1958 Aeroflot Tu-104 Kanash crash


The 1958 Aeroflot Тu-104 Kanash crash occurred on 17 October 1958 when a Tupolev Tu-104A operated by Aeroflot flying an international route from Beijing to Moscow crashed in bad weather near the town of Kanash, Chuvashia, Russia, four hundred miles east of Moscow, killing all 80 people on board. The flight was carrying high-level diplomatic delegations from numerous Soviet aligned countries such as China, East Germany, and Czechoslovakia. It was just the second fatal accident involving the Tu-104 which had been introduced into Aeroflot's inventory two years earlier, and the deadliest in the aircraft's history until the crash of Aeroflot Flight 902 in 1962.

Aircraft

The aircraft involved in the accident was a Tupolev Tu-104A, registered CCCP-42362 to Aeroflot. The Tu-104A was a relatively new aircraft at the time, having been introduced in 1956. It was based on the design of the Soviet strategic bomber, Tupolev Tu-16, but included a wider, pressurized fuselage in order to seat passengers. At the time of the accident, CCCP-42362 had sustained a mere 465 flight hours and had been in service for less than three months.

Passengers and crew

Crew

Aboard were three flight attendants and a cockpit crew consisting of:
The passengers on board the flight consisted by and large of diplomatic delegations from numerous foreign nations, most of them Soviet allies, who were on their way to Moscow for an official event. The largest group of passengers aboard the aircraft were Soviet citizens, however a sixteen-person Chinese Communist delegation led by Cheng Chen-to and Tsai Sha-fan comprised the largest group of foreign citizens on the flight. Among those in the Chinese delegation was prominent writer and academic Zheng Zhenduo. The single Cambodian citizen on the flight was Cambodia's ambassador to China.

Nationalities

Synopsis

CCCP-42362 took off from Beijing en route to Moscow on 17 October 1958. It landed at its stopover in Omsk, Russia before continuing west to its final destination. As it neared Moscow-Vnukovo Airport, authorization to land was denied by controllers due to heavy fog. The pilots diverted to their alternate, Gorky Airport, before proceeding to Sverdlovsk after the weather in Gorky was also deemed unsuitable for landing. At this point the aircraft was flying at an altitude of 10,000 meters when it suddenly flew into an area of high turbulence causing the aircraft to experience a sudden and drastic increase in pitch.
Caught in a powerful updraft, the aircraft abruptly reached an altitude of 12,000 meters. According to one of the pilots per the cockpit voice recording, the aircraft was "standing on its hind legs", and shortly after it entered a sharp, near vertical dive followed by a spin. Despite the efforts of the crew, the force on the aircraft's horizontal stabilizers was too great for the pilots to overcome and an impact with the ground became inevitable. The flight's pilot-in-command, Harold Kuznetsov, instructed the radio operator to transmit details about the aircraft's situation to ground controllers before shouting "... we're dying! Goodbye!", according to the black box recordings. At 21:30 MSK, the Tu-104A crashed near Apnerka rail station, west of the town of Kanash.

Conclusions

The investigation into the crash was led by Minister of Aircraft Production Mikhail Krunichen and Chief Air Marshal Pavel Zhigarev, the head of Aeroflot. The cause of the crash was determined to be a loss of control as a result of the aircraft flying into an area of strong turbulence which caused it to exceed critical angles of attack. This conclusion was reached by comparing the experience of other Tu-104 pilots who reported similar cases after flying at altitudes of 8,000 meters ) and higher, and examination of the cockpit voice recordings. As a result of the crash, authorities limited the maximum flight level of the Tu-104 to 9,000 meters and a redesign of the aircraft's stabilizers was undertaken.