On June 17, 1982, during a flight from Moscow to Severomorsk, there was a catastrophe of the Tu-134 No. 400 aircraft laboratory of the Flight Research Institute of the USSR Ministry of Aviation Industry, now the Gromov Flight Research Institute, Moscow.
9 crew members and 6 passengers were killed.
The ship's commander, Viktor Khatkovsky, the husband of the famous pilot and cosmonaut Svetlana Savitskaya, is the only one who survived.
The flight time of the ship's commander was 3800 hours, and the rest of the crew at the time of the disaster exceeded 3000 hours.
The crew was manned with seemingly experienced flight personnel.
What happened that day with the plane and its crew, you will find out by watching this video to the end.
The catastrophe became unprecedented in the number of deaths during the tests, and also caused a huge resonance in the circles of the Military-Industrial Complex of the USSR.
The thing is that this plane was equipped with secret equipment for detecting submarines. This test complex was created as a weapon and as a result of flight tests, the system was to become a serious argument in the hands of the USSR.
It is now known that after the final stage of testing, just two months later, it should have been heard from the UN rostrum that the USSR now has the means to control the movements of nuclear submarines in the World Ocean. The USSR was going to present the potential enemy of the United States with a new type of weapons systems, as proof of superiority in the military confrontation with the West.
For this, a very complex aerospace experiment was conceived with the involvement of the forces of the navy.
In the laboratory plane flying to Severomorsk, in addition to the crew, there were the Chief Designer of the unique secret system and his closest assistants - specialists, engineers and developers who created and owned this technique.