Russian combat aircraft are falling not only in Ukraine. Tonight, a Su-34 front bomber crashed in the city of Yeysk – right next to an apartment block in the city center. Both crew members managed to eject (one parachute is shown in the photo below), but at least six civilians were killed and more than twenty were injured. There was information in the Russian media that there was an engine fire.
It is not known yet what exactly led to the accident. As always, the probable cause is, of course, a technical malfunction of the engine, but in such a situation the most interesting question would be whether the malfunction resulted from the aircraft being loaded with combat service. Other reports say that a bird was sucked into the engine. According to preliminary information, the unlucky bomber spent little time in the air and tried to return to the airport shortly after take-off.
When I saw this photo, supposedly showing an Su-34 fighter jet slamming into an apartment building in Yeysk, Russia, I couldn’t believe it.
But I have found the photo location: 46.679614, 38.295050
It is indeed in Yeysk. pic.twitter.com/UybPjsRHzJ
– Geoff Brumfiel (@gbrumfiel) October 17, 2022
If the plane was just after take-off, its tanks were full. If it was refueled under the cap before departure, there was approximately 12 tons of fuel waiting in the inner tanks. And as would be expected under the circumstances, the explosion caused a widespread fire in the apartment block – the flames spread over five floors in several risers. Several storeys have partially collapsed.
The rescue operation was made more difficult by the fact that the bomber was armed and – as you can hear in the video below showing one of the pilots – that there was an explosion of ammunition in the fire for a long time. Meanwhile, more victims are waiting for sure in the rubble of the block. It was evening after 6 p.m. local time, and some of the townspeople were slowly getting ready for sleep.
According to the official statement of the Russian defense ministry, the plane was making a training flight – theoretically it is possible, but somehow you don’t want to believe it. The 859th Combat Training Center is located in Jejsk, but at the same time the base is intensively used by aircraft on combat flights over Ukraine.
Kuban ‘: 4 dead, 6 missed, 25 wounded as result of military Su-34 crash in Eysk of Krasnodar Krai https://t.co/FsrycxFEbb pic.twitter.com/ygU65MPsvp
– Liveuamap (@Liveuamap) October 17, 2022
Yeysk is located in Krasnodar Krai on the Taganroskaya Bay, which is the northeastern tail of the Azov Sea, southeast of Mariupol. The machine crashed at the intersection of Komunistyczna and Czerwona, four kilometers from the runway threshold. Videos and maps show that the plane flew more or less from east to west in the last seconds, which is consistent with the version about an attempt to return to the naval air base on the western outskirts of Yeysk.
Videos of the Su-34 bomber crashing. 2 / https: //t.co/qK37FFwzCIhttps: //t.co/IvxEszvpmv pic.twitter.com/agn8CL1opD
– Rob Lee (@ RALee85) October 17, 2022
The pilots catapulted in the last seconds before hitting the ground, suggesting they were struggling to get the machine back to the airport until the very end. After all, the following video shows something strange. One ejection seat seems to have hit the shoulder of a construction crane.
According to data collected by the authors of the Oryx blog, Russia has so far lost sixteen machines of this type during the war in Ukraine (not counting today), including at least one shot down by its own forces. In other words: the Russians lost 11% of all 147 Fullbacks they produced.
See also: Ukrainian Starstreak systems have already had the first shoot down
Alex Beltyukov, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported
