St. Petersburg Water Landing
Most of us have seen those emergency instructions in case of water landing. Like, take the vest from under the seats, go to the emergency exit, first leave the plane then pull the ring and inflate the fest and etc., but not everyone knows that according to the official statistics material the survival rate in the plane which goes ditching is dreadfully low. In fact, they say, it is so low, that the crew doesn’t get any training for this case.
Still, sometimes, it works. In 1963, such water landing happened in Russia. It was even more remarkable by the fact that the big passenger jet plane has landed right in the center of St. Petersburg city with hundreds witnessed this event.
The story behind this landing was as follows. The TU-124 plane was a new model in Russian passenger air fleet back in 60s. It has undergone checks and tests, and was already approved for the use in the passenger aviation. This particular flight was just a regular flight across the Soviet Union, with a destination point of Tallinn, now the capital of Estonia. When the plane approached Tallinn and was going to land the problem arose: one of the landing gears couldn’t be released.
The crew tried all their best to release this stuck thing, but nothing happened. They went as far as chopped through the body of the plane with an axe to try to release the gear by hand, but even this didn’t help.
Then they got the order to land on the plane’s body, and to do that they headed to Leningrad, now St. Petersburg. There was an unpaved landing stripe near that city, they needed one to reduce the damage and the tension during such risky landing.
But before the landing could occur, they needed to burn out all the fuel left on board in order to minimize the fuel blast possibility. So they flew above the city in circles, waiting for it to be fully used. And then another defect of the newly approved plane arouse - the fuel meters were wrong, they showed that there is still some fuel left but it hasn’t - the engines shut down one by one and now they had no chance even to approach to that unpaved stripe.
So the only thing they left to do in order not to crash a plane full of passengers on the densely populated city center was a water landing. The crew captain did all his best to maneuver heavy jet with not working engines and finally he did it - landed right on the Neva city, the river of St. Petersburg.
It was a big luck - none got serious injuries after such a rough act, but then, the plane started to sink - remember that hole in the floor which they chopped trying to reach the stuck gear - the water was coming though at a pretty descent rate. And yet again they were lucky - there was a cargo boat going by the river which helped the sinking plane and towed it to the shore where already emergency services were.
It’s interesting no facts of this crash were ever published before the Soviet Union ceased to exist. Such a secrecy had an explanation - these jets were a huge export for Russia and the party did not want anyone to know about the accidents with them. Most of the film rolls were immediately confiscated
from the witnessing public. Some of those who’ve seen these told later that they thought it was just some new movie shooting.
Sevastopol city, 1963
This is Sevastopol, old Russian southern city, photos are back from 1963. Now this is the territory of Ukraine with the most of population is ethnically Russian (71%).
USSR. Living in the Fifties.
More pictures portraying life in the Soviet era, submitted by our visitor Firsak. We’ve already seen life in the USSR in the seventies and sixties and now come the fifties.
See also:
USSR in the 70-s, part 1
USSR in the 70-s, part 2
USSR in the 70-s, part 3
USSR in the 60-s, part 1
USSR. Life in the Sixties
So one more time back in the USSR.
See also:
USSR in the 70-s, part 1
USSR in the 70-s, part 2
USSR in the 70-s, part 3
Moscow in the 60-s and 70-s
More pictures of old Moscow. One can see on some photos the construction of Ostankino TV-tower which was for some time the tallest structure in the world.
Old Russian Car That Could Swim
One guy has told about a car that stays in his parking. It history goes back to Soviet times, the communist sixties.
It was a car that was designed and built by special Soviet car company, it had many advanced features at that time. It had some features never being implemented in Russian cars before: the clearance could be adjusted from with dashboard buttons, like on some modern SUVs, it had a button to start an engine, instead of a key, the dashboard indicated the current gear selected etc, it had heating of rear and front windows, and the main thing - it could run float on water as well as on regular roads.
Soviet Military Postal Stamp
This is a postal stamp from a private collection issued for the 50th anniversary of the Soviet Army at 1968. It’s hard to say what the authors of this stamp, which was widely used all across Russia tried to tell common people about the Soviet Army.
Moscow 1967
These are color photos of Moscow back from 1967 scanned by Valkorn.
(more…)
Photos From Soviet Russia
These are photos from a photo contest where people mailed in their Soviet photos from the family albums.
Year 1924, here is collectivization depicted, an event in the begining of the Soviet state when all peasants and farmers were deprived of their private property and were forced to participate in the organized by state collective ventures, where all the property belonged to the state people worked there and didn’t get a share, just a salary. (more…)
First Russian Mobile Phone
This is the photo of the first Soviet cellular phone. The development of such devices has started in 1958 as a cooperative project by the group of the Soviet scientists from different cities.
It was a fully functional mobile phone that was placed in the car of the Soviet elite. It had a full duplex link and in order to dial a phone one had just pick up the receiver and dial a number using this big square buttons with letters and digits on them. On the first models there were even old-style round dial.
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