Railway accident at Forst Zinna

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The Forst Zinna railway accident between Jüterbog and Luckenwalde on January 19, 1988 was the collision of a tank of the Soviet armed forces in Germany with an express train on the Berlin – Halle railway line .

Starting position

In Forst Zinna there had been barracks with an associated training area for decades, which was then used by a battalion of the 400,000-strong Soviet armed forces in Germany. The area was bordered to the southeast by the Berlin – Halle railway line.

There, pulled by the electric locomotive 211 006 , the D 716 was traveling from Leipzig via Berlin to Stralsund at 120 km / h. Around 450 passengers sat in the 13 cars.

the accident

T-64 A tanks

A 19-year-old Kazakh student tank driver trained with a 36-ton T-64 A tank. It was the first time he was behind the wheel of such a vehicle. It was just before 6 p.m. and dark. The driving instructor , only 20 years old, sat behind and above the learner driver . With the engine running, the two could only communicate over the on-board intercom. Perhaps due to language problems with the only Russian- speaking driving instructor, there was a misunderstanding: The driving instructor ordered first gear to be engaged and a right turn where a bridge led to the nearby practice area. But the learner driver got into second gear and drove straight on. The driving instructor knew that they were moving hard on the edge of the barracks and pressed an emergency switch to shut off the engine. When that took effect, the tank was already on the railway line . The soldiers heard the train coming towards them and fled from the vehicle. The approaching D 716 crashed unbraked into the tracked vehicle at around 5:50 p.m.

consequences

Due to the force of the impact, the 80-ton locomotive overturned and pushed the tank 130 meters ahead of it. It was compressed, the two engine drivers were among the six fatalities, 33 people were also injured. It was only thanks to the relatively small number of people on the train that the numbers were not higher. The locomotive, six express train cars and a dining car were so badly damaged that they had to be dismantled and scrapped on the spot. The Jüterbog volunteer fire brigade and soldiers from the Soviet Army provided first aid . When the uninjured travelers learned that a Soviet tank was the cause of the accident, the mood turned aggressive.

The tank crew was also interrogated by the People's Police that same night . The language problems between the two soldiers became clear.

The media of the German Democratic Republic reported on the incident in unusual detail. Numerous accidents involving members of the Red Army had almost always been kept secret in the GDR. The now open reporting was particularly possible because at that time there was already an upset between Erich Honecker and Michail Gorbatschow about the future political course.

Video recordings that were made of the rubble in the dark reached the Tagesschau studio in Hamburg and were broadcast. Since Western correspondents were not there so quickly or would not have been admitted at all, these recordings must have gone to the West with the approval of the organs of the GDR. This is another indication of how angry the GDR leadership was about the event.

It was agreed between the GDR and the Soviet military that the two people responsible for the accident should appear before a Soviet military court . The sentences they received there were not disclosed. What happened to them is not known: they were returned to the Soviet Union within 48 hours. Your trail is lost there. Whether they - as then the rumor was - shot were not known until today.

There had already been accidents with injuries and deaths caused by military vehicles in the area of ​​the Forst Zinna military facility. Even before the accident, tanks had driven over the railroad tracks here. " Track warpage " was then given as the cause of subsequent accidents . As a result of the accident, the line against the training area was secured with anti-tank barriers : earth walls and concrete sleepers dug in at an angle were intended to prevent tank crews from arbitrarily crossing the railway line.

The Reichsbahn sent after completion of the cleaning up their claims for compensation totaling 13.55 million marks to the Soviet army; however, this bill remained unpaid.

literature

Web links

Train accident Forst Zinna 1988 (documentary), report on YouTube

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Evidenced by Dassler and Jüterbog garrison history . According to the pictures in the rbb report, the person who caused the accident was a version with a cannon.
  2. ↑ Information sheet on the Jüterbog garrison history ( Barbara message ) No. 16 (2008) pp. 19–24.
  3. ↑ Sandro Poggendorf: The tank on the rails. TV documentary from the series Forgotten Catastrophes , MDR 2003

Coordinates: 52 ° 3 ′ 36.3 "  N , 13 ° 6 ′ 30.5"  E