It was the first time in the USSR that a capture of such a scale took place. passenger aircraft(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 the aircraft. 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 were ordered to follow at full speed to the site of a possible disaster.

The board did not respond to any of the requests. A few more minutes - and the An-24 left the airspace of the USSR. And in the sky over the Turkish coastal airfield of Trabzon, two rockets flashed - red, then green. It was a signal emergency landing. 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.

BLACK ENVELOPE

I flew to the place of emergency in a few hours. He flew, not knowing either the circumstances of the drama or the name of the murdered flight attendant. Everything had to be found out on the spot.

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. To tell about it, first of all, 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 bear 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, letting the water shoot up with sparkling tiny cannonballs, 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.

Having drunk the crew, she returned to her compartment. At that moment, the bell rang: one of the passengers called the flight attendant. She approached. Passenger said:

- Pass it on to the commander immediately, - and handed her some kind of envelope.

"ATTACK! HE'S ARMED!"

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 door luggage compartment— further 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:

- Return to your seat. You can't come here!

But he took out a weapon - the nerves burned to the ground. Nadia did not know his intentions. But I knew he was absolutely dangerous. Dangerous for the crew, dangerous for the passengers.

She clearly saw the revolver.

Opening the cockpit, she shouted to the crew with all her might:

- Attack! He is armed!

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!

Trabzon. The released passengers of Flight 244 cry with happiness.

BATTLE AT THE LAST LINE

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 the weapon out of 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 they were at the moment of the attack, and immediately filled up the roaring car 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.

The young man opened his gray cloak, and the passengers saw grenades - they were tied to their belts.

"This is for you! he shouted. “If anyone else gets up, we’ll split the plane!”

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 - pulled out 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. The depressurization of the aircraft was not yet threatened - the height was negligible.

The next moment after the second shot, the young man opened his gray cloak and people saw grenades - they were tied to his belt.

- This is for you! he shouted. - If anyone else gets up - we will split 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.

Struck by the incredible resistance of Nadia, enraged by his own impotence to cope with the wounded, bloody, 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!

42 BULLETS ON THE CREW

Another bullet pierced the back of the commander - Grigory Chakhrakiya. In order to keep at least a little blood in his body, so as not to lose consciousness and not to drop the steering wheel from his hands, Grigory pressed himself against the back of the commander's chair with all his might. The next shot - a bullet paralyzes the right arm of the navigator Valery Fadeev and hits the chest. There is a communication microphone in his hand, Fadeev loses consciousness, no one can open his hand with a microphone - each of the crew members is already wounded, Nadia is dead.

There is no way out: the plane must not fall into the sea - there are 46 passengers in the cabin, there are children. The co-pilot sees: the commander still loses consciousness. Shavidze takes control - he drives the car, as in a nightmare: in a cabin filled with the blood of friends, among screaming criminals, under the threat of a sawn-off shotgun and a revolver, under the threat of grenades.

When a Turkish coastal airfield appears in a gray dream of reality, it fires emergency rockets into the sky. And the plane, pierced by forty-two bullets, falls to the hard foreign ground ...

LOOKING THROUGH THE YEARS

WHILE HOPE LIVES...

For courage and heroism, Nadezhda Kurchenko was awarded military order of the Red Banner, 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.

It was necessary: ​​to allocate an air corridor for the return of the hijacked aircraft; air corridor for the transfer of injured crew members and those passengers who needed urgent care from Trabzon hospitals medical care; 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.

There were many concerns. But all these dramatic actions could not alleviate the acute pain of the loss - Nadia remained at the center of any conversations of a huge country, television and radio programs, newspapers.

Air Marshal, Minister civil aviation USSR Boris Pavlovich Bugaev. I twice - due to circumstances - talked on the phone with the minister, who listened to wishes, advice, requests to meet Nadia's mother in Sukhumi, decide on the place of burial, and other actions. Could there be something similar in our hectic days - the concern of the minister of a superpower about the fate of the murdered flight attendant of a tiny non-commissioned flight?

No. Couldn't. In any case, I don't believe in it.

In Komsomolskaya Pravda, where I then worked (and was the first and only journalist from Moscow at the site of the tragedy), only in the first two weeks after even the censored reports received more than 12 thousand letters and telegrams from shocked readers who mourned Nadya and admired her courage !

There was such a country. And there were such people. Is it possible today?

On the day of Nadia's funeral, over her coffin littered with flowers and over the heads of thousands of people following her coffin through the streets of the city, all the planes leaving for the flight shook their wings, demonstrating tribute to their protector, their young colleague, their heroine. In each of these planes, flight attendants tearfully told their passengers:

“Look down until you can see the city. These people say goodbye to our friend. With our Nadia.

Do you believe that we are all the same?

... Nadia's mother, Henrietta Ivanovna, with whom I stood at Nadia's coffin and who dryly and lifelessly repeated, looking at her daughter's strikingly beautiful face:“Now you don’t laugh at me, you are serious with me,”handed me notes, notebooks, Nadya's papers. Among them, I found the phrase of a 9th grade student Nadezhda Kurchenko:

“I want to be a worthy daughter of the Motherland and I am ready to give my life for this, if necessary.”

I absolutely believe in these words that are familiar to hearing, but written by Nadia's hand and heart.

PAY

The bandits punished themselves

The terrorists turned out to be 46-year-old Lithuanian Pranas Brazinskas (pictured right), a former store manager from Vilnius, and his 13-year-old son Algirdas (left). The Turkish authorities refused to extradite the criminals to the USSR and condemned them themselves. The eldest received eight years, the youngest two. After some time, both were released under an amnesty, and the bandits moved to Venezuela, and from there to the USA: they got off the plane in New York bound for Canada. The Lithuanian diaspora obtained permission to leave them in the country.

The Brazinskas settled in Santa Monica, California. In February 2002, 77-year-old Pranas had an argument with his son, for which he received several fatal blows with a bat. Algirdas was sentenced to 16 years in prison.

“My clear star, how far you are from me…”

The people dedicated a song written on a completely different occasion to the feat of Nadezhda Kurchenko ...

1973 The ballad "My Clear Star" flew around the Soviet Union like a dove. No one had any doubts: the song is dedicated to the young stewardess, forever remaining in the sky. Murdered three weeks before the wedding. And performed on behalf of her fiancé. The sad story is still replicated on the Internet to this day. However, this is just a beautiful legend…

Composer Vladimir Semyonov:

“Many sang and sing this song. But it seems to me that Sasha Losev was and remains her best performer ... "

Soloist of the student amateur ensemble, winner of the district competition, where the main prize is the recording of his own record at the Melodiya company ...

The tragic halo that the song acquired, 22 years later, covered its first performer with a black cloud. Shortly before his departure, Losev admitted that before he sang "My Clear Star" with one subtext, now - in memory of his son who died early. And summed up the sad result:

“Inexplicably, the main song in the program became the main one in life.”

The main song "Asterisk" became in the life of the composer Vladimir Semenov. He was already 35 years old. Behind Astrakhan, an automobile and road technical school, a home-made electric guitar and hundreds of kilometers on a battered bus that traveled around with concert teams of the Astrakhan Philharmonic ...

“Of course, I remember the story of the hijacking of the plane, then they wrote a lot about the feat of Nadia,” says Semenov. - But, to be honest, I didn’t think about anything like that when I took out a small collection of poems from the Vologda poetess Olga Fokina from the store shelf. Literally 12-13 pages printed on thin newsprint. I started flipping through them and suddenly came across the words “People have different songs, but mine is one for centuries.” There was something about these lines that grabbed me.

A song was born, which Semenov showed to his friend, composer Sergei Dyachkov. He brought Semenov to Stas Namin, who led the vocal and instrumental ensemble. They recorded a small disc, consisting of three compositions - Oscar Feltsman's song “Flowers Have Eyes”, Sergey Dyachkov's song “Don't” and Vladimir Semenov's ballad “My Clear Star”. It scattered across the country with a circulation of almost 7 million copies!

“After all the hassle - rehearsals, recordings - my wife and I went to rest in Sochi,” recalls composer Vladimir Semenov today. - I’m lying on the sand and suddenly I hear something familiar - somewhere in the distance a ship is sailing, a huge, Intourist one, and Sasha Losev’s voice comes from there:

“People have different songs, but mine is one for the ages!”

Vologda poetess Olga Fokina wrote these lines a few years before the tragedy aboard the An-24. Lines about my own, very personal. Her famous fellow countryman, the writer Fyodor Abramov, said that Olga

“very close to life, in her poems there is always no fiction, no letters, no words - poems are generated by life itself ... they captivate, enchant you with sincerity, purity and immediacy of feelings.”

October 15 marks the 45th anniversary of 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 were ordered to follow at full speed to the site of a possible disaster.

The board did not respond to any of the requests. A few more minutes - and the An-24 left the airspace of the 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 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 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 an airplane bear 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, letting the water shoot up with sparkling tiny cannonballs, 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.

Having drunk the crew, she returned to her compartment. At that moment, the bell rang: one of the passengers called the flight attendant. She approached. Passenger said:
- Pass it on to the commander immediately, - and handed her some kind of envelope.

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.

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 they were at the moment of the attack, and immediately filled up the roaring car 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, she 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 his belt.
- This is for you! he shouted. - If anyone else gets up, we'll blow up the plane!
It was obvious that this was not an empty threat - if they failed, they had nothing to lose.

Meanwhile, despite the evolution of the plane, the 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.
Struck by the incredible resistance of Nadia, enraged by his own impotence to cope with the wounded, bloody, 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.
Next was the massacre. Their shots were muffled by their own cries:
- 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 in 1970 ill-fated flight. - 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." Even the thought flashed 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.

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.

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 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 people..

Immediately after the hijacking in the USSR, sparing TASS reports appear:
“October 15 civil aircraft air fleet An-24 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 injured, 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”.

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.

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.

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 Brazinskas again surrendered to 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 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 "premeditated 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 when the tyrant finally died, Algirdas, a man in his prime, would 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.

October 15 marks the 45th anniversary of 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 were ordered to follow at full speed to the site of a possible disaster.
The board did not respond to any of the requests. A few more minutes - and the An-24 left the airspace of the 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 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 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 an airplane bear 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, letting the water shoot up with sparkling tiny cannonballs, 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.
Having drunk the crew, she returned to her compartment. At that moment, the bell rang: one of the passengers called the flight attendant. She approached. Passenger said:
- Pass it on to the commander immediately, - and handed her some kind of envelope.

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.
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 they were at the moment of the attack, and immediately filled up the roaring car 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 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, she 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 his belt.
- This is for you! he shouted. - If anyone else gets up, we'll blow up the plane!
It was obvious that this was not an empty threat - if they failed, they had nothing to lose.
Meanwhile, despite the evolution of the plane, the 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.
Struck by the incredible resistance of Nadia, enraged by his own impotence to cope with the wounded, bloody, 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.
Next was the massacre. Their shots were muffled by their own cries:
- 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 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." Even the thought flashed 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.
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.
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 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 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.
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 injured, 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”.

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.
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.

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, which allegedly threatened 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 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 "premeditated 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 when the tyrant finally died, Algirdas, a man in his prime, would 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.

Exactly 45 years ago, our compatriot, flight attendant Nadezhda Kurchenko, set off on her last flight. In a fight with terrorists, she died protecting the crew and passengers of the aircraft.

Forty-five years ago, on October 15, 1970, terrorists hijacked a passenger plane for the first time in the world. It happened in the Soviet Union in the sky above Black Sea coast Caucasus. A fragile young stewardess, a native of the Altai Territory, Nadezhda Kurchenko, tried to hide the pilots from an angry armed bandit. IA "Amitel" offers to recall the chronicle of these tragic events.

View from the ground

An-24 took off from the Batumi airfield on October 15, 1970 at 12:30. Course - to Sukhumi. There were 46 passengers and five crew members on board. Scheduled flight time is 25-30 minutes. But life broke both the schedule and the schedule.

At the ninth 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 were ordered to follow at full speed to the site of a possible disaster.

The board did not respond to any of the requests. A few more minutes - and the An-24 left the airspace of the 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.

View from childhood

In the Soviet Union, the status of a flight attendant was only slightly lower than that of a film actress or pop singer. Plays were written about them, films were made, songs were dedicated to them. Nadya Kurchenko was born on December 29, 1950 in the Altai Territory.

Her childhood was dense forests near her native village of Novo-Poltava (Klyuchevsky district), excellent grades at school, a large and friendly group of peers. Later, the Nadia family moved to the homeland of their mother, Henrietta Semyonovna, in the village of Ponino, Glazovsky district (Udmurtia).

After graduating from school, Nadia went to a distant Southern City Sukhumi, where she began working first in the accounting department of the airport, and when she was 18 years old, she switched to working as a flight attendant.

In the very first year of work, the first serious test came - a fire on board the aircraft and the need for it to land with one engine. For the impeccable performance of her duties in an emergency, Nadezhda Kurchenko was awarded a nominal watch.

Nadezhda had many plans: entering a law school, marrying her school friend Vladimir Borisenko. In May 1970, Nadezhda came on vacation to her relatives. We agreed that the wedding would be played on the November or New Year holidays. And on October 15, the girl went on her last flight.

View from the plane

Flight 244 from Batumi to Krasnodar with a stop in Sukhumi was considered short and uncomplicated, from Batumi to Sukhumi only half an hour of summer. 46 people boarded the AN-24. Among them was a middle-aged man with a fifteen-year-old son - Pranas and Algirdas Brazinskas.

Ten minutes after takeoff, Brazinskas Sr., who was sitting next to the service compartment, called Nadezhda Kurchenko and ordered her to take an envelope with a note to the cockpit. The typewritten text contained a demand to change the route and a threat of death in case of disobedience. The geek with a weapon went to the cockpit, but a fragile flight attendant stood in his way.

Further on the plane began a massacre. The first bullet hit Nadia 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. Struck by the incredible resistance of Nadia, enraged by his own impotence to cope with the wounded, bloody, 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.

The slaughter continued already with the pilots. The navigator Valery Fadeev, the flight mechanic Hovhannes Babayan were wounded, the bullet shattered the spine of the pilot Georgy Chakhrakia. The wounded pilots landed the liner in the nearest Turkish Trabzon. Later, investigators counted 42 bullets fired.

The Turkish authorities were indulgent towards the hijackers - after serving a short term and being released under an amnesty, they moved to the United States, but that's a completely different story.

Afterword

Nadezhda Kurchenko was buried in Sukhumi in the form of a stewardess and with a Komsomol badge; 20 years later, at the request of her mother, the ashes were reburied in Glazov. The tanker, the peak of the Gissar Range and the planet in the constellation Capricorn were named after Nadezhda. In addition, after the death of flight attendant Kurchenko, the rules for passenger safety during air travel were radically changed and the norms of international laws against air terrorism were tightened.

It seems that heaven itself decided to put an end to the heavenly tragedy. In early 2002, news reports flashed a message that in Santa Monica, California, 46-year-old Albert Victor White killed his father with a baseball bat. Albert turned out to be the former Algirdas, the murdered - ex-Pranas. Now Brazinskas senior is in the grave, the youngest is in prison.