Air accident involving the Douglas C-47 CCCP-L1204 of Aeroflot

Air accident involving the Douglas C-47 CCCP-L1204 of Aeroflot
A Douglas C-47
Accident summary
Accident type	Emergency landing after an engine problem and power failure
place	Taimyr Peninsula , 180 km north of the village of Volochanka , Soviet Union
date	April 22, 1947
Fatalities	9
Survivors	25th
Aircraft
Aircraft type	Douglas C-47DL (DC-3)
operator	Aeroflot
Mark	CCCP-L1204
Departure airport	Kosisty Airport , Soviet Union
1. Stopover	Chatanga Airport , Soviet Union
2. Stopover	Dudinka Airport , Soviet Union
3. Stopover	Turukhansk Airport , Soviet Union
Destination airport	Krasnoyarsk Airport , Soviet Union
Passengers	29
crew	5
Lists of aviation accidents

The air accident involving the Douglas C-47 CCCP-L1204 of Aeroflot occurred on April 22, 1947, when a Douglas C-47DL (DC-3) of Aeroflot after engine problems and a power failure in an unpopulated area on the Taimyr Peninsula , in the tundra , had to make an emergency landing. All inmates survived the crash, but nine of them died after setting out for help. The remaining survivors were rescued 21 days after the crash.

plane

The aircraft was a Douglas C-47-DL with serial number 9118 , which was built in February 1943 at the Douglas Aircraft Company's plant in Long Beach , California and which made its maiden flight on February 24, 1943. The machine with the military model serial number 42-32892 was intended for the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF). The aircraft type C-47 was a military variant of the Douglas DC-3 . At the time, the Douglas Aircraft Company readily supplied the Soviet Union with aircraft within the framework of the loan and lease law , especially since it was an ally of the USA in the ongoing Second World War . Accordingly, on March 12, 1943, like 704 other machines in those years, the machine was exported via Alaska to the Soviet Union, where it went into service with the Soviet Air Force with the military model serial number of the Soviet Union CCCP-H-328 . On April 16, 1943, the machine was handed over to the 1st Division of the 7th Arctic Aviation Regiment and was assigned to the administration for polar aviation for reconnaissance flights over the ice. Between October 22 and November 1, 1943, the Kara Sea was explored with the machine under the command of Captain MA Titlow . Further exploratory missions followed between June 3 and July 24, 1944. In 1945 the machine was handed over to the civilian polar flight division of Chukotka . The C-47 was given the new civil number CCCP-A-3072 . After the end of the war, the machine went to Aeroflot (Polar) and received the aircraft registration CCCP-L1204 . The aircraft was powered by two Pratt & Whitney R-1830-92 Twin Wasp double radial engines , each with an output of 1200 hp. By the time of the accident, the machine had had a cumulative operating performance of 2,691 operating hours.

crew

There was a crew of five on board the machine. The captain was Maxim D. Tyurikov, the first officer was the 24-year-old Sergei Anoschko. The 33-year-old Viktor Pismarjew was the flight engineer on duty, the radio operator was the 34-year-old Alexej Smirnow. In addition, a flight attendant was on board.

Passengers and cargo

26 adult passengers and three children had taken the flight. In the official documents only 26 occupants were specified, but several passengers were subsequently admitted who did not have a valid ticket. The machine carried luggage and cargo weighing 852 kg.

Flight plan

On April 22, 1947, the machine first completed the flight route from Krasnoyarsk via Dudinka to Kosisty on the Bay of Koschenikowa. The flight schedule for the return flight provided for a start in Kosisty and a flight to Krasnoyarsk. Three stopovers were planned, which were to take place in Khatanga , Dudinka and Turuchansk .

Course of the flight and course of the accident

The start from Kosisty took place at 19:20 local time. Technical problems occurred on the machine on the first section. A few minutes after take-off, the pilots were shown an increase in the oil temperature in the left-hand double radial engine, then the oil pressure in this engine fell. After 38 minutes in the air, the oil pressure dropped to zero while the oil temperature rose to the upper limit. The pilots switched off the left engine and brought its propeller into the sail position . They flew the machine on with a drive. Since the generator of the right engine also failed in the meantime, the machine's battery discharged in flight, causing the on-board electrics and thus the on-board radio to fail.

As the weather conditions at the departure airport had worsened in the meantime, a return was no longer possible. Due to the unavailable on-board radio, the pilots could neither communicate their position to air traffic control nor receive position determinations via radio direction finding. So they felt the machine was on a 280-degree course in the direction of Chatanga. Unable to locate the airport, the pilots decided to fly to Volochanka airport. After five hours in the air, the machine flew into an area where icing conditions prevailed. The master changed course 15 minutes later in order to avoid the bad weather area. Shortly afterwards, the oil pressure in the right engine also dropped while the oil temperature increased. The master then made an emergency landing on the snowy tundra. At around 9:30 p.m., he managed to set the machine down on the 1.5-meter-high blanket of snow in such a way that all occupants survived and only some of them suffered minor injuries. During the emergency landing, the aircraft's nose was severely deformed and the left radial engine was torn off the wing.

After the landing

After the successful emergency landing, the survivors' hope for a quick rescue increasingly waned. They did not know where they were, nor did air traffic control have any information about the last position of the aircraft due to the broken radio contact. The search area in the uninhabited tundra was very large.

After the survivors had already spent four days at the wreck without any help arriving, a group of nine people, consisting of Captain Tyurikov, flight engineer Pismarjew, radio operator Smirnov and six passengers, set out to fetch help. This was forced by four pardoned men returning from a deportation from a gulag in Siberia. As time went on, these men became more and more aggressive and threatening, whereupon Tyurikov and the other crew members decided to set off and walk to find a settlement nearby. The men took to their search with a map and a compass, captain Tjurikow left its flare gun at the first officer Sergei Anoschko who remained with the passengers in the wreck.

The search for the aircraft initially concentrated on the area around Khatanga, 305 kilometers from the accident site, and was initially unsuccessful. After the wife of the radio operator Alexei Smirnov sent a telegram to Josef Stalin asking not to give up the search, the latter gave the order to continue the search. The best pilots in the country were recruited for the search.

The 19-year-old air traffic controller Lydia Torgaschina, who was on duty at Volochanka Airport at the time of the accident, believed she was sure that she heard the machine through her crackling radios. She stated that Douglas C-47 machines produced a characteristic sound that made them different from other aircraft. Captain Fyodor Shtarov, who had traveled from Moscow, was one of the few who listened to the woman's statements.

It was not until May 11, 19 days after the emergency landing, that the accident site was discovered by the crew of a Lissunow Li-2 transport aircraft under Captain Fyodor Shtarow. On May 13, the 25 survivors were rescued after the Lissunow had been equipped with landing skids in order to be able to land on the ice near the wreck. Despite the long duration from the emergency landing to the rescue, all the occupants remaining in the wreck survived, among other things by feeding on breakfast meat reserves that had been on board.

The men who went out for help never returned. In 1953, a hunter discovered the body of Captain Tyurikov in a bog 120 kilometers southwest of the wreck, who could be identified by means of ID cards and notebooks with his daughter's name. The other eight people remained missing.

causes

The immediate cause of the accident was found to be bearing damage on a shaft of the left engine. This led to failure of the engine lubrication and overheating of the left engine. Another factor noted was a malfunction of the generator coupled to the right engine, as a result of which no more electricity was fed into the on-board network and the on-board radio was not available.

Discovery and recovery of the wreck in 2016

The Douglas C-47 was written off as a total loss after the accident. The wreck of the machine was left on the tundra at the scene of the accident. In August 2016, the amazingly well-preserved wreck was recovered and taken to Krasnoyarsk, where it will be exhibited as an exhibit by the Museum of Exploration of the Russian North. On this occasion, Awelina Anziferowa, the daughter of the flight captain Maxim D. Tyurikow, also traveled to the crash site and sat in the plane for the first time 69 years after the accident. Anziferowa, together with her then two-year-old brother, had become an orphan through the death of her father at the age of six , as her mother had died six months earlier.

Commemoration

In addition to the further use of the machine in a museum, a memorial was erected on the tundra at the scene of the accident, which is intended to commemorate the incident even after the machine has been removed.

Video

• Russia: Crash landed 40s-era Douglas C-47 plane moved to Krasnoyarsk for restoration , video on YouTube from August 29, 2016.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h i j} Daughter honors her pilot father, killed after safely crash landing US plane in Arctic. The Siberian Times , August 16, 2016.
2. ↑ ^{a b c} Russian C-47 'Dakota' found in Siberia WW2 in Color, July 22, 2012.
3. ↑ ^{a b} An Airplane's Extraordinary Story Recalls Bygone US-Russian Amity , The New York Times, May 7, 2019.
4. ↑ ^{a b c d e f} Douglas C-47 from WWII era brought in from Siberian cold , CNN of April 10, 2017.
5. ↑ Detailed description of the operating history on aerialvisuals.ca
6. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g} Description of the accident on airdisaster.ru
7. ↑ ^{a b c d} 'If I can touch this plane, then my life is not lived in vain' , The Siberian Times of August 7, 2016.
8. ↑ ^{a b c d} Aircraft accident data and report in the Aviation Safety Network , accessed on April 19, 2020.
9. ↑ ^{a b} Description of the incident on B3A - Bureau of Aircraft Accident Archives