The tragedy of the Russian Knights

12 December, 1995.

The Russian Knights Russian display team flying Su-27s participated the LIMA '95 airshow in N Malaysia. The 4 sigle seater Su-27 P, 1 Su-27 UB and the Il-76 transport plane with the equipment and the technicians left for home on 12 December of 1995. The team didin't choose the shortest way to home over China. The reason for that probably was that the air control and the quality of the fuel was sometimes pour there and one plane of the Swifts display team flying MiG-29 had an accident there before. The team planned its first landing at Cam Ranh airbase which is the base of the Russian Far-East Fleet in S Vietnam 300 km ENE from Saigon. After a 1200 km flight the 6 aircrafts arrived to the landing area where they had a bad weather with thick clouds. The formation started to descent by the lead of the Il-76 and they got out the cloud at 600 m altitude 20 km far from the runaway. According to the approach rules of the airport at that point they should have been at least at 1500 m altitude. As they became aware of the peak rising in front and right of the formation the crew of the Il-76 ordered "break formation and climb"to the formation. Only the Il-76 and the 2 Su-27s on the right side of it managed to execute the order and the 3 planes on the other side of the transporter crashed to the hill. Finally the Il-76 managed to land but the 2 Su-27s climbed back into the clouds and landed 70 km further to S at Pham Rang airport. Due to the bad weather the wrecks were only 4 days later founded by a helicopter and it took 4 more days the ground units to get there. By this time it was sure that the 4 pilots Boris Grigorev, Alexandr Sirojov, Nikolaj Kordukov and Nikolaj Grecanov were killed in the crash. One pilot of the Su-27 UB probably tried to eject at the last moment because his body was found hanging from a tree on the cords of his parachute.

During the investigation of the tragedy it was turned out that some landing equipment of the airport were not working because they didn't know the exact date and time of the display team's arrival. The crew of the Il-76 probably made a mistake too because they didn't pay attention to the approach rules of the airport.