Childhood crushed by the sky
On May 16, 1972, in broad daylight, kindergarten ik in the city of Svetlogorsk a plane crashed. The teachers, who were having lunch at that moment, did not get up from their tables, and the children did not return to their toys. 35 people died in that nightmare.
For many years, everyone was silent about the Svetlogorsk tragedy, including those who lost loved ones. Until now, even encyclopedias indicate the wrong number of deaths, and it is believed that the dead pilots, in whose blood alcohol was allegedly found, were to blame for everything.
MK found eyewitnesses and victims of the tragedy who spoke out after more than forty years of silence.
Photo of the deceased kindergarten group. On the right is teacher Valentina Shabashova-Metelitsa (died), on the left is head Galina Klyukhina (she was not at work that day). Photo from personal archive
Trajectory of Death
At the Svetlogorsk cemetery, near the mass grave where the victims of that terrible tragedy are buried, two women are fussing.
“I have a brother here,” says one. - Burned alive. Are you from Moscow? Tell me, why are they still not writing about our tragedy at all, or are they writing nonsense? I once read that, supposedly, after the disaster there was a mass suicide in the city. That parents committed suicide, unable to bear the pain of loss. I also read that many people drank themselves after this. Not true! In fact, many decided to give birth and named newborns after the names of dead children.
The women and the priest of the local temple give us “addresses, passwords, appearances.” For some reason we are sure that now all the victims and eyewitnesses will tell how it really happened.
So, on May 16 in Svetlogorsk it was clear and calm. At approximately noon, an An-24 aircraft of the 263rd Air Transport Regiment of the USSR Baltic Fleet appeared on the horizon. He went around the stadium, almost hitting the Ferris wheel in the park, and with his left plane he cut down the top of a tall birch tree. Among the first to see it were the few vacationers who found themselves in the park that day, and schoolchildren whose physical education lesson was ending at the city stadium.
“We were returning to our school along a forest path that went past the kindergarten,” recalls Nikolai Alekseev, a former student of one of the schools. “When we saw the plane falling on our heads, we were dumbfounded with horror; someone tried to run away. “Stop!” - our teacher shouted to us. Standing rooted to the spot, we froze in place. We stood and watched as this uncontrollable colossus, dousing us with the heat of its turbines and losing altitude, flew over our heads.
The first random victims that day were high school students Tanya Ezhova and Natasha Tsygankova. The girls were approaching the kindergarten, when suddenly...
“We were only a few meters from the kindergarten when we were doused with burning vapors from aviation fuel,” recalls Tatyana Ezhova, whom we met at the scene of the tragedy. “We didn’t even have time to understand anything, when in an instant our hair, clothes, and shoes flashed on us. We were in severe shock from fear and unbearable pain. There is not a soul around, and we are alone in the middle of the street, engulfed in flames...
And the plane continued to rush towards the kindergarten, hidden in the massive spruce trees. The kindergarten was considered departmental (from the Svetlogorsk sanatorium), and, as usual, it had all the best: from the conditions of the children’s stay to the salaries of the staff. The official position of the parents fully justified the status of this institution: chief of police, chief of the traffic police, first secretary of the city committee of the Komsomol, employee of the Svetlogorsk court, chief physician...
Having returned from their walk, the children sat down in their places, waiting for lunch. The dining room was filled with the aroma of hot soup. The cook, Tamara Yankovskaya, probably, as usual, slowly walked between the tables, making sure that the students ate carefully, slowly, and held their spoons correctly.
Looking out the window, teacher Valentina Shabashova-Metelitsa saw her son Andrei. That day the boy was walking with his grandmother Nina around the city. Near the kindergarten Nina Sergeevna met a neighbor. We stopped to chat. “Grandma, should I run to mom for a minute?” asked Andrei. Valentina ran out to meet him. Mother and son only had time to hug...
The next moment, the kindergarten building was rocked by a monstrous blow. Having lost both planes and the landing gear during the fall, the half-halved fuselage rammed the second floor at high speed, burying everyone under its rubble. Aviation fuel, which flared up with renewed vigor from the impact, consumed all living things in its flames in a matter of seconds.
Next to the burning ruins of the kindergarten, an airplane cabin lay on the road. A dead pilot sat in it, clutching the steering wheel. The co-pilot was lying on the road. The wind either knocked the flames off it or fanned it with renewed vigor.
“No one even poured a bucket of water on him,” recalls an old woman who lived next door. “It was impossible to get close to him.”
A diagram of the accident site drawn up by eyewitness Valera Rogov.
Misidentification
It seemed that no one could survive in this hell. And yet, not everyone died. Anna Nezvanova, a kindergarten nanny, escaped a terrible death by wiping the windows on the street side with a rag. The blast wave threw her several meters to the side. Having barely come to her senses, Anna Nikitichna rushed to the burning ruins. There, under the ruins of the kindergarten, was her son Vanya. A woman, distraught with grief, trying to get her child, almost died in the fire...
That day, for various reasons, three pupils did not go to kindergarten. Irina Golushko suffered from the flu shortly before the tragedy. On May 16, her mother was going to take her to kindergarten, but changed her mind.
“And I ended up in the hospital with kidney disease,” recalls Oleg Saushkin, who was then six years old. “I remember that at some point the whole hospital began to bustle. Everyone started running, cars were driving out somewhere, confusion and signs of some kind of distant horror reigned in the eyes of the hospital staff. And my mother, with tears in her eyes, a little later, told about what happened in my kindergarten...
“I had my tonsils removed the day before; my mother and I were on sick leave,” says Olga Korobova. “Staying at home was an unbearable torment for me. That day my mother gave up: “Okay, let’s get ready for kindergarten.” We quickly got dressed and just opened the door when there was a strong explosion. It thundered so hard that the ground shook. By the way, my mother worked as a nanny in that garden. It turns out that God saved her from a terrible death.
He also saved Valery Rogov, a graduate of this kindergarten. And not just saved, but warned about the tragedy.
“In 1972, I was already in first grade,” says Valera. — Last night I had a dream. I can clearly see the faces of my kindergarten children, engulfed in flames. The fire is somehow unusual - a real torch. The next morning I woke up in a cold sweat. I told my mother about what I saw. We didn’t attach any importance to it then, but I went to school with a severe headache. Around noon I went to the kindergarten - and... In general, I was one of the first at the scene of the tragedy. People rushing around, not knowing what to do, came running to help. Somewhere in the bushes, turning my soul inside out, a burnt dog howled, howled terribly...
“It was lunchtime when all this happened,” recalls former employee of the Svetlogorsk Department of Internal Affairs (in 1972 - OBKhSS inspector, police lieutenant) Leonid Baldykov. “At that very moment I was at home, having lunch. My house was only a hundred meters from the kindergarten. What we saw when we got there shocked us, grown-up, strong men. A wall of raging fire and unbearable fumes from burning fuel that spread across the asphalt from a broken tank...
Almost simultaneously, police squads, firefighters, servicemen from neighboring military units and Baltic Fleet sailors arrived at the scene of the disaster. In a matter of minutes, a triple cordon was set up. Armed soldiers, tightly clasping hands, barely restrained the unfortunate mothers rushing to where their children died in a terrible fire. Somehow we managed to push them to a safe distance.
“In the first row of the cordon was my uncle, midshipman Valentin Konstantinovich,” recalls Oleg Saushkin. - According to him, the officers, midshipmen and sailors who stood near the destroyed kindergarten suffered the most. Many, including himself, had their vests torn to shreds, their faces were covered in bruises from the women, distraught with grief, trying to break through the ranks...
Along the road, on the soot-blackened lawn, the military laid out white sheets. Immediately, rescuers began to place the remains of children recovered from the ruins on them. Many, unable to bear it, closed their eyes and turned away. Someone fainted.
“For the rest of my life I remembered that terrible howl that shook the air,” recalls Valery Rogov. “People were crying, screaming, sobbing, some were hysterical...
In order for special vehicles to park and pick up the remains of the dead, rescuers and firefighters had to drag away a pile of bricks and mangled fragments of the plane in different directions from a narrow street. The asphalt was covered with numerous furrows, more like bleeding wounds. Soldiers immediately appeared with canvas stretchers. Two strong fighters carried the burnt body of the pilot next to Valera Rogov. Then - another, a third. Someone grabbed Valera's hand. The boy turned around and saw tear-stained women who, pointing their fingers at the smoking ruins, shouted to him: “Why are they there, and you here?!” You should have been with them! They told your mother that you are with them!..”
State of emergency
A state of emergency was declared for 24 hours in the resort Svetlogorsk. Residents were forbidden not only to leave the city, but even to leave their houses. Electricity and telephones were cut off. The city stood still, people sat in dark apartments, as if in shelters during the war. Since the evening, police and vigilantes were on duty on the coast: there was a fear that one of the relatives of the victims would decide to drown themselves. Work to clear the rubble and search for the bodies of the dead continued until late at night. The remains of the ruins, as it later turned out, were taken to a landfill on the outskirts of the city. For a long time, burnt children's books and toys, parts and items of military ammunition will be found in its vicinity...
As soon as the last loaded car left the city, the place where the kindergarten had stood the day before was leveled, covering the scorched earth with turf. In order to hide the traces of the tragedy from prying eyes, it was decided to plant a large flowerbed in that place.
“By morning, it was as if the garden had never existed—a flowerbed had bloomed in its place!” - Andrey Dmitriev recalls. “Many parents didn’t believe their eyes then. The scorched earth has been cut away, turf has been laid, and paths have been strewn with broken red bricks. Broken and burnt trees were cut down. And there was only a sharp smell of kerosene. The smell lasted for another two weeks...
The consequences of the Svetlogorsk tragedy were terrifying: 24 (and not 23, as stated in official sources) pupils, one kindergarten teacher and 8 crew members were burned alive. Where did another child come from? It turned out that one of the girls was the daughter of a sea captain. A sad telephone message was sent to his ship. In response, he asked not to bury his daughter in a mass grave, but to wait for him. That’s why the girl was not taken into account...
Garden workers Tamara Yankovskaya, Antonina Romanenko and her friend Yulia Vorona, who happened to come to visit her that day, were taken to a military hospital with severe burns. In addition to their relatives, KGB officers visited them daily in the hospital, ready for any help in exchange for silence. Unfortunately, Romanenko died quickly without regaining consciousness, Yankovskaya died six months later, and Vorona survived.
The dead children and teachers were buried in a mass grave in a cemetery, not far from the Svetlogorsk-1 railway station. On the day of the funeral, traffic on the roads connecting the regional center with Svetlogorsk was limited. At the same time, diesel trains carrying passengers from Kaliningrad to the resort town were cancelled. The official version is urgent repairs of access roads, the unofficial version is to minimize publicity of all the circumstances of the plane crash. Despite the time restrictions associated with mourning events, according to eyewitnesses, over seven thousand people gathered at the cemetery on the day of the funeral.
At the funeral, KGB officers forbade taking photographs and exposed the films of those who did so. But the relatives of the victims still managed to take a few photographs. Photo from personal archive
Quiet Consequence
No criminal case was opened regarding the plane crash in Svetlogorsk. They limited themselves only to the order of the Minister of Defense, in accordance with which about 40 military officials were removed from their positions.
And even then the main version appeared: the pilots were to blame, in whose blood alcohol was allegedly found. For this reason, relatives of the deceased children and kindergarten staff prohibited burying the pilots in the Svetlogorsk cemetery next to “their victims.” For the same reason, in the general list of those killed in the plane crash, there was no place for eight names of crew members in the church-chapel.
The priest of the local temple keeps some archival documents relating to the tragedy. But the main thing is that dispatchers, flight mechanics, and pilots of that same detachment came here. Many confessed... What did they say? The secret of confession does not allow him to tell. But he is sure: the crew had nothing to do with it.
There were other versions, sometimes absurd. Some argued that the pilots were poorly prepared for the mission. They didn’t forget about the nudist girls sunbathing on the beach (and this was in 1972, and at a temperature of plus 6 degrees!), whom the pilots allegedly tried to see during their next descent over the sea. They wrote that the crew allegedly took off without permission. In reality, the reason was the altimeter...
“Our closest Scandinavian neighbors have repeatedly attempted to violate air boundaries,” says one of the employees of the 263rd Separate Transport Aviation Regiment (the same one to which the crashed plane belonged). “In some cases they succeeded.” And these were by no means military aircraft. Sports class, single-engine, low-flying, driven by amateur pilots. To find out how foreign pilots crossed the border without hindrance, the Soviet command decided to conduct test flights by the naval aviation of the Baltic Fleet in the area of responsibility of the Soviet radar stations of the coastal tracking system. And on that fateful day, the An-24 (tail number 05) with the crew of Captain Vilor Gutnik set off on a mission. On the eve of the flight, on command from above, the altimeter on the An-24 was moved from the Il-14. The performance of the device has not been properly tested. No one then could have imagined how the altimeter would behave on the new aircraft.
According to legend, the crew of Captain Gutnik was supposed to play the role of a conditional target, that is, an intruder. In the field of view of the radar, the target aircraft had to gain altitude, move away, and then descend sharply to get out of control. all seeing eye" When descending, turn left and right to outsmart the station operator. Gutnik conscientiously did what was required. The operator was informed of the flight altitude every minute, and he made notes on the tablet, informing the crew of board 05 whether the target was visible or not. At the lowest altitudes, the radar did not see the target: the plane left its field of view. That is why it was not possible to notice the danger. The crew kept in touch with the shore until the last second, but there was already dense fog over the sea.
The first collision with an obstacle occurred at the 14th minute 48th second of the flight. The flight recorders recorded altimeter readings: 150 meters above sea level. In fact, from the foot of the steep bank to the top of the birch tree is no more than 85 meters.
In the declassified case, the diagram clearly shows the entire path of the crash of the aircraft and the destruction of its structure. But eyewitnesses of the events drew their own map. They handed it over to us for publication in MK. They say that maybe this will help heal their wound at least a little... How? The fact that the inhabitants of a huge country will finally see for themselves how everything really happened.
At 4 p.m. on May 16, 1972, Radio Free Europe from Munich broadcast the following message: “An An-26 military transport aircraft of the Baltic Fleet naval aviation fell three hours ago on a kindergarten in Svetlogorsk (Kaliningrad region). Among the dead are children under 6 years of age, teachers and the plane crew, more than 30 people in total.” The efficiency of the German radio station is easily explained - NATO radio surveillance stations operated on the island of Bornholm, which intercepted the communications of our military. But the Soviet media were silent about the incident.
On May 16, 1972, at about 12:30, an An-24T aircraft of the 263rd separate transport aviation regiment of the USSR Baltic Fleet, flying to fly over radio equipment, crashed in difficult weather conditions, hitting a tree. After a collision with a tree, the damaged plane flew about 200 meters and crashed onto the building of a kindergarten in Svetlogorsk. 33 people died in the crash: all 8 members of the plane's crew, 22 children and 3 kindergarten employees.
AN-24 took off from Khrabrovo at 12:15. General supervision of the flight was carried out by the operational duty officer of the aviation command post, Lieutenant Colonel Vaulev, and he also gave permission to carry out the mission. Having gained altitude, the plane reached a point in the Zelenogradsk area, “attached” to it and went to Cape Taran. Then he made a turn over the sea to reach the given bearing. There was already a dense fog over the sea. The plane collided with an obstacle at 14 minutes and 48 seconds of flight. At the same time, the black boxes recorded: the altimeter showed an altitude of 150 meters above sea level. In fact, from the foot of the steep bank to the top of the pine tree there is no more than 85 meters.
In the case there is a diagram of the destruction of the plane. The commander lacked some fractions of a second. Coming out of the fog, he understood everything and pulled the rudders towards himself. Alas, the An-24 is not a fighter.”
The diagram shows down to centimeters the plane's fall after a collision with a pine tree on the seashore.
Why did the altimeter lie? It turns out that on the eve of this flight, the Navy Air Force made, as is now clear, an ill-conceived decision to replace the altimeters from the IL-14 to the AN-24. Subsequent experiments showed that the altimeter, moved from the Il-14 to the An-24, gave an error of up to 60–70 meters.
Among the first to see the falling plane were a few vacationers who found themselves in the park that day, and schoolchildren whose physical education lesson was ending at the city stadium. The next moment, the kindergarten building was rocked by a monstrous blow. Having lost both planes and the landing gear during the fall, the half-halved fuselage rammed the second floor at high speed, burying everyone under its rubble. Aviation fuel, which flared up with renewed vigor from the impact, consumed all living things in its flames in a matter of seconds. Next to the burning ruins of the kindergarten, an airplane cabin lay on the road. A dead pilot sat in it, clutching the steering wheel. The co-pilot was lying on the road. The wind either knocked the flames off it or fanned it with renewed vigor. Almost simultaneously, police squads, firefighters, servicemen from neighboring military units and Baltic Fleet sailors arrived at the scene of the disaster.
In a matter of minutes, a triple cordon was set up. Armed soldiers, tightly clasping hands, barely restrained the unfortunate mothers rushing to where their children died in a terrible fire. Somehow we managed to push them to a safe distance. Along the road, on the soot-blackened lawn, the military laid out white sheets. Immediately, rescuers began to place the remains of children recovered from under the ruins on them. Many, unable to bear it, closed their eyes and turned away. Someone fainted.
A state of emergency was declared for 24 hours in the resort Svetlogorsk. Residents were forbidden not only to leave the city, but even to leave their houses. Electricity and telephones were cut off. The city stood still, people sat in dark apartments, as if in shelters during the war. Since the evening, police and vigilantes had been on duty on the coast: there was a fear that one of the relatives of the victims would decide to drown themselves. Work to clear the rubble and search for the bodies of the dead continued until late at night. The remains of the ruins, as it later turned out, were taken to a landfill on the outskirts of the city. For a long time, burnt children's books and toys, parts and items of military ammunition will be found in its vicinity...
As soon as the last loaded car left the city, the place where the kindergarten had stood the day before was leveled, covering the scorched earth with turf. In order to hide the traces of the tragedy from prying eyes, it was decided to plant a large flowerbed in that place.
By morning, it was as if the garden had never existed - a flowerbed had blossomed in its place! - Andrey Dmitriev recalls. “Many parents didn’t believe their eyes then. The scorched earth has been cut away, turf has been laid, and paths have been strewn with broken red bricks. Broken and burnt trees were cut down. And there was only a sharp smell of kerosene. The smell lasted for another two weeks...
Garden workers Tamara Yankovskaya, Antonina Romanenko and her friend Yulia Vorona, who happened to come to visit her that day, were taken to a military hospital with severe burns. In addition to their relatives, KGB officers visited them daily in the hospital, ready for any help in exchange for silence.
Unfortunately, Romanenko died quickly without regaining consciousness, Yankovskaya died six months later, and Vorona survived. The dead children and teachers were buried in a mass grave in a cemetery, not far from the Svetlogorsk-1 railway station. On the day of the funeral, traffic on the roads connecting the regional center with Svetlogorsk was limited.
At the same time, diesel trains carrying passengers from Kaliningrad to the resort town were cancelled. The official version is urgent repairs of access roads, the unofficial version is to minimize publicity of all the circumstances of the plane crash. On the day of the funeral of the dead children, more than 7,000 people gathered at the cemetery in Svetlogorsk.
No criminal case was opened regarding the plane crash in Svetlogorsk. They limited themselves only to the order of the Minister of Defense, in accordance with which about 40 military officials were removed from their positions. And even then the main version appeared: the pilots were to blame, in whose blood alcohol was allegedly found. For this reason, relatives of the deceased children and kindergarten staff prohibited burying the pilots in the Svetlogorsk cemetery next to “their victims.” For the same reason, in the church-chapel, in the general list of those killed in the plane crash, there was no place for eight names of crew members.
In 1972, it was not customary to widely cover the details of accidents and disasters, especially those that happened in the military department. And the circumstances of the tragedy that occurred in a small resort town on the shores of the Baltic Sea were covered with a veil of silence. Albeit with a great delay, but the public charge against the crew, who themselves became the victim of erroneous office decisions, has finally been dropped...”
After the Curonian Spit before Kaliningrad, we planned a short walk around Svetlogorsk, a former German resort town, which we were strongly advised to visit. Svetlogorsk is located on the shores of the Baltic Sea, 50 km from Kaliningrad. The population of the city is about 11 thousand people. Svetlogorsk received its modern name in 1946; before that time the city was called Rauschen (German: Rauschen). The city's popularity as a resort has increased significantly since 1900, when the railway from Königsberg to Rauschen/Ort station (now Svetlogorsk-1), extended in 1906 to Rauschen/Dune station (Svetlogorsk-2). Trains could now travel closer to the sea, and the resort became much more accessible to many residents of Königsberg.
Svetlogorsk is connected to Kaliningrad by a highway. It is part of the Primorsky Ring under construction. Surprisingly, this 4-lane expressway of continuous traffic with bumpers, night lighting and interchanges is not a federal highway. True, only the first two stages have been put into operation so far: Kaliningrad - Zelenogradsk - Khrabrovo Airport and Zelenogradsk - Svetlogorsk - Pionersky. After completion of construction, the ring will be closed with Kaliningrad through the cities of Baltiysk and Svetly.
1. Primorsky Ring, first stage, image from Google StreetView.
2.
Svetlogorsk can easily be considered one of those cities where you can return again. This is a quiet seaside town with interesting architectural buildings.
3.
We go down to the Promenade and the sundial.
4.
Sundial (1974) in the form of a mosaic panel with images of the zodiac signs.
5.
Beach.
6.
In 1908, a wooden promenade deck was built on stilts on the seashore.
7.
Descent to the beach.
8.
Bronze sculpture "Nymph" (1938) by Hermann Brachert on the Promenade.
9.
Contemporary sculpture (early 2000s) on the Promenade.
10.
Swans in the waters of the Baltic Sea.
11.
Anchor.
13.
The main symbol of the city is the Hydrotherapy Tower.
14.
The 25-meter-high sea spa tower was built between 1900 and 1908.
15.
In 1978, a sundial was installed on the tower, which organically blended into the appearance of the building.
16.
We didn’t have a classic paper or electronic (OsmAnd) map at that time; we navigated among the city’s attractions using this photograph.
17.
We went to have a snack at the cafe “For Friends” on Lenin Street. It turned out quite tasty and very inexpensive (740 rubles for three).
The building "Hunting Lodge" was built in 1926 original project arch. Goering in Art Nouveau style. From 1925 to 1933 the owner of the house was the burgomaster of Rauschen, Karl von Streng. Because of its extraordinary architecture, the building was repeatedly filmed in films, including in the film “Little Red Riding Hood”, which is where the name “House of the Astrologer” came from, played by the famous actor Evgeny Evstigneev. In 2003, the house became private property and was restored by specialists from the Czech Republic and Moscow. The building was raised on jacks and the beams were replaced. The slate tiles for the roof were brought from the Czech Republic. Due to the fact that the stained glass windows were cemented in the post-war period and the parquet flooring was painted with oil paint, they were preserved, and during the reconstruction of the building they were restored.
18. "Hunting Lodge" (1926).
19.
Many houses are less fortunate; they still have a very long wait for restoration.
20.
Memorial sign to Thomas Mann (2003) in memory of his visit to Rauschen in 1929.
21.
Signposts in different styles.
22.
Sculptural composition “The Frog Princess” (2006).
23.
Railway station Svetlogorsk-2.
24.
Pancake house with original wall paintings. We will definitely go there on our next visit to Svetlogorsk.
25.
Most of the buildings are carefully maintained in a single architectural style.
26.
Marble sculpture “Carrying Water” (1944) by Hermann Brachert.
27.
Building of the Svetlogorsk sanatorium.
28.
Original solution, in a niche of an ordinary residential building there is a sculpture of a German sailor.
29.
A small wooden mill on the territory of the Old Doctor hotel.
30.
Church of Seraphim of Sarov (since 1992), in the past (1907-1946) - Lutheran Church of Rauschen.
And at the end of the photo story about Svetlogorsk, there is one more memorable place -.
31. Chapel in honor of the icon of the Mother of God “Joy of All Who Sorrow” at the site of the destruction of the kindergarten on May 16, 1972.
The chapel was erected in memory of the victims of the disaster May 16, 1972. On this day on previously located here kindergarten plane crashed. At 12:15, six experienced pilots took off from the Khrabrovo airfield on an An-24 military transport aircraft. At 12:29:48, emerging from the dense fog over the sea, the plane chops off the top of a pine tree with its wing and falls onto a kindergarten with a damaged wing. At these moments 22 children and three adults were seated at tables for lunch. The cause of the disaster was incorrect readings from the altimeter switched to the An-24 from the Il-14. No one checked how it would behave on the new plane. Victims ill-conceived decision became Svetlogorsk children and the An-24 crew.
32. Memorial plaque.
By morning, the soldiers' hands turned the gaping crater into a square with flowers. At that time, official information about such tragedies was not published. Only 22 years later, with public donations, a chapel was built on the site of the bitter grave in memory of those who died so unexpectedly and so terribly on that May day. On May 16, pilots from Khrabrovo arrive at the place of death and lay flowers. There is no other monument to their colleagues. Children come here for Sunday school.
33. ...
For many years the terrible history of Svetlogorsk could not even be mentioned. When new times came, fundraising for the chapel began. It was erected in 1994. And since then a candle has always been burning in her. In memory of those who once suffered a terrible death here...
Last minutes (based on Wikimapia).
Today, the kindergarten of sanatorium No. 3 (the current Svetlogorsk) would probably be considered “elite”. And then they called him “thieves”. Cozy two-story mansion. There are 25 children in total. Warm staff. Many people wanted to place their child here.
According to the Kaliningrad Hydrometeorological Bureau, on May 16, cloudy weather with clearings without significant precipitation is expected in the region, fog in places in the morning, variable winds are weak to moderate, the temperature is five to ten degrees Celsius.” The weather forecasters were right. The weather that distant day turned out to be really bad. Nevertheless, the children still enjoyed going for a traditional walk.
The husband of teacher Valentina Shabashova-Metelitsa was in the hospital, where he underwent surgery. Valentina was in a hurry to Kaliningrad to visit her husband. And so I finished my walk twenty minutes earlier than usual. Many people believe that if children were still walking instead of sitting in the building, they would have a chance...
On May 16, Yulia Vorona and her husband Vladimir went to buy a TV. The path lay past the kindergarten. Antonina Romanenko, Yulia’s friend, worked there as a cook.
Shall I run over to Tosa for a minute?
In the locker room, Vorona saw two boys standing in a corner.
What are you doing this for, huh?
In response, they only sniffled offendedly.
“They were playing around, so they were punished,” the teacher explained with feigned severity. Everyone who knew her says that she was a very kind person.
Come on, Val! - the guest waved it off in an unpedagogical manner. - Come on, let's shoot, go to lunch!
One boy rushed to wash his hands, the other to the toilet. The teacher went outside to meet her Andryushka. He was sick, his grandmother took him to warm up. And on the way they decided to visit their mother.
The rest of the kids were already in the dining room.
We sat quietly at the tables, like angels, waiting for the first, second, compote,” Yulia Egorovna wipes away the tears that came.
Leaving Anna Nezvanova in the kitchen to finish frying the cutlets, Tosya and Yulia went out to the games room. Chatting, they stood at the window. We watched Valya hugging his son as he ran up on the street.
While waiting for Yulia, my husband decided to pick her lilies of the valley. Having moved a hundred meters away, he heard a hum and a strange crackling sound. Turning towards the sound, I froze: from the sea, breaking the tops of trees, a plane was rushing...
At the stadium near the kindergarten, a physical education lesson had just ended. The class stretched out and returned to school. Seeing the plane, everyone seemed numb.
To me! - Having come to his senses, teacher Yuri Baklanov shouted to the guys who had gone ahead.
Everyone ran back. And then the plane crashed...
Maria Kudreshova then worked in an atelier as a men's cutter. It was an ordinary Tuesday, it was about lunchtime. Suddenly - the sound of an explosion. Immediately after this, the electricity went out.
And then - terrible news:
The kindergarten exploded!
Maria Grigorievna had a son Alyoshka there. She jumped out into the street, saw a motorcycle standing there, and began shouting: “Whose motorcycle?!” The owner came running and they rushed off. We arrived, and in place of the kindergarten there was hell. Everything was burning, even the asphalt. There was an airplane cabin lying on the road. A dead pilot sat in it, clutching the steering wheel. The body of another was hanging on a tree. There were no firefighters yet. The first people who came running to help were rushing around, not knowing what to do.
Among them was Vladimir Moiseevich, the husband of Yulia Egorovna.
You won’t believe it, but for some reason I was sure: my Julia is alive, alive!
Having woken up, Crow, covered in debris, could only turn her head. I saw that Tosya was dead nearby. Yulia Egorovna was saved by the closet. He took the brunt of everything that was flying at her head.
The woman tried to get out. In vain. She started screaming: “Help, help!” Meanwhile, the fire was already approaching her. It was getting harder and harder to breathe...
And then - an explosion. As it turned out later, the gas cylinders standing in the kitchen exploded. As a result, a hole appeared in the rubble. The crow began to make its way upstairs.
Having got out, she walked at random through the burning ruins. A fireman is coming towards you. Seeing Yulia, he threw the fire hose and ran away.
I got scared. No wonder I looked terrible. And in general, this kind of thing happened there. Anyone will lose their nerve.
She was eventually pulled out by a police officer she knew, Pyotr Zanin. Then they put Yulia on the grass and tried to persuade her not to move. She kept rushing back: “Tosya is burning there, we need to get her!”
You can't hide the truth
Eduard Trushchenkov 35 years ago was the secretary for ideology of the Svetlogorsk city committee of the CPSU. It so happened that in those days he remained in the city “on the farm.” The first secretary fell ill with a heart attack, the second left.
On the morning of May 16, Trushchenkov was in Kaliningrad - at a meeting in the regional committee dedicated to the affairs of the fishing industry. By noon the meeting was over, and the secretary went back. Suddenly his car was overtaken by an ambulance. Behind her is another, a third.
“Let’s go after them,” Eduard Vasilyevich said to the driver, getting worried.
When they arrived at the scene of the tragedy, the area was already cordoned off. Military personnel and cadets from the police school came to the aid of the firefighters. Some collected the remains of the pilots and the wreckage of the plane, others dismantled the ruins of the kindergarten, removing bodies from under the rubble.
By the way, on the same day the Voice of America reported about the emergency in Svetlogorsk.
On May 17, there was a meeting dedicated to what happened,” Trushchenkov continues. - And I asked: how did people abroad learn about our misfortune so quickly? Are there really agents in Svetlogorsk who work for foreign intelligence? One of the KGB officers reluctantly explained: the foreigners intercepted the negotiations, they have a tracking station nearby.
Despite the measures taken by the “authorities,” the news of the tragedy quickly spread here too.
Soon after the plane crashed, my friends from Svetly called me,” recalls Larisa Novikova, who lived in Svetlogorsk at the time. - Like, what happened there? And in the evening they called from Kyiv. By that time, I was already a little out of my mind. There is only talk around about what happened. Two people from our house died at once - a girl and a boy...
The scant information about the tragedy was distorted and overgrown with speculation. Sometimes people only knew that a plane had fallen on some kindergarten. And they ran in panic to “their” kindergarten, where they had taken the child in the morning.
Life after death...
The tragic incident was the number one topic in Svetlogorsk for a long time. Then, as usual, history began to be gradually forgotten. And only the relatives of the victims always remember May 16, 1972. Some never managed to recover from that day at all. Someone drank himself to death, someone committed suicide... Time, of course, heals. And yet, as soon as you talk to them about that tragedy, tears appear in their eyes. On the morning of May 16, relatives of the victims will again gather in the chapel on Lenin Street. After the service everyone will go to the cemetery.
Trip log:
40 years ago, in quiet Svetlogorsk, a military transport An-24 crashed into a kindergarten. 23 children, 3 teachers and 8 crew members died. We met with those who miraculously survived or escaped the disaster.
The tracks were covered overnight
On May 16, 1972, a military transport aircraft of the Baltic Fleet naval aviation took off from Khrabrovo. The pilots were carrying out a planned flight - weather reconnaissance. Near Svetlogorsk, an An-24, trying to determine the lower limit of cloud cover, fell into dense fog. The pilots flew the plane low and at some point, according to eyewitnesses, it touched the Ferris wheel and began to fall, sinking lower and lower, catching the tops of pine trees...
And below there is a school, a kindergarten, and residential buildings. Catastrophe was inevitable. At this moment, the guys had just returned to the kindergarten from a walk. They were sitting in the dining room - lunch was about to be served. One moment claimed the lives of all the children and three teachers...
– I was sitting in the office, then I heard a roar, then children ran in and shouted: “The plane fell near the stadium!” And there my guys did physical education with a teacher. The day is in full swing! “I ran with everyone,” Sergei Popov, who in those years worked as the director of school No. 1 in Svetlogorsk, tells us. “The kindergarten building was on fire, and there were fragments of the fuselage lying right there. People were running and screaming, women were crying. In May, there were already a lot of vacationers in Svetlogorsk - they began to run to the site of the disaster. The chairman of the city executive committee arrived. The first secretary of the city party committee, Zubkov, fainted from what he saw - he was taken to the hospital. I myself was shocked by all this. The plane was flying straight towards the school, but it hit the Ferris wheel and it turned towards the kindergarten. Otherwise it would have fallen on us. At that moment there were at least 200 people in the school.
The regional Ministry of Internal Affairs took control of the case. The crash site was quickly cordoned off and people were not allowed near.
“I remember when the fire had not yet been put out, cartridges suddenly began to explode. Bullets whistled over their heads - apparently the pilots had weapons, says Sergei Popov. – In order not to spread rumors and not to traumatize people, the case was not made public. It wasn’t like that then as it is now. Then everything was hidden. (By the way, the Western media announced the Svetlogorsk disaster very quickly. Soviet newspapers and radio were silent - Ed.).
The fire was cleared up overnight. And everything that remained was leveled, turning it into a neat area, on which by morning a large flowerbed had “grown”. In the morning they began to bring flowers and toys to her. There is no trace left of the kindergarten.
– Despite the fact that there was no information, everyone was only talking about the plane. The city is small, and rumors and news spread quickly,” says Popov.
Got sick and saved
Today Oleg Saushkin drives a respectable car, runs his own business and knows everyone in Svetlogorsk. Then, in 1972, he was six years old, and he was the simplest boy.
We met Oleg at the chapel, which stands on the site of the tragedy on Lenin Street. We went inside and looked at the photographs of the dead children. It’s scary to imagine that among the black and white photographs there could be a portrait of little Olezhka...
– For some reason I really didn’t like this kindergarten. I didn’t like coming here, even though all my friends were here, even my neighbors in the yard. I often ran to my mother to work, and she worked in a sanatorium, and here he is, nearby,” says Saushkin.
That day Oleg did not have to run away from the kindergarten.
“The day before I had a “successful” walk - I fell into an ice hole and caught a cold in my kidneys, and problems began,” he recalls. “I was first treated in Pionersky, then transferred to the regional hospital in Kaliningrad. I was there after the operation. I remember that at some point the whole hospital began to bustle. Everyone started running, cars were driving somewhere, but no one said anything. And only then my mother came to me. I still remember her tears. This is how an everyday accident saved my life.
Another lucky one is Olga Lukeeva. Her mother worked as a nanny in that kindergarten.
– My tonsils were removed, my mother and I were on sick leave. When I was already recovering, my mother took another week of leave at her own expense to stay at home with me,” says Olga. “And I was so tired of going to hospitals and sitting within four walls that every day I begged my mother to go to kindergarten and visit friends. That day I also asked, and my mother kept saying: “Wait, let’s sit at home a little longer.” But I insisted on my own. And mom gave in: “Okay, let’s get ready.” We got dressed and were already on the porch when there was an explosion. It crashed so hard that the ground shook and I was thrown up. I remember when we ran there, there were a lot of people. There was a burnt plane and charred books. Doctors and military men were loading something in white sheets onto cars. I was little, but I understood everything. I still remember all the faces of the children, their names, especially those who sat at the same table with me at lunch. Only today they are all gone, but I am left...
Thrown out by explosion
In 1972, on the day of the funeral of the victims, in order to prevent publicity, electric trains to Svetlogorsk were canceled “for technical reasons”, and checkpoints were posted on the roads - the movement of cars to the resort town was limited.
Despite this, several thousand residents of Svetlogorsk and regional cities gathered at the cemetery (some sources indicate 10 thousand people). As local residents recall, the entire city buried the children. The funeral procession stretched along the road, a cordon of soldiers did not allow the crowd to approach the small coffins...
The only person who was in the kindergarten that day and survived was nurse Anna Nezvanova. Her little son died in the fire. She herself, as we were told, was standing in the window opening, and at the time of the accident she was thrown out into the street. That's how I was saved. Today Anna Nikitishna does not tell anyone about what happened. We barely managed to find her at her dacha near Svetlogorsk.
“It’s easy for you to say, but it’s hard for me to even remember.” “I don’t want to disturb the memory,” she refused to talk.
There were also those whom God took away from the tragedy. An example of this is the pilot who was supposed to fly on the ill-fated plane. A week before, he was baptized and accepted the faith. And before the flight itself he fell ill - his temperature rose and he was not allowed to take the flight...
FROM THE "KP" DOSSIER
One of the most reliable is the version about a technical malfunction of the aircraft's altimeter. The error in his testimony is explained by the fact that on the eve of the flight, the Navy Air Force decided to replace the altimeters from the Il-14 to the An-24. The performance of the devices after such a replacement was not properly checked. Experiments carried out during the investigation made it possible to establish: the An-24 crew in Svetlogorsk received data with an error of up to 60–70 meters.
On May 16, 1972, at about 12:30, an An-24T aircraft of the naval forces of the USSR Baltic Fleet, flying to fly over radio equipment, crashed in difficult weather conditions, hitting a tree. After a collision with a tree, the damaged plane flew about 200 meters and crashed onto the building of a kindergarten in Svetlogorsk. 34 people died in the crash: all 8 on the plane, 23 children and 3 kindergarten employees.
The kindergarten in the resort town of Svetlogorsk was filled with cheerful people. ringing voices. It was time for lunch and the kids returned from their walk. And suddenly - a giant shadow covered the sky, a monstrous blow was heard, and flames shot up. Two kindergarten workers jumped out into the opening of the collapsed wall, engulfed in fire. The heat hit tenth-graders from a local school walking down the street... It happened at 12.30 on May 16, 1972.
Eyewitnesses of the tragedy will tell you: in the morning it was clear and warm, but then fog lay over the sea like a dense veil. From there, from the sea, the hum of turbines came from the fog. Then a plane appeared over the steep bank, hit a tall pine tree, cut down the top, broke off half of the wing and, as it descended, losing parts of the skin, flew another two hundred meters and crashed onto the building of a kindergarten. Twenty meters from the crash site, a lonely old woman lived in a house. This house is still intact today...
The regional party leadership and the command of the Baltic Fleet urgently arrived at the scene of the tragedy, examined it, photographed it, and took away the remains of the victims. Overnight, sailors from a nearby unit removed the wreckage of the plane, dismantled the ruins, cleared the area and even planted a flowerbed on the site of the former kindergarten. Information about the tragedy was severely vetoed. Naturally, rumors and speculation immediately began to circulate around Svetlogorsk. A small resort town was shocked by a tragedy that claimed twenty-three children's lives. The kindergarten cook, Tamara Yankovskaya, also died under the ruins, and two more workers, Antonina Romanenko and Valentina Shabaeva-Metelitsa, died from burns in a military hospital.
Military pilots, crew members of the crashed plane - captains Vilory Gutnik and Alexander Kostin, senior lieutenant Andrei Lyutov, warrant officers Nikolai Gavrilyuk, Leonid Sergienko, senior inspector-pilot Lieutenant Colonel Lev Denisov, senior engineer Lieutenant Colonel Anatoly Svetlov were buried in the city cemetery in Kaliningrad. The body of the right pilot, senior lieutenant Viktor Baranov, was taken home by his wife.
A commission to investigate the causes of the disaster, headed by the Deputy Minister of Defense for Armaments, Colonel General - Engineer Alekseev, urgently left Moscow. He was accompanied by many high military officials. The found “black boxes” were sent for decryption, suggesting that the disaster occurred due to the failure of some device. The commission put all the aviators through a “sieve” into the air regiment. When the “black box” data was received a few days later, it became clear: the technology had nothing to do with it. Having worked through all the versions, the commission finally came to a single conclusion. But this conclusion was not communicated to the general public, and for many years the residents of Svetlogorsk blamed the pilots for what happened.
Until now, on the anniversary of the tragedy, representatives of the Baltic Fleet aviation come to the Svetlogorsk cemetery to honor the memory of the victims and meet with relatives of the victims of the tragedy, who now know the true cause of the disaster. Every year on May 9, on the birthday of the AN-24 commander, Captain Vilory Gutnik, fellow soldiers of the deceased crew gather at the Kaliningrad city cemetery. And a chapel was erected at the site of the tragedy.
But in the local press, no, no, and even articles appear where the authors question the professionalism of the crew. They say that he did not cope with his task due to unfavorable flight conditions: a high approaching bank, sudden fog, ignorance of the weather on the route. The “intoxicating” factor allegedly also worked: the delayed reaction of the crew members (possible influence of alcohol). One of the authors even circulated ridiculous rumors about the crew’s desire to take a closer look at nudist girls sunbathing on the beach (and this was in 1972, and at a temperature of plus 6 degrees!). They wrote that the crew took off allegedly without permission....
What really happened on May 16, 1972? We had to listen to a lot of versions and eyewitness accounts. But I will be based only on official documents. As for the professionalism of the crew, the act of investigating the AN-24 plane crash does not call it into question: Captain Gutnik’s flight time by that time amounted to about five thousand hours. And his colleagues speak of him as a highly qualified pilot.
Reserve Lieutenant Colonel Vyacheslav Kuryanovich:
After graduating from the flight school, Vilor Ilyich Gutnik underwent retraining at the Ryazan training center. Then he trained in civil aviation. He flew as a co-pilot in the Yakut air squadron. There I gained experience in long- and ultra-long-distance flights. In 1965, he became the commander of an airship in our unit. I flew for him for a year and a half as a navigator. In our regiment, Gutnik was considered one of the best pilots...
Reserve Lieutenant Colonel Vladimir Pisarenko:
Vilor Ilyich was a pilot of the highest class. Literate,. disciplined, very scrupulous in everything. And his entire crew was the strongest. The same navigator, Captain Kostin. He was older than the commander in age. A very competent navigator. He came to us from Novaya Zemlya, where he flew in the most difficult conditions.
As for the “beer factor”, the materials of the investigation of the disaster contain a pathologist’s conclusion that completely denies such an assumption.
I carefully studied (many thanks for the help to the former commander of the Baltic Fleet Air Force, Lieutenant General of Aviation Vasily Proskurin) all the documents, photographs, drawings, eyewitness accounts, radio communications records, etc. It turns out that back on March 13, 1972, the commander of the Baltic Fleet Air Force, Colonel General Aviation S. Gulyaev approved the flight plan. According to it, the flight on May 16 was supposed to take place along the route Khrabrovo-Zelenogradsk - Cape Taran - Kosa (landing) - Chkalovsk (landing) - Khrabrovo (landing).
From the report of the dispatcher, Warrant Officer Mikulevich: “Upon Captain Gutnik’s arrival at the control post, I took from him a certificate stating that the crew could carry out the task due to health reasons. And I signed the flight sheet with a landing on Kos.”
The An-24 took off from Khrabrovo at 12:15 p.m. General supervision of the flight was carried out by the operational duty officer of the aviation command post, Lieutenant Colonel Vaulev, and he also gave permission to carry out the mission. Having gained altitude, the plane reached a point in the Zelenogradsk area, “attached” to it and went to Cape Taran. Then he made a turn over the sea to reach the given bearing. There was already a dense fog over the sea.
The plane collided with an obstacle at 14 minutes and 48 seconds of flight. At the same time, the black boxes recorded: the altimeter showed an altitude of 150 meters above sea level. In fact, from the foot of the steep bank to the top of the pine tree there is no more than 85 meters. In the case there is a diagram of the destruction of the plane. “The commander lacked some fractions of a second,” Vasily Vladimirovich Proskurnin says bitterly. “Coming out of the fog, he understood everything and pulled the controls towards himself. Alas, the An-24 is not a fighter.” The diagram shows down to centimeters the plane's fall after a collision with a pine tree on the seashore. And it seems almost mystical after a corkscrew falls horizontally onto a kindergarten...
Why did the altimeter lie? It turns out that on the eve of this flight, the Navy Air Force made, as is now clear, an ill-conceived decision to replace the altimeters from the IL-14 to the AN-24. No one checked how they would behave on the new plane. The first victims of this ill-conceived decision were the children of Svetlogorsk and the crew of Gutnik. Subsequent experiments showed that the altimeter, moved from the Il-14 to the An-24, gave an error of up to 60-70 meters.
The published version of the disaster: unsatisfactory organization of preparation and control of this flight. No criminal case was opened into the tragedy in Svetlogorsk. The result of the investigation was an order from the Minister of Defense with two zeros, according to which about 40 military officials were removed from their positions.
In 1972, it was not customary to widely cover the details of accidents and disasters, especially those that happened in the military department. And the circumstances of the tragedy that occurred in a small resort town on the shores of the Baltic Sea were covered with a veil of silence. Although very late, the public charge against the crew, who themselves became the victim of erroneous cabinet decisions, has finally been dropped.