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The feat of stewardess Kurchenko in 1970. Kurchenko's last flight of hope

How 45 years ago 19-year-old stewardess Nadezhda Kurchenko stood in the way of armed bandits

Then, in October 1970, the very attempt of an armed seizure of a civilian aircraft looked like an unprecedented villainy. It is then that terrorists of all stripes will open the hunt for liners around the world. It is worth rummaging through the memory - and right there the hijacking of the scheduled Tu-154 to Pakistan by prisoners of the Yakut prison, the seizure of the Aeroflot board by Shamil Basayev in the Mineralnye Vody, the attack by terrorists of the World shopping center in New York and dozens more cases. And the first victim of air piracy was our stewardess Nadya Kurchenko. The tragedy that shook the USSR was the reason for tightening security controls on board civilian ships. A fragile girl gave her life to save many others.

So, on October 15, 1970, a passenger An-24 took off from Batumi on the route Simferopol - Odessa. The plane had not yet managed to gain altitude when two passengers, the father and son of Brazinskasa, called the stewardess and, threatening with a sawn-off shotgun, conveyed the demand to the crew: to head for Turkey. Nadia managed to sound an alarm, block the bandits' way to the pilot's cabin - and was struck down by a point-blank shot. The Brazinskas fired incessantly - both in the cockpit and in the cabin. Then 18 bullet holes will be counted in the skin of the An-24! Navigator Valery Fadeev and flight engineer Hovhannes Babayan were seriously injured. Pilot Giorgi Chakhrakia was shattered by a bullet in the spine, and he landed the plane in Turkish Trabzon with almost failed legs. Planted...

Turkish authorities returned the passengers and the aircraft, but refused to extradite the hijackers. Pranas and Algirdas Brazinskas, after serving a short time in a Turkish prison, were released under an amnesty and moved to the United States. There they received new names, a residence permit and a house in California. But it is not in vain that they say that God is targeting a rogue: in a quarrel, the younger Brazinskas killed his father, for which he received 16 years in prison.

The bestial nature of the killers of Nadia Kurchenko manifested itself in full, but America was not even embarrassed. But the US authorities at one time ignored both the demands of the Soviet side to extradite the criminals and the letters of the crew members who remained disabled. Mother dead stewardess Henrietta Ivanovna Kurchenko secured a meeting with President Reagan at the American embassy. After that, the US State Department announced that "the US concern about international terrorism does not extend to the case of the Brazinskas." And then-Secretary of State Cyrus Vance declared the killers to be human rights activists.

Everything is stricter, and stricter, and stricter...

After the hijacking of the Batumi plane in the USSR, measures were taken to improve security on board civilian aircraft. On all passenger planes, the doors to the cockpits were reinforced, and peepholes were installed. They began to sell air tickets only with passports, and selective baggage screening was introduced at airports. Flights with routes near the state border were accompanied by police officers in civilian clothes. The Soviet Union became the 120th member of ICAO, ratified the Hague Convention for the Suppression of Unlawful Seizure of Aircraft.

But on April 23, 1973, a new incident followed - this time with a Tu-104 en route from Leningrad to Moscow. The hijacker demanded to fly to Stockholm, and when he tried to land at the Soviet airport, he activated explosive device. The hijacker and the crew commander were killed, and the passengers managed to be rescued from the burning aircraft.

After that incident in civil aviation introduced mandatory screening of passengers, metal detectors appeared at airports. The hijacking of an aircraft began to qualify as an independent type of crime, for which they were given 15 years in the camp and even the death penalty. To combat terrorism, on July 29, 1974, by order of the chairman of the KGB, Yuri Andropov, a special unit was created - group "A".

And in the 1980s and 1990s, there was a new surge in air piracy in our country. We even became leaders among European powers in this type of crime. And every time the flight attendants were the first to encounter the hijackers. Irina Viktorova is one of them.

“At Aeroflot, the name of Nadia Kurchenko was on everyone’s lips, but I couldn’t imagine that something like this could happen to me,” Irina, who at that time was a flight attendant for the Tbilisi air squadron, tells me. - In November 1983, our Tu-134 followed in Batumi. On approaching Kutaisi, we got into a thunderstorm front, the commander decided to return. When I went out to tell the passengers about this, I saw a terrible picture. There was a guy with a grenade in the aisle. Another fired a pistol at a man sitting in front ... As it became known later, seven hijackers from the Georgian "golden youth" registered in the deputy hall, bypassing the inspection. The bandits beat me up. They grabbed the stewardess Valya and dragged her to the cockpit. The pilots saw her face through the peephole and opened the door. Navigator Vladimir Gasoyan opened fire to kill, indiscriminate firing began. In this hell, the fragile Valya dragged the wounded bandit away from the door and helped the pilots to close in the cockpit. The crew miraculously managed to land the plane.

At the trial, the surviving hijackers were asked: "You are the children of wealthy parents - would you take tour packages and stay abroad." The answer caused a shock: “But we wanted to fly away like the Brazinskas - with noise and with shooting! Then they would not have given us away ... "

Nerves are on fire at this job.

But on March 18, 2005, the stewardess of the Aeroflot Boeing, Anya Filatova, could be said to be lucky - like all 214 passengers flying on the Sydney - Tokyo - Moscow flight.

“We had already come in for a landing 15 kilometers from Sheremetyevo, and then the call light came on. I approached the passenger, the guy invited me to sit next to him. Shows - explosives on the belt. Demands to land in Grozny. She reported to the commander, and she continued the conversation with the hijacker. Then she could not remember what we talked about, how he reacted - such was the nervous tension. Fortunately, all ground and special services worked well - the hijacker was neutralized. It turned out that he had a dummy bomb on his belt. But nerves something we expended seriously. That story came back to me: a nervous breakdown, a hospital bed. Until now, I sometimes dream of the eyes of that passenger ... "

Instructions instructions, but no one canceled courage

Today, civil aviation has done a lot to ensure that the tragedy of 45 years ago does not happen again. The pilot's cabin is securely reinforced, the door is always locked. Even a flight attendant can get into the cockpit only after contacting the crew. But what if the offender nevertheless got on board and decided to hijack? The service memo obliges the flight attendant to take additional measures to prevent the possible entry of offenders into the cockpit. To begin with, inform the commander of the situation in the cabin via intercom, make an attempt to convince the offenders that the crew is forced to comply with their requirements, so there is no need to enter there. Agree to transfer the note to the commander of the aircraft only if the offenders are in their places. In a detailed list of further necessary actions, in addition to instructions to distract and deter offenders from violence, recall the inevitability of criminal liability for this.

Nothing is said about personal courage in the instructions. Apparently, because our flight attendants take this quality for granted.

P.S. In Sukhumi, they wanted to put the same An-24 on a pedestal in the park named after Nadezhda Kurchenko. But that car was waiting for a difficult fate. Board number 46586, having undergone a major restoration at the Kiev Aircraft Repair Plant, then ended up in Soviet Uzbekistan. There he honestly worked on local roads until 1997, after which he was sawn into scrap metal.

An unfamiliar star in the sky
Shines like a monument to Hope...

He recalls Georgy Chakhrakia, the commander of the An-24 crew, No. 46256, who flew on October 15, 1970 on the Batumi-Sukhumi route - I remember everything. I remember perfectly.

Such things are not forgotten, - That day I told Nadia: “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 take a walk at the wedding ... ”- the pilot recalls with sadness. - The girl raised her blue eyes, smiled and said: “Yes, probably on November holidays". I was delighted and, shaking the wings of the plane, shouted at the top of my voice: “Guys! On holidays we walk at the wedding! ”... And an hour later I knew that there would be no wedding ...

Batumi airport

At 12.40. 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: “Give it to the crew commander!”. The envelope contained Order No. 9 printed on a typewriter:

1. I order you to fly along the indicated route.
2. Stop radio communication.
3. For failure to comply with the order - Death.
(Free Europe) P.K.Z.Ts.
General (Krylov)

There was a seal on the sheet, on which it was written in Lithuanian: "... rajono valdybos kooperatyvas" ("management cooperative ... of the district"). the man was dressed in the dress uniform of a Soviet officer.

Realizing the intentions of the "passenger", the flight attendant Nadezhda Kurchenko rushed into the cockpit and shouted: "Attack!" The criminals rushed after her. "No one get up! yelled the younger. “Otherwise we’ll blow up the plane!” Nadia tried to block the bandits' way into the cockpit: "You can't go there!" . "They are armed!" - were last words Nadia. Immediately, the flight attendant was killed with two shots at close range.

Bullets were flying from the cockpit. One went through my hair

- says Leningrader 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, one grenade from the elder hung on his chest. (...) The plane was thrown left and right - the pilots probably hoped that the criminals would not stand on their feet.
The shooting continued in the cockpit. There they will then count 18 holes, and in total 24 bullets were fired. One of them hit the commander in the spine:
Giorgi Chahrakia - I lost my legs. Through my efforts, I turned around and saw a terrible picture, Nadia lay motionless on the floor in the door of our cabin and bled to death. Navigator Fadeev lay nearby. And a man stood behind us and, shaking a grenade, shouted: “Keep the seashore on the left! Heading south! Do not enter the clouds! Obey, otherwise we will blow up the plane!

The offender did not stand on ceremony. He ripped off the radio communication headphones from the pilots. He trampled on the lying bodies. Flight engineer Hovhannes Babayan was wounded in the chest. 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 the 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 are flying towards Turkey!” - and was afraid that when approaching the border we might be shot down. My wife also remarked: “The sea is below us. You feel good. You can swim, but I can't! And I thought: “What a stupid death! He went through the whole war, signed on the Reichstag - and on you!
The pilots still managed to turn on the SOS signal.
Giorgi Chakhrakia - I told the bandits: “I am wounded, my legs are paralyzed. I can only control with my hands. The co-pilot should help me,” And the bandit answered: “Everything happens in the war. We can die." The thought even crossed my mind to send "Annushka" to the rocks - to die ourselves and finish off these bastards. But there are forty-four people in the cabin, including seventeen women and one child.
I told the co-pilot: “If I lose consciousness, lead 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 heading the car, warned me that he would shoot me and blow up the ship. I made the decision to cross the border. And five minutes later we crossed it at low altitude.
... The airfield in Trabzon was found visually. For the pilots, it was not difficult.
Giorgi Chakhrakia - We made a circle and launched green rockets, making it clear that the runway was free. We entered from the side of the mountains and sat down so that, if something happened, we would land on the sea. We were immediately cordoned off. The co-pilot opened the front doors and the Turks entered. In the cockpit, the bandits surrendered. All this time, until the locals showed up, we were under gunpoint...
Leaving the cabin after the passengers, the senior bandit rapped on the car with his fist: “This plane is now ours!”
The Turks provided medical assistance to all crew members. They immediately offered those who wished to stay in Turkey, but not one of the 49 Soviet citizens agreed.

The next day, all passengers and the body of Nadia Kurchenko were taken to the Soviet Union. A little later, the hijacked An-24 was overtaken.

An-24B (board USSR-46256) became the first Soviet passenger liner stolen abroad. After returning from Turkey, he underwent repairs at the Kiev ARZ 410 and again flew in the Sukhumi squadron with a photo of Nadia Kurchenko in the cabin. In 1979, the aircraft was transferred to Samarkand, where it was operated until the resource was completely depleted, and in 1997 it was written off for scrap

Nadezhda's mother Henrietta Ivanovna Kurchenko says: - I immediately asked that Nadia be buried with us in Udmurtia. But I was not allowed. They said that from a political point of view, this cannot be done.

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 Nadia on foot, shot nearby - there was everything ... And then I impudently wrote a letter addressed to Gorbachev: “If you don’t help transport Nadia, I will go and hang myself on her grave!” A year later, the daughter was reburied at the city cemetery in Glazov. They wanted to bury him separately, on Kalinin Street, and rename the street in honor of Nadia. But I didn't allow it. She died for the people. And I want her to lie with the people...

The monument on her grave is temporary, made of bad granite. They carved a face that was washed away by rain ... The authorities promised to put a new one, but then the Komsomol broke up, and they forgot about all the promises ...
- After the death of Nadia, did you get any help?
- They gave me a three-room apartment in Glazov. I live with my son and my family. I also have two daughters.
- Do you have grandchildren?
- Two grandchildren and three granddaughters. They wanted to name their son's daughter Nadia.

And you know what he said? “Mom, who knows what she will grow up to be? Suddenly dishonor Nadia? And the girl was named Anya ...

In 1970 you were bombarded with letters...
- There were a lot of letters ...

Thousands! I read everything, but I could not answer. And sent them to the museum. Only we had 15 schools in Glazov. And in each there was either a detachment, or a squad named after Nadia.

In Izhevsk, in Tataria, in Ukraine, in Kursk, in the Altai Territory, in her homeland, there were folk museums dedicated to Nadia Kurchenko...

You know, I still cry every day. So many years have passed, and I'm crying. I feel sorry for her, that's all.
- Do you have the feeling that your daughter has been forgotten?
- Not! Remember! Remember, thank God! Here, in Glazov, they remember! At the boarding school where Nadia studied.

Nadezhda Vladimirovna Kurchenko (1950-1970)
She was 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, Glazovsky district of the UASSR. Since December 1968, a flight attendant of the Sukhum air squadron. She died on October 15, 1970 while trying to prevent a terrorist hijacking. In 1970 she was buried in the center of Sukhumi. After 20 years, her grave was moved to the city cemetery of Glazov. She was awarded (posthumously) the Order of the Red Banner. The name of Nadezhda Kurchenko was given to one of the peaks of the Gissar Range, a tanker of the Russian fleet and a minor planet in the constellation Capricorn.

At the end of 1970, Nadezhda was supposed to have a wedding. The Vologda poetess Olga Fokina wrote the poem “People have different songs” about Nadezhda and, as it were, on behalf of her young man. In 1971, the composer Vladimir Semenov wrote music to these verses and the song “My Clear Star” was obtained, which was recorded by VIA Flowers in 1972 (Stas Namin, Sergey Dyachkov, Yuri Fokin and Alexander Losev - vocals).

Immediately after the hijacking in the USSR, sparing TASS reports appear:
“On October 15, an An-24 aircraft of the civil air fleet made a regular flight from the city of Batumi to Sukhumi. Two armed bandits, using weapons against the crew of the plane, forced the plane to change its route and land on Turkish territory in the city of Trabzon. During a fight with the bandits, the flight attendant of the plane was killed, who was trying to block the bandits from entering the cockpit. Two pilots were injured. The passengers of the plane are unharmed. The Soviet government turned to the Turkish authorities with a request to extradite the murderous criminals to bring them to the Soviet court, as well as to return the plane and the Soviet citizens who were on board the An-24 aircraft.
Appeared the next day, October 17, "shuffle" reported that the crew and passengers returned to their homeland. True, the navigator of the aircraft, who received an operation, remained in the hospital of Trabzon, who received serious wounds in the chest. The names of the hijackers are not known: “As for the two criminals who committed an armed attack on the aircraft crew, as a result of which the flight attendant N.V. Kurchenko was killed, two crew members and one passenger were wounded, the Turkish government stated that they were arrested and the prosecution authorities an order to conduct an urgent investigation into the circumstances of the case”.

Roman Andreyevich Rudenko Prosecutor General of the USSR

The general public became aware of the personalities of the air pirates only on November 5 after a press conference by the USSR Prosecutor General Rudenko.

Brazinskas Pranas Stasio born in 1924 and Brazinskas Algirdas born in 1955
Pranas Brazinskas was born in 1924 in the Trakai region of Lithuania.

Algirdis (far left) and Pranas (far right) Brazinskasy

According to the biography written by Brazinskas in 1949, the “forest brothers” killed the chairman of the council with a shot through the window and mortally wounded father P. Brazinskas, who happened to be nearby. With the help of local authorities, P. Brazinskas bought a house in Vievis and in 1952 became the head of the household goods warehouse of the Vievis cooperative. In 1955, P. Brazinskas was sentenced to 1 year of corrective labor for embezzlement and speculation in building materials. In January 1965, by decision of the Supreme Court, he was again sentenced to 5 years, but already in June he was released ahead of schedule. 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 had 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.

On October 7-13, 1970, having visited Vilnius for the last time, P. Brazinskas and his son took their luggage - it is not known where the acquired weapons, accumulated dollars (according to the KGB, more than 6,000 dollars) and flew to the Transcaucasus.

The film "Lies and Hatred" (US espionage against the USSR). 1980 was filmed for viewing at Komsomol and party meetings. The crew members of the AN-24 airliner #46256 talk about the capture at 42:20 minutes of the film.

In October 1970, the USSR demanded that Turkey extradite the criminals immediately, but this demand was not met. The Turks decided to judge the hijackers themselves. The Trabzon Court of First Instance did not recognize the attack as premeditated. In his defense, Pranas stated that they hijacked the plane in the face of death, allegedly threatening him for participating in the “Lithuanian Resistance.” And they sentenced 45-year-old Pranas Brazinskas to eight years in prison, and his 13-year-old son Algirdas to two. In May 1974, the father fell under the amnesty law and Brazinskas Sr.'s imprisonment was replaced with house arrest. In the same year, the father and son allegedly escaped from house arrest and applied to the American embassy in Turkey with a request to grant them political asylum in the United States. Having been refused, the Brazinskases again surrendered to the Turkish police, where they were kept for another couple of weeks and ... finally released. Then they flew through Italy and Venezuela to Canada. During an intermediate landing in New York, the Brazinskas got off the plane and were "detained" by the US Migration and Naturalization Service. The status of political refugees was never granted to them, but for a start they were provided with a residence permit, and in 1983 both were given American passports. Algirdas officially became Albert Victor White, and Pranas became Frank White.
Henrietta Ivanovna Kurchenko - In seeking the extradition of the Brazinskas, I even went to a meeting with Reagan at the American embassy. I was told that they were looking for my father because he lives illegally in the USA. And the son received American citizenship. And he can't be punished. Nadia was killed in 1970, and the law on the extradition of bandits, wherever they are, 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, in the Lithuanian community, the attitude towards the Brazinskas was wary, they were frankly afraid. An attempt to organize a fundraiser for a self-help fund failed. In the US, the Brazinskas wrote a book about their "exploits", in which they tried to justify the hijacking and hijacking of the plane by "the struggle for the liberation of Lithuania from Soviet occupation." To whitewash 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, the support of the Brazinskas by Lithuanian organizations gradually faded away, everyone forgot about them. Real life in the US was very different from what they expected. The criminals lived miserably, under old age Brazinskas Sr. became irritable and unbearable.

In early February 2002, the 911 service in the California city of Santa Monica rang. The caller immediately hung up. The police determined the address from which the call was made and arrived at 900 21st Street. The door was opened to the police by 46-year-old Albert Victor White and led the officers of the law to the cold corpse of his 77-year-old father. On the head of which the forensic experts then counted eight blows from a dumbbell. Murder is rare in Santa Monica—it was the first violent death in the city that year.

Jack ALEX. Brazinskas Jr. lawyer
“I am Lithuanian myself, and I was hired to protect Albert Victor White by his wife, Virginia. There is quite a large Lithuanian diaspora here in California, and you don't think that we Lithuanians have any support for the 1970 plane hijacking.
- Pranas was a terrible person, it used to be, in fits of rage, he chased the neighbor's children with weapons.
Algirdas is a normal and sane person. At the time of the capture, he was only 15 years old, and he hardly knew what he was doing. He spent his whole 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-defence. His father pointed a gun at him, threatening to shoot his son if he left him. But Algirdas knocked out his weapon and hit the old man several times on the head.
- The jury considered that, having knocked out the gun, Algirdas could not have killed the old man, since he was very weak. The fact that he called the police only a day after the incident also played against Algirdas - all this time he was next to the corpse.
- Algirdas was arrested in 2002 and sentenced to 20 years in prison under the article “premeditated murder in the second degree”
“I know this doesn't sound like a lawyer, but let me offer my condolences to Algirdas. When I last saw him, he was in a terrible depression. The father terrorized his son as best he could, and when the tyrant finally died, Algirdas, a man in his prime, would rot in prison for many more years. Apparently it's fate...

Forty-nine years ago, the first hijacking occurred in the Soviet Union. An-24 flying from Batumi to Sukhum was hijacked by Lithuanian terrorists.

Sputnik, Astanda Ardzinba.

capture

On October 15, 1970, the Soviet civil aircraft An-24 flew from Batumi to Sukhum. Travel time would have taken 30-35 minutes, but five minutes after takeoff, at 12:40 local time, two passengers in the front row called the flight attendant and demanded that the envelope be handed over to the pilots. It was "Order No. 9" printed back in Vilnius, in which the terrorists demanded to fly to Turkey and stop radio communications, and death for failure to comply with the order. At the same time, one of the terrorists announced to the passengers that there was no more Soviet power on their plane.

Thus began the first capture in the history of the USSR passenger aircraft. There were 46 passengers and five crew members on board.

The terrorists turned out to be Lithuanians, the father and son of Brazinskasy. Later, the competent authorities will thoroughly study all stages of their life. It turns out that the elder Brazinskas, 45-year-old Pranas, an anti-communist, served in the auxiliary troops of the German division in 1944, where he assembled pontoon bridges. Later, he supplied the Lithuanian members of the "Resistance" with weapons. In 1965, Pranas Brazinskas, working as the head 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 for Uzbekistan.

But even there, Pranas became the organizer of the local black market, the son also participated in his father's scams. When the KGB became interested in the Brazinskas in 1970, they decided to flee the country without thinking of anything better than hijacking the plane.

However, these curious details of the biography of the invaders were not yet known to either the passengers on board or the crew members.

Turboprop passenger aircraft "AN-24"

Nadezhda Kurchenko, a 19-year-old flight attendant of the Sukhumi Aviation Detachment, rushed to the pilots, shouting: "Attack!" The terrorists rushed after her. "Don't get up!" shouted Algirdas. "Otherwise we'll blow up the plane!" - Kurchenko tried to block their way into the cockpit, and then Pranas shot her point-blank from a sawn-off shotgun.

The terrorists burst into the cockpit and began to shoot at the crew, injuring the commander, flight mechanic and navigator, only the co-pilot was not injured. Later, they will explain that they deliberately chose to injure the three crew members, but not kill them, but leave one unharmed so that he could fly the plane.

Standing behind the pilots, Pranas Brazinskas shook a grenade and ordered them to head south to Trabzon.

About an hour and a half after the hijacking, the aircraft landed in this Turkish city. Local special forces, who had been alerted to the incident, cordoned off the aircraft. Coming out of the plane, Brazinskas Sr. said: "Here it is, freedom!" Both terrorists voluntarily laid down their arms and surrendered to the police.

All crew members received medical assistance. Passengers and pilots were offered to stay in Turkey, but none of them accepted this offer. A day later, a Soviet military plane took them all back to the USSR, and the body of the deceased flight attendant Nadezhda Kurchenko was delivered to Sukhum on a special flight.

In memory of Nadia

The feat of nineteen-year-old Nadezhda Kurchenko, a graduate of the Poninsky boarding school in the Glazovsky district in Udmurtia, a flight attendant of the Sukhumi aviation detachment, did not go unnoticed. Songs were written in honor of Nadia, parks and streets of Soviet cities were named, a minor planet No. 2349, discovered by scientists of the Crimean Observatory, was named after her, and the film "Applicant" was made about her. By decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, Nadezhda Kurchenko was posthumously awarded the Order of the Red Banner for courage and bravery.

Opening of a monument to flight attendant Nadezhda Kurchenko, who died at the hands of the father and son Brazinskas, who hijacked the An-24 passenger plane, which was operating regular flight No. 244 from Batumi to Sukhum.

Nadezhda Kurchenko was born on December 29, 1950 in the village of Novopoltava, Klyuchevsky District, Altai Territory. She graduated from a boarding school in the village of Ponino, Glazovsky District, Udmurt ASSR. In December 1968, Nadia moved to Sukhum, where she began working as a flight attendant for a local airline. Young Nadezhda Kurchenko did not live two and a half months before her twentieth birthday and three months before her wedding.

The body of the flight attendant killed by the terrorists was brought on a special flight from Trabzon to Sukhum, where her mother had already flown from Udmurtia. They decided to bury Nadya Kurchenko in Sukhum, in one of the central parks, which to this day bears her name.

On the day of her funeral, thousands of people followed the coffin through the streets of the city and brought her flowers. And the planes leaving for the flight shook their wings as a sign of respect for their young colleague.

Twenty years after the tragic death in 1990, the ashes of Nadia Kurchenko, at the insistence of her mother, were transported to Udmurtia, the remains of the heroine are now buried in her cemetery hometown Glazov. In the school of young pilots in the capital of the republic, Izhevsk, a museum named after her was opened, which was awarded the title of "folk".

Life "under the supervision of the KGB"

The Turkish authorities, largely due to the influence of the United States, did not extradite the terrorists to the Soviet Union. They were convicted: father to eight years in prison, son to two. But less than two years later, both bandits were free and managed to move to the United States, where the Lithuanian diaspora procured them citizenship. In the West, it was believed that the Brazinskas should not be put on a par with other terrorists, allegedly they were fighting against the Soviet regime.

In America, they changed their names and surnames to Frank and Albert White and settled in the town of Santa Monica in California. Both have improved their lives. Brazinskas Sr. first worked as a painter, and then became a co-owner of a weapons store. His son graduated from accounting courses, got a job in an insurance company and married an American.

However, until the end of his life, Brazinskas Sr. was haunted by the communists. It seemed to him that KGB agents were watching the house, who wanted to steal it back to the USSR. In the 1980s, he was chronicled several times when, with a pistol in his hand, he brought "KGB agents" to the police station - some first comers from the street.

In America, Algirdas wrote a book of memoirs about his "exploits" with his father, in which he tried to justify the hijacking and hijacking of the plane by the "struggle for the liberation of Lithuania from Soviet occupation", and also spoke about the horrors of life in the Soviet Union. But even after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the independence of Lithuania, the Brazinskas did not return to their homeland, still fearing disguised KGB agents.

In his old age, Brazinskas Sr. became irritable, he and his son often had quarrels. During one of these, 45-year-old Algirdas beat his 77-year-old father to death with a sports dumbbell. The court found him guilty and sentenced him to 16 years in prison.

Monument to Hope in Sukhum

In Sukhum, a city park was named after Nadezhda Kurchenko, in which a monument to the brave stewardess was erected.

During the Patriotic War of the people of Abkhazia, the monument was significantly damaged, as it was subjected to constant shelling.

In 2010, the city administration allocated funds, the holes were patched up on the monument, but damage from heavy shelling affected it when a tree fell on it in 2013 - the monument fell to pieces.

In 2017, that the monument will be restored and installed in its original place.

Nadezhda Kurchrnko Career: citizens
Birth: Russia, 12/29/1950
At the end of November 1968, Nadezhda Kurchenko came to work in the Sukhum air detachment, and less than two years later, an entry appeared in her personal file "Exclude from the list of personnel due to death occurring in the line of duty."

At the end of November 1968, Nadezhda Kurchenko came to work in the Sukhum air detachment, and less than two years later, an entry appeared in her personal file "Exclude from the list of personnel due to death occurring in the line of duty." Today we want to tell about the most famous and at the same time the most mysterious case of the capture of a Soviet aircraft.

STOP NUMBER ONE

In the end " velvet season"- On October 15, 1970, an An-24 airliner took off from the border city of Batumi on flight N244 to Sukhumi and Krasnodar. There were 46 passengers in it, covering 17 women and one child. People who had a rest in the Caucasus did not yet know that in the next day they had 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 - the father and son of Brazinskasa, called the flight attendant and handed over a note to the pilots demanding to change the route and fly to Turkey. The girl rushed into the cockpit and shouted: "Attack!" The criminals rushed after her. "Nobody get up!" yelled the smallest of the hijackers. "Otherwise we'll blow up the airliner!" At that very moment, shots rang out in the salon, the only one of which cut short the existence of 19-year-old Nadezhda Kurchenko, whose wedding was scheduled smoothly in three months ...

The first pilot, Giorgi 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: Nadia was lying motionless in the door of the pilot's cabin and bleeding. Navigator Valery Fadeev was shot in the lung, and flight engineer Hovhannes Babayan was wounded in the chest. Co-pilot Suliko Shavidze was the luckiest of all - a stupid bullet got stuck in an iron pipe in the back of his seat. Brazinskas Sr. stood behind the pilots and, shaking a grenade, shouted: "Keep the seashore on the left. Heading south. Do not 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 training). Soon the captured board crossed the Soviet-Turkish border, and after another 30 minutes was over the airfield in Trabzon. The plane made a circle over the runway and fired green rockets, asking to be spared for an emergency landing. Immediately after landing, the hijackers surrendered to the 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 stolen An-24. After a major overhaul, the board N46256 with a photo of Nadia Kurchenko in the cabin is still for a long time flew to Uzbekistan.

GOD JUDGMENT

Then, in October 1970, the USSR demanded that Turkey immediately extradite the criminals, but this request was not fulfilled. The Turks decided to judge 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 took place in this country and the imprisonment of Brazinskas Sr. was replaced with ... house arrest in a luxurious villa in Istanbul. According to one of the former high-ranking KGB officers, an operation was developed and prepared in the depths of this department to destroy both air terrorists, which failed due to the removal of the Brazinskas from Turkey by the US special services.

The farce with the "flight" of criminals to America was arranged as follows: the 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 Brazinskases once again surrendered to the Turkish police, where they were kept for another couple of weeks and ... completely released. Then, through Italy and Venezuela, they calmly flew to Canada. During an intermediate landing in New York, the Brazinskas got off the plane and were "detained" by the US Migration and Naturalization Service. The status of political refugees was never given to them, but for a start they were provided with a residence permit, and in 1983 both were 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 house painters. In the US, the Brazinskas wrote a book about their "exploits", in which they tried to justify the hijacking and hijacking of the plane by "the struggle to free Lithuania from Soviet occupation." According to the newspaper "Los Angeles Times", in the Lithuanian community of America, the attitude towards the Brazinskas was wary, they were openly afraid of them. An attempt to set up a fundraiser for a self-help 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, a 45-year-old son beat his 77-year-old dad to death with a baseball bat. In early November of this year, a Santa Monica jury already found him guilty of this crime, and Albert Victor White now faces at least 16 years in prison.

MAIN QUESTION

The most significant interrogative motive, the fact that 33 years after the tragedy, a reliable reaction has not been received, is: "How did the flight attendant Nadezhda Kurchenko die and what is the true number of victims of the hijacking?" According to information that was leaked to the press in the near future, 18 holes were counted in the hull of the captured aircraft, and a total of 24 shots were fired on board. The fire was so intense that one of the women - eyewitnesses of those events is still convinced that Brazinskas Sr. fired from a machine gun. Meanwhile, it is exactly known that the hijackers had only sawn-off hunting rifles. If it is distributed from the fact that there were no other barrels on the plane, then it turns out that the Brazinskas had to reload their sawn-off shotguns at least 12 times. It is not clear why the criminals had to act so full of shots, if the most powerful means of pressure on the crew, of course, was the danger of exploding a grenade?

Maybe the version of this event that was announced at a court in Turkey in the near future 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 you analyze logically, then why did the Brazinskas need to incapacitate all five crew members, covering both pilots (recall that their seatbacks were shot through), if the criminals themselves did not have the skills to drive an aircraft?

It can be assumed that the crew of the An-24 really found itself under heavy fire from those who shot at the hijackers, since at that very moment the Brazinskas were at the door 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 is their further fate (all publications say that there were victims 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 specially trained professionals? Or maybe during the shootout, the Brazinskas used Nadia as a "human shield" or simply forced the guards to lay down their weapons with the threat of detonating 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 workers of the Soviet power structures.

ARITHMETIC OF LIFE

Contrary to popular belief, flight attendant Nadezhda Kurchenko was not the first Aeroflot employee to die in a hijacking. This happened for the first time on June 3, 1969, when three terrorists tried to hijack an Il-14 en route from Leningrad to Tallinn, and at the same time killed a flight mechanic who had entered into a fight with them. Well, the last of these tragedies occurred on March 16, 2001. Four Chechens, armed with one hatchet and a knife, seized a Russian Tu-154 flying from Istanbul to Moscow and forced the crew to land in Medina ( Saudi Arabia). During the assault on the plane, two terrorists, the only passenger and a flight attendant, were killed by bullets fired by Saudi special forces soldiers.

In the entire history of Soviet and Russian civil aviation, 91 attempts and 26 successful hijackings of passenger aircraft have been recorded. During these 117 incidents, 111 passengers and crew members were killed, and another 17 terrorists were shot dead. This means that for every hijacker killed, there are on average 6-7 innocent victims. Is it not excessively high cost for the strength of "castles" on our air borders?...

P.S. I express my deep gratitude for the assistance in preparing this material to Nadia's younger sister - Ekaterina Vladimirovna Kurchenko

Nadezhda Kurchenko

She was 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, Glazovsky district of the UASSR. Since December 1968, a flight attendant of the Sukhum air squadron. She died on October 15, 1970 while trying to prevent a terrorist hijacking. In 1970 she was buried in the center of Sukhumi. After 20 years, her grave was moved to the city cemetery of Glazov. She was awarded (posthumously) the Order of the Red Banner. The name of Nadezhda Kurchenko was given to one of the peaks of the Gissar Range, a tanker of the Russian fleet and a minor planet in the constellation Capricorn.

Unfortunately, moreover, in the "Encyclopedia of the Udmurt Republic" information about Nadia contains a lot of errors: the month of her birth and the path of the last flight are incorrectly given - it is indicated in the opposite direction. It is also stated there, just as in November 1968 the young lady became a flight attendant, although in fact, until her 18th birthday, she worked in the accounting department of the air squadron. And nothing is said about either the mountain peak or the Nadia tanker. Here we have such an "Encyclopedia", if I may say so.

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Nadezhda Kolba Nadezhda Kolba

Vice Governor of the Krasnoyarsk Territory.

Your comments

Olesya I liked it very much, very touching! November 20 18:49

October 15 marks 47 years since the death of 19-year-old stewardess Nadezhda Kurchenko, who at the cost of her own life tried to prevent terrorists from hijacking a Soviet passenger plane. The story of the heroic death of a young girl awaits you further.

This was the first time a passenger plane had been hijacked on such a 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 started like this.

An-24 took off from the Batumi airfield on October 15, 1970 at 12:30. Course - to Sukhumi. There were 46 passengers and 5 crew members on board. Scheduled flight time is 25-30 minutes. But life broke both the schedule and the schedule. At the 4th minute of the flight, the plane sharply deviated from the course. The radio operators requested the board - there was no answer. Communication with the control tower was interrupted. The plane was leaving towards close Turkey.

Military and rescue boats went to sea. Their captains received an order: to proceed at full speed to the place possible catastrophe.

2. The board did not respond to any of the requests. A few more minutes - and the An-24 left air space USSR. And in the sky over the Turkish coastal airfield of Trabzon, two rockets flashed - red, then green. It was an emergency landing signal. The plane touched the concrete pier of a foreign air harbor. Telegraph agencies around the world immediately reported that a Soviet passenger plane had been hijacked. The flight attendant was killed, there are wounded. Everything.

He recalls Georgy Chakhrakia, the commander of the An-24 crew, No. 46256, who flew on October 15, 1970 on the route Batumi - Sukhumi: “I remember everything. I remember perfectly. Such things are not forgotten. That day I told Nadia: “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 take a walk at the wedding ... ”- the pilot recalls with sadness. - The girl raised her blue eyes, smiled and said: "Yes, probably for the November holidays." I was delighted and, shaking the wings of the plane, shouted at the top of my voice: “Guys! On holidays we walk at the wedding! ”... And an hour later I knew that there would be no wedding ...

Today, 45 years later, I intend to recount - at least briefly - the events of those days and again speak 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 a person. First of all, to tell about this to the people of the new generation, the new computer consciousness, to 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 working room, a narrow compartment. She opened a bottle of borjomi and, after letting the water shoot up sparkling tiny cannonballs, she filled four plastic cups for the crew. Putting them on a tray, she entered the cabin.

The crew was always glad to have a beautiful, young, extremely benevolent girl in the cockpit. Probably, she felt this attitude towards herself and, of course, she was also happy. Perhaps, 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, Nadia was in a wonderful mood - everyone who saw her in the last minutes of her pure, happy life claimed.

3. Having drunk the crew, 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: “Give it to the crew commander!” The envelope contained Order No. 9 printed on a typewriter:

1. I order you to fly along the indicated route.
2. Stop radio communication.
3. For failure to comply with the order - death.
(Free Europe) P.K.Z.Ts.
General (Krylov)

There was a seal on the sheet, on which it was written in Lithuanian: "... rajono valdybos kooperatyvas" ("cooperative of management ... of the district"). The man was dressed in the dress uniform of a Soviet officer. Nadia took the envelope. Their eyes must have met. She must have been surprised at the tone in which those words were spoken. But she did not find out anything, but stepped to the luggage compartment door - then there was the door of the pilot's cabin. Probably, Nadia's feelings were written on her face - most likely. And the sensitivity of the wolf, alas, surpasses any other. And probably, it was precisely thanks to this sensitivity that the terrorist saw hostility in Nadia's eyes, a subconscious suspicion, a shadow of danger. This turned out to be enough for the sick imagination to announce the alarm: failure, verdict, exposure. Self-control failed: he literally catapulted out of his chair and rushed after Nadia. She barely had time to take a step towards the cockpit when he flung open the door to her compartment, which had just been closed by it.

You can't come here! she screamed.

But he was coming closer, like the shadow of a beast. She realized that the enemy was in front of her. In the next second, he also understood: she would break all plans. Nadia screamed again. And at the same moment, slamming the cabin door, she turned around to face the bandit, enraged by such a course of affairs, and prepared for an attack. He, as well as the crew, heard her words - no doubt. What was left to do? Nadya made a decision not to let the attacker into the cockpit at any cost. Any!

He could be a maniac and shoot the crew. He could kill the crew and passengers. He could... She didn't know his actions, his intentions. And he knew: jumping towards her, he tried to knock her down. Leaning her hands against the wall, Nadya resisted and continued to resist. The first bullet hit her in the thigh. She clung even tighter to the pilot's door. The terrorist tried to squeeze her throat. Nadia - knock out a weapon from his right hand. The stray bullet went through the ceiling. Nadia fought back with her feet, hands, 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 filled up the roaring machine to the left, and then to the right. In the next second, the plane went up steeply: the pilots tried to knock down the attacker, believing that his experience in this matter was not great, and Nadia would hold on. The passengers were still wearing seat belts - after all, the display did not go out, the plane was only 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 they were the first to feel the trouble. Galina Kiryak and Aslan Kaishanba, however, did not have time to take a step: they were outstripped by the one who was sitting next to the man who had escaped 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 salon. The bullet whistled over the heads of the shocked passengers.

Don `t move! he yelled. - Do not move!

Pilots with even greater sharpness began to throw the plane from one position to another. The young man fired again. The bullet pierced the fuselage skin and went right through. Depressurization of the aircraft was not yet threatened - the height was insignificant. Opening the cockpit, Nadia shouted to the crew with all her might:

Attack! He is armed!

The next moment after the second shot, the young man opened his gray cloak, and people saw grenades - they were tied to the 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 older one remained on his feet and, with bestial fury, tried to tear Nadia away from the door of the pilot's cabin. He needed a leader. He needed a crew. He needed a plane.

4. Struck by the incredible resistance of Nadia, enraged by his own impotence 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 cockpit. Behind him is his geek with a sawn-off shotgun.

To Turkey! To Turkey! Return to the Soviet coast - we will blow up the plane!

“Bullets were flying from the cockpit. One walked through my hair, - says Vladimir Gavrilovich Merenkov from Leningrad. He and his wife were passengers on the ill-fated flight in 1970. - I saw: the bandits had pistols, a hunting rifle, one grenade from the elder hung on his chest. The plane was thrown left and right - the pilots probably hoped that the criminals would not stand on their feet.

The shooting continued in the cockpit. There they will then count 18 holes, and in total 24 bullets were fired. One of them hit the commander in the spine.

Giorgi Chakhrakia: “I lost my legs. Through my efforts, I turned around and saw a terrible picture: Nadia lay motionless on the floor in the door of our cabin and bled to death. Navigator Fadeev lay nearby. And a man stood behind us and, shaking a grenade, shouted: “Keep the seashore on the left! Heading south! Do not enter the clouds! Obey, otherwise we will blow up the plane!”

The offender did not stand on ceremony. He ripped off the radio communication headphones from the pilots. He trampled on the lying bodies. Flight engineer Hovhannes Babayan was wounded in the chest. 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 the navigator Valery Fadeev came to his senses (his lungs were shot through), the bandit swore and kicked the seriously wounded man.

Vladimir Gavrilovich Merenkov: “I told my wife: “We are flying towards Turkey!” - and was afraid that when approaching the border we might be shot down. My wife also remarked: “The sea is below us. You feel good. You can swim, but I can't! And I thought: “What a stupid death! He went through the whole war, signed on the Reichstag - and on you!

The pilots still managed to turn on the SOS signal. Giorgi Chakhrakia: “I told the bandits: “I am wounded, my legs are paralyzed. I can only control with my hands. I have to help the co-pilot.” And the bandit replied: “Everything happens in war. We can die." Even the thought flashed to send "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, lead 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 heading the car, warned me that he would shoot me and blow up the ship. I made the decision to cross the border. And five minutes later we crossed it at low altitude.

... The airfield in Trabzon was found visually. For the pilots, it was not difficult. Giorgi Chakhrakia: “We made a circle and launched green rockets, making it clear that the runway was free. We entered from the side of the mountains and sat down so that, if something happened, we would land on the sea. We were immediately cordoned off. The co-pilot opened the front doors and the Turks entered. In the cockpit, the bandits surrendered. All this time, until the locals appeared, we were at gunpoint ... "

Leaving the cabin after the passengers, the senior bandit rapped on the car with his fist: “This plane is now ours!” The Turks provided medical assistance to all crew members. They immediately offered those who wished to stay in Turkey, but not one of the 49 Soviet citizens agreed. The next day, all passengers and the body of Nadia Kurchenko were taken to the Soviet Union. A little later, the hijacked An-24 was overtaken. For courage and heroism, Nadezhda Kurchenko was awarded the Order of the Red Banner in battle, a passenger plane, an asteroid, schools, streets, and so on were named after Nadia. But it should be said, apparently, and about something else.

The scale of state and public actions associated with an unprecedented event was enormous. Members of the State Commission, the USSR Foreign Ministry 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 aircraft; an air corridor for the transfer of injured crew members and those passengers who needed urgent medical care from Trabzon hospitals; of course, those who did not suffer physically, but ended up in a foreign land against their will; an air corridor was required for a special flight from Trabzon to Sukhumi with Nadia's body. Her mother had already flown to Sukhumi from Udmurtia.

Nadezhda's mother Genrietta Ivanovna Kurchenko says: “I immediately asked that Nadia be buried with us in Udmurtia. But I was not 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 Nadia on foot, shot nearby - there was everything ... And then I impudently wrote a letter addressed to Gorbachev: “If you don’t help transport Nadia, I will go and hang myself on her grave!” A year later, the daughter was reburied at the city cemetery in Glazov. They wanted to bury him separately, on Kalinin Street, and rename the street in honor of Nadia. But I didn't allow it. She died for the people. And I want her to lie with people.”

Immediately after the hijacking in the USSR, sparing TASS reports appear:

“On October 15, an An-24 aircraft of the civil air fleet made a regular flight from the city of Batumi to Sukhumi. Two armed bandits, using weapons against the crew of the plane, forced the plane to change its route and land on Turkish territory in the city of Trabzon. During a fight with the bandits, the flight attendant of the plane was killed, who was trying to block the bandits from entering the cockpit. Two pilots were injured. The passengers of the plane are unharmed. The Soviet government turned to the Turkish authorities with a request to extradite the murderous criminals to bring them to the Soviet court, as well as to return the plane and the Soviet citizens who were on board the An-24 aircraft.

7. Appeared the next day, October 17, "shuffle" reported that the crew and passengers returned to their homeland. True, the navigator of the aircraft, who received an operation, remained in the hospital of Trabzon, who received serious wounds in the chest. The names of the hijackers are not known. “As for the two criminals who committed an armed attack on the crew of the aircraft, as a result of which the flight attendant N.V. was killed. Kurchenko, two crew members and one passenger were injured, the Turkish government stated that they were arrested and the prosecutor's office was instructed to conduct an urgent investigation into the circumstances of the case.

8. The general public became aware of the personalities of air pirates only on November 5, after a press conference by the USSR Prosecutor General Rudenko.

Brazinskas Pranas Stasio born in 1924 and Brazinskas Algirdas born in 1955

Pranas Brazinskas was born in 1924 in the Trakai region of Lithuania.

According to a biography written by Brazinskas in 1949, the "forest brothers" shot through the window and killed the chairman of the council and mortally wounded Father P. Brazinskas, who happened to be nearby. With the help of local authorities, P. Brazinskas bought a house in Vievis and in 1952 became the head of the household goods warehouse of the Vievis cooperative. In 1955, P. Brazinskas was sentenced to 1 year of corrective labor for theft and speculation in building materials. In January 1965, by decision of the Supreme Court, he was again convicted, already for 5 years, but already in June he was released ahead of schedule. Having divorced his first wife, he left for Central Asia.

On October 7-13, 1970, having visited Vilnius for the last time, P. Brazinskas and his son took their luggage - it is not known where the weapons purchased, the accumulated dollars (according to the KGB, more than 6,000 dollars) - and flew to the Transcaucasus.

In October 1970, the USSR demanded that Turkey immediately extradite the criminals, but this requirement was not met. The Turks decided to judge the hijackers themselves. The Trabzon Court of First Instance did not recognize the attack as premeditated. In his defense, Pranas claimed that they hijacked the plane in the face of death, allegedly threatening 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 fell under the amnesty law, and Brazinskas Sr.'s prison sentence was replaced with house arrest. In the same year, the father and son allegedly escaped from house arrest and applied to the American embassy in Turkey with a request to grant them political asylum in the United States. Having been refused, the Brazinskases again surrendered to the Turkish police, where they were kept for another couple of weeks and ... finally released. Then they flew through Italy and Venezuela to Canada. During an intermediate landing in New York, the Brazinskas got off the plane and were "detained" by the US Migration and Naturalization Service. The status of political refugees was never granted to them, but for a start they were provided with a residence permit, and in 1983 both were given American passports. Algirdas officially became Albert Victor White and Pranas became Frank White.

9. Henrietta Ivanovna Kurchenko: “In seeking the extradition of the Brazinskas, I even went to a meeting with Reagan at the American embassy. I was told that they were looking for my father because he lives illegally in the USA. And the son received American citizenship. And he can't be punished. Nadia was killed in 1970, and the law on the extradition of bandits, wherever they are, allegedly came out in 1974. And there will be no return ... "

The Brasinskas settled in the town of Santa Monica in California, where they worked as ordinary painters. In America, in the Lithuanian community, the attitude towards the Brazinskas was wary, they were frankly afraid. An attempt to organize a fundraiser for a self-help fund failed. In the US, the Brazinskas wrote a book about their "exploits", in which they tried to justify the hijacking and hijacking of the plane by "the struggle for the liberation of Lithuania from Soviet occupation." To whitewash himself, P. Brazinskas stated that he got into 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, the support of the Brazinskas by Lithuanian organizations gradually faded away, everyone forgot about them. Real life in the US was very different from what they expected. The criminals lived miserably, under old age Brazinskas Sr. became irritable and unbearable.

In early February 2002, the 911 service in the California city of Santa Monica rang. The caller immediately hung up. The police determined the address from which the call was made and arrived at 900 21st Street. Albert Victor White, 46, opened the door to the police and led the lawmen to the cold corpse of his 77-year-old father, on whose head the forensic experts then counted eight blows from a dumbbell. Murder is rare in Santa Monica - it was the first violent death in the city that year.

Jack Alex, attorney for Brazinskas Jr.:

I am Lithuanian myself, and I was hired to protect Albert Victor White by his wife, Virginia. There is quite a large Lithuanian diaspora here in California, and you don't think that we Lithuanians have any support for the 1970 plane hijacking.
- Pranas was a terrible person, it used to be, in fits of rage, he chased the neighbor's children with weapons.
- Algirdas is a normal and sane person. At the time of the capture, he was only 15 years old, and he hardly knew what he was doing. He spent his whole 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-defence. His father pointed a gun at him, threatening to shoot his son if he left him. But Algirdas knocked out his weapon and hit the old man several times on the head.
- The jury considered that, having knocked out the gun, Algirdas might not have killed the old man, since he was very weak. The fact that he called the police only a day after the incident also played against Algirdas - all this time he was next to the corpse.
- Algirdas was arrested in 2002 and sentenced to 20 years in prison under the article “Deliberate murder in the second degree”.
- I know this doesn't sound like a lawyer, but let me express my condolences to Algirdas. When I last saw him, he was in a terrible depression. The father terrorized his son as best he could, and now, when the tyrant was finally gone, Algirdas, a man in his prime, will rot in prison for many more years. Apparently it's fate...

Nadezhda Vladimirovna Kurchenko (1950-1970). She was 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, Glazovsky district of the UASSR. Since December 1968, a flight attendant of the Sukhum air squadron. She died on October 15, 1970 while trying to prevent a terrorist hijacking. In 1970 she was buried in the center of Sukhumi. After 20 years, her grave was moved to the city cemetery of Glazov. She was awarded (posthumously) the Order of the Red Banner. The name of Nadezhda Kurchenko was given to one of the peaks of the Gissar Range, a tanker of the Russian fleet and a small planet.