Lieutenant Colonel Yuri Ivanovich Stavitsky, Hero of Russia:
- The total number of sorties I have is more than seven hundred. But we also had such pilots who had one thousand two hundred sorties. A person is drawn into this rhythm and no longer wants to leave. And I, in general, envied the pilots of the army aviation: they flew in for a year, bombed, shot - and went home!.. And I had to spend on the border with Afghanistan from 1981 to 1989. Psychologically, it helped that we were still based on the territory of the Soviet Union.
For me personally, Afghanistan began in the spring of 1981. I flew to the border of Afghanistan and Central Asia in my helicopter from Vladivostok on April 30, 1981. The Mary border airfield is located there. We flew for a whole month. According to the logbook, only a clean flight is fifty hours. During the flight, my pilot-navigator was Mikhail Kapustin. And during the ferry, we became very good friends. And when on August 6, 1986, he died in the Tulukan area (his side was shot down from a hand grenade launcher), I gave myself my word: if we have a son, we will call him Mikhail. And so it happened - the son was born a month later in September 1986. And we named him Michael.
Previously, there were planes at the Mary airfield, but then they were relocated to another place. Only the MI-8 and MI-24 helicopters remained. I still remember the call sign of the airfield itself - "Patron".
The fact that the border troops were participating in hostilities was a secret until 1982, we were forbidden to disclose our belonging to the border troops.
After completing the task on the other side, we almost always returned to our airfield. But when they drove the high command and if they stayed in Afghanistan to work, then we also stayed with them for a day, for two. When there were technical failures, we also had to stay (in these cases we tried to get closer to ours).
Throughout 1981, we were engaged in transport and combat work. And I remembered my first fight very well. Then they took me only to "lead" (as the helicopter pilots say). After all, I flew in the so-called MI-8 "buffet", which has no suspension for either machine guns or nurs (NURS. Unguided missiles. - Ed.), Only fuel tanks. Therefore, they put the follower, where I had to just fly after the leader. We flew at a height of four or five hundred meters. And then they began to work on us from the ground! The leading side fired, left … I, trying not to break away from him, also made turns, dived, pretended to go to the target. But I had nothing to shoot with … Thank God, this time everything worked out.
In the early 80s, we still did not know anything about MANPADS (portable anti-aircraft missile system. - Ed.). But they almost always worked with small arms on us from the ground. Sometimes it was visible, and sometimes not. The working DShK (Detyarev-Shpagin heavy machine gun. - Ed.) Is especially noticeable: flashes appear, similar to an electric welding arc. And if you fly low, you even hear the queues.
At first, we tried to get away from small arms as high as possible, to a height of two to three thousand meters. It was not so easy to hit us with machine guns at this height. But in 1985-1986, the spirits began to shoot down our helicopters from MANPADS. In 1988, in one day, two crews were shot down by "stingers". With this in mind, we began to fly at both low and extremely low altitudes. And if we fly over the desert, then as if they always lay down on their belly for twenty to thirty meters and flew above the ground itself.
But flying in the mountains at extremely low altitudes is very difficult. And it is almost impossible to get up from the "stinger", because the range of its action is three and a half thousand meters. Therefore, even if you fly at the maximum altitude, you can still be hit by a stinger from a mountain a thousand meters high.
The Lord took me away from the MANPADS, but I got under both automatic and machine-gun fire, they hit me at close range … The instruments went out, it smelled of kerosene, but the car still pulled. Of course, two engines helped out. If one refused, then he pulled the second, and on it it was possible to somehow crawl to the airfield and sit down like an airplane.
In Afghanistan, in October 1981, we had a military operation with an amphibious assault, during which the "spirits" were waiting for us. We walked in several groups, in threes. I was in the second or third three. While hovering at close range, our first helicopter was shot from machine guns. The group was led by Major Krasnov. In his helicopter was the commander of the task force, Colonel Budko. He was sitting in the middle in the place of the flight technician. A bullet from the DShK hit the leg.
While hovering, our helicopters responded with "nursami". After that, the helicopters began to leave. But one side of Captain Yuri Skripkin was still knocked out, and he himself died. Miraculously survived the right pilots and flight technician. They jumped out of the burning car along with the paratroopers and then fought a whole night near the helicopter. Ours helped as best they could: they illuminated the battlefield, fired at targets where they were pointing from the ground. One of the crew members had a small radio station, 392nd, which survived the fall. Thanks to her, we knew where the spooks were sitting, where to shoot. But our helicopters themselves could not land in this Kufab gorge at night. When dawn broke, we began to inflict massive bombing strikes, our group was completely ready for hostilities. In this case, there was no complete defeat of the "spirits". But with our blows we forced them to retreat and took our own - both the living and the dead.
After a while, there was a very typical situation in Pyanj. There was some kind of break in the combat operation, when usually only the couple on duty are left in place, the rest leave for lunch. The canteen was two kilometers away in the border detachment. And here I was in this pair on duty. And this must happen: as soon as the boards flew away, helicopters were urgently called in according to the situation. Our "boxes" with the landing force were squeezed near the village of Imam-Sahib in Afghanistan, we had to immediately fly out to their aid.
Already on the way to the Imam-Sahib, on the way, they learned that the commander of the group of "boxes" had been killed. Many pilots knew him. After all, we often talked with the infantry and ate porridge together. I remember that we were so angry!.. We asked the infantry over the radio: where, what, how? We start to spin. The infantry guides us and shows us with tracer bullets at the Bai house, from where the fire was coming. This time we did not think for a long time and “Nursami” smashed this house to smithereens.
We ask: "Well, guys, is everything okay?" They say that everything seems to be fine. We are already going to leave. But then they shouted from the ground: “They're shooting again!..”.
We returned. It can be seen that they are shooting from somewhere to the right, but it is not precisely determined from where exactly. And then I saw that in the old dry riverbed, among the boulders, people were lying: blue trousers and white turbans were clearly visible from the air. There were fifteen or twenty of them. And again, a wave of rage rolled over! I say to the wingman, Captain Vaulin: “Volodya, I can see them! Join me. We go into the river bed and hit the "Nursami"! ". And then it became clear that neither I, nor he had "nurses" … This was a lesson for me for the rest of my life. I always left a volley or two afterwards just in case.
We only have machine guns left in our armament. On my farms hung two PKT (Kalashnikov tank machine gun. - Ed.) Of 7, 62 mm caliber, which I could only operate together with a helicopter. There was also an onboard machine gun, from which the flight technician usually fired from an open door. But on another MI-8TV helicopter, the machine gun was more serious - caliber 12, 7. We stood in a circle and began to pour spirits from everything that was. While I am on a straight line, Volodya walks in a circle, and his flight technician hits with a machine gun from an open door. Then we change - he went on a straight line, I walk in a circle. The circle is always left, counterclockwise. The crew commander always sits on the left, so he can see the battlefield better.
I went on a straight line, then Volodya, then me again. I walk at a low level at a height of twenty meters above the ground, I hit with machine guns … And at the same time I look, as if my bullets ricocheted off rocks or stones at me - this also happened. Up to this point, the "spirits" tried to hide. But then, it seems, they realized that they had nowhere to go. We have already gotten many during this time. Suddenly I see how one rises, and in his hands is a PKS (Kalashnikov machine gun easel. - Ed.)! The distance to it was forty or fifty meters. At the moment of the attack, feelings are all sharpened: you see in a different way, you hear in a different way. So I got a good look at him: a very young guy, about twenty. Afghans usually look good at forty-five at the age of twenty-five.
I could only control machine guns together with the helicopter body. Therefore, I cannot bend the helicopter below in order to get the "spirit" - then I will definitely stick into the ground. And then there was a roar … This "spirit" from the hand began to shoot at us!.. I hear the blows of bullets on the fuselage, then the pedals jerked with some unnatural force. There was a smell of kerosene, the smoke went … I shout to the follower: “Volodya, go away, there's a machine gun!..” He: “Yura, you go away yourself! I see him, now I will shoot!.. ". And he removed this "spirit" from the machine gun.
I went towards the airfield (it was forty kilometers away). Volodya still hovered over the river bed, but there was no longer anyone alive there. He caught up with me and asked: "Well, how are you?" Me: “Yes, we seem to be walking normally. True, one engine went to low gas and smells like kerosene. According to the fuel meter, the consumption of kerosene is above the norm."
So we went as a couple. If we had to sit down, Volodya was ready to pick us up. But we made it. We sat down at the airfield, got out, and looked: and the helicopter, like a colander, is all full of holes!.. And the tanks are punctured! So that's why the consumption of kerosene was so high: it just flowed out through the bullet holes. But the most interesting thing is that not a single bullet hit any of us. And then an amazing story really turned out: the flight technician, who was firing from the side door with a machine gun, went to fetch a new store. And just at this moment in this place a bullet pierces the floor of the helicopter!.. Above the door hangs a stretched cable, to which the paratroopers fasten the carabiners of the halyards. So this cable was cut off with a bullet, like a knife! If he had not left, then everything, the end of him …
We looked - and in other places where we sat - holes in the fuselage. It turned out that the pedals hit me in the legs because the bullet hit the tail rotor control rod. The rod is a large diameter pipe. The bullet hit her flat. If she hit the deadlift straight, she would definitely interrupt her completely. Then the tail rotor would rotate, but I would no longer be able to control it. There were cases when, with such damage, they still landed like an airplane, but we were lucky: the thrust did not break, a hole just formed in it.
We then got a great hat from the authorities. They explained to us that we cannot fly at low altitudes. Extremely low height - twenty meters. You can't go below, because if you gape a little, the helicopter will stick into the ground.
And in 1984 I had to transfer to a large MI-26 helicopter. Before that, there were no such people in the border troops. But the flow of cargo was so great that the chief of aviation of the border troops, General Nikolai Alekseevich Rokhlov, decided to adopt two such helicopters.
This is a very special car, even in size - it is more than forty meters long. Together with another crew from Dushanbe, we were retraining in Torzhok near Kalinin in the army retraining center.
In 1988, on this machine, we, the first in the history of domestic aviation, had to complete a very difficult task - to pick up an MI-8 helicopter from the territory of Afghanistan, from the Chahi-Ab region. A group from the Moscow border detachment was sitting in that place. The aircraft of Major Sergei Balgov, who took part in the operation in the area, was hit. The helicopter was shot through, but survived and was subject to restoration. We were given the command to evacuate this plane. (By that time, they had already tried not to lose the cars, they were expensive! In total, Soviet aviation in Afghanistan lost three hundred thirty-three helicopters. One can imagine how much it cost the country!)
By that time, I already had a double experience of transporting MI-8 helicopters on an external sling. But both times the work took place on its own territory. And here you have to work on the other side. In the area of our border detachment near Dushanbe, we flew for an hour and a half to burn off excess fuel. Captain Sergei Merzlyakov, a specialist in airborne transport equipment, was on board. I worked with him on the first two sides. He, of course, played a very important role in the fact that we were able to successfully complete this task. From a technical point of view, this is a very difficult operation. The MI-26 helicopter itself is a very complex machine, here it was also necessary to properly fix the eight-ton MI-8 on the external sling!..
Before us, the blades were removed from the downed helicopter. We arrived at the place, sat down. Technicians "spider" picked up MI-8. I hovered a little to the side, the "spider" was connected to my external harness, and then I hovered exactly over the helicopter. This was very important, otherwise swinging during lifting could not be avoided. This experience was gained during the first transportation, when, together with the Hero of the Soviet Union, General Farid Sultanovich Shagalei, we almost threw off the car due to swaying. For a stable position of the suspended machine, it is necessary to move at a low speed of one hundred kilometers per hour and a vertical speed of five meters per second. So we went: up, then down, then up, then down …
The evacuation route was laid out in advance, taking into account intelligence data. And although I was accompanied by a couple of MI-24, any meeting with the dushmans could end in tears for us. After all, there was no possibility of even minimally maneuvering. But God had mercy on us, and we did not come under fire.
One MI-26 replaced a whole column of vehicles (it could lift about fifteen tons). But for security reasons, we never took people on MI-26 to the other side. And therefore, when in 2002 I heard that in Chechnya more than a hundred people were loaded into MI-26, and this helicopter was shot down, I could not understand for a long time: how could one afford it at all? food, and ammunition, and fuel. Gasoline, for example, was transported in three containers of four thousand liters each. Once, when the commander of the detachment, Major Anatoly Pomytkin, was flying, the tanks were poured under the throat. When climbing to a height and changing pressure, gasoline began to expand and flow out of the containers. The wingman saw a white petrol train behind us. God forbid some kind of spark - would have burned out in one second …
In 1988 it became clear that we were leaving Afghanistan. Even a specific day was named. Therefore, the command reduced flights to a minimum. We only supported our border airborne assault groups that were operating on the other side. Here, too, the situation with the "stingers" became very difficult. Because of them, because of the damned, we began to fly at night, although it was strictly forbidden by the guidelines for flight work.
Once General Ivan Petrovich Vertelko, who was in charge of the operation of our combat groups in Afghanistan, arrived at the airfield in Maimen, where one of our such group was sitting. He decided to conduct a military operation. But there was not enough ammunition, especially the shells for the "hail". They had to be delivered by MI-26 helicopters at night. Here we had to sweat, as they say …
We took off with three sides. At an altitude of three thousand meters, I was the first to go on the MI-26 with ammunition. MI-8 went to three three hundred, and another MI-8 went to three six hundred. They were supposed to cover me. One of the helicopters had a luminous SAB bomb in case of an emergency, if you had to land in the dark to somehow illuminate the landing site.
On the helicopters, only the front lights were burning from above. They are not visible from the ground. The second board sees me, the third one sees the second and, perhaps, me. I don't see anyone. If some lights were still visible from below on the territory of the Union, then after crossing the border, there was complete darkness below. Sometimes some kind of fire breaks out. But then the tracers went forward.
"Spirits" heard the roar of our helicopters. The sound is clear: something powerful is flying. They probably thought we were flying low and started shooting. But at night it is almost impossible to shoot by ear, and the tracks went very far to the side.
We walked over the steppe regions, so our real height was three thousand meters. At such a height, the DShK did not reach us. We ourselves tried to do everything to survive; they themselves changed frequencies at radio stations, altitudes and routes. But the main task was to bypass those areas where the gangs with "stingers" were located.
This time it was especially hard. We came to the point. And the airfield is mountainous! We must go down - but the mountains themselves are not visible! Four landing lights were lit on the ground in bowls. I had to sit in this quadrangle. But in the mountains, even during the day, it is very difficult to determine the distance to the slope. And at night you look: something dark is approaching you … You intellectually understand (after all, you flew in this place during the day) that it is in this place that you cannot collide with a slope! But the mood is so oppressive at this moment … You begin to roll more and more to increase, the spiral of decline to twist more and more. It is impossible to sit down like a helicopter, hovering, because then you will raise dust with screws, in which you can very easily lose your spatial position. And when the pilot ceases to see the ground, he loses orientation in space (it was in such a situation that many accidents happened). Therefore, we had to sit down like an airplane. But here another problem arises: the airfield is mined on all sides. Consequently, it was necessary not to sit down to the bowls with lights and at the same time not to leave the bowls after landing. Of course, it was also very difficult to stop a loaded car when landing in an airplane way, the brakes of such a heavy car are not effective. That is, my work had to be done with jewelry.
At the base, we loaded up thoroughly: the cargo was packed and secured very carefully, completely in accordance with the instructions for placing the cargo in the cargo hold, and spent half a day on it, but they unloaded us instantly - the soldiers in the uniform "boots-cowards-machine" ran very quickly …
There was no time to deploy the helicopter on the ground. Therefore, when I began to take off, on the load, which was not very heavy, the soldiers simply lay down flat, otherwise the air flow from the propellers would have simply blown away everything light. I climbed to a height of thirty meters, turned around and went back to the base. There was little time before dawn. We made the second trip of the night more cunningly. With gasoline, they generally came up with the following scheme: they drove the tanker himself into the helicopter, and when he landed, he just had to unfasten it. He himself left the helicopter, and an empty one was loaded in his place.
Of course, flying with gas on board was very dangerous. One of the slaves, my classmate at the Saratov School, Sergei Bykov, who was walking higher, saw tracers that "spirits" were letting off the ground at the sound of my helicopter. And if at least one stray bullet had hit us, it’s not hard to imagine what would have happened to us. The mood was no better when transporting shells for the "Grads". We loaded twelve or fourteen tons of them, and eight tons of our own kerosene. So, God forbid, if they hit us, we would have to collect the debris far away …
What was the stress, especially during the decline, can be understood from this example. At the navigator, a navigation ruler suddenly fell from the work table (it is like a logarithmic one, only with different numbers). Well, what such a sound could be from its fall against the background of working engines!.. But at such moments everything is exacerbated to the limit: smell, sight, hearing. So this extraneous sound seemed to us just a terrible roar! Where?.. What happened?.. And when they realized what was the matter, how everyone attacked the navigator!.. They called him very bad words, and my soul felt better …
At night, we flew to the other side only eight or ten times. This was quite enough for us … But when you now tell civilian pilots that we flew in the MI-26 to the mountains at night, they just twist their fingers to their temples … But there was no other way. During the day, we would definitely crawl under the stinger. It was a situation according to the proverb: wherever you throw it, there is a wedge everywhere …
The high accuracy of the stinger launches could also be explained by this: the “spirit”, launching the rocket, understood that in case of a hit, he was entitled to a great reward: wife, money … and at the same time he understood if, unfortunately, he missed then not be alive to him. First, the Stinger itself is very expensive (the cost of one rocket is $ 80,000 in 1986 prices - Ed.). And yet this very "stinger" had to be transported from Pakistan in a caravan through our ambushes! And this is not easy! Therefore, they were specially trained to shoot from MANPADS. This is not what they gave a simple peasant a gun, and he began to shoot from it. Each rocket they had was simply worth its weight in gold. And even more than that - the price was her life. If hit, the lives of those on board. And in case of a miss - the one who missed. Such is the arithmetic …
On February 14, 1989, the day before the official withdrawal of troops, I still flew to the other side, and on February 15 I was already at my airfield in Dushanbe. A rally was immediately organized right on the site. But the complete withdrawal of Soviet troops as such in February 1989 did not happen. For a long time we covered the withdrawal of army groups and guarded the bridge across Termez to Hairaton.
I have long dreamed of transferring to serve in the Arctic and trying MI-26 in completely different climatic conditions, and in general, over the years I was so tired of this heat … But the commander of our aviation, General Rokhlov, said: "Until the war is over, you will not go anywhere." And finally, on March 21, 1989, my dream came true! We loaded the belongings of the entire crew's families into MI-26 and flew north. On March 23, we were already in Vorkuta. In Dushanbe it was plus twenty, the grass turned green, and when we arrived in Vorkuta, it was already minus twenty there. Then I couldn't even imagine that I would have to return to Dushanbe again.
But in 1993, our first crews from Dushanbe began to fly to the other side of the border again. And some kind of cargo was transported, and dushmans were pinched. By that time I was serving in Gorelovo near St. Petersburg. And the more or less measured course of life was again disrupted. Many, perhaps, remember the reports of the attack on the twelfth outpost of the Moscow border detachment in Tajikistan (this was shown on TV more than once). And it became clear to the Command that the border guards in Dushanbe could not do without helicopters.
When the first crews went to Afghanistan, it became clear to me that my turn would soon come. And she came in September 1996. We got to Moscow by train, where we boarded an FSB plane that went from Vnukovo to Dushanbe. Aviation there was commanded by General Shagaliev, Hero of the Soviet Union, with whom I once dragged a plane from Afghanistan on MI-26. He said to me: “Yura, you are great for arriving. There is a lot of work."
I needed to regain permission to fly in the mountains. To do this, it was necessary to fly two or three times with an instructor and land at different heights on sites selected from the air. At that time, a man who had never left these places, Major Sasha Kulesh, also boarded a helicopter with me. So he served in these parts for fifteen years without replacement …
At first, we did not have large-scale tasks to support combat operations. We transported goods from the outpost to the outpost, circled between the commandant's offices. At that moment, the border guards inflicted huge damage on those who tried to drag the wineskins with drugs through the Pyanj. One day, the border guards attacked the rafts on which the waterskins were ferried, and took a lot of this potion. And the "spirits" in revenge captured our border detachment - two soldiers - and dragged them to the other side. And only after some time, with great difficulty, we received the bodies of our guys back very badly mutilated. The command decided to carry out an operation to eliminate the bandit groups.
Our intelligence worked on both sides of the Pyanj. Our people knew in which villages these "spirits" lived, where they were based, where their families lived. Preparations for the operation began. But the "spirits" did not sleep either.
Once we sat at the Kalai-Khumb airfield. And then the sound of a flying mine is heard!.. All at once stopped playing backgammon. Cotton, more cotton, more cotton, more … At first it was not clear what was shooting, where it was shooting from … But the fragments quickly figured out that these were 120-mm mines. And they can fly only from the dominant heights.
The commander of our helicopter regiment, Colonel Lipovoy, has arrived from Dushanbe. Says to me: "Fly with me." It was September 29, 1996, Sunday. They took off, began to patrol … One MI-8 and one MI-24 followed us. They shot in different directions in the hope of provoking the "spirits". But this time we did not find the battery. They sat down, began to re-equip, refuel. Here Lipovoy sat on the left, I - on the right. We flew again.
The second time they began to examine the area more thoroughly. We flew low: the true height was forty to fifty meters. And the barometric one, above sea level, is three thousand two hundred meters. This is the height of those mountains where, as we assumed, the battery was located.
This time we have already begun to fire at everything that seemed suspicious to us. I - through the right blister from a machine gun, a flight technician - from a machine gun. Again and again they tried to provoke the "spirits" to return fire. And this time the spirits could not stand it. From a distance of seven hundred meters we were hit by a DShK machine gun. It is impossible to shoot at this distance even with "nursami", because you can get hit by your own fragments. When they opened fire on us, we saw this machine gun: a very bright characteristic arc flared up, similar to a welding one. I saw the splash first - and immediately threw back the flight engineer Valera Stovba, who was sitting in the middle between me and Lipov. The bullet hit him through the windshield. Before that, he managed to fire a burst from the bow machine gun. Whether she helped MI-24 to see the place where they started shooting, I don't know … But ours quickly got their bearings and hit the “spirits” from everything they had. Then we finished this event with our rockets.
Shouting to the wingman: “Lyosha, be careful! They're shooting!..”, I managed to shoot from a machine gun through the blister in the direction of the DShK, and we started to leave to the left. The spirits, of course, aimed at the cockpit. But there was still a spread, and some of the bullets hit the engine. The right engine immediately went to low throttle, a jet of oil whipped down the blister. We were already flying at an altitude of only forty meters, and then we began to descend.
It's good that the ridge ended and a huge abyss began. We fell into this abyss with a vertical speed of ten meters per second!.. But gradually the main rotor speed was more or less restored, and we went towards the Kalai-Khumb airfield, from where we took off.
When we managed to level the car, Lipovoy asks: "Something is not audible to the navigator, where is he there?" I try to call him on the intercom: "Igor, Igor …". Is silent. Gently, he began to get up. I see Valera Stovba leaned back on the seat. I dragged him into the cargo compartment. I looked - Igor Budai was lying on the floor: no obvious wounds seemed to be visible. And when they pulled him out of the helicopter at the airport, he was still alive. I then thought that maybe it was just a lot of stress and he was in shock. It was only later that the doctors said that a bullet from a 5.45 caliber machine gun pierced the skin of the fuselage, entered his thigh, interrupted an artery there and, tumbling, passed through the whole body …
This was not the first loss in my crew. In 1985, our MI-26 helicopter crashed while landing. We took off from Dushanbe. We are already standing on the runway, threshing with screws, getting ready to taxi. Then a "tablet" drives up and some officers ask to board - they need to go to Khorog. They ask me: "When did you draw up the documents, did you see if there were any people inscribed in them?" The answer is: "No." We didn’t take them, to their happiness. During the fall, our board formed in such a way that they would definitely not have survived in the cargo compartment. In general, then we were faced with the task of delivering fifteen tons of aerial bombs to Khorog. But we flew this flight completely empty, because we had to pick up these bombs in the border detachment on the border with Afghanistan. And if we fell with bombs ?!
It turned out that at the manufacturing plant in Perm, where the main gearbox was made, the fitter did not install one part in the gearbox. And at the forty-first hour of the raid, the transmission shaft, which drives the tail rotor into rotation, came out of the connection with the main gearbox and stopped rotating. The tail rotor stopped right in the air.
In the border detachment, where we had to load the bombs, we counted on landing like an airplane. I sat in the left seat, in the place of the crew commander. When the tail rotor stops, the reactive moment begins to act on the helicopter, which rotates the machine to the left. While our speed had not slowed down very much, the tail boom, like a weather vane, somehow kept the helicopter. But when the speed dropped, we began to turn more and more to the left. In the right chair sat Major Anatoly Pomytkin, the commander of my detachment. When the helicopter got up almost across the runway and completely lost speed, it began to turn even further to the left with a loss of altitude. I then realized that if we don't turn off the engines now, then the helicopter could explode if it hits the ground hard. And only the left pilot has engine stop valves, so I cut out the engines just before the ground.
The direct fall was from forty to fifty meters. We were falling with a roll to the right side. When the propeller touched the ground, the blades immediately began to collapse. One of them hit the escort's cockpit, where the flight mechanic ensign Zhenya Malukhin was sitting. He died instantly. And the navigator, senior lieutenant Alexander Perevedentsev, was behind the right pilot. The same blade struck the armored back of his seat, throwing the chair forward. From this powerful blow, Sasha received severe injuries to his internal organs. He lived for another week, but then died in the hospital. I myself received a compression fracture of the spine. Well, the little things: a concussion and a blow to the face on the control stick. Pomytkin broke his leg. Flight technician Volodya Makarochkin got off the easiest of all. Three days later he comes to our ward and, as in the movie "Welcome, or No Unauthorized Entry", says: "What are you doing here?..".
After a spinal fracture, according to the rules, you cannot fly for a year. But we were lying in our border hospital, and I asked the doctors: “Do not enter this compression fracture in the medical book, as it seems it never happened. And let there be a concussion. It was impossible to fly with a concussion for only six months, to which I somehow agreed. And the doctors hid this fracture.
But on this bed, whether it was wrong, I lay for a long time, about two months. And all this time, I constantly did exercises so as not to lose flexibility and develop the spine. Even in my thoughts, I did not admit that I would lie in the hospital for a long time, and then do some kind of ground work. And six months later he started flying the MI-26 again. I think that I was able to recover so quickly only because I had a great desire to fly.
