Nadya Kurchenko story. A post in memory of the Soviet flight attendant Nadezhda Kurchenko, who died in the sky from a terrorist bullet. year. The ballad “My Clear Little Star” flew around the Soviet Union like a dove. There was no doubt in anyone’s mind: the song was dedicated to a young flight attendant who would forever
In the Soviet Union, the status of a flight attendant was only slightly lower than that of a film actress or pop singer. Young and beautiful girls in an elegant uniform with friendly smiles they seemed like real celestials. Plays were written about them, films were made, songs were dedicated to them. One of these songs, “My Clear Little Star,” was a real hit at dance parties in the seventies. However, not all of the dancers knew that the piercingly sad words and melody of this song are dedicated to tragic death flight attendants, or, speaking official language, flight attendant Nadezhda Vladimirovna Kurchenko.
Komsomol member, athlete and beauty
Nadya Kurchenko was born on December 29, 1950 in the Altai Territory. Her childhood included dense forests near her native village of Novo-Poltava (Klyuchevsky district), excellent grades at school, a large and friendly company of peers. Later, Nadya’s family moved to the homeland of her mother, Henrietta Semyonovna, in the village of Ponino, Glazovsky district (Udmurtia). It was not easy to establish life in a new place - my father’s alcoholism, two younger sisters and a brother. Nadya had to study at the Glazov boarding school. However, she became one of the best students at school, loved poetry very much and recited it beautifully. Beautiful blue-eyed Nadya was the permanent Snow Maiden at New Year's matinees, and after joining the Komsomol, she became a pioneer leader in the junior classes, organized hikes, and published a wall newspaper. For Nadezhda, the Komsomol card was not an empty formality, and the concepts of “conscience” and “duty” were not just words.
It is difficult to say why a girl from an Udmurt village decided to throw in her lot with aviation. However, after graduating from school, Nadya went to a distant place Southern City Sukhumi, where she first started working in the airport accounting department, and when she turned 18, she switched to working as a flight attendant. The girl quickly mastered the technical intricacies of her profession and knew how to get along with the most restless passengers. Her school passion for tourism continued in her new place - she became responsible for sports work in the air squadron, organized exciting hikes around the outskirts of Sukhumi, and even passed the standards for the “USSR Tourist” badge. In the very first year of work, the first serious test came - a fire on board the aircraft and the need to land it with one engine. For the impeccable performance of her duties in an emergency, Nadezhda Kurchenko was awarded a personalized watch.
Nadezhda had many plans - entering law school, marriage to school friend Vladimir Borisenko. In May 1970, Nadezhda went on vacation to visit her relatives. We agreed that the wedding would take place in November or new year holidays. And on October 15, the girl went on her last flight.
Close with yourself
Flight 244 from Batumi to Krasnodar with a landing in Sukhumi was considered short and uncomplicated, from Batumi to Sukhumi only half an hour of summer. 46 people boarded the AN-24. Among them were a middle-aged man with a fifteen-year-old son - Pranas and Algirdas Brazinskas. Ten minutes after takeoff, Brazinskas Sr., who was sitting next to the service compartment, called Nadezhda Kurchenko and ordered her to take an envelope with a note to the cockpit. The typewritten text contained a demand to change the route and a threat of death in case of disobedience. Seeing the flight attendant's reaction, the man jumped out of his seat and rushed to the cockpit. “You can’t go here, come back!” - Nadezhda shouted, blocking his path. She managed to shout “Attack” and fell - the bandits started shooting. Under the threat of the plane exploding, the wounded pilots had to head to Trabzon airport. The Turkish authorities were lenient towards the hijackers - after serving a short sentence and being released under an amnesty, they moved to the United States, but that’s a completely different story.
Nadezhda Kurchenko was buried in Sukhumi - in the uniform of a flight attendant and with a Komsomol badge; 20 years later, at the request of her mother, the ashes were reburied in Glazov. A tanker, the peak of the Gissar ridge and a planet in the constellation Capricorn were named after Nadezhda. In addition, after the death of flight attendant Kurchenko, the rules for passenger safety during air travel were radically changed and the norms of international laws against air terrorism were tightened.
Nadezhda Kurchrnko Career: Citizens
Birth: Russia, 12/29/1950
At the end of November 1968, Nadezhda Kurchenko went to work at the Sukhumi air squad, and less than two years later, an entry “Remove from the list” appeared in her personal file personnel due to death occurring in the line of duty."
At the end of November 1968, Nadezhda Kurchenko came to work at the Sukhumi air squad, and less than two years later, an entry appeared in her personal file: “To be removed from the list of personnel due to death occurring in the line of duty.” Today we want to talk about the most famous and at the same time the most mysterious case of the hijacking of a Soviet plane.
THEFT NUMBER ONE
At the end " velvet season" - On October 15, 1970, the An-24 airliner took off from the border city of Batumi on flight N244 to Sukhumi and Krasnodar. It carried 46 passengers, including 17 women and one child. People who had vacationed in the Caucasus did not yet know that in the next 24 hours they were to become witnesses and participants in the drama associated with the first successful hijacking of a Soviet aircraft.
A few minutes after takeoff at an altitude of 800 meters, two passengers - Brazinskasa's father and son - called the flight attendant and passed a note to the pilots demanding to change the route and fly to Turkey. The girl rushed into the cabin and shouted: “Attack!” The criminals rushed after her. “Nobody get up!” shouted the smaller of the hijackers. “Otherwise we’ll blow up the airliner!” At that very moment, shots were fired in the cabin, the only one of which ended the existence of 19-year-old Nadezhda Kurchenko, whose wedding was scheduled within three months...
The first pilot, Georgiy Chakhrakiya, was hit in the spine by a bullet, and his legs were paralyzed. Overcoming the pain, he turned around and saw a terrible picture: Nadya lay motionless in the door of the pilot’s cabin and was bleeding. Navigator Valery Fadeev was shot in the lung, and flight mechanic Oganes Babayan was wounded in the chest. Co-pilot Suliko Shavidze was luckiest of all - a stupid bullet got stuck in an iron pipe in the back of his seat. Behind the pilots stood Brazinskas Sr., shaking a grenade and shouting: “Keep the seashore on the left. Head south. Don’t enter the clouds!”
The pilot tried to fool the terrorists and land the An-24 at a military airfield in Kobuleti. But the hijacker once again warned that he would blow up the car (later it turned out that Brazinskas was bluffing because the grenade was a practice grenade). Soon the captured aircraft crossed the Soviet-Turkish border, and after another 30 minutes it found itself over the airfield in Trabzon. The plane circled the runway and fired green flares, asking to be cleared for an emergency landing. Immediately after landing, the hijackers surrendered to Turkish authorities.
By the way, passengers and crew members were asked to stay in Turkey, but no one agreed to this. The next day, on a specially sent plane, all the people and the body of the dead girl were taken to the USSR. A little later, the Turks returned the hijacked An-24. After a major overhaul, aircraft N46256 with a photograph of Nadya Kurchenko in the cabin flew in Uzbekistan for a long time.
GOD'S COURT
Then, in October 1970, the USSR demanded that Turkey immediately extradite the criminals, but this request was not fulfilled. The Turks decided to try the hijackers themselves and sentenced 45-year-old Pranas Brazinskas to eight years in prison, and his 13-year-old son Algirdas to two. In 1974, a general amnesty occurred in this country and Brazinskas Sr.’s prison sentence was replaced with... house arrest in a luxurious villa in Istanbul. According to one of the former high-ranking KGB officers, within the bowels of this department an operation was being developed and prepared to destroy both air terrorists, which failed due to the removal of the Brazinskas from Turkey by US intelligence services.
The farce of the “flight” of criminals to America was framed as follows: father and son allegedly escaped from house arrest and turned to the American embassy in Turkey with a request to give them political asylum in the United States. Having been refused, the Brazinskas once again surrendered Turkish police, where they were kept for a couple more weeks and... completely released. Then they calmly flew through Italy and Venezuela to Canada. During a stopover in New York, the Brazinskas got off the plane and were “detained” by the US Migration and Naturalization Service. They were never given the status of political refugees, but first they were given residence permits, and in 1983 they were both given American passports.
Back in 1976, Algirdas officially became Albert-Victor White, and Pranas became Frank White. They settled in the town of Santa Monica in California, where they worked as ordinary painters. In the USA, the Brazinskas wrote a book about their “exploits”, in which they tried to justify the seizure and hijacking of the plane by “the struggle to fight back Lithuania from Soviet occupation.” According to the Los Angeles Times, the Lithuanian community in America was wary of the Brazinskas and were openly afraid of them. An attempt to raise funds for their own aid fund failed - in practice, none of the Lithuanian immigrants gave them a single dollar.
In his old age, Brazinskas Sr. became irritable and bilious, and therefore quarrels often began to arise in the two-room apartment that he shared with his son. During one of these quarrels, the 45-year-old son beat his 77-year-old dad to death with a baseball bat. A Santa Monica jury already found him guilty of this crime in early November of this year, and Albert-Victor White now faces a minimum of 16 years in prison.
KEY QUESTION
The most significant questioning motive, to the fact that 33 years after the tragedy a reliable response has not been received, sounds like this: “How did flight attendant Nadezhda Kurchenko die and what is the true number of victims of the plane hijacking?” According to information that was soon leaked to the press, 18 holes were counted in the hull of the hijacked plane, and a total of 24 shots were fired on board. The fire was so intense that one of the women who witnessed those events is still convinced that Brazinskas Sr. fired from a machine gun. Meanwhile, it is precisely known that the hijackers had only sawed-off hunting rifles. If we take into account the fact that there were no other guns on the plane, it turns out that the Brazinskas had to reload their sawn-off shotguns at least 12 times. It is not clear why the criminals needed to act so full of shots, if the most powerful means of putting pressure on the crew was undoubtedly the danger of exploding a grenade?
Perhaps the version of this event that was recently voiced at a trial in Turkey is not so absurd? It boils down to the fact that there were two armed guards in civilian clothes on board the Soviet plane. According to the Brazinskas, these two were the first to open fire and it was their bullets that killed the flight attendant. No, I do not at all want to justify the hijackers - they actually committed a serious offense, which led to the tragedy. But if we analyze it logically, then why did the Brazinskas need to incapacitate all five crew members, including both pilots (recall that their seat backs were shot through), if the criminals themselves did not have the skills to fly an airplane?
It can be assumed that the An-24 crew really found themselves under heavy fire from those who shot at the hijackers, since at that very moment the Brazinskas were in the doorway of the pilot’s cabin. But in this case, new questions arise: “What kind of “guards” were they, because the architecture for escorting border flights by armed people was created in the USSR only at the beginning of 1971? What was their further fate (all publications say that there were casualties only four, and all of them were members of the An-24 crew), were those guards injured or killed? And, in the end, why did the hijackers turn out to be more skilled shooters than deliberately trained professionals? Or maybe during the shootout the Brazinskas used Nadya? as a “human shield” or did they easily force the guards to put down their weapons by threatening to explode the same grenade?” Unfortunately, we will not find an answer to all these questions until the real circumstances of the An-24 hijacking are made public. Probably, the chronicle of this event officially announced in the USSR did not contain any mention of the guards in order to avoid accusations of low professionalism of the employees of the Soviet security forces.
ARITHMETICS OF LIFE
Contrary to popular belief, flight attendant Nadezhda Kurchenko was not the first Aeroflot employee to die during the hijacking aircraft. The first time this happened was on June 3, 1969, when three terrorists tried to hijack an Il-14 en route from Leningrad to Tallinn, and killed a flight mechanic who fought with them. Well, the last of these tragedies occurred on March 16, 2001. Four Chechens, armed with one hatchet and a knife, hijacked a Russian Tu-154 flying from Istanbul to Moscow and forced the crew to land in Medina ( Saudi Arabia). During the attack on the plane, two terrorists, the only passenger and a flight attendant were killed by bullets fired by Saudi special forces soldiers.
Throughout the history of Soviet and Russian civil aviation 91 attempts and 26 successful hijackings of passenger aircraft were recorded. During these 117 incidents, 111 passengers and crew members were killed, and another 17 terrorists were shot and killed. This means that for every hijacker killed, on average there are 6-7 innocent victims. Isn’t the price for the strength of the “castles” on our air borders excessively high?...
P.S. I express my deep gratitude to Nadya’s younger sister, Ekaterina Vladimirovna Kurchenko, for her assistance in preparing this material.
Nadezhda Kurchenko
Born on December 29, 1950 in the village of Novo-Poltava, Klyuchevsky district Altai Territory. She graduated from a boarding school in the village of Ponino, Glazov district of the Ukrainian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. Since December 1968, she has been a flight attendant of the Sukhumi air squadron. She died on October 15, 1970, while trying to prevent terrorists from hijacking a plane. In 1970 she was buried in the center of Sukhumi. 20 years later, her grave was moved to the Glazov city cemetery. Awarded (posthumously) the Order of the Red Banner. The name of Nadezhda Kurchenko was given to one of the peaks of the Gissar ridge, a tanker of the Russian fleet and a small planet in the constellation Capricorn.
Unfortunately, moreover, in the Encyclopedia Udmurt Republic"The information about Nadya contains a lot of errors: the month of her birth and the route of her last flight are given incorrectly - it is indicated in exactly the opposite direction. It is also stated there, just as in November 1968 the young lady became a flight attendant, although in fact, until she was 18- years ago, she worked in the accounting department of the air detachment. And nothing is said about either the mountain peak or the tanker named after Nadya. This is what we have, if I may say so, “Encyclopedia”.
→Nadezhda Kolba Nadezhda Kolba
Vice-Governor of the Krasnoyarsk Territory.
Your comments
Olesya I really liked it, very touching! 20 November 18:49 Song with a story =My clear little star...=Since childhood, I have really loved the song “My Clear Star” performed by VIA Flowers!! Some time ago, I came across an article about this song. Which said that the poem, which was subsequently set to music, was dedicated to the Soviet flight attendant Nadezhda Kurchenko.
I was very impressed by this story and I think it deserves our attention.
It was the end of the “velvet season”. An An-24 aircraft with 46 passengers on board took off from the city of Batumi on flight N244 to Batumi-Sukhumi-Krasnodar. People vacationing in the Caucasus did not yet know that in the next 24 hours they were to become witnesses and participants in the drama associated with the first successful hijacking in the history of the USSR passenger plane abroad.
A few minutes after takeoff at an altitude of 800 meters, two passengers - Father and son Brazinskas - called the flight attendant and, threatening with an explosion, demanded to land in Turkey. In those years, the door to the pilot's cabin was not locked on airplanes, and there were no special officers on duty in the cabin either. Nadya tried to block the bandits’ path to the cockpit. She rushed into the cabin and shouted: “Attack!”
The terrorists' first shots killed the flight attendant who blocked their way and burst into the cabin. The terrorists fired in all directions. Later, 18 holes were counted in the casing. Several bullets were fired towards the cabin; none of the passengers were injured. The first pilot, Georgiy Chakhrakia, was hit in the spine by a bullet, and his legs were paralyzed.
Overcoming the pain, he turned around and saw a terrible picture: Nadya lay motionless in the door of the pilot’s cabin and was bleeding. Navigator Valery Fadeev was shot in the lung, and flight mechanic Oganes Babayan was wounded in the chest. Co-pilot Suliko Shavidze was luckiest of all - the bullet got stuck in a steel pipe in the back of his seat. Behind the pilots stood Brazinskas Sr., shaking a grenade and shouting: “Keep the seashore on the left. Head south.
Do not enter the clouds!" The pilot tried to deceive the terrorists and land the An-24 at a military airfield in Kobuleti. But the hijacker once again warned that he would blow up the car (it later turned out that Brazinskas was bluffing, since the grenade was a training grenade). Soon the captured board crossed the Soviet- the Turkish border, and after another half hour found himself over the airfield in Trabzon.
The plane circled the runway and fired green flares, asking it to be cleared for an emergency landing. Immediately after landing, the hijackers surrendered to Turkish authorities. The next day, on a specially sent plane, all the people and the body of the deceased girl were taken to the USSR. A little later, the Turks returned the hijacked An-24. After a major overhaul, aircraft N46256 with a photograph of Nadya Kurchenko in the cabin flew in Uzbekistan for a long time.
The Brazilians were issued American passports in 1983. Back in 1976, Algirdas officially became Albert-Victor White, and Pranas became Frank White. They settled in the town of Santa Monica in California, where they worked as ordinary painters. In the USA, the Brazinskas wrote a book about their “exploits”, in which they tried to justify the seizure and hijacking of the plane by “the struggle for the liberation of Lithuania from Soviet occupation.
According to the Los Angeles Times, the Lithuanian community in America had a wary attitude towards the Brazinskas and were openly afraid of them. An attempt to organize a fundraiser for their own aid fund failed - almost none of the Lithuanian immigrants gave them a single dollar. In his old age, Brazinskas Sr. became irritable and bilious, and therefore quarrels began to arise frequently in the two-room apartment he shared with his son.
During one of these quarrels, a 45-year-old son beat his 77-year-old father to death with a baseball bat and was convicted of murdering his father on domestic grounds. This tragedy received a very wide resonance at that time. In fact, this was not only the first successful act of air terrorism in the history of the USSR, but also the first case in the world when a crew member died during the hijacking of an aircraft. Much was written about the tragedy in newspapers around the world.
The death of the very young Nadya Kurchenko, whose wedding was scheduled in three months, shocked the country. One of them, the famous Vologda poetess Olga Fokina, wrote a poem in the early 70s entitled “People have different songs.” At one of the creative meetings, Fokina admitted that she was deeply struck by the tragic death of Nadezhda Kurchenko, which happened on the eve of Nadya’s wedding, that the verse was written with the thought of the deceased flight attendant and, as it were, on behalf of her young man, mourning the death of his bride, his star. ...
After some time, Olga Fokina’s poem caught the eye of the then aspiring composer, guitarist Vladimir Semenov. In 1971, he wrote the song “My Clear Little Star” with these verses. A musical group was created specifically to perform the song and record a record with it, which was called VIA "Flowers" (later "Stas Namin Group").
And the lead singer of “Tsvetov”, the late Alexander Losev, sang the song in an unusually lyrical and soulful manner. The song “My Clear Star,” which elevated VIA “Flowers” to the pop Olympus and made the ensemble super popular in the USSR, has not lost its popularity for almost 40 years and, thanks to its extraordinary lyricism, sincerity and sincerity, still lives in the hearts of many people. 
The name of STAR, the deceased young flight attendant Nadya Kurchenko, who at the cost of her own life tried to save people from armed bandits, also lives in the memory of people... ETERNAL MEMORY TO HER! The name of Nadezhda Kurchenko was given to one of the peaks of the Gissar Range, a tanker of the Russian fleet and an asteroid.
October 15 marked 47 years since the death of 19-year-old flight attendant Nadezhda Kurchenko, who at the cost of her own life tried to prevent the hijacking of a Soviet passenger plane by terrorists. The story of the heroic death of a young girl awaits you further.
This was the first case of a passenger aircraft being hijacked on this scale (hijacking). With him, in essence, began a long-term series of similar tragedies that spattered the skies of the whole world with the blood of innocent people. And it all began like this. The An-24 took to the skies from the Batumi airfield on October 15, 1970 at 12:30 p.m. Heading to Sukhumi. There were 46 passengers and 5 crew members on board the plane. Flight time according to schedule is 25-30 minutes. But life has ruined both the schedule and the schedule. At the 4th minute of the flight, it sharply deviated from the course. The radio operators asked for the board, but there was no response. Communication with the control tower was interrupted. went towards nearby Turkey. Military and rescue boats went out to sea. Their captains received orders: to proceed at full speed to the site of a possible disaster.
2. The board did not respond to any of the requests. A few more minutes - and the An-24 left USSR airspace. And in the sky above the Turkish coastal airfield of Trabzon, two rockets flashed - red, then green. It was a signal emergency landing. touched a stranger's concrete pier air harbor. Telegraph agencies around the world immediately reported: a Soviet passenger plane had been hijacked. The flight attendant was killed and some were wounded. Everything. Georgy Chakhrakiya, the crew commander of the An-24, No. 46256, who performed a flight on the Batumi-Sukhumi route on October 15, 1970, remembers: “I remember everything. I remember it thoroughly. Such things are not forgotten. That day I told Nadya: “We agreed that in life you would consider us your brothers. So why aren't you being honest with us? I know that soon I will have to go to a wedding…” the pilot recalls with sadness. - raised her blue eyes, smiled and said: “Yes, probably November holidays" I was delighted and, shaking the wings of the plane, shouted at the top of my voice: “Guys! We're going to a wedding for the holidays!”... And an hour later I knew that there would be no wedding... Today, 45 years later, I intend to again - at least briefly - outline the events of those days and again talk about Nadia Kurchenko, her courage and her heroism . To talk about the stunning reaction of millions of people of the so-called stagnant time to the sacrifice, courage, courage of man. Tell about this, first of all, to the people of the new generation, the new computer consciousness, tell how it was, because my generation remembers and knows this story, and most importantly - Nadya Kurchenko - and without reminders. And it would be useful for young people to know why many streets, schools, Mountain peaks and even the plane bears her name.”...After takeoff, greetings and instructions to passengers, the flight attendant returned to her work area, a narrow compartment. She opened a bottle of Borjomi and, letting the water shoot with sparkling tiny kernels, filled four plastic cups for the crew. Having placed them on a tray, she entered the cabin. The crew was always glad to have a beautiful, young, extremely friendly girl in the cabin. She probably felt this attitude towards herself and, of course, she was happy too. Perhaps, even in this dying hour, she thought with warmth and gratitude about each of these guys, who easily accepted her into their professional and friendly circle. They treated her like a little sister, with care and trust. Of course, Nadya was in a wonderful mood - everyone who saw her in the last minutes of her pure, happy life affirmed.
3. Having given the crew something to drink, she returned to her compartment. Five minutes after takeoff (at an altitude of about 800 meters), a man and a guy sitting in the front seats called the flight attendant and gave her an envelope: “Tell the crew commander!” The envelope contained “Order No. 9” printed on a typewriter: 1. I order you to fly along the specified route.
2. Stop radio communication.
3. For failure to comply with an order - death.
(Free Europe) P.K.Z.Ts.
General (Krylov) There was a stamp on the sheet, on which it was written in Lithuanian: “...rajono valdybos kooperatyvas” (“cooperative management ... district”). The man was dressed in the dress uniform of a Soviet officer. Nadya took the envelope. Their gazes must have met. She was probably surprised by the tone in which these words were spoken. But she didn’t find out anything, but stepped towards the door luggage compartment - Next was the door to the pilot's cabin. Probably, Nadya's feelings were written on her face - most likely. And the sensitivity of the wolf, alas, surpasses any other. And it was probably precisely thanks to this sensitivity that the terrorist saw hostility, subconscious suspicion, a shadow of danger in Nadya’s eyes. This was enough for the sick imagination to sound the alarm: failure, verdict, exposure. His self-control failed: he literally ejected from his chair and rushed after Nadya. She only managed to take a step towards the pilot’s cabin when he opened the door to her compartment, which she had just closed. “You can’t come in here!” - she screamed. But he was approaching like the shadow of an animal. She realized: there was an enemy in front of her. The next second, he also realized: she would ruin all plans. Nadya screamed again. And at the same moment, slamming the cabin door, she turned to face the bandit, furious with this course of affairs, and prepared to attack. He, like the crew members, heard her words - without a doubt. What was left to do? Nadya made a decision: not to let the attacker into the cockpit at any cost. Anyone! He could be a maniac and shoot the crew. It could have killed the crew and passengers. He could... She didn't know his actions, his intentions. And he knew: by jumping towards her, he tried to knock her off her feet. Pressing her hands against the wall, Nadya held on and continued to resist. The first bullet hit her in the thigh. She pressed herself even tighter against the pilot's door. The terrorist tried to squeeze her throat. Nadya - knock the weapon out of his right hand. A stray bullet hit the ceiling. Nadya fought back with her feet, hands, and even her head. The crew assessed the situation instantly. The commander abruptly interrupted the right turn in which the plane was at the moment of the attack, and immediately flipped the roaring machine to the left, and then to the right. The next second the plane went steeply upward: the pilots tried to knock down the attacker, believing that he had little experience in this matter, but Nadya would hold on. The passengers were still wearing their belts - after all, the display did not go out, the plane was just gaining altitude. In the cabin, seeing a passenger rushing to the cabin and hearing the first shot, several people instantly unfastened their belts and jumped out of their seats. Two of them were closest to the place where the criminal was sitting, and were the first to sense trouble. Galina Kiryak and Aslan Kayshanba, however, did not have time to take a step: they were ahead of them by the one who was sitting next to the one who had fled into the cabin. The young bandit - and he was much younger than the first, for they turned out to be father and son - grabbed a sawn-off shotgun and fired along the cabin. The bullet whistled over the heads of the shocked passengers. - Don `t move! - he yelled. - Don't move! The pilots began to throw the plane from one position to another with even greater sharpness. The young man fired again. The bullet pierced the fuselage skin and went straight through. Depressurization did not yet threaten the aircraft - the altitude was insignificant. Opening the cockpit, Nadya shouted to the crew with all her might: “Attack!” He is armed! The moment after the second shot, the young man opened his gray cloak, and people saw grenades - they were tied to his belt. - This is for you! - he shouted. “If anyone else gets up, we’ll blow up the plane!” It was obvious that this was not an empty threat - if they failed, they had nothing to lose. Meanwhile, despite the evolution of the plane, the elder remained on his feet and with bestial fury tried to tear Nadya away from the door of the pilot's cabin. He needed a commander. He needed a crew. He needed a plane.
4. Struck by Nadya’s incredible resistance, enraged by his own powerlessness to cope with the wounded, bloodied, fragile girl, he, without aiming, without thinking for a second, fired at point-blank range and, throwing the desperate defender of the crew and passengers into the corner of a narrow passage, burst into the cabin. Behind him was his geek with a sawed-off shotgun. Then there was a massacre. Their shots were drowned out by their own cries: “To Turkey!” To Turkey! If you return to the Soviet shore, we will blow up the plane! “Bullets were flying from the cockpit. One walked through my hair,” says Leningrad resident Vladimir Gavrilovich Merenkov. He and his wife were passengers on the ill-fated flight in 1970. “I saw: the bandits had pistols, a hunting rifle, the elder had one grenade hanging on his chest. The plane was throwing left and right - the pilots probably hoped that the criminals would not stay on their feet.” The shooting continued in the cockpit. There they would later count 18 holes, and a total of 24 bullets were fired. One of them hit the commander in the spine. Georgiy Chakhrakiya: “My legs have become paralyzed. Through my efforts, I turned around and saw a terrible picture: Nadya lay motionless on the floor in the doorway of our cabin and was bleeding. Nearby lay navigator Fadeev. And a man stood behind us and, shaking a grenade, shouted: “Keep the seashore to the left! Heading south! Don't enter the clouds! Listen, or we’ll blow up the plane!” The criminal did not stand on ceremony. He tore off the pilots' radio headphones. He trampled on lying bodies. Flight mechanic Hovhannes Babayan was wounded in the chest. The co-pilot Suliko Shavidze was also shot at, but he was lucky - the bullet got stuck in the steel pipe of the seat back. When navigator Valery Fadeev came to his senses (his lungs were shot), the bandit cursed and kicked the seriously wounded man. Vladimir Gavrilovich Merenkov: “I told my wife: “We’re flying towards Turkey!” - and I was afraid that when approaching the border we might be shot down. She also noted: “Below us is the sea. You feel good. You can swim, but I can’t!” And I thought: “What a stupid death! I went through the whole war, signed on the Reichstag - and on you! ”The pilots still managed to turn on the SOS signal. Georgy Chakhrakiya: “I told the bandits: “I’m wounded, my legs are paralyzed. I can only control it with my hands. The co-pilot needs to help me.” And the bandit replied: “Everything happens in war. We might die.” The thought even flashed of sending “Annushka” to the rocks - to die ourselves and finish off these bastards. But there are 44 people in the cabin, including 17 women and one child. I told the co-pilot: “If I lose consciousness, fly the ship at the request of the bandits and land it. We must save the plane and passengers! “We tried to land on Soviet territory, in Kobuleti, where there was a military airfield. But the hijacker, when he saw where I was driving the car, warned that he would shoot me and blow up the ship. I decided to cross the border. And five minutes later we crossed it at low altitude.”...The airfield in Trabzon was found visually. This was not difficult for the pilots. Giorgi Chakhrakia: “We made a circle and fired green rockets, signaling to clear the runway. We came in from the mountains and sat down so that, if anything happened, we could land on the sea. We were immediately surrounded. The co-pilot opened the front doors and the Turks entered. In the cabin the bandits surrendered. All this time, until the locals showed up, we were held at gunpoint...” Coming out of the cabin after the passengers, the senior bandit tapped the car with his fist: “This plane is now ours!” The Turks provided medical assistance to all crew members. They immediately offered those who wanted to stay in Turkey, but not one of the 49 Soviet citizens agreed. The next day, all passengers and the body of Nadya Kurchenko were taken to the Soviet Union. A little later they overtook the hijacked An-24. For courage and heroism, Nadezhda Kurchenko was awarded the Military Order of the Red Banner; a passenger plane, an asteroid, schools, streets, and so on were named after Nadya. But it should be said, apparently, about something else. The scale of government and public actions related to the unprecedented event was enormous. Members of the State Commission and the USSR Ministry of Foreign Affairs negotiated with the Turkish authorities for several days in a row without a single break.
5. It was necessary to: allocate an air corridor for the return of the hijacked plane; an air corridor to transport wounded crew members and those passengers in need of urgent medical attention from Trabzon hospitals; of course, those who were not physically harmed, but found themselves in a foreign land not of their own free will; an air corridor was required for a special flight from Trabzon to Sukhumi with Nadya’s body. Her mother was already flying to Sukhumi from Udmurtia. Nadezhda’s mother Henrietta Ivanovna Kurchenko says: “I immediately asked that Nadya be buried here in Udmurtia. But I wasn't allowed. They said that from a political point of view this cannot be done.
6. And for twenty years I went to Sukhumi every year at the expense of the Ministry of Civil Aviation. In 1989, my grandson and I came for the last time, and then the war began. The Abkhazians fought with the Georgians, and the grave was neglected. We walked to Nadya on foot, there was shooting nearby - all sorts of things happened... And then I impudently wrote a letter addressed to Gorbachev: “If you don’t help transport Nadya, I will go and hang myself at her grave!” A year later, the daughter was reburied in the city cemetery in Glazov. They wanted to bury her separately, on Kalinin Street, and rename the street in honor of Nadya. But I didn't allow it. She died for the people. And I want her to lie with the people.” Immediately after the hijacking, TASS reports appeared in the USSR: “On October 15, a civil air fleet An-24 aircraft made a regular flight from the city of Batumi to Sukhumi. Two armed bandits, using weapons against the plane's crew, forced the plane to change its route and land in Turkey in the city of Trabzon. During the fight with the bandits, the flight attendant of the plane was killed, who tried to block the bandits’ path to the pilot’s cabin. Two pilots were injured. The plane's passengers are unharmed. The Soviet government appealed to the Turkish authorities with a request to extradite the criminal killers to bring them to Soviet court, as well as to return the plane and Soviet citizens who were on board the An-24 aircraft.”
7. The “shuffle” that appeared the next day, October 17, reported that the plane’s crew and passengers had been returned to their homeland. True, the navigator of the plane, who was seriously wounded in the chest, remained in the Trabzon hospital and underwent surgery. The names of the hijackers are not disclosed. “As for the two criminals who committed an armed attack on the aircraft crew, as a result of which flight attendant N.V. was killed. Kurchenko, two crew members and one passenger were injured, the Turkish government announced that they were arrested and the prosecutor’s office was instructed to conduct an urgent investigation into the circumstances of the case.”
8. The identities of the air pirates became known to the general public only on November 5, after a press conference by the USSR Prosecutor General Rudenko. Pranas Stasio Brazinskas, born in 1924, and Algirdas Brazinskas, born in 1955. Pranas Brazinskas was born in 1924 in the Trakai region of Lithuania. According to the biography, written by Brazinskas in 1949, the “forest brothers” shot through the window and killed the chairman of the council and mortally wounded P. Brazinskas’s father, who happened to be nearby. With the help of local authorities, P. Brazinskas purchased a house in Vievis and in 1952 became the manager of the household goods warehouse of the Vievis cooperative. In 1955, P. Brazinskas was sentenced to 1 year of correctional labor for theft and speculation in building materials. In January 1965, by decision of the Supreme Court, he was again sentenced to 5 years, but was released early in June. Having divorced his first wife, he left for Central Asia. He was engaged in speculation (in Lithuania he bought car parts, carpets, silk and linen fabrics and sent parcels to Central Asia, for each parcel he made a profit of 400-500 rubles), quickly accumulated money. In 1968, he brought his thirteen-year-old son Algirdas to Kokand, and two years later he left his second wife. October 7-13, 1970, having visited Vilnius for the last time, P. Brazinskas and his son took their luggage - it is unknown where they purchased weapons, accumulated dollars (according to the KGB, more than $6,000) - and flew to Transcaucasia. In October 1970, the USSR demanded that Turkey immediately extradite the criminals, but this demand was not fulfilled. The Turks decided to judge the hijackers themselves. The Trabzon Court of First Instance did not recognize the attack as intentional. In his defense, Pranas stated that they hijacked the plane in the face of death, which allegedly threatened him for participating in the “Lithuanian Resistance.” They sentenced 45-year-old Pranas Brazinskas to eight years in prison, and his 15-year-old son Algirdas to two. In May 1974, the father came under an amnesty law, and Brazinskas Sr.’s prison sentence was replaced with house arrest. That same year, father and son allegedly escaped from house arrest and contacted the American Embassy in Turkey with a request to grant them political asylum in the United States. Having received a refusal, the Brazinskas again surrendered into the hands of the Turkish police, where they were kept for another couple of weeks and... finally released. They then flew to Canada via Italy and Venezuela. During a stopover in New York, the Brazinskas got off the plane and were “detained” by the US Migration and Naturalization Service. They were never granted the status of political refugees, but first they were given residence permits, and in 1983 they were both given American passports. Algirdas officially became Albert Victor White, and Pranas became Frank White.
9. Henrietta Ivanovna Kurchenko: “While seeking the extradition of the Brazinskas, I even went to meet Reagan at the American embassy. They told me that they were looking for my father because he was living in the United States illegally. And the son received American citizenship. And he cannot be punished. Nadya was killed in 1970, and the law on the extradition of bandits, wherever they were, allegedly came out in 1974. And there will be no return...” The Brazinskas settled in the town of Santa Monica in California, where they worked as ordinary painters. In America, the Lithuanian community had a wary attitude towards the Brazinskas; they were openly afraid of them. An attempt to organize a fundraiser for our own aid fund failed. In the USA, the Brazinskas wrote a book about their “exploits”, in which they tried to justify the seizure and hijacking of the plane as “the struggle for the liberation of Lithuania from Soviet occupation.” To clear himself, P. Brazinskas stated that he hit the flight attendant by accident, in a “shootout with the crew.” Even later, A. Brazinskas claimed that the flight attendant died during a “shootout with KGB agents.” However, support for the Brazinskas by Lithuanian organizations gradually faded away and everyone forgot about them. Real life in the US was very different from what they expected. The criminals lived a miserable life; in his old age, Brazinskas Sr. became irritable and unbearable. At the beginning of February 2002, the 911 service in the Californian city of Santa Monica received a call. The caller immediately hung up. Police located the address from which the call was made and arrived at the 900 block of 21st Street. 46-year-old Albert Victor White opened the door for the police and led the officers to the cold corpse of his 77-year-old father, on whose head forensic experts later counted eight blows from a dumbbell. Murder is rare in Santa Monica - this was the first violent death in the city that year. Jack Alex, Brazinskas Jr.'s lawyer: - I am Lithuanian myself, and his Virginia hired me to defend Albert Victor White. There is a fairly large Lithuanian diaspora here in California, and don't think that we Lithuanians are in any way supportive of the 1970 hijacking.
- Pranas was scary person Sometimes, in fits of rage, he would chase the neighborhood kids with a gun.
- Algirdas is a normal and sensible person. At the time of his capture, he was only 15 years old, and he hardly knew what he was doing. He spent his entire life in the shadow of his father's dubious charisma, and now, through his own fault, he will rot in prison.
- It was necessary self-defense. The father pointed a gun at him, threatening to shoot his son if he left him. But Algirdas knocked the weapon away from him and hit the old man on the head several times.
- The jury considered that, having knocked out the pistol, Algirdas might not have killed the old man, since he was very weak. Another thing that played against Algirdas was the fact that he called the police only a day after the incident - all this time he was next to the corpse.
- Algirdas was arrested in 2002 and sentenced to 20 years in prison for second-degree murder.
- I know this doesn’t sound like a lawyer, but let me express my condolences to Algirdas. The last time I saw him, he was terribly depressed. The father terrorized his son as best he could, and now, when the tyrant was finally gone, Algirdas, a man in the prime of his life, would rot in prison for many more years. Apparently, this is fate... Nadezhda Vladimirovna Kurchenko (1950-1970). Born on December 29, 1950 in the village of Novo-Poltava, Klyuchevsky district, Altai Territory. She graduated from a boarding school in the village of Ponino, Glazov district of the Ukrainian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. Since December 1968, she has been a flight attendant of the Sukhumi air squadron. She died on October 15, 1970, while trying to prevent terrorists from hijacking a plane. In 1970 she was buried in the center of Sukhumi. 20 years later, her grave was moved to the Glazov city cemetery. Awarded (posthumously) the Order of the Red Banner. The name of Nadezhda Kurchenko was given to one of the peaks of the Gissar ridge, a tanker of the Russian fleet and a small planet.
Feat is a heroic act,
accomplished under difficult conditions
On October 15, 1970, taking off from Batumi airport, the AN-24 aircraft (flight 244) with 46 passengers on board was supposed to land in Krasnodar. A few minutes after takeoff at an altitude of 800 meters, two passengers called flight attendant Nadezhda Kurchenko and passed a note to the pilots demanding that they change the route and fly to Turkey.
.jpg)
The terrorists turned out to be Lithuanians, father and son Brazinskas . Later, the competent authorities will thoroughly study all stages of their life. It turns out that the eldest Brazinskas - 45-year-old Pranas , an anti-communist, in 1944 he served in the auxiliary troops of the German division, where he assembled pontoon bridges. Later he supplied Lithuanian “resistance” members with weapons. In 1965, Pranas Brazinskas, working as a manager of a household goods warehouse, received five years in a general regime colony for theft of socialist property, but he was released on parole after three years, and in order not to tempt fate, he left with his son Algirdas to Uzbekistan. But even there, Pranas became the organizer of the local black market, and his son also participated in his father’s scams. When the KGB became interested in the Brazinskas in 1970, they decided to flee the country, unable to think of anything better than to hijack the plane.
However, these curious details of the biography of the invaders were not yet known to either the other passengers on board or the crew members.
.jpg)
Flight attendant of the Sukhumi aviation detachment Nadezhda Kurchenko rushed towards the pilots shouting: “Attack!” The terrorists rushed after her. “Don’t let anyone get up!” Algirdas shouted. “Otherwise we’ll blow up the plane!” N. Kurchenko tried to block their path to the cabin, and then Pranas shot her point-blank with a sawn-off shotgun.
.jpg)
Still from the movie "Enrollee"
Later, 18 holes were counted in the aircraft's skin. Several bullets were fired towards the cabin, but none of the passengers were injured. The first pilot, Georgiy Chakhrakia, was hit in the spine by a bullet, and his legs were paralyzed. Overcoming the pain, he turned around and saw a terrible picture: Nadya lay motionless in the door of the pilot’s cabin and was bleeding. Navigator Valery Fadeev was shot in the lung, and flight mechanic Oganes Babayan was wounded in the chest. Co-pilot Suliko Shavidze was luckiest of all: the bullet got stuck in a steel pipe in the back of his seat.
.jpg)
This was the first case in the global practice of air terrorism with the murder of a crew member, the hijacking of an aircraft in neighboring country and the non-return of criminals, which was facilitated by the obvious double morality of the West
.jpg)
Vologda poetess Olga Fokina wrote a poem entitled “ People have different songs." long before the girl's death. Olga Fokina’s poem caught the eye of the then aspiring composer Vladimir Semenov. He wrote the song “My Clear Little Star” in 1971, which became a hit for centuries. And its first and most popular performer was Stas Namin’s group “Flowers”.
.jpg)
Monument to Nadezhda Kurchenko in Sukhumi
The visibility was clear! The Ana flight was ordinary.
The flight attendant was so bright and sweet,
Because the flight was simple and familiar,
And Nadya didn’t think that trouble would break out!
The plane suddenly deviated unexpectedly from its course,
Communication with the Earth has been interrupted!
Not a single person on earth thought
That Nadya died, but did not surrender to the scoundrels!
...Nadya was summoned by the man in the first chair
And he ordered the commander to deliver the letter.
The flight attendant looked at him cautiously,
And suddenly he realized: “She can get in the way!”
He rushed after her, Nadya said harshly:
“Citizen! You come back, you can’t come here!”
He pulled out a revolver and she screamed,
Opening the cabin door slightly: “Attack, friends!”
A shot rang out. Nadya staggered, but stood up,
Pressing against the doors, shielding friends.
But the bandit, enraged, gave a second one, and you fell.
So Nadezhda died at the hands of the executioners!
And the next morning the whole country knew about Nadya.
And how our plane was hijacked to Turkey!
The crew, the flight attendant saved the passengers!
And she was killed before finishing the flight!
Although I didn’t fly on her plane,
But with soul and heart you have become dear to me.
Blocking the bandits' path to the cockpit,
You gave your life for our Motherland!
And a plane named after her flies,
And with a color photograph of where she died!
And all kinds of people will see Hope,
And the greatness of the feat will always be remembered!
Tatiana Smirnova