Tu-16 crash after a low pass by aircraft carrier USS Essex 

I was there and watched the entire thing while working on the flight deck. I was a helicopter mechanic in HS-9 at the time. When it overflew the flight deck you could feel the heat and smell at jet exhaust. After the flight deck overfly (starboard to port) he continued to fly away from the ship at low level. he gained a little altitude and started to make a left turn, leveled back out, lost altitude and just when it looked like he was going to make a controlled ditching his left wing dipped and hit the water and then he cartwheeled in a ball of flame.. Our helicopters were in the air already and made a beeline for the crash, hovered in the smoke but no one survived. I remember when in went in we cheered, but then quieted down when we all realized that these guys were doing the same thing we were, for the same reason.

I was there on the flight deck. I was an aircraft electrician in VS 34. I remember him coming over the flight deck from starboard to port flying a couple hundred yards and appeared to have stalled hitting his starboard wing tip cartwheeling and exploding. We were launching planes and had hielos up as plane guards they went right over to the crash site to see if they could help to no avail. I don't remember anyone cheering though. This happened in 1968 45 years ago so my memory is probably a bit foggy. This stuff happened every day also many times a Russian destroyer would cut across our bow as we turned into the wind and picked up speed to launch our aircraft. We were doing anti submarine warfare exercizes in the north atlantic at the time

I'm impressed that the aircraft carrier made a low pass over the TU-16.

Ну известное дело! Кривизна земли (или воды в данном случае), это вам не хухры-мухры!

Вот от таких провокаций и начинаются войны. История ничему не учит.

Команда решила пронырнуть под авианосцем удивить лихостью и отвагой..

Read a story one of the Sailors aboard the Essex who shared his experience about this incident he witnessed: he stated there was a general feeling of somber for the Russian aircrew. The Essex deployed a number of aircraft to see if they could rescue the crew. The accident was catastrophic.....God Bless the men & women on both sides...lets hope & pray we find a better way to settle differences.

I was aboard. ESSEX had no fleet - no destroyer screen - no fighters. We were an ASW carrier. Please note the ship was aware of the low altitude approach well in advance of the overflights, The crew was at General Quarters and Air Defense stations (No Drill). No shots were fired. The event is detailed in Dr. David Winkler's "Cold War at Sea" Naval Institute Press, (2000) pp 60-61.

Он был тяжелее воздуха

Looks like somebody made a glaring mistake.

However, once he reported about the coordinates to the soviet fleet deployed in the area, after one of his low passes the plane crashed into the sea. Although it was told by the Soviets that Plyiev may have crashed after trying to dodge an American helicopter, the official version provided by the US Navy - the only witness to the accident - was that the aircraft crashed because one of its wings hit the water.

In May 1968 the aircraft-carrier USS Essex and its fleet were in the Norwegian Sea. The strategic impact of this presence to the USSR was similar to having a column of tanks in the outskirts of Moscow. It was such a threat that the surveillance planes were ordered to keep the USS Essex located all the time with periodical flights, every 4 hours. In spite of this continuous tracking, on May 25 the contact was lost. ....continue

I was an aircraft mechanic on that cruise in1968 in the med is was during Paris peace talks during vet war.the only aircraft on board were antisubmerine Grumman s2s from vs34 and vs39 I also had video of the crash.a large Russian vessel a few days after picked up the bodies of the crew.we were on general quarters but really couldn't do much I was fascinated to find this on you tube.I still have the newspaper from the accident.like the saying there are old pilots and bold pilots but no old bold p

А сьогодні аси можуть повторити "подвиг" Плієва???

Darwin`s award)))

First of all, the F-14 was not reverse engineered from the MIG 25. It came from the failed design of the carrier based F-111B.The origin of the Rockwell B-1 can be traced back to 1961, when the Air Force began to consider alternatives to the North American B-70 Valkyrie, which had just been downgraded from production to test aircraft status.The first B-1 flight aircraft (74-0158) rolled out from USAF Plant 42 at Palmdale, CA on October 26, 1974. It made its first flight on December 23, 1974.

I was on the USS RANGER flight deck off the Aleutian Islands in the fog so we couldn’t fly. A bear flew right over the bow you could clearly see the red star on the tail it was really wild.

I flew aircrew in P3 Orions based out of NAS Barbers Point, Hawaii; did several Westpac/IO deployments and Detached Ops. Any accident involving an aircraft is sad. In 1978 a US Navy P-3C Orion ditched in heavy seas in the vicinity of Shemya, AK. five fatalities the Patrol Plane Commander and an FE swept away in heavy seas unable to get to life rafts; the three enlisted Sensor Operators who launched the rafts died from exposure their anti exposure suits were ripped while launching from jagged edges around the airplane and prolonged time in the water to stabilize their respective life rafts for other survivors to board the rafts. All members of that crew would have died it a Soviet Fishing Trawler had not rescued that crew. I've flown many missions in the Northern Pacific, Sea of Okhotsk, Sea of Japan, East China Sea, South China Sea, Straits of Maloca, and Persian Gulf. We were frequently intercepted and did photo runs close by on varied ships at 300' too, it was part of our mission. The crew of the Essex also had a duty to attempt to recover survivors; it's the law of the high seas.

The pilot chosen to spot the Essex was the Lieutenant Colonel Alexandr Plyiev; an ace pilot who had taught his fellow pilots how to fight and fly at low altitude to avoid being detected by enemy radars. He used to fly so close to the water that he was widely known for returning to the base with his cockpit impregnated with saltpeter. Plyiev didn’t let down his command and found the US aircraft-carrier, coming out of the blue as he wasn’t detected.

Where I come from this is called "an own goal"...

So to be clear this video does NOT show the actual impact - just some low passes and then a column of smoke in the distance.

@Wyodak What do you mean by everyone cheering and that those guys (The Soviets I mean) were doing the same thing you were for the same reason? Just curious. Im ex Royal Navy and I remember being in various standoffs with Russian vessels. We never fired at each other we only had to assume they were hostile and had to keep every gun on the ship trained on the Soviets. We mostly had standoffs with Kirov class and Kara class cruisers.

бля это 2 пилота решили повыёживатся и один говорит смотри как я могу и вжжжик пролетел , а второй ему смотри как надо и бумсь и буль буль

there was a second plane circling above the Badger at maybe 2000 ft. I always have remembered it as a Bear but it looks like a Badger in the film. After the accident I remember being told to keep it quiet as there was talk thet the Russians might assume we shot it down. This would have been next to impossible because the only guns we had on board were 2 5 " deck guns left over from WW 2 that needed to be cranked to move never even close to be able to keep up with the speed of the Badger

Матросы высыпали на палубу и наблюдают за странными повадками дикарей...

Russian Badger bombers flew over my ship, the U.S.S. Ticonderoga (CVA-14), twice, in 1963. The first time was when we were down around the P.I. (Philippine Islands). The second time was when we were on our way home, to Dago, and happened near the Kamchatka Peninsula. Another time, a Russian "trawler," a thinly disguised spy ship, passed us, going in the opposite direction, between my ship and a destroyer, which was just a few hundred yards off our port beam. These were just "games" that we played with each other. Sometimes the games turned deadly, which happened to both sides. The public never heard about these incidents.

Sad event, in any case. They were serving their country, much as we were. Tragic.

Вот это поворот!

We all love the country of our birth and most of us are willing to fight to the bitter end in defense of our motherland whether it be America or Russia ... same reason, no difference ... one human race on the same ball of dirt and water.

My grandfather was on the uss warrington destroyer when this happened he verified with me watching this thank you

Хорошо, хоть люди не пострадали.

"Yes Ameriknskis shot our bomber out of sky with their secert Crash-O-Ray gun. This was Nazi war crime."

In Soviet Russia,plane is submarine!!

Was on the USS YARNELL was about 50 miles away when he flew over heading to the carrier

раССия и понты - синонимы.

In the early 80' we had the TU 95 (Bear Delta) fly over the formation..huge aircraft

"Понты для приезжих" в исполнении "великАй и несАкрушимАй", как всегда обернулись тем, ....самолет оказался тяжелее воздуха... ))

I was there that day air traffic control division on a break went to third level of the island saw the whole thing happen watched the badger approach from the right side 50 ft off the water heading toward our bow in a climb to go over our bow I saw the pilot face through the window so close then he leveled off went about 3 miles turned left and stated a decending turn left to come back at us at a low level but the left wing tip hit the water and he cartwheeled a time and a half and broke apart we then Essex went picked up the remains and took them to sick Bay and prepared the remains for the Soviet destroyer that showed up we passed the remains to them then they went to there fantail and buried them at sea I am now 74 and this still bothers me today to see the lose of this Soviet crew to never go home

very well said my friend.When the americans fly all day over our countries media says nothing,and when the russians started in 2007 the long range tu-95 patrol,they said "OMG another cold war"

My grandpa was on the uss Warrington destroyer with the Essex and remembers this all

The pilot was flying too low. I was in the port side gun tub on the Essex. He banked left and his wing tip hit the water causing him to cartwheel into the ocean and explode.

Da, Comade. The Americans will never expect an underwater attack from an airplane.

Это называется, "голой жопой напугаю комаров".

Долетались те, долетаются и эти!

The announcer says that this film footage (by the USS crew) was sent to Soviets and has been immediately classified there, so the TV channel had to take it from the US National Archive in Washington. The more I know about the USSR, the more I hate it (I'm a Russian who thank God was born after its collapse)

sad video. Let the gound be a fluff for them.. My father is a former pilot of TU-16 and have served that time.

Ещё одна вещь , на которую можно смотреть вечно))

Anything that starts with TU is made of papamache.

Люблю такие видео

Horribly overexposed. The comments from the witnesses are excellent.

Haha, at 0:36 the narrator calls the pilot a "stupid sod", clear as day!

Afterward, the Essex, and a school of tuna made several passes over the TU-16.

Too much salt vapor being sucked into the intakes,too low on the water as well. An aircraft that size flying too slow and too low is bound to hit the water

I served aboard the Kittyhawk n the late 70s. We had Bear bombers flying so low and close to the ship I could see the gunner in the tail blister. Quite a show seeing an aircraft that large so close to the wave tops.

If that were the case you would not be able to have made such a comment. There would have been a huge nuke crater were you "would" be sitting.

This all could have been avoided had the Russia not try to provoke all the time, its a shame.

. 1968 говорите?.... Тогда этот Badger / «Барсук» ещё летал без единого ремонта, а теперь эта латаная фанера годна только на тренажёры...

"Nyet ,Ghost Rider! Pattern is Full!"

“No good moose and squirrel”

shall we talk about the similarities of the C-141/IL76? How about the C-5/AN-224 and 225? The origin of the Bear may be traced back to 1945, when several USAAF B-29 aircraft, severely damaged by Japanese defences, landed in Russian territory. While the crews were repatriated, the B-29s never left Siberia. Engineers from the Tupolev and Shvetsov bureaus, despatched from their plants, proceeded to strip the aircraft down to the last component, analysing and documenting all. Oh and TU-4.

In Cold War both sides were doing provocative actions. This is what sucks about Cold War, people were dying due to politicians playing stupid games.

The following video - that has been recently declassified - shows the previous and subsequent moments to the accident. We can see how Plyiev’s Tu-16 flies by the aircraft-carrier at about 500 km/h and just 15 meters above the water, to finally crash when it was about to turn back. After a while, a second Tu-16 comes up trying to find out what happened to Plyiev. Source..link the movie (thought to post it for those who love to engage in comments war online without reading)

Huh; engine failure at low altitude? Pilots got distracted flew into the water? It happens. RIP. Love the sound of a voice talking in Russian; wish I understood what he was saying.

Когда в Скнилове на "шоу" погибли 77 человек., дети погибли... в России только соболезновали искренне, никто плохого слова ни сказал, тем более ни слова о национальной принадлежности погибших... А здесь комменты ненавистью пропитаны...

Did two west pac pumps in the late 80's and Bears (tu-95's) often flew low, between ships!! and that is even a more frightening sight as you wonder "what if those big props failed and started spinning out to our ship"! I never saw any turn that low (as this aircraft did) just fly straight and level gradually gaining hight.

@EMT308 It is one of the myths. there were such fly-bys all the time on both sides. A dangerous game as it can be seen here.

Brave crew is to be testing glooooorious new bomber-submarine!! 💂🏼‍♂️🇻🇳

Американцы сняли - "Тупой,ещё тупее"

За такое шоу американские моряки даже заплатили бы!

Жаль что только один самолёт разбился.

Low pass by aircraft carrier. I was expecting something else.

Плиев с того света читает эти комментарии и сожалеет о своих понтах.

Doviyobivalis

Like many story’s I find more information in the comment section. Flying over in a large plane,.......unfortunate accident,...men in the service are of a kind,......during the Cold War,.....Respect was the order of the day! And despite all the Hollywood movies,..there was cooperation,..and search and rescue of downed airmen was always a priority,....no matter who was flying.

Shame that this happened, the russian pilots probably just wanted to show that they could either have fun or do stunts just like the americans do.

большинство аварий начинаются со словсмотри как я могу... Довыебывались. 15 метров над водой, ага, смог...

Dude everybody does it. When people flipped over the US plane being near China (When the Chinese guy ran into it) I was like "That happens all the time." I remember as a kid on the US East Coast in the day Tu-95s flew up and down the US East Coast all the time. US fighters went out and they basically waved hi to each other. All kinds of stuff like this went on in the Cold War. Sometimes people buzzed each others' ships etc.

Российские дешевые понты дороже собственной жизни.

Cartwheeling a bird that big in the ocean...god...

If there were any survivors I hope they got picked up. Yeah these low passes were done by both sides and with any flight an accident can happen.

"Hey Boris! Hold my vodka. I'm gonna do something funny. It'll be great!" "Don't do it!" "To late!" "Ivan you little. . ." . . . people died that day. =^( It's not all that funny really.

That's one way to defect with plausible deniability.

This pilot was experienced, almost all sorties he flew were at low altitude so he could approach carriers undetected.

@ArmAFan they also fought each other in korea, vietnam, afghanistan and many small african wars that most people never heard of.

sorry for those fellas

Thats a USN S-2 Tracker on that carrier deck and that is definitely a Tu16 badger soviet plane. Sorry mate, this is definitely a USN aircraft carrier.

It is the present video about the present failure of the Soviet jet rocket carrier of Tu-16. On NATO classification - "badger". On May, 25th, 1968 2 Tu-16 have taken off for the North Sea on investigation of an aircraft carrier of the Navy of the USA "Essex". The leading rocket carrier under command of the commander of a squadron of lieutenant colonel Pliev has made some passes over an aircraft carrier and round it at height about 15 metres (45 foots).

Let me quote you, al3xt3hl0nly. "please dont speak when you dont know what your talking about"

Мощщный самавлёт. Действительно, Ту-16 - АНАЛА ГАВНЕТ.

Hmmm... another possible theory is that the pilot tried to ditch the AC, hoping that none of the crew would get hurt, in an attempt defect? It was indeed during the height of the Cold War... :/

so, all wars sux. Cold too...

Thank you ol' wise one, Daniel, for your profound comment. I did say "a possible theory." :)

Понты. это святое!

Russo-dolboyobo

Даже пересылать не стану, засмеют, им же надо, что бы все, от и до было и даже тогда скажут :американцы все инсценировали! Не доказанно! Россия вперед , скажут они!

RIP valiant flyers of the Soviet Air Force. We should not be enemies - we should be working together to save our world.

The drum beat 1/2 way through is very haunting, almost like war drums. Would love to know if it is part of a musical score, a doco background music or a song I can find stand alone.

if they ever get the a400 into the air, it will probably suffer from the same autopilot disconnect problems & avionics malfunctions that have sent several airbuses diving into the ground.

Wonder if the pilot or another crewman decided it would be a great time to defect and tried an "accident at sea"? A little different theory.

Comrade, hire the guy from Dark Skies to narrate your videos. He's awesome.