Yesterday's tragic Concorde crash at Charles de Gaulle had eerie parallels with a similar crash 27 years ago. The earlier accident involved the second production Tu-144 - Russia's first supersonic airliner, and an aircraft so similar to the Anglo-French supersonic jetliner that it was actually nicknamed 'Concordski'. Both aircraft crashed within eight kilometres of each other - the Air France Concorde at Gonesse, the Tupolev at nearby Goussainville.
The Tu-144 was making a demonstration flight during the 1973 Paris Air Salon, participating in the same flying programme as a Concorde prototype. As the show wore on, it became clear that Concorde was giving more impressive displays, and on the final day of the show, Tupolev OKB test pilot Mikhail Koslov decided to pull out all the stops. The display was aggressively flown from the take off. Trying to emulate Concorde's show-stopping low pass and steep climb, Koslov made an extremely fast pass at very low level, before reefing the aircraft into a near-vertical climbing turn. Watched by thousands the Tu-144 suddenly seemed to falter, descending steeply and turning sharply to the left. As the aircraft pulled out of its dive it began to break up, losing its starboard outer wing and then the tailfin. The aircraft reared up and then snap-rolled onto its back, breaking up as it did so. The fuel tanks in the massive Delta wings ruptured and one of the three falling sections began to burn. Most of the wreckage fell on Goussainville, tearing the roofs off ten homes and setting buildings ablaze. Nine people on the ground lost their lives, along with Koslov and his five crew-members. The USSR never published an accident report, but later intimated that the aircraft had been over-stressed as the pilot manoeuvred hard to avoid a prying Armee de l'Air Mirage.
Source: Flight Daily News
