those years, the brilliant aircraft designer Andrei Nikolaevich Tupolev was still alive, and of course he denied the possibility of such problems in his brainchild. But other pilots and flight mechanics confirmed that the technology of those times was not always perfect and such an inaccuracy of the instruments was quite possible.
After the failure of the second engine, the liner began to glide over the city center, rapidly losing altitude. The crew needed to make an urgent decision. Later it became known that only 14 seconds had passed from the moment of failure of the second Tu-124 engine to the landing of the aircraft on the Neva River. 14 seconds!!! to make a decision and save the lives of not only the passengers of the plane, but also the residents of the city.
Co-pilot Vasily Chechenev was a naval pilot before civil aviation and he had the opportunity to land planes on water many times. He says to the captain: "Commander, only Neva will save us." The captain of the aircraft, Viktor Mostovoy, decides to land the Tu-124 on the Neva and transfers this right to his assistant, as more experienced in such matters.
But there are a huge number of bridges on the Neva River. The plane plans to fly 90 meters above the Liteyny Bridge, then at a distance of 40 meters it will pass the Bolsheokhotinsky Bridge and very low over the Alexander Nevsky Bridge under construction. So low that the workers jump from it into the water in fear. Fortunately, at that moment there were no ships on the river, only 1 small tugboat "Burevestnik", which floated the forest along the Neva. With all his might, the pilot keeps the nose of the aircraft raised, for a softer landing. If the nose goes under water, the liner will fall apart from a sharp impact on the water. But there is another obstacle ahead – the heavy Finnish railway bridge. At the time of the landing of the aircraft, the landing gear was released. This is what saved the situation, thanks to the great resistance, the braking distance was shortened, and the plane stopped about 50 meters from the bridge supports. The usual landing length of the Tu-124 aircraft takes 1000 – 1200 m, it took less than 900 meters for the pilots to land on the Neva. In total, the distance between these bridges is 1,370 meters – a jewelry drive.
The landing of the plane on Neva was smooth, none of the passengers and crew were injured. Only the half-open front landing gear flew off and violated the integrity of the fuselage in the tail section of the aircraft and the water began to slowly arrive in the cabin, it was necessary to somehow evacuate people. Then the same tugboat «Burevestnik» came to the rescue, its captain saw everything that was happening, detached the platform with the forest and hurried to the sinking plane. Taking him in tow, he dragged him to the right bank, where the wing of the aircraft very successfully went onto wooden pontoons, and through the upper hatch on the wing, passengers were able to safely disembark as if by a ladder.
After the incident, all passengers were put on buses and taken to Leningrad airport. The crew was sent in special vehicles to the KGB for investigation. Of course, such an event could not but attract crowds of onlookers, there were people with cameras among them, but the police forbade taking pictures, and those who succeeded immediately demanded that the film be illuminated. They wanted to keep this incident a secret, to classify the case. The pilots were accused of wrong actions and errors in calculating fuel residues. They were not rewarded for saving lives, but even wanted to be judged.
The situation was unknowingly saved by Yuri Tuisk, an amateur photographer. At the time of the emergency landing of the plane on the Neva River, he was nearby and decided to film the event with a camera. When he got closer, he saw that the police forbade filming on camera. Then he moved a little further away and imperceptibly took some pictures. Later, it was these pictures that got into the Izvestia newspaper and made the incident public. As a result, the investigation of the pilots was stopped, and the case was quickly hushed up without unnecessary hype. They did not reward anyone, the commander of the Bridge and navigator Tsarev received a small 2-room apartment each and were happy that they had escaped the court.
When all the passengers and crew left the ship, the commander of the tugboat, Yuri Porshin, dragged the plane under the bridge in the hope of a shallow depth of the Neva River in that place. A port tug with a powerful drainage system followed and began pumping out water, but it came in large volumes and it was not possible to avoid flooding the aircraft. And the depth in that place was not small – 5 meters.
The next day, the plane was lifted from the bottom and towed to a military unit in the west of Vasilyevsky Island. There he was examined for serviceability and written off due to damage. The cabin was sawed off from the Tu-124 and given to the Kirsanov Aviation School in the Tambov region as an air trainer. In the early 2000s, during the reorganization, the educational institution needed money, and the cabin was scrapped. The airplane seats were immediately sold to everyone for a bottle of belenka, and the fuselage was sawn and also sold for scrap.
Here is such a page in the history of Soviet aviation, the skill and professionalism of our pilots. This incident was studied as an example in flight schools in other countries. Since 1963, many pilots in similar situations, seizing on the last chance, tried to land a plane in distress on the water. But statistics are a harsh thing, all attempts failed and led to disaster. It was only in 2009 that Chesley Sullenberger was able to repeat the feat of Soviet pilots and successfully landed his Airbus A320-214 on the Hudson.
