Photograph Copyright © Russian Aviation Page, 1997.

What really happend to Tu-144 on Paris Air Show 1973? Was it a pilot error, a flaw in design of Soviet SST or was it bad luck?

James E. Oberg in his book "Uncovering Soviet disasters; exploring the limits of Glasnost" ISBN 0394560957 writes:

"On June 3, the last day of the air show, the two different Mach 2 airliners flew head to head before a crowd of 200,000 aviation fans. First the Anglo-French Concorde made a magnificent flyby and circuit of the field, performing more like a fighter jet than a passenger airliner. The crowd was impressed. Then it was the Tu-144's turn. Pilot Mikhail Kozlov did his best to outperform the Concorde, completing a series of maneuvers with a low flyby along Runway 060. As he came along the runway in front of the main reviewing stand, many aviation experts and journalists grew apprehensive over the airplane's low airspeed. They saw the plane's afterburners kick in, painting shock diamonds behind the four engines. As the plane reached the end of the runway, it pulled up into a climb which rapidly became dangerously steep. "Shoot him, shoot him!" one bureau chief cried to his cameraman. "He's not going to make it!" Kozlov's nearly vertical climb had had its intended effect: The crowd oohed in amazement. The admiration then suddenly turned to horror. As clearly shown later in photographs, the left canard broke clean off from the stresses, which went far beyond the design limits of a commercial airliner. It smashed into the wing root behind it, and a small orange flare blossomed as the ruptured fuel tank exploded. The plane noised over and dived straight into the ground "like an arrowhead," one horrified newsman recalled years later."

The second opinion comes from Jean Alexander's book "Russian Aircraft from 1944" ISBN 0370100255:

"...it was thought that the accident was due to failure of the flying control system mixer box, a mechanical device which converts pitch and roll commands into elevon movements. ...it was unofficially reported that the accident was due to the pilot initially attempting to land on the wrong runway. On going round again he found himself on a collision course with a Mirage fighter and pushed the nose of the Tu-144 down at a sharp angle to avoid it. This threw the co-pilot, who was filming at the time, on to the controls and when eventually a recovery was made it proved to be too sudden, causing a structural failure in the starboard mails wing panel."

Aviation Week and Space Technology (June 11, 1973, p. 18-21) articles support Alexander and I tend to believe that this is what really happened on July 3, 1973. Perhaps, we will never know the truth... In any rate, according to both sources, PILOT'S ERROR seems to be the major contribution to the crash. Unrealisticly large G-load caused airliner to desintegrate in the air. This could have happen to any plane...

On the side note Tu-144 was choosen as a SST testbed by NASA. Reengined wuth Tu-160 engines Tu-144 will conduct several test flights which would help to determine the noise level in the passanger cabin and temperature of the airframe's skin.

An article in Air and Space (Fall 1995) describes recent developments of this project.
Soviet SST: the technopolitics of the Tupolev-144 by Howard Moon. ISBN: 051756601X