Flight No. 402. Bulgaria

I want to tell you about one tragic event in Bulgarian history - the death of the Israeli airline El Al, No. 402.

The causes of this tragedy are still not known to the broad masses and, apparently, will never be known.

The Lockheed S-69 "Constellation" airplane, the property of the Israeli airline "El Al", flew from New York to Tel Aviv with stops in London, Paris and Vienna. It was from Vienna that the flight departed at 02 hours 53 minutes on July 27, 1955 and headed for Istanbul. The plane was supposed to fly over Yugoslavia, northern Greece and enter Turkish airspace. But something went wrong. Five hours later, for unexplained reasons so far, the plane was over Bulgaria.

At 7 am on July 11, 1955, on July 27, 1955, when an unidentified aircraft crossed the military alarm without permission from the Bulgarian border in the Dobraslavtsi area, which was defended by the Sofia air force. Two minutes later two interceptors flew to intercept the offender. The leader of this pair was Captain Boris Petrov. The air surveillance system signaled that the plane made a sharp right turn after Breznik and passed Radomir and Blagoevgrad. According to the pilots of the fighters, they overtook the intruder at 7 hours and 26 minutes over Simitli. A few minutes later, after refusing to land, Lockheed S-69 Constellation aircraft was struck and fell on the edge of Rupite village, north of Petrich. All 58 passengers on board died.

An international scandal has risen. "A passenger plane carrying citizens of Israel, the United States and Great Britain was shot down by the pro-Soviet government of Bulgaria." So the headlines of the daily publications of Western Europe looked like.

An investigation has begun. Two weeks later, his results were presented by the Minister of National Defense Petr Panchevsky at the highest level of the Party and state power in Bulgaria - the Politburo and the Central Committee of the BCP. The report collected all the details relating to the incident, from the testimony of people directly or indirectly implicated in this, to the defense minister himself.

From the report it was clear that the tragic outcome of Flight No. 402 is the result of a number of errors, dislocations, tension and incompetence. General Panchevsky blamed the incident for eight people, including himself. However, one moment in this story stands out as a key - - the lack of radio communication between fighters and land. Captain Petrov acted on his own. He argued that on his part, all the rules for such situations were observed. According to the testimony of the two pilots, they did not have time to identify the nationality of the aircraft and thought that it was a freight plane. Then they gave three warning shots in the air and the fourth on the plane. Their approval is denied by the camera, which is on the second fighter. According to her information, it is clear that after an unsuccessful attempt to contact the pilots, Captain Petrov fired immediately at the end of the aircraft. After this, without giving the time offender the reaction, Petrov shot again - already in the body of the aircraft. Struck by the target, the fighters did not stop shooting at the plane, even at an altitude of 600-700 meters, on which it was impossible to pass Belasitsa mountain.

Despite the unregulated actions of the two Bulgarian pilots, they are by far not the only culprits of the tragic outcome of the tense situation. The total lack of coordination between the various elements of air defense was of key importance. Dobroslavets branch lost radio contact with the pilots and could not restore it, and the command could not properly assess the situation.

All this led to the tragic death of innocent people - 58 people.

Initially, the Bulgarian authorities refused to be responsible, severely criticizing the Israeli aircraft for violating the air borders of the Bulgarian People's Republic. Subsequently, the authorities apologized to the relatives of the victims of this plane crash and said that the pilots of the fighters acted in a hurry. Israel tried to condemn Bulgaria in the international Hague court, but there they replied that it was not in their jurisdiction. Two states began to agree on the amount of material compensation for the relatives of the deceased. After nine years, this litigation ended with the condition that Bulgaria will give $ 8,292 each for each victim.

Despite a thorough report and explanation of the causes of the incident, one question remains unanswered to this day. Why did the plane take a course towards Bulgaria? Israeli investigators say that the strong wind that rose from the storm in Serbia, forced to count the course of the aircraft. In their opinion, it was the computational error that led to the aircraft entering the airspace of Bulgaria. The data of the Bulgarian report, however, indicate that the weather at that time was clear, cloudless with visibility of up to 30 kilometers. It is also interesting that the Israeli aircraft was piloted by Captain Stanley Hinks - a famous British pilot, who at one time even drove Churchill. Such an experienced as he, he could hardly admit such mistakes. According to other opinions, 300 kg of silver were found at the site of the accident, which was transported in a smuggled manner, and this, allegedly, caused the refusal to land.

No matter what the truth is, the incident with Flight No. 402 is one of the most tragic in the Bulgarian aviation history.

 Original article in Russian 

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With love from Bulgaria @varya-davydova

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