Although airplanes are very safe, victims of plane crashes often die. However, there are still miraculous survivors in the world . The following story is one of them.
Forty years ago, the peace of the skies near the town of Zavitinsk (800 km northwest of Vladivostok) was shattered by a plane crash. It happened on August 24, 1981 in the Far East of the Soviet Union, now Russia.
Tragic Honeymoon
On that day, a Tu-16K missile carrier collided with an An-24RV passenger plane, which was flying from Komsomolsk-on-Amur to Blagoveshchensk. At that time, the military aircraft was only performing some meteorological and meteorological data collection operations.
The collision was the result of a series of unfortunate factors that, individually, would have been insignificant, but taken together created a very dangerous situation.
The Tu-16K was one of several military aircraft that had to fly through the area that day. The pilots were misinformed about other aircraft they had to watch out for in the sky.
Tu-16K bomber
That is why they told the air traffic controllers that they had reached the required altitude (so that the tower could safely direct other aircraft), but in fact the pilots had planned for the Tu-16K to reach that altitude a little later. The military flight commanders did not use radio interrogators at that time - otherwise they would have determined the An-24RV's location. In addition, the civil and military forces did not agree on the flight plan that day.
An-24RV aircraft
At 3:21 p.m., the two planes collided at an altitude of 5,200 meters. The An-24RV lost its upper fuselage and wings, and its propellers cut into the fuselage of the Tu-16K. The two planes broke apart and plunged into the taiga. Thirty-seven people died, including six military crew members, five crew members of the An-24RV, and 26 passengers (including a child). However, the total number of people on board was 38: Larisa Savitskaya, a 20-year-old student of pedagogy, miraculously survived the crash.
Computer reconstruction of the accident
Larisa Savitskaya was returning from a honeymoon with her husband, Vladimir. They had been visiting Vladimir’s relatives in Komsomolsk-on-Amur. Blagoveshchensk was the city where the couple lived and studied. Larisa remembered all the passengers and when they boarded the plane, but later she recalled: “I was so tired that I don’t remember how we took off.”
The plane was half full and a flight attendant offered two people seats at the front, but they decided to move to the back to feel less noisy. This was one of the decisions that saved Larisa's life: "When the plane broke apart, the seats we were sitting on at first came off and flew away with a piece of the plane and some passengers."
She woke up after the impact. The 25°C temperature in the cabin suddenly dropped to -30°C as the top of the plane was torn off. Larisa felt a burn. She heard a cry and the air hissed around her. Vladimir died instantly on impact and Larisa felt as if her life was over as well, unable to even scream in grief or pain.
Larisa Savitskaya
At some point, she collapsed on the aisle of the plane. Then she remembered an Italian film called 'Miracles Do Happen' that she had seen in the theater with Vladimir about a year ago. It was about Julianne Koepcke, who survived a plane crash in the Peruvian jungle. Larisa recalled: “Only one thought - how to die without pain. I grabbed the armrest of the seat, trying to push my other hand and leg off the floor and the seat with all my remaining strength.” Julianne did the same thing in the film.
taiga forest
Fortunately, the tail section of the An-24RV with Larisa's seat was gliding through the air and did not turn abruptly. She recalls that she could not see everything that was happening. “Clouds were flying by the window, then thick fog covered them and the wind was howling. The plane did not catch fire. Suddenly, trees everywhere surrounded the wreckage. The taiga! (a type of coniferous forest in the northern hemisphere - Ed.). Larisa was lucky again: after eight minutes of free fall, the wreckage of the plane with her stuck in a clump of flexible birches, which made the landing much softer than if it had fallen straight to the ground or onto the fir trees.
The first sound Larisa heard when she regained consciousness was the buzzing of wild mosquitoes around her. However, she could not yet fully appreciate the severity of her injuries. She felt multiple injuries to her spine (fortunately, she could still move), broken teeth, ribs, arms and legs, concussion, and dull pain all over her body. Larisa suffered from various hallucinations: “I opened my eyes: the sky was above me, I was sitting in an armchair, and Volodya was in front of me. He was sitting on the floor of the intact right compartment, leaning against the wall. It seemed that he was looking at me. But his eyes were closed.
It was like he was saying goodbye. I think if he had one wish before he died, he would probably just want me to survive.”
Despite her injuries, Larisa was able to walk. It started to rain in the evening and she found a piece of the fuselage to shelter from. She was very cold and used the seat cover to keep warm. The first night, she heard a growl somewhere in the forest. It could have been a bear, but Larisa was too shocked to think about it. For two days, she drank water from nearby puddles. Because she had lost most of her teeth, she couldn't even eat berries. Larisa recalled: "I heard the sound of a helicopter and tried to signal the people on board. I found a red seat cover and started waving it. They saw me with this cover and thought I was the cook of the geological staff doing a trick. The geological team's camp was somewhere nearby." On the third day, she remembered that Vladimir had matches and cigarettes in his coat pocket.
The search party found Larisa sitting on a chair, smoking. “When the rescuers found me, they couldn’t say anything other than ‘oh, ah’. I understood them, three days of frantic searching, pulling human remains from trees, and then suddenly seeing a living person,” she recalled. No one believed that anyone could survive such an accident (which is actually why Larisa was found so late).
“I looked like no one else in the world. I was plum-colored with a silvery sheen—the fuselage paint was unusually sticky. And my hair had turned into a big piece of windblown glass.”
After the rescuers arrived, Larisa could no longer walk. “When I saw people, I was exhausted,” she explained. Rescuers had to cut down a birch tree to allow a helicopter to land and take the sole survivor to Zavitinsk. “Later, in Zavitinsk, I found out that a grave had been dug for me. It was dug in advance, according to the An-24RV passenger logbook.”
Larisa's treatment was difficult, but overall her body recovered from her terrible injuries. She applied for a disability certificate, but a commission decided that her injuries were not serious enough. Larisa received only a small compensation - just 75 rubles (about $117 at 1980 exchange rates), while the average monthly salary in the Soviet Union was about 178 rubles (about $278). Larisa Savitskaya holds the Guinness World Record for the person who received the smallest compensation ever after a plane crash.
Larisa and son, 1990
Mrs. Larisa in 2021
Meanwhile, the plane crash was immediately hushed up. The Soviet press did not write anything about the disaster. As for the results of the official investigation, the authorities declared the pilot and the air traffic controller responsible for the crash. Larisa Savitskaya was informed about the results of the investigation only in the 1990s. The first report appeared only in 1985 in the newspaper 'Sovetsky Sport' ("Soviet Sport "). Larisa Savitskaya recalled: "It seems that they really wanted to write about the accident, but it was forbidden. So they wrote that I was flying in a homemade plane and fell from a height of 5 km, but survived, because a Soviet person can overcome anything."
Then Larisa moved from Blagoveshchensk to Moscow. It was difficult for her to live in a city where everything was connected with Vladimir.
Forty years after the crash, Larisa admits that she still remembers everything and the memories still make her miserable. At the same time, she believes that “a rocket never lands in the same place twice” and is not afraid of flying.
Nguyen Xuan Thuy (Source: RBTH)
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