Kozlov, Mikhail Vasilievich

Born on November 5, 1928 in the village of Yezhovo, now the Galich district of the Kostroma region. Russian. He graduated from 10 classes.

In the Soviet Army since 1946. In 1947 he graduated from the Tambov Military Aviation School of Pilots . In 1951 he graduated from the Kirovobad Military Aviation School of Pilots . He served in it as a flight instructor.

Member of the CPSU since 1953.

In 1955 he entered the School of test pilots. After graduating from SHLI in 1957, he worked at the A. N. Tupolev Design Bureau . He participated in the refinement of experimental aircraft, conducted research flights in special and critical modes.

On March 18, 1961, together with the navigator K.I. Malkhasyan, he first raised the prototype of the Tu-128 long-range interceptor into the sky.

In 1966 he graduated from the Moscow Aviation Institute .

The title of Hero of the Soviet Union with the awarding of the Order of Lenin and the Gold Star medal to Mikhail Kozlov was awarded by decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of July 22, 1966 for the courage and heroism shown when testing new aircraft.

In 1970, M.V. Kozlov was appointed head of the flight bureau of the Design Bureau. He participated in factory and state tests of the world's first supersonic passenger aircraft Tu-144, flew on an analogue MiG-21I aircraft. Totally mastered 50 types of aircraft and helicopters.

In 1972, he was awarded the title of Honored Test Pilot of the USSR.

June 2, 1973 at the aviation salon in Le Bourget (France), Mikhail Kozlov, who headed the crew, performed the first demonstration flight of a Tu-144 aircraft with tail number 77102 in accordance with the program. The Concorde showed practically the same thing, but after landing it braked to a complete stop by reverse, then it gave full throttle and went into the sky with a candle. On ordinary liners, this cannot be done, but for an ATP with its powerful engines such a maneuver is permissible. Probably, in the evening of June 2, 1973, after a long debate, the OKB leadership decided to "surpass" Concord. It was decided during the passage over the runway Runway4 to make a "steep" hill, at the end to remove the front wing, and then finish the flight as planned. Such a passage was not practiced, it was not claimed that, generally speaking, it was a violation of the rules of demonstration flights at the exhibition. M.V. Kozlov, according to eyewitnesses, did not agree for a long time, but then he was "persuaded".

Doom

On June 3, the Tu-144 is getting ready for flight, the crew is heading for the aircraft, and here one French correspondent persuades the lead engineer V. N. Benderov to take his movie camera on board and to photograph the flight from the cockpit. Bender agrees. There are 4 people in the cockpit: crew commander M. Kozlov, co-pilot V. Molchanov , navigator G. Bazhenov and test director Major General V. Benderov with a movie camera. Leading engineer B. Pervukhin remained in the cabin.

Take-off from runway 030 was made at 15 hours 19 minutes. After a series of maneuvers, the aircraft made the planned passage over strip 030 at low speed in the takeoff and landing configuration (the landing gear and front wing were released). About 1 kilometer before the end of runway 030 at an altitude of about 190 meters (data on the flight path and aircraft behavior are given based on the processing of film and photo materials), the crew turned on the afterburner and started climbing, removed the landing gear and began to remove the front wing. In the upper part of the trajectory at an altitude of approximately 1200 meters, a small horizontal platform was made. After a short period of time, the aircraft abruptly dived. The angular transition velocity can be considered equal to 8 degrees per second. The maximum pitch angle at the end of this flight phase was approximately 38 degrees. Being in an inclined position, the plane moved to the ground. An attempt was made to release the PC and exit from the dive with a delay of about 4 seconds with an angular speed of up to 5 degrees per second. The height of 750 meters corresponded to the beginning of the exit from the dive, while the angle of heel reached 40 degrees. After about 5 seconds from this moment, the aircraft was destroyed in the air (separation of the left wing console). One second before the start of destruction, the overload coefficient reached 4.5-5g. The destruction began at an altitude of 280 meters at a speed of approximately 220 meters per second (780 km / h). The aircraft performed the left half-barrel and collapsed in the air under the influence of aerodynamic and inertial forces.

During the climb after flying above the runway and subsequent exit to a horizontal platform, the crew could see the Mirage-3 plane suddenly appearing in front of it. As the French side further showed, the Mirage-3 reconnaissance aircraft of the French Air Force flew at the same time at the same rate at a slightly higher altitude. The flight crew of the Tu-144 aircraft did not know anything about the presence of another aircraft in the zone of its flight. The crew of the Mirage was supposed to photograph the flight of the Tu-144.

The wreckage of the Tu-144 aircraft fell at a distance of 6500 meters from the end of runway 030 of Le Bourget Airport to the southern part of the village of Goussainville. The dispersion of the wreckage of the aircraft was located in the area of ​​1000 meters along the flight path and 500 meters perpendicular to the flight path. As a result of the fall of parts of the aircraft on the city of Hussanville, 5 buildings were completely destroyed, 20 were damaged. Among third parties were 8 dead and 25 wounded.

The crew of the aircraft composed of M.V. Kozlov (commander), V.N. Molchanov (2nd pilot), V.N. Benderov (test director), A.I. Dralina (flight engineer), G.N. Bazhenova ( navigator), B. A. Pervukhina (Leading Test Engineer) - died. The remains of the crew after forensic research were sent to Moscow on June 9, 1973.

On June 12, 1973, the funeral of Kozlov and his crew took place at the Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow.

The official report on the cause of the crash read: “... French and Soviet experts unanimously concluded that no abnormality was revealed either in the design or in the general functioning of the aircraft and its systems. The intervention of the human factor is therefore the most likely. The hypothesis that was mentioned most often takes into account two facts. On the one hand, the Mirage-3P aircraft was located near the Tu-144 aircraft. Although the investigation found that there was no real danger of a collision between the two aircraft, this could be a surprise for the Soviet pilot, and he could suddenly maneuver to evade. On the other hand, the crew member - flight test director was in the pilot cockpit of the Tu-144 and was not tied. It is possible that the recent evolutions of the Tu-144 aircraft could cause the fall of this crew member, probably holding a movie camera, which occurred in conditions that caused a temporary blockage of the pilot's actions. This hypothesis does not, however, take into account all the facts noted, and no material evidence was found to either support or refute it. Under these conditions, the commission of inquiry and Soviet experts came to the conclusion that the causes of the disaster should be declared undetermined and the case closed. ”

The conclusions of the commission caused widespread dissatisfaction, and allusions to the guilt of the crew members caused indignation among specialists. But there was no material for an open discussion. The case was classified, and access to it was closed. On the whole, his conclusions satisfied all parties. The costs of compensation and reimbursement of all costs were fully borne by the Soviet Government.

According to representatives of OKB them. A.N. Tupolev, a possible “trigger” was nevertheless a meeting with the Mirage, which, suddenly appearing on the left side from above, at least distracted the attention of the ship's commander MV Kozlov. As a maximum, the sudden appearance of the Mirage made MV Kozlov use a sharp movement to turn the plane right-down. This moment almost coincided with the moment of cleaning the front wing and shifting gear ratios (contrary to the instructions, the experimental block of the HRBA ABSU was turned on). The actions of the crew show that in the initial period the behavior of the aircraft was unexpected for them. But even in this short time, the crew, and first of all its commander, showed amazing flying skills. The command to clean the front wing is given and executed instantly and actions are taken to remove the aircraft from the dive. Unfortunately, on the unfinished aircraft in some areas there were unreinforced places, which are usually finalized according to the results of strength tests. At overload, the destruction of the aircraft structure occurred. In no element of the flight did the crew violate the instructions and did not aggravate the development of the situation by any special actions. Absolutely baseless is the version of the possible guilt of V. N. Benderov. The crew became hostage to the situation.

Leading the investigation were political motives. It was absolutely clear that there was no “supersonic” motive in the disaster. Normal work is required to identify all the factors involved, the development of preventive measures and further work on testing and fine-tuning the Tu-144 aircraft. Actually, this was done. Since August 1973, TsAGI, LII, OKB finalized the control system and ABSU (automatic on-board aircraft control system) of the Tu-144 aircraft, as a result of which the elevon course from the ABSU RA was sharply reduced (instead of + 10 ° they made + 5 °), all signals except the damping signal were removed from the control system (stability improvement and controllability system), a mechanism for balancing the angle of the PC and other measures that were urgently implemented in 1974-75 on all Tu-144 aircraft were introduced. Similar activities were carried out in terms of strength.

• The Gold Star Medal (No. 11260) of the Hero of the Soviet Union (06/22/1966).
• Order of Lenin (06/22/1966).
• Order of the October Revolution .
• Two orders of the Red Star .
• Medal "For Military Merit" (1956).
• Medal "In commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the birth of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin" (1970).
• Anniversary medal "Twenty Years of Victory in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945."
• Anniversary medal "30 years of the Soviet Army and Navy . "
• Anniversary medal "40 years of the Armed Forces of the USSR . "
• Anniversary medal "50 years of the Armed Forces of the USSR . "
• Medal "For Impeccable Service" 1st degree .
• Medal "For Impeccable Service" 2nd degree .

• Honored Test Pilot of the USSR (1972).

• Heroes of the Soviet Union: A Brief Biographical Dictionary / Prev. ed. collegium I. N. Shkadov . - M .: Military Publishing , 1987.- T. 1 / Abaev - Lyubichev /. - 911 p. - 100,000 copies. - ISBN comp., Reg. RCP No. 87-95382.
• "Aircraft of the country of the Soviets" / "Multimedia service", 1998, CD-ROM /
• Bliznyuk V., Vasiliev L., Vul V. et al. The truth about supersonic passenger aircraft. - M.: Moscow Worker, 2000.
• Melik-Karamov V. Life and death of the Tu-144 aircraft // Spark. - 2000, January. - No. 3 (4630).

• Kozlov, Mikhail Vasilievich (Russian) . Site " Heroes of the country ".