The remains of human bodies after a plane crash. The bodies of the dead in Sochi are badly broken, as if without bones at all

There were 160 passengers on board the liner, 45 of them were minors - all of them were returning home after a holiday at sea. However, due to crew error and bad weather, control over the aircraft was lost - as a result, it crashed to the ground and caught fire. Nobody managed to survive.

13 years ago, on the morning of August 22, 2006, the crew of a Tu-154 aircraft was preparing to make a regular flight from Vityazevo airport in Anapa to Pulkovo in St. Petersburg. 160 passengers boarded the liner: 115 adults and 45 children, six of whom were babies, and the rest were barely 12 years old.

August was very hot, but a few days before the departure of the flight, cold air came to the south, which provoked severe thunderstorms with showers. According to the forecast, on the way the plane was expected by two centers of thunderstorms, in which heavy showers and even hail were observed. However, the commander of the aircraft - 49-year-old Ivan Korogodin - did not attach much importance to the forecasters' warnings and decided to fly.

At 11:04 a.m., the plane took off from Vityazevo and reached its prescribed flight level of 5,700 meters. Eight minutes after the start of the flight, the controller from Rostov-on-Don contacted the flight and warned of powerful thunderstorms with heavy hail. At the same time, he forgot to indicate the height of the thunderstorm front, which reached unusually high values ​​- 12-13 km.

At that time, the crew themselves already saw the impending threat, as became clear from the recording of the conversation in the cockpit between the navigator and the commander. The words of the FAC are heard on it: “Oh, we’re climbing right into the cloud. How ugly."

Nevertheless, the plane managed to safely bypass the frightening cloud - the crew exhaled calmly, not suspecting that the worst was ahead of them.

The second thunderstorm center lay in wait for the plane in the sky over the Donetsk region. At this time, the plane had already been handed over to the dispatchers of the Kharkiv regional center, who did not inform the flight about the disaster. As a result, the St. Petersburg crew headed straight for the thunderstorm without any data on its size.

At 15:30, the Tu-154 entered the zone of clouds through which hail broke through. In order to bypass the dangerous terrain, the commander of flight 612 Korogodin decided to raise the liner higher: in just 5-6 seconds, the 85-ton car flew up almost 400 meters. Continuing to climb at a vertical speed of approximately 68.6 m/s, the aircraft nosed up to a climb angle of 45.7°, after which it rolled over to the right and began to enter a flat tailspin. The crew lost control of the aircraft, which went into an uncontrolled fall.

For some time, the commander was still trying to stabilize the rapidly falling car, deflecting the steering wheel either “towards himself”, then “away from himself”, thereby raising and lowering his nose.

The SOS distress signal was given at the direction of Korogodin at an altitude of 7.2 thousand meters. Approximately two and a half minutes after that, the plane collided with the ground 35 km from Donetsk.

The first blow fell on the right wing and the right engine of the aircraft, then in a fraction of a second the left wing also entered the soil, and the tail also came off. Upon impact, the aircraft's fuel tanks exploded, after which the fuselage was torn apart.

One of the witnesses of the fall of the Tu-154 was Gennady Urasov - at the time of the tragedy, he was in his apiary near the village of Sukhaya Balka. The liner crashed just 300 meters from her.

“Suddenly I heard a terrible rumble. I raised my head and was stunned: a plane was falling on me. It whirled in the air like the millstones of a mill, but I did not see it burning. Then he heard a bang and hit the ground. Already deaf. Ours, who saw how the plane fell, fled to the scene of the tragedy to try to save someone. But you couldn’t even get close to him, he burned so hot, ”the man told the KP newspaper.

According to eyewitnesses, Donetsk airport arrived at the crash site in 20 minutes and immediately told the rescuers the exact coordinates of the fall of the Tu-154. However, the firefighters who arrived could not even get close to the plane, as a heavy downpour began. Streams of water washed away the slope of the hill, so the fire had to be extinguished through a sleeve that stretched from a nearby lake. For this, 10 fire engines were involved.

By the evening of the next day, fragments of the bodies of 150 dead were recovered from under the rubble, which were taken to Donetsk in black plastic bags.

“I have been working in the Ministry of Emergency Situations for eight years, but I have never seen anything like this,” one of the rescuers recalled in a conversation with KP. - Children and their mothers literally intertwined into one. The bodies were badly burned. On the faces - horror.

Andrey Frolov was among the passengers of the crashed liner that day. Initially, the man was not supposed to fly this plane - he even had ticket purchased On the train. However, on the last day, he decided to stay in Anapa for another day and scheduled a flight on flight 612. His mother and her grandson left by train, not suspecting that a few days later they would have to go to the identification procedure.

The tragedy near Donetsk has become one of the three largest air crashes involving the Tu-154. The final results of the crash investigation were published on February 17, 2007. They were presented by a government commission chaired by Igor Levitin, head of the RF Ministry of Transport.

“The cause of the crash of the Tu-154M RA-85185 aircraft of Pulkovo Airlines was the withdrawal of the aircraft during flight in the control mode to supercritical angles of attack and stall mode, followed by a transition to a flat tailspin and a collision with the ground at high vertical speed,” the document said.

After the plane crash near Donetsk, Levitin also promised that the Tu-154 and Tu-134 would be replaced by other ships within 5 years. Relatives of those who died in the crash and experts in the field of aviation then spoke out for a ban on flights on these planes.

“In our case, the investigation found the commander guilty. They referred to the inadequacy of his actions, pulled the steering wheel to the side, and this led to the stall of the aircraft, in simple terms. Plus bad weather. But all these are consequences, not causes of the disaster,” Vitaliy Yusko, co-founder of the public regional organization for assistance to victims of air crashes Interrupted Flight, told reporters.

A year after the tragedy, a monument to the victims was erected at the site of the fuselage crash, one and a half kilometers from the village of Sukhaya Balka. It is made of white concrete and is part of an airplane wing. Around it are marble slabs engraved with views of St. Petersburg and the names of the passengers of flight PLK-612.

Initially, the composition of the monument was also supposed to include the engine of the crashed aircraft. For this, the commission of inquiry even gave permission for the use of a Tu-154 fragment. However, later the authors of the monument abandoned this idea, since hunters for non-ferrous metal could attack the unguarded monument.

October 20, 1986 at 15 hours 58 minutes Moscow time at the Kuibyshev airport (and now it is Samara, Kurumoch airport) crashed a Tu-134 aircraft of the Grozny squadron of the North Caucasus Directorate civil aviation, following the route "Sverdlovsk-Grozny". Photographs of this disaster, taken by the head of the test fire laboratory V.V. Frygin. It must be understood that in Soviet time all plane crashes were classified. KGB officers immediately appeared at the scene of the accident, who made sure that no one took pictures. VV Frygin still managed to hide one of the two films.

01. The bodies of the dead are taken out of the plane


"Special message. To the Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR, comrade Ryzhkov N.I. Top secret.

On October 20, 1986, at 15:58 Moscow time, a TU-134 plane of the Grozny squadron of the North Caucasian Civil Aviation Administration crashed at the Kuibyshev airport on the Sverdlovsk-Grozny route. At the time of the incident, there were 85 passengers on board the aircraft, including 14 children, and 8 crew members.

Right after emergency landing a fire broke out on board the aircraft. The emergency rescue service of the airport and the fire departments of the city of Kuibyshev extinguished the fire, rescued 16 people from among the passengers and crew, the rest of the survivors left the burning aircraft on their own or were carried out by the crew. Directly at the time of the disaster, 53 passengers and 5 crew members died, 28 people were hospitalized. Subsequently, 11 more people died in hospitals. A government commission arrived at Kuibyshev Airport to investigate the causes of the crash.

Chairman of the Kuibyshev Regional Executive Committee V.A. Pogodin".

02.

October 20, 1986 the weather in Samara is excellent, the wind is 2-3 meters per second. The plane TU-134 is landing. But something is wrong... The plane is landing too fast and at too sharp an angle. The plane literally crashes "belly" on a concrete runway, the landing gear breaks, it is dragged along the runway, then it skids to the right, takes it to the ground and the plane rolls over. The right wing broke off, and the left folded in half. The hull broke into two parts and kerosene poured from the fuel tanks onto the red-hot turbines of the engines. The fire started. Three flight attendants burned to death. An oxygen cylinder was stored next to their cabin, from which the fitting was knocked out and a hot stream of oxygen hit them directly. From the flight attendants, only fragments of skulls and tibias remained.

03.

Sergey Churilov recalls, in 1986, the political officer of the company of the regiment of the patrol service of the Internal Affairs Directorate of the city of Samara: “On the evening of October 20, I was on duty in the village of Bereza. on the runway. When we entered the territory of the airport, we saw a plane broken into two parts, its torn off and burning wing. I also remember that a woman was holding out a child from a break in the hull, and a pilot got out of his cockpit, caught his breath a little - and again climbed into the plane. He pulled someone into the air - and again inside, behind the passengers. In total, he saved several people. Meanwhile, firefighters put out everything that was burning. And we, who arrived on alarm from the police, were dispersed about one hundred and fifty meters from the crashed plane and warned: for the cordon not to let anyone in, except for members of the government commission.

04. Loading corpses

A man in handcuffs ran out of the plane and, running away from the plane, stopped. It turned out that a recidivist was being transported from Grozny. And, although the conditions for the escape were ideal, he did not run away, but waited for the policemen to notice him.

Five or six people escaped through a hatch in the tail section, which was opened by one of the passengers. But this hatch, as the commission later established, caused the death of several more passengers, since there was a rift ahead through which air flowed. The effect of "furnace draft" was created. Flame and smoke went through the entire cabin, and since the interior lining emits all sorts of rubbish when burned, the passengers breathed it and got poisoned

05. Inverted aircraft cabin

At 16.59, a message was received from the dispatcher of the fire department of the airport "Kurumoch" to the control panel of the SVCH-8 of the Krasnoglinsky district of Kuibyshev: "Your help is needed, the plane at the airport is on fire." They arrived 20 minutes later, but there was no fire. 18 units of rescue equipment arrived from Kuibyshev. The fact is that the flames were suppressed by the fighters of the fire and emergency services of the airport. They came to him literally one and a half minutes after the signal was received, having gathered and driven a kilometer distance, which is better than the standards. Then the government commission 18 times in a row raised the alarm units, forcing them to rush to the fire point, and all the time the result was one and a half minutes. The commission acknowledged that 69 deaths were not the fault of firefighters. They acted promptly and professionally, it was just that the whole plane flared up too quickly.

The fire was extinguished at 17.44. The head of the fire department, Colonel A.K., arrived at the scene of the fire. Karpov and the fire fighting headquarters of the UPO, which included the engineer of this laboratory, and now the head of the test fire laboratory V.V. Frygin, whose photographs we see. Here is what he recalls: “Not everyone could contemplate such a terrible picture without a shudder. Many people immediately turned out from the sight of corpses and the sickening smell of burnt meat. I dived into a smoky crack in the hull and immediately saw dead people hanging over my head, fastened with seat belts. clothes, and others only without shoes.All this was either torn off from them by a stream of air or burned up in a flame.

06.

I see a girl hanging on the straps and seems to be moving - which means she may still be alive. I took her in my arms and began to make my way back to the exit. Then I saw another child in blue overalls, lying on the floor - that is, on the ceiling, which at that moment became the floor. There was still air, and, therefore, there was a chance that the baby would survive. I was already bending down to the child when dead people began to fall right on top of me. Two collapsed right on the baby - such healthy men. Apparently, the straps holding them melted, and the bodies fell one after another on the rescuers. I still pulled out the children, but it was not possible to save them.

07.

I not only dragged corpses from the plane, but as part of my duty, I also tried to take as many photographs of the scene as possible. I understood that they would then be very useful in investigating the causes of the tragedy. However, this unique photographic film was nearly destroyed. The fact is that almost simultaneously with us, KGB officers arrived at the crash site. And in the ensuing darkness, the uniforms of firefighters and KGB officers looked quite similar, and, apparently, that’s why, without any special obstacles from the state security officers, I managed to snap off almost a whole film within 15-20 minutes. I filmed the charred plane, the bodies of passengers hanging on belts, and the loading of corpses into cars.

But soon the KGB officers caught on. Taking another shot, I heard a conversation behind me: “What kind of photographer is walking around here? He doesn’t look like ours. We need to find out.” I immediately realized: the film must be saved. Without a moment's hesitation, I ran behind the car, quickly rewound the almost completely filmed cassette to the beginning, and took it out of the machine. Just then, one of the firefighters I knew passed by. I gave him the cassette and told him to hide it deep in my inner pocket, and only asked me to return it personally and only upon arrival in Kuibyshev.

08.

As soon as I inserted a new film into the camera and took a few shots, KGB officers approached me. They checked my documents, listened to my words that the pictures would be needed for the investigation, but then they still forced me to open the camera and exposed the film. They explained that permission to take photographs was issued only to an employee of their department, in connection with which they warned me not to spin around the plane with my camera anymore. So, if I hadn’t oriented myself in time and hid the film, then hardly anyone would have seen the pictures of the liner that crashed in 1986.”

09.

Passengers and firefighters recall that TU-134 co-pilot Yevgeny Zhirnov pulled several people out of the plane. And when he pulled a woman through the pilot's cabin, he sank to the ground, said that it was difficult for him to breathe and lost consciousness. Three days later he died in the Berezovskaya medical unit.

10. Valery Frygin

So what caused the disaster? The "black box" recorded all the negotiations and the incredible was revealed. The crew commander, first-class pilot Alexander Klyuev, argued with other crew members that he would land the plane blindly, only according to the readings of the instruments. He closed all the windows with metal curtains and went to land. But he went at too steep an angle and with excessive speed. Calculations showed that the chassis hit the concrete strip with a load one and a half times the tensile strength. At first, during interrogation by the investigator, Klyuev fully confessed to the dispute, but then changed his testimony at the trial, saying that before landing there was a fuel leak and one of the engines failed. But these testimonies of his were not confirmed by the case materials and technical expertise. The court gave him 15 years in prison. But after Klyuev's petition, he changed his term to 6 years in prison.

No. 10. A300 crash over the Persian Gulf - 290 dead

The A300 crash over the Persian Gulf occurred on July 3, 1988. An Iran Air Airbus A300B2-203 was on a commercial passenger flight IR655 on the Tehran-Bender-Abbas-Dubai route, but a few minutes after taking off from Bandar Abbas, flying over the Persian Gulf, it was hit by a surface-to-air missile fired from US Navy guided missile cruiser Vincennes. All 290 people on board the aircraft were killed: 16 crew members and 274 passengers, including 65 children. During the launch of the missile, the cruiser Vincennes was in Iranian territorial waters.

The US government said the Iranian airliner was mistakenly identified as an Iranian Air Force F-14 fighter. The Iranian government, however, claims that the Vincennes deliberately attacked a civilian aircraft.

No. 9. Boeing 777 crash in Donetsk region - 298 dead

The accident occurred on July 17, 2014 in the east of the Donetsk region of Ukraine, when the Boeing 777 aircraft of the airline Malaysia Airlines operated a scheduled flight from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur.


On board the aircraft were 283 passengers and 15 crew members, all of whom died.


No. 8. L-1011 disaster in Riyadh - 301 dead

The L-1011 crash in Riyadh occurred on Tuesday, August 19, 1980 at Riyadh Airport.
A few minutes after taking off from Karachi, a fire broke out on board a Lockheed L-1011-385-1-15 TriStar 200 operated by Saudi Arabian Airlines on passenger flight SVA163 on the Karachi-Riyadh-Jeddah route. The crew managed to make an emergency landing in Riyadh, but the airport emergency services opened the door to the passenger compartment only 23 minutes after the plane landed. As a result of the delay in the evacuation, the liner burned out completely, killing all 287 passengers and 14 crew members on board (a total of 301 people).
Lockheed L-1011-385-1-15 TriStar 200 of Saudi Arabian Airlines, identical to the burnt one:


#7 Boeing 747 crash near Cork - 329 dead

The Boeing 747 crash near Cork occurred on Sunday 23 June 1985 as a result of a terrorist attack. The Air India Boeing 747-237B airliner was flying AI182 on the Montreal-London-Delhi-Bombay route, but when approaching London, an explosion thundered on board, destroying the aircraft. All 329 people on board were killed - 307 passengers and 22 crew members.


When the explosion thundered, the tail of the aircraft was torn off, the crew of the ship did not even have time to transmit a distress signal, hundreds of passengers “scattered” in the sky over the Atlantic, then within a few days 131 bodies and aircraft wreckage were lifted from the water.

No. 6. Disaster DC-10 near Paris - 346 dead

The Paris DC-10 crash, also known as the Ermenonville Air Crash, occurred on Sunday March 3, 1974 near Paris.

The Turkish Airlines McDonnell Douglas DC-10-10 airliner was operating passenger flight TK 981 on the Istanbul-Paris-London route. 6 minutes after departure from Paris at an altitude of 3500 meters, one of the doors of the cargo compartment suddenly opened, which created an explosive decompression, as a result of which the control systems were destroyed. The liner went into a dive and after 1.5 minutes at high speed crashed into the Ermenonville forest northeast of Paris.

All 346 people died, including 12 crew members and 334 passengers. The DC-10 crash near Paris remains the largest aircraft crash with no survivors.


No. 5. Collision over Charkhi Dadri - 349 dead

On November 12, 1996, 5 kilometers from the Indian city of Charkhi Dadri, at an altitude of 4109 meters, Boeing 747-168B airliners of Saudi Arabian Airlines (flight SVA763 Delhi-Jeddah) and Il-76TD of Kazakhstan Airlines (flight KZA1907 Shymkent-Delhi) collided. All 349 people on both planes died: 312 people on Flight 763 and 37 people on Flight 1907.

This plane crash is the largest in terms of the number of victims in the collision of aircraft in the air.


No. 4. The crash of the Boeing 747 near Tokyo - 520 dead

The Boeing 747 crash near Tokyo occurred on August 12, 1985. The Boeing 747SR-46 of Japan Airlines was flying JAL 123 on the Tokyo-Osaka route, but lost its vertical tail stabilizer 12 minutes after takeoff.

Computer reconstruction of the disaster:


The crew kept the unmanned airliner in the air for 32 minutes, but the plane lost control and crashed into Mount Otsutaka, 112 kilometers from Tokyo. 520 people died, of which 15 crew members and 505 passengers, 4 people survived.

This is the biggest single plane crash ever.


No. 3. Collision at the airport of Los Rodeos - 583 dead

The Los Rodeos Airport Collision (also known as the Tenerife Collision) occurred on March 27, 1977 on the island of Tenerife ( Canary Islands). Boeing 747-206B airliners of KLM airlines (flight KL4805 Amsterdam-Las Palmas) and Boeing 747-121 of Pan American airlines (flight PA1736 Los Angeles-New York-Las Palmas) collided on the runway.


583 people died: 248 people on board the Boeing KLM, of which 234 passengers and 14 crew members, and 335 people on board the Pan American Boeing, of which 326 passengers and 9 crew members. 61 people on the Pan American Boeing survived the crash: 54 passengers and 7 crew members.

#2 United Airlines Flight 175 - 65 people on board and 900+ dead in and around the building

United Airlines Flight 175 was hijacked during the September 11, 2001 attacks. He became the second aircraft involved in the attack.

Airliner Boeing 767-222 attacked the south tower of the World shopping center in New York. The ramming of the South Tower by Flight 175 was the only plane crash that was seen on live television around the world. The impact and subsequent fire that engulfed the South Tower led to the collapse of the skyscraper 56 minutes after the accident.

There were 65 people on board the plane: 51 passengers, 5 terrorists and 9 crew members, all died. The total death toll was more than 900 people who were in and around the tower and the rescuers involved in the evacuation.


No. 1. 11 American Airlines flight - 92 people on board and 1600+ dead in and around the building

On September 11, 2001, an American Boeing 767-223ER Airlines flight 11 crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center in New York as a result of a terrorist takeover. He became the first aircraft involved in the attack.

The catastrophe was witnessed by thousands of people who were at that moment on the streets near the World Trade Center. Several video cameras filmed the Boeing hit. After being rammed by an aircraft, the tower caught fire and after 102 minutes collapsed into neighboring areas.


There were 92 people on board the plane: 76 passengers, 5 terrorists and 11 crew members, all died. The total death toll was more than 1,600 people who were in and around the tower and the rescuers involved in the evacuation.

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In St. Petersburg, the identification of the bodies of those killed in the crash began Airbus aircraft A321 company "Kogalymavia" on Sinai Peninsula. According to representatives operational headquarters, the process of identifying all the bodies can take up to several weeks.

On Tuesday morning, a second plane with the remains of the dead landed in St. Petersburg, while a search operation is still ongoing at the crash site itself.

The head of the task force of the Russian Ministry of Emergency Situations in the Sinai, Alexander Agafonov, said that on Monday more than 100 items of personal belongings of passengers were found, including two cameras, two tablets, four cell phone, five passports and one crew ID.

All these items can further help in identifying the bodies of those killed in a plane crash.

The BBC Russian service asked experts to clarify how the process of identifying the dead takes place in such cases.

"It's a very laborious process"

"It's very simple - heaps with bodies are lying, and experts are trying to group them according to some parameters, but all this is very relative with such destruction, so people go through this terrible mess and try to find out - by clothes, by body fragments, what -some tattoos, some tattoos, maybe some features - only in this way, "the head of the department of forensic medical examination of the First Moscow State Medical University named after I.M. Sechenov explained to the BBC Russian Service Yuri Pigolkin.

"And so - people are in a state of shock. Firstly, it is simply very difficult to identify a dead body - the color changes, and if it is also damaged, then this is a very laborious process, extremely difficult," the expert says.

“Then, when it has already been recognized that it is impossible to carry out identification, then a genetic study is carried out. A genetic study is carried out by comparing genotypes, blood is taken on gauze, if the oral cavity is preserved, saliva can also be taken. In the complex, saliva, and blood, and bones for research. Now genetic material has been collected from relatives - a database is being created, and then these samples are entered into this database. Then, when there is a database, genes are obtained from the samples and compared in length with those in the database, "- says Pigolkin.

An Egyptian forensic expert who took part in the procedure for examining the crash site told reporters that the nature of the damage to the bodies of the passengers of the crashed A321 may indicate that an explosion occurred on board the liner before hitting the ground.

"A large number of separate fragments of bodies may indicate that a strong explosion occurred on board before the collision with the ground," RIA Novosti quoted the expert as saying.

Given the condition of most of the bodies, DNA testing may be required to determine the identity of the dead, he said.

DNA Forensics: Lessons from MH17

The identification of the bodies of passengers who died as a result in July 2014 was carried out by specialists from the Forensic Science Institute of the Netherlands. On the website of this organization identification of the dead.

In particular, the fingerprints and records of the victims' dentists are being examined.

Passengers' personal belongings are also taken into account - for example, their clothes, jewelry.

According to the Dutch Forensic Science Institute, DNA testing is only used if identification from a dentist's records is not possible. In the process of identification, DNA samples are taken from the dead - fragments of muscle tissue, bone tissue and fragments of teeth.

"DNA is best protected from external influences in parts of the teeth," the institute's website says. After that, experts make DNA profiles of the victims.

DNA samples (saliva sample) are also taken from direct relatives. Direct relatives are the parents, children, brothers and sisters of the deceased, their DNA is much closer than that of distant relatives, experts explain.

In addition, forensic scientists receive victims' personal items, such as combs or toothbrushes, which may contain samples of their DNA. But the data obtained with their help cannot always be used - sometimes it is impossible to determine who exactly owned this or that object, and whether anyone else used this object.

That is, this is a complex and complex process: the DNA profiles of the dead are compared with the DNA profiles of their relatives, as well as with DNA profiles made on the basis of the study of their personal belongings, and they are analyzed using a special program.