Volcanohysteria obscured the problems of aviation. What is an air pocket? Airplane flight Downdrafts and updraughts

Pilot bloggers tell passengers what is really worth and what should not be afraid of in flight.

The holiday season is in full swing. Many would be happy to rush somewhere to the sea, but the fear of flying overpowers the desire to bask in the southern sun. The story of the crash near Smolensk of the liner with the President of Poland on board further strengthened this fear: if the sides number 1 fall, then you should not hope for the reliability of a simple civilian aircraft. But aviators have a different opinion: an airplane is the safest transport. Pilot bloggers, tired of drunken tantrums on board, decided to fight passengers' aerophobia, telling why air pockets are not terrible, and that the liner should "knock, rattle and blink" in flight. The idea came to a former military pilot, and now the captain of a civil aviation aircraft, Alexei Kochemasov, known on the Internet under the nickname "Lekha pilot". Supported him and colleagues from other airlines.

Turbulence is normal

Most of all, passengers are frightened when the plane enters the turbulence zone. In the language of pilots, this is "chatter". The plane begins to shake, and sometimes it even “jumps” up and down and anxiously “flaps its wings”.

Chatter can occur both in the clouds and outside them. It will be clear sky turbulence, - says Alexey Kochemasov. Clouds are to an airplane what potholes are to a car. If there is no wind, the temperature is evenly distributed over the heights, humidity and pressure are uniform. The flight is calm and serene. And if there are clouds and wind, there is a difference in the temperature of the ascending and descending flows, then most likely it will shake in flight. It always shakes over mountains and big water, but not necessarily strongly. But aircraft are designed with turbulence in mind. Therefore, you should not be afraid that the plane, hitting the air pocket, will fall apart. Nothing will fall off and nothing will come off.

Is chatter dangerous for an airplane? Can he collapse?

Chatter is unpleasant for many, but it is not dangerous, the pilot reassures. - However, flights in an area of ​​strong turbulence are not welcome. Pilots try to avoid getting into turbulence, and if they do, they tend to jump out of these zones as quickly as possible. Entry into the turbulence zone is not unexpected. The pilots are ready for it and know the routes to bypass or exit.

What is really dangerous

Pilots include dangerous weather phenomena: thunderstorm, icing, wind shear and its microbursts (also called microexplosions), squall, dust or sandstorm, ash clouds from volcanoes (can rise to a height of 14 kilometers), tornadoes, heavy rainfall, ultra-high and ultra-low temperatures. If any of the above is outside the window, then the weather is considered non-flying. If the crew encounters such a weather phenomenon on a flight, then they act according to the instructions.

Thunderstorms

They are different: frontal (warm air displaces cold air), orographic (air rises along mountain slopes), intramass (with uneven heating of the surface layer of air), dry (without precipitation).

Half of all thunderstorms last no more than an hour. Flights in the zone of thunderclouds are dangerous: there are powerful ascending and descending air currents up to 20 - 30 m/sec., more intense icing, lightning strikes, hail, heavy rain showers, poor visibility.

We know about thunderstorms and try not to go there, - Alexey Kochemasov assures. - The plane has a locator that can see thunderstorms well. Depending on the density of clouds on its screen, a thunderstorm object is highlighted in different colors. Weak clouds - barely green, denser clouds - bright green, thunderclouds - bright red, clouds containing hail formations (ice) - purple-red. Wind shear and strong turbulence - dark cherry.

Depending on the color on the locator, the crew decides whether it follows a given route or chooses a new one.

Icing

It is very dangerous. The external and frontal surfaces of the aircraft are covered with ice. The liner becomes like a supermarket shrimp. Icing occurs when flying in an atmosphere with supercooled water droplets. When icing ceases to work, the laws of aerodynamics: the aircraft becomes heavier at lightning speed, the bearing properties of the wing deteriorate, the liner becomes uncontrollable. Sometimes the engine can freeze too.

Aviation knows how to deal with this phenomenon.

The most severe icing occurs near the ground or even on the "concrete" itself. If there is a danger of "freezing" even at the airport (snow, rain at sub-zero temperatures, hoarfrost, ice), the aircraft must be treated with anti-icing fluid before departure. They spray everything: wings, tail, stabilizer.

If I was doused with a liquid that is effective for half an hour, and I taxied along the airfield and stood in front of the runway longer, then I would not fly. I'll be back and get sick again! - says our consultant. - And let the passengers swear at the airline and "honor the mother" of the commander. Life is more precious!

In the air, icing is less likely, but if it occurs, it is more intense. The crew is already working here: it starts the anti-icing system, which pours hot air over the frozen parts. Once upon a time they fought with this byaka, pouring pure alcohol on the case. Up to 200 liters of this invaluable liquid were lifted on board and sprinkled on the glass, like on a car: there was a tank and a special lever in front of the windshield.

If the anti-icing system fails, the pilots leave the dangerous cloud zone.

We turn around and fly away so that the heels sparkle! - admits Kochemasov.

Likbez

The flight is going well if:

When taxiing, you feel the vibration and creaking of the wheels. These are flaps-slats, hydraulic system and brakes are checked. The flaps move to increase lift. After takeoff, they retract. They are released again before landing.

When the engines were started, the lighting and air conditioners abruptly turned off, and then turned on. It is the power sources switched from the external generator to the generator on board.

After takeoff, something knocks and creaks under the floor - this is the landing gear being retracted.

After takeoff and before the start of the descent, the engine is quieter. This decreased engine thrust - as it should be.

During the chatter, the wing "waves". Everything is in order - the wings of the liner are flexible and designed with turbulence in mind.

Something flickers in the window. These are the flashing beacons mounted on the wings. Often their light reflects off the clouds, creating the illusion of lightning.

After landing, a "blowing" sound is heard - this is the reverse thrust of the engine with the help of a jet of air slows down the aircraft.

After landing, the plane brakes sharply and vibrates. The shorter the bar, the sharper the stop.

In the rain, the plane "slams" on the concrete - a hard landing provides better grip on the asphalt. Vibration - This is an anti-skid device that prevents slipping.

And at this time

A scandal flares up: Australian flight attendants saw posters of naked girls in the cabin on the Internet and were offended. Flight attendants from the Green Continent believe that such a photo causes a surge of violence against air transport workers, as some passengers begin to perceive them as a sexual object.

Who actually made and posted the scandalous nudes on the Web is still unknown.

By the way

On takeoff, the crew reads a "prayer".

Before departure, pilots activate all the systems necessary for a safe flight. And after each action performed, they read the Control Checks Card. This document is a kind of "bible" for the crew or, as the pilots themselves call it, "prayer". As a result, her readings check whether everything is done correctly, in order to correct problems in time if something happens.

An amazing sight is a cone of steam that appears around an aircraft that flies at transonic speeds. This amazing effect, known as the Prandtl-Gloert effect, causes the eyes to open wide and the jaw to drop. But what is its essence?

(Total 12 photos)

1. Contrary to popular belief, this effect does not appear when the aircraft breaks the sound barrier. The Prandtl-Gloert effect is also often associated with supersonic popping, which is also not true. Ultra high bypass aircraft engines can create this effect at takeoff speed because the engine inlet is low pressure and the fan blades themselves operate at transonic speeds.

2. The reason for its occurrence is that an aircraft flying at high speed creates an area of ​​high air pressure in front of itself and an area of ​​low pressure behind. After the flight of the aircraft, the area of ​​low pressure begins to fill with ambient air. In this case, due to the rather high inertia of the air masses, the entire low-pressure area is first filled with air from nearby areas adjacent to the low-pressure area.

3. Imagine an object moving at transonic speed. Transonic speed is different from the speed of sound. The sound barrier is overcome at a speed of 1235 km / h. Transonic speed is below, above or near the speed of sound and can vary from 965 to 1448 km/h. Therefore, this effect can appear when the aircraft is moving at a speed less than or equal to the speed of sound.

4. And yet, it's all about the sound - it is on it that the "visibility" of this steam cone behind the aircraft depends. The shape of the cone is formed by the force of sound (in the case of aircraft) traveling faster than the sound waves it produces. The Prandtl-Gloert effect occurs as a result of the wave nature of sounds.

5. Again, think of the plane as the source and the sound as the crest of the wave. These crests of sound waves are a series or sheath of overlapping circles. When the waves are superimposed on each other, a cone shape is created, and its tip is the source of the sound. So far invisible.

6. For the effect to become visible to the human eye, one more thing is needed - humidity. When the humidity is high enough, the air around the cone condenses and forms the cloud we see. As soon as the air pressure returns to normal, the cloud disappears. The effect almost always occurs with planes flying over the ocean in the summer - the combination of water and heat produces the right level of humidity.

7. Here you can destroy another one. Some believe that the Prandtl-Gloert effect occurs as a result of fuel combustion.

8. You can probably understand if you think that this effect is a contrail, that is, an unnatural cloud that appears from condensed water vapor, which is produced by engine exhaust. However, they are not the same. The water vapor is already there - it's already in the air before the plane passes through it.

9. Air pressure is also worth mentioning. When an aircraft is moving at transonic speed, the air pressure around it is called an N-wave, because when the pressure is time dependent, the result is like the letter N.

10. If we could slow down the blast wave passing through us, we would see the leading compression component. This is the beginning of N. The horizontal stick occurs when the pressure drops, and when the normal pressure of the atmosphere returns to the final point, the letter N is created.

11. The effect is named after two prominent scientists who discovered this phenomenon. Ludwig Prandtl (1875 – 1953) was a German scientist who studied the development of systematic mathematical analysis in aerodynamics. Herman Gloert (1892 – 1934) was a British aerodynamic scientist.

12. Believe it or not, you can create this effect yourself. You only need two things: a stick and a day of high humidity. If you can lash the whip like Indiana Jones, you'll see a similar effect. However, you shouldn't try it at home.

Ordinary piston aircraft with wings and tails are part of the UFO mystery. Although international laws require all aircraft to carry identification marks and tail numbers on their planes, tailfins and fuselages, none of these mysterious aircraft obey the above rules. Usually they are gloomy gray or black and do not have any identification marks. In the flop areas they can often be observed flying at low altitude, with the cockpit always brightly lit, which is not in line with normal night flying practice, as the cockpit light interferes with the pilot's visual observation.

Since 1896, these "pirate" aircraft have been seen in various places around the world. This gives reason to believe that they are interested in our entire planet as a whole. On Monday, July 22, 1968, at about 2 pm, one of these aircraft appeared in a cloudless sky over the San Carlos de Bariloche airport in the vicinity of the city of Bahia Blanca (Argentina). He circled lazily over the airfield at 200 feet, as if preparing for a landing approach.

A large number of witnesses, among whom were pilots, police officers and airport employees, dropped everything and began to observe the unexpected visitor. Of course, the arrival of a plane in broad daylight at a major airport is an event that is unlikely to be of much interest to anyone, but there was something strange about this car. Even very strange.

Subsequently, all the witnesses in their testimony agreed that this aircraft had an unusually long fuselage, and its delta-shaped wings seemed too short to keep a machine of this size in the air. And yet he flew very slowly, so slowly that it was simply incredible how he could stay in the air. One of the fundamental laws of aerodynamics is that the shorter an aircraft's wings are relative to its overall length, the faster it must fly in order to maintain wing lift.

The airport control tower made an attempt to contact this aircraft by radio, but received no answer. Then green signal lights were lit, giving permission to land. However, the giant car continued to circle over the airport. Having reached the end of the 28th runway, the plane suddenly turned 360 degrees around its axis, almost in place. The astonished spectators, watching the maneuvers of the mysterious machine through binoculars from the ground, could not make out any identification marks on its sides, except for three small and one large black squares. None of the airport workers could even identify the type of aircraft, although they were familiar with all existing classes of aircraft from Constellation to U-2, not to mention the fact that they had all the necessary reference books at hand. This plane seemed to be hovering rather than flying, making a small whistling sound. A few minutes later, the car picked up speed and disappeared in a southeasterly direction.

The Argentine authorities have not been able to give at least some explanation for this incident. On July 25, 1968, this story hit the pages of the newspaper LA RAZON, and was later investigated by the Englishwoman Edith Grinet, an employee of the FLYING SOS REVIEW magazine. In 1968, the entire area of ​​the city of Vaia Blanca became the site of extensive UFO sightings. There were reports of both landings and contacts.

A whole formation of unidentified hang-wings has been spotted over the United States and has even received special scrutiny from the unbelieving Air Force. PROJECT BLUE BOOK REPORT 14 states the following in the Unidentified Objects section:

"A cadet of the Naval Aviation School, his wife and several other persons on Sunday, April 20, 1952, were in an open summer cinema for motorists on a session that lasted from 21.15 to 22.40. During the session, they noticed nine groups of objects flying directly above them. In each group consisted of two to nine objects, and one group consisted of twenty objects.These objects flew in a straight course, while changing it with a normal aircraft turn.They resembled ordinary jet aircraft in shape.

The unusual thing about them was that each was surrounded by a red glow emanating from himself. The night was completely cloudless."

A government official from Washington, whose name I understandably do not name, recently told me about an incident that happened to him while living in Long Island in 1957. According to him, he was awakened by the barking and squealing of his dog and Leaving the house, he saw a huge delta-wing aircraft majestically sailing over him in complete silence. The plane was surrounded by some terrible crimson glow. Since he had never seen anything like it, he called the nearest air base and reported what had happened.

The next day, he was called to the air base, where the area security officer asked him for some additional details, saying that they had received similar reports from other people. (Apart from a small number of prototypes, hang-wings were a rarity in the fifties.) UFO enthusiasts and the organizations they have created are primarily concerned with collecting information about objects of unusual configuration, such as the disk and flying saucers. However, the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization, having received an intriguing report of a mysterious aircraft, investigated it with all possible care. The witness voluntarily agreed to testify on a lie detector and answer questions from professional psychologists. The name of the witness is Wilhelm Hetzke, a rancher in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. It fully passed the test on the detector. An entire chapter of Jim and Karel Lorenzev's book "UFOs over America" ​​is dedicated to this case.

One morning in October 1965, Wilhelm Hetzke was riding through the grounds of Sickle J Ranch when he suddenly saw what looked like a small plane standing on the ground. It was silvery gray in color with recurved (delta) wings. Driving closer, Hetzke carefully examined the aircraft. It was about 16 feet long, with a wingspan of 12 feet, and the thickness of the fuselage did not exceed 4-5 feet.

According to Hetzke, the aircraft's skin was unusual, resembling a "waffle surface". A transparent, apparently plastic, canopy covered the cockpit. Through it you could see all sorts of complicated instruments, a fourteen-inch television screen, and two small, glass-like, dented seats. There were no engines, propellers, nozzles to be seen, and no identification marks or even numbers. There were no signs of life either on the plane or around it. Hurrying to work, Hetzke was forced to leave and could not return to this place later.

Hetzke's description of the aircraft contained many more details than we have given here, and most of them were very unusual.

Despite the fact that the object had the most common wings and tailfin, its interior and waffle-like skin speak for themselves. (From numerous reports it follows that UFOs have rough or notched skin. Obviously, this kind of bumpy surface is necessary for sudden braking and reducing the potential speed of the object. The latest aircraft are made with as smooth a surface as is technologically possible.

Even an improperly fitted rivet head can significantly reduce speed.) The aircraft Hetzke discovered was clearly built for very young pilots and flew on a principle unknown to us, requiring neither propellers nor jet blast. (It should also be noted that all gliders have very long wings, while the object Heizke discovered had very short ones.) If you saw such an aircraft flying slowly over you, you probably would not pay much attention to it.

Several more types of mysterious aircraft operate over the territory of North America. The gigantic machine, resembling the Flying Boxcar military transport aircraft, frequently appeared over the flask areas, performing maneuvers that were completely impossible for machines of this class. A group of witnesses from the suburbs of Gallipolis, Ohio, told me that they have been watching mysterious flying lights over their hills and fields for thirty years. In addition, without any leading questions from me, they began to talk about "big cargo planes" that fly over the hills a couple of times a month, and "sometimes so low that they would even look to crash into a hill." These cargo planes are multi-engined and painted dull grey. There are no regular military or civil aviation routes over Gallipolis. There are no air bases nearby, and planes flying to Charleston Airport (West Virginia) pass much further north. And this is quite understandable, since the reckless courage required when flying over the treacherous mountain range of the Ohio-West Virginia region is not justified in any way.

In his report to the Armed Forces Committee on the Investigation of the UFO Phenomenon (April 5, 1966), engineer Raymond Fowler drew attention to the results of his own investigation conducted by him in the Exeter area (New Hampshire). In particular, he said: “During my first two visits to Carl Dinning Field (from where UFO sightings had been reported earlier), on both occasions I saw a low-flying C-19 Flying Boxcar. It happened on September 11, 1965." In doing my own research, I heard from many people in areas far apart and from air force bases, descriptions of C-19 aircraft.

All witnesses saw these aircraft flying at a very low altitude, which in itself is strange for such a class of aircraft, not to mention the fact that the aerobatics that these aircraft demonstrated is simply impossible for them. For a while, I assumed that the Air Force sent specially equipped aircraft to the flop areas for photography and various tests. But the facts forced me to part with this pleasant hypothesis, replacing it with a very unpleasant one. I came to the conclusion that planes resembling S-19s really operated in the areas of flasks, but, alas, they have absolutely nothing to do with our Air Force.

Small single-engine aircraft have also been frequently seen flying and sniffing over recent UFO sightings. As usual, these aircraft were painted gray and did not have any markings.

Competent witnesses, some of whom had binoculars, saw them over Texas, Florida, and West Virginia. Like large cargo planes, these small machines fly at night with brightly lit cockpits, they are seen in the air on such stormy and rainy nights when no pilot in his right mind would dare to take to the air. There are a lot of facts confirming the love of UFOs for bad weather.

In March 1968, at Point Pleasant, West Virginia, competent observers watched low-lying lights over Highway 62 during an overnight snowstorm. The lights were of the characteristic UFO type. Directly behind these lights followed a small single-seat airplane, seemingly oblivious to the wind and blizzard.

A year before this incident, in early April 1967, I had been chasing a strange flying fire from an area of ​​old World War II explosives warehouses north of Point Pleasant to the head of a mountain range outside Henderson, West Virginia. I broke off the pursuit and, getting out of the car, joined a group of people standing on the top of one of the hills, when a twin-engine plane suddenly appeared, circled, flew right at us, almost brushing the tops of the trees. As it got closer, the plane shut off its engines, hovering literally over our heads, a completely idiotic maneuver, given the treacherous updrafts that always surround hills and gorges. The cockpit of the aircraft was brightly lit, and the figure of the pilot was clearly distinguished in it. It was about 9 pm, very dark, and the brightly lit cabin looked doubly odd. What kind of pilot is this, who not only decided to fly over the treetops in an extremely dangerous area, but also deliberately stopped the engines and blinded himself by turning on the bright lights in the cockpit?

I jumped in the car and crossed the Ohio River to a small airfield near Gallipolis to see this crazy pilot, since by my calculations there was nowhere else for him to land. There was no one at the airfield, the cars standing there were covered, the engine of none of them was warmed up. Of course, there are certainly private jet owners who like to pinch their nerves with night flights at low altitudes, but there are hardly any among them who would risk their license and life so much by performing such stupid and dangerous tricks over densely populated areas.

Swedish researcher Ek Frenzen, recently digging headlong into the Stockholm newspapers of the thirties, brought together many forgotten fragments of the Scandinavian hat from 1932-1938. He dug up over 90 detailed messages and was kind enough to do the boring job of translating them into English for us. These messages paint an amazing picture.

Beginning in 1932 large unmarked aircraft began to appear over northern Sweden, Norway and Finland. All descriptions of these machines indicate that they were gray. They often appeared during terrible snowstorms over cities, railway stations, forts and ships at sea. Often, circling over some object, they turned off their engines. According to the descriptions, many of them were huge multi-engine machines. One group of five witnesses announced sightings of a huge eight-engine aircraft. From many reports it is clear that these machines have repeatedly appeared in threes.

In those years, there were almost no private planes in Scandinavia. The gigantic China Clipper was still being built in the US, and the hulking three-engine Ford, which had just begun production, was used on the many commercial airlines that then existed. In 1926, Admiral Byde and Floyd Bennet flew from Svalbard to the North Pole in a three-engine Fokker.

Their flight was widely covered by the Scandinavian press, and the photo of the Fokker went around all the newspapers.

Six years later, when mysterious planes began to appear over Scandinavia, many witnesses compared them to Baid's Fokker.

The Swedish government took these reports very seriously. In 1934 no less than 24 biplanes of the Swedish Air Force were dispatched to patrol remote and sparsely populated areas of the country, where "flying ghosts" were reported to have appeared. Thorough searches were organized on land, sea and in the air. The operation was carried out in adverse weather conditions, which resulted in the loss of two Swedish aircraft.

I will try to summarize here some of the main cases of this flask.

Sources are the following newspapers: DABENS NEWHETER, STOCKHOLMOTIDNINGEN, VASTERBOTTENSKU RIREN, NORRBOTTENS ALLEMANDA, HUDIKSWALS TIDNINGEN and THE NEW YORK TIMES.

"Piteo. - The parish priest from Landtresk reported that over the past two years he had often seen some mysterious aircraft in the area. Last summer," flying ghosts "flyed twelve times over their town, constantly adhering to the same route and direction - from the south -west to northeast.

Four times the planes appeared at very low altitude, but no identification marks were visible on them.

In one case, the aircraft flew only a few meters above the dome of the parish church. For several seconds, two pilots in the cockpit were clearly visible. The car was a gray monoplane.

The priest did not report this earlier because he thought that the authorities already knew about it from other sources."

Until December 1933 there were extremely few reports published, but the experience of the 1909 flask over New England gives every reason to believe that there were already enough reports of sightings before they made their way to the press.

The first note at our disposal describes a UFO sighting on Christmas Eve: “December 24, 1933 Kalix. The mysterious plane appeared from the sea at about 18:00. Passed over Kalix and disappeared in a westerly direction. A beam of searchlight light directed from the aircraft illuminated the area. On December 27, 1933, the NEW YORK TIMES devoted almost an entire column to the appearance of "mysterious aircraft in a severe blizzard" right over New York City. At 9:30 am on December 26, people throughout Manhattan distinctly heard the sound of an airplane, apparently circling over the city in a blinding blizzard. Radio station NBS noted this case in the latest news, telephone calls with messages fell upon the editorial offices of newspapers. THE TIMES continues:

“Comparison of various reports shows that the pilot flew to 72nd Street, made a circle over Central Park and then headed for the Bronx area (231st Street and Sadwick Avenue). For some time there were no further reports, but at about 2:25 p.m., the sound of an engine was reported from the 155th Street area, near the dam across the Hudson ... All airfields in the Metropolitan District reported that no flights were made and no aircraft landed at them all day through a snow storm."

The planes of 1933 were simply unable to fly in such difficult weather conditions, and it is very doubtful that even now any of the planes could be in the air for five or six hours during a snowstorm. But the plane that appeared over Manhattan did just that, and of course no one ever knew anything about the plane.

In February 1934, exactly the same incident occurred over the capital of Great Britain (see THE NEW YORK TIMES, February 4, 1934).

In Scandinavia, "flying ghosts" immediately after Christmas began to be extremely active. (Remember that the 1909 flag also happened on Christmas week.) There was a report of an unknown aircraft flying back and forth along the Swedish-Norwegian border, and the report came from two places - from Ternaby (Sweden) and from Langmo Vefon (Norway) . On December 28, 1935, the 4th Air Corps of the Swedish Air Force was ordered to fly to Ternaby to investigate the incident.

The mystery took on a tragic twist when Lieutenant Georg Engelhard of the artillery regiment in Gotland skied from Tennas to Storlien, a route that led through wooded areas where flying ghosts were reported to be most frequent. The lieutenant did not arrive at Storlien. Search parties, including Norwegian Air Force aircraft, tried in vain to locate him. On January 4, 1934, a group of three skiers took the alleged Engelhard route and did not return. A new search party was organized already in order to find them.

Even the NEW YORK TIMES has become interested in this overgrown mystery. On January 10, 1934, the Stockholm correspondent of the TIMES reported:

“The Swedish Air Force has already lost two aircraft in its persistent effort to locate the bases of the mysterious aircraft. Everyone's attention is now focused on the fate of Lieutenant Engelhard-Vanberg, who went missing on Christmas Eve, and three skiers who disappeared while trying to find the lieutenant. A spokesman for the Ministry of Defense told reporters that the search for all four missing servicemen has so far yielded no results.

The three missing skiers suddenly appeared on January 12 at the New Style railroad station. The newspapers gave no explanation for their long absence. If they did give an interview to anyone, they have not yet been able to find his publication.

Finally, on January 17, the tent of Lieutenant Engelhard was discovered, and two miles from it, the frozen body of the officer himself. Despite the blizzard raging in the area, the lieutenant left his skis and a fur jacket in a tent and set off on foot into the mountains to meet his death. No further details about this case have been released.

What made the most experienced skier and hunter leave his skis and warm clothes in a tent and go on foot to the mountains through a furious storm? This we will probably never know.

While the unfortunate Engelhard was searched for in the mountains of northern Norway, the flying ghosts continued their flights over the three Scandinavian countries. Approximately one third of all published messages for January-February 1934 fall on Sunday. Swedish officials openly called these cases "Sunday". Several reports of landings of mysterious vehicles came from distant regions. All of them happened on Wednesday.

The prints found in the snow at the landing sites were traces of airplane skis.

In that year, there were many mass sightings of cities and towns for mysterious machines flying over them. Planes often flew during snowstorms, sometimes circled low over the villages, illuminating the ground with powerful searchlights.

We take the liberty of giving a few facts about these incidents, taken from the above-mentioned newspapers;

1. Sunday, December 31, 1933 - Olaf Hellund - "a serious man with a good reputation" - saw "a large gray plane that was larger than any military aircraft he knew." The plane made three circles over the Sorsel railway station at 3.45 am. The car was a monoplane and completely closed, which resembled a passenger plane. It was equipped with floats or skis of some special design... No identifying marks were visible. (It was a full moon, the night was clear.) During the flight over the station, the aircraft engine did not work.

2. Wednesday, January 10, 1934 - At 6 pm, the inhabitants of the city of Tarna noticed a sparkling object at an altitude of 1000 feet. The object turned and headed towards the Arjeplog. After 15 minutes, the inhabitants of Arjeplog, hearing the noise of an aircraft engine, poured out of their homes to look at the plane. Then the plane appeared over Rortrask, north of Norse, and witnesses say that the plane's engine stopped three times while it flew over their town ... The car flew so low that the whole forest was flooded with light.

3. Wednesday, January 10, 1934 Trondheim, Norway. “Two landings of flying ghosts were reported on Wednesday evening in northern Norway. One car landed near the island of Gjeslingen on the Rorvik parallel, the other - in the Namndala area, in a place called Kvala. A report from Gjeslingen says that the inhabitants saw a huge beam of light and heard the noise from the powerful engine. The car landed and remained on the water for about an hour and a half, illuminating the sea around it with a searchlight.

The Norwegian cruiser Eagle was sent to the island, but it arrived too late.

4. Sunday, January 21, 1934 - "On Sunday, at 6 pm, many residents of Bengtoforsen (Scotland) saw a very bright light in the sky.

It was about the size of a full moon and moved at high speed. The sound of a running engine was clearly audible... In Indal, west of Bengtoforsen, the light appeared at the beginning of the seventh. Many people watched as the fire swirled over the village for ten minutes, and then disappeared in a westerly direction.

Much to the annoyance of the Swedish military authorities, these mysterious machines liked to circle over railway stations and forts, especially over Fort Boden, without leaving other important strategic objects without attention. Many observed only a blinding beam from the light, and our old friend "spotlight" began to appear in one message after another.

When a large gray plane began to circle over the Norwegian ship "Tordenkskiold" off the coast of Tromso on Tuesday, January 23, 1934, it, flying at low altitude, searched the deck with a powerful searchlight. Captain Sigvard Olsen said the pilot was clearly visible in the brightly lit cockpit. He was wearing a helmet with large flying goggles.

But the real flop began on Saturday, January 6, when a significant number of sightings were recorded simultaneously across Sweden. Then the peaks of the flop were: Monday January 8th, Wednesday January 10th, Saturday January 20th, Sunday January 21st, Tuesday January 23rd, Thursday January 25th, Tuesday February 6th and Sunday February 11th.

The number of published reports decreased sharply when representatives of the army and counterintelligence were sent to the areas of the most frequent sightings for a thorough investigation. The military ministries of Sweden, Norway and Finland already had their own, and very gloomy, point of view on the whole thing.

The territorial airspace of their countries was violated in the most flagrant way, and not by one or two aircraft, but by a whole air armada acting with suspicious persistence. These aircraft were larger than any combat vehicles, they could operate in any weather over any, even the most dangerous, mountainous territory. Such a global operation certainly required well-equipped bases with a large number of technical personnel, with a well-thought-out fuel supply system and other necessary equipment, such as warehouses with spare parts, food, a repair base, etc. But despite the thorough searches undertaken by the armed forces of the three states, nothing resembling such a base, of course, was found.

Aircraft carriers in 1934 were still in their infancy and could produce and receive only a small number of small biplanes.

In 1942, the US Navy slightly upgraded the Hornet aircraft carrier in order to deliver General Doolittle's B-25 twin-engine bombers closer to the coast of Japan (The author is mistaken: in 1942, James Doolittle, who commanded the famous flight over Tokyo, was not a general, but a lieutenant colonel. - approx. per.).

These bombers took off with great difficulty from an aircraft carrier and made a purely symbolic raid on Tokyo, but they could no longer land on an aircraft carrier and were forced to fly to the unoccupied part of mainland China.

In 1934, Hitler was still gaining strength, and the Luftwaffe simply did not exist yet.

The Soviet Union had no aircraft and, more importantly, no reason for such senseless demarches over Scandinavia. After all, there was a huge risk of causing an unprecedented international scandal. If at least one of these aircraft crashed or was captured and its belonging to some foreign power was proved, then the actions of the entire armada could not be regarded otherwise than as the beginning of hostilities.

Based on some information, probably known only to the New York Times, this newspaper suggested that the Japanese were to blame for the entire Scandinavian history. But none of the Scandinavian newspapers, despite the large number of speculations discussed, even hinted at Japan. And the justice of this is quite obvious - Japan, which at that time was resolving its problems in China, had neither the opportunity nor the reasons for carrying out such an operation.

At the very beginning of the flask, Swedish newspapers entertained themselves with a completely frivolous conclusion about liquor smugglers delivering liquor to the Scandinavian countries. It makes no sense to refute it, we only note that even the official investigation left no stone unturned from him ...

As in the days of the 1896-1897 and 1909 flops, during the 1934 flop there were occasional flights at low altitudes of objects that are in principle familiar to people, and hundreds of high-altitude flights of mysterious lights, which, as it seemed, were they were controlled, judging by the maneuvers they performed. The mysterious planes were "hard" objects and were used to support the actions of a much larger number of "soft" objects, which for some reason deployed their operations in northern latitudes. Witnesses reported seeing aircraft carrying red, green and white lights. When these glittering lights were seen at high altitudes, it was suggested that the planes were flying to connect with flying ghosts hiding somewhere much higher.

The mysterious planes could perform amazing maneuvers. They switched off their engines, sometimes at an altitude of not more than 100 feet, and without any visible energy they made three or four circles over some object.

Try to perform such a maneuver on an ordinary plane, and you will end your life under its wreckage. On April 30, 1934, Major General Reutersvärd, commander of the district in Norland (Sweden), issued the following statement to the press:

"Comparison of all the reports leaves no shadow of doubt about the illegal aerial inspection of our secret strategic areas. Many reports from quite reliable people give an almost detailed description of these mysterious machines, and in each case one common detail attracts attention: no on one of these machines, no identification marks were seen ... It is absolutely impossible to explain all these cases with fantasy or hallucination. And then the questions arise: “who are they?”, “and why are they violating our airspace?”.

If all the courses of the flying ghosts of 1934 are mapped, then their route seems to become clear. It seems that from day to day they flew in a huge arc with fanatical constancy. Flying south from northern Norway, they passed over Sweden and turned north again over Finland. If we make a full circle from this arc, then its upper part will fall on the area of ​​the sparsely populated island of Svalbard in the Arctic Ocean, and the western part will fall on the northern tip of the island of Greenland. Incidentally, there have been a lot of interesting observations over Greenland. (In Chapter 1, we talked about a case in which a string of unidentified objects were detected by radar while flying over Greenland.) Hundreds of reports of UFO sightings come from the Arctic regions and thus seem to confirm the very popular theory that flying saucers come from holes over the North Pole. The Aerial Phenomena Research Organization holds the advanced theory that objects enter from space into the Earth's polar regions to bypass the intense radioactive belt concentrated above temperate zones.

During flights over Scandinavia of flying ghosts, mysterious radio signals were received throughout Sweden and Norway. This issue has also been widely discussed in the press. On January 11, 1934, one of the newspapers of the city of Umeå (Sweden) noted the following:

“Officers at the Air Force headquarters believe that the mysterious planes have radio transmitters and radio navigation devices on board ... It is certain that these machines are representatives of some extraordinary organization.”

“The radio listeners of the city of Umeå intercepted on their receivers the conversations of the flying ghosts, from which it can be concluded that their intelligence service is at the highest level ... The radio conversations took place in the wake of the popular music program of the city of Umeå, and their topic was a discussion of the rendezvous point of several flying ghosts. At the end of the negotiations, the time for the next contact was named. (Correspondents investigating a 1956-1957 UFO contact claim by one Howard Menger of New Jersey allegedly found a strange radio transmitter on his farm. This transmitter did not emit its own signals, but used signals “stolen” from a local radio station. Swedish reports suggest that someone in Umeå in 1934 used the same equipment when the "output" of an ordinary radio station was used as a power source for "pirate" signals.) January 25, 1934 named Halmar Hedstrom caught on his receiver the following message, transmitted on short waves: “The sea is calm, the temperature is two degrees Celsius. You must land on the water and catch what we have been talking about. Be in touch again at 19.45. The message also included data on wind direction, location coordinates and other information. Although all the conversations were in Swedish, Hedstrom couldn't remember much.

Another radio amateur from the city of Hedesund picked up a similar message on the same day. An additional message was also intercepted at the indicated time - 19.45.

Some messages were received on a wave of 900 m, others - in the range of 230-275 m.

The vast majority of sightings in 1934, regardless of location, took place around 6 p.m. In March, the flop began to decline, but periodic reports were received throughout the thirties.

"Reports of mysterious lights seen in the sky are coming in from various places. A correspondent from the Norwegian Telegraph Agency collected some of these reports while traveling through the Sixth District. Nearly all sightings were reported by residents to the police, whose representative gave a detailed report to the correspondent. A report of an observation was also received mysterious lights in the vicinity of Tromso on Tuesday evening.

The flying ghosts returned to Scandinavia in 1936, exactly following the well-trodden routes of 1934. Once again, their appearance was accompanied by mysterious radio signals. The NEW YORK TIMES correspondent, who in 1934 tried to blame everything that happened on Japan, this time blamed Germany for transmitting the mysterious radio signals. But again, as in 1934, the Scandinavian press did not attach any importance to these fabrications.

As the brightly shining object chased across the Midwestern prairie behind. by a train in 1937, The NEW YORK TIMES, August 15, citing astronomers, attributed the incident to the influence of the planet Venus.

It need hardly be said that the inhabitants of northern Scandinavia are very familiar with the northern lights and other ordinary astronomical and atmospheric phenomena. It is doubtful that they paid particular attention to anything they thought could have a natural explanation.

We have at our disposal two messages from different parts of Europe that deserve to be included in this book. On Thursday, February 11, 1937, the Norwegian fishing trawler "Fram" left Kvalovik at about 9 pm. Bypassing the mountainous cape that separates the harbor of Kvalovik from the ocean, the crew of the trawler noticed a large seaplane sitting on the water.

Deciding that the plane had crashed, the captain of the trawler changed course and headed towards it. The green and red signal lights on the wings of the car were clearly visible, but as the ship began to approach, the lights suddenly went out. At the same moment, the plane was enveloped in clouds of smoke and disappeared.

At noon the next day, on Friday, February 12, 1937, an unknown aircraft, having appeared over the capital of Austria, Vienna, began to circle over the city. The unusualness of this case was widely noted by the European press. Obviously, there were some reasons to doubt the origin of this aircraft.

On June 10, 1946, an object resembling a German V-2 rocket passed over Finland. In the following two weeks, UFO-type lights, cylindrical objects and unidentified winged vehicles were seen by thousands of people in Sweden and Norway. The vast majority of observations were concentrated in the cold, sparsely populated northern regions of both countries. The European press paid due attention to them - "ghost rockets" replaced the flying ghosts of 1934. They were seen far to the south, over Greece and over the mountains of Switzerland, where they flew confidently over gorges and canyons. They were intercepted by radar and photographed. (One such photograph, depicting an arrow-shaped streak of light, was published by the London Morning Post on September 6, 1946.) The speed of these objects has been measured and ranged from 400 to 1000 miles per hour.

Some of the objects seemed to be exploding in mid-air, some of them ejecting shards of metal that looked like normal slag.

British and Scandinavian newspapers openly accused the Soviet Union of testing new types of combat missiles in northern European airspace. Moscow categorically denied this fact. In September bright green balloons were spotted over Portugal. "A huge projectile with a fiery tail" swept over Casablanca. A huge flaming sphere whistled through the sky over Oslo and exploded with a terrifying roar. On Wednesday, July 3, 1946, a mysterious explosion rocked a small town in the center of Scotland, shattering windows and killing one person (apparently by shell shock). No one could explain the cause of this explosion. Swedish authorities have collected more than 2,000 reports of "ghost rockets". Although this flask received very little coverage in the American press, General James Doolittle flew to Stockholm to participate in the investigation. London was also shocked by a series of explosions, the origin of which no one could explain.

At the end of August 1946, the lid slammed shut. On August 22, the London DAILY TELEGRAPH newspaper reported: "In order to prevent the leakage of technical information about the launch of rockets flying over Denmark, the Danish government asked correspondents not to indicate those areas of the country where these rockets were seen ... ". On August 31, 1946, the correspondent of the DAILY TELEGRAPH in Oslo reported:

"Starting from Wednesday, Norwegian newspapers stopped any discussion about missile flights over Scandinavia. Today, the Norwegian General Staff issued a memorandum for the press, demanding that no information be published in the press about the appearance of missiles over Norwegian territory and that all reports on this topic be sent to the Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff …

In Sweden, it is also forbidden to mention in the press about flights and explosions of missiles over the country's territory.

In a short 50 years, we have gone from mysterious inventions to espionage and smuggling, and then came to the Russian secret weapon. Since none of these explanations can be taken seriously, and the phenomenon continues to be observed, we seem to be left with the only acceptable hypothesis: the arrival of aliens from outer space on Earth. For a long time, members of the Fortian Society, admirers and followers of the late Charles Fort, have been fueling this hypothesis with their irresponsible publications. They have not yet been asked a question, and they already have an answer ready for anything. Their thought works in this direction: in 1945 we dropped atomic bombs on Japan. The energy of atomic explosions was recorded in space by the instruments of some alien super-civilization.

This super-civilization was terribly shocked by the fact that such a nonentity as a man discovered the secret of atomic energy. To investigate this sad fact, an expedition to Earth was organized. However, some superintelligent navigator made a small mistake and instead of bringing the spacecraft to the affected Japan, he flew to Scandinavia.

It's a pity if that's the case.

Thousands of observations for the period 1896-1938. ghost airships and mysterious planes lead us to the next inevitable conclusion; the true substance of a phenomenon is such that it can shape itself into any desired form it chooses. And that raises a very important question: Do these things really exist? Or are all the thousands of messages nothing more than examples of mass hysteria, correspondent jokes and misinterpretations of natural phenomena?

It is impossible to have two points of view. Either the overwhelming percentage of reports must be recognized as true, or everything is pure nonsense.

If I were to write a book, say, about the Civil War, I would use the same sources, i.e. old newspapers, historical documents, letters from participants in the events, and as a result, the book I created would be accepted by scientists and historians with little or no no questions at all. But flying saucers have been so discredited by all sorts of amateur theories and fans of the alien version that skeptics, who easily find obvious nonsense in all their hypotheses, get reason to say the same about all other UFO data.

If a farmer of the sixties of the last century, who participated in the battles of the Civil War, left behind a bunch of crumpled letters, where he describes the events he experienced, then historians like tigers rush at these letters to repeatedly quote them in their scholarly works. But if the same farmer saw some unusual object over California in 1875 and reported it in a letter to the local newspaper, then why can't this letter be considered a historical document today? No, skeptics will find fault with every word of such a letter, and if there is nothing to complain about, they will question the author's sanity.

It is my firm opinion that we should stop asking the question: "Could such things really be?", and start asking another: "What can this all mean?".

The gullible can get caught up in stories about amazing spaceships from distant galaxies, and everything will become clear to them. But what will they say about the numerous stories associated with seemingly completely ordinary planes and helicopters? Yes, there are also ghost helicopters!

On Tuesday, October 11, 1968, a bright flying fire danced over drinking water tanks in New Jersey. There had been enough strange observations in that area before, but this case was doubly strange. A few minutes after the blinding bright object disappeared, a whole formation of mysterious helicopters appeared.

"This thing blinded me so much that I could not find my car," one of the witnesses to the incident, police sergeant Ben Thompson, told Dr. Berthold Schwartz. “I had the impression that I was looking straight into the spotlight to see the nests of reflective lamps ... After that, I saw absolutely nothing for about twenty minutes.”

Approximately 15 minutes after the blinding object disappeared, a detachment of helicopters appeared and began to circle at low altitude. A little above them appeared a group of ten or twelve jets. Hundreds of cars filled with stunned spectators drove up to the spot. They, of course, saw helicopters, but not in such numbers. Police Sergeant Robert Gordon described his confusion as follows: “In all my life I have never seen seven helicopters in the air at once ... And I have been living here for forty years.”

Science writer Lloyd Mellen investigated the case. He made inquiries at all nearby Air Force bases, airports, and even the Pentagon. No one knew anything about these helicopters and planes. The Civil Aviation Bureau was as surprised as the others. No one has been able to lift the veil of secrecy. I don't really believe that this was the Air Force's reaction to the appearance of a sparkling object above the tanks. Firstly, because no one directly reported this to the Air Force, and secondly, because there never was such a large detachment of helicopters at the nearby McKire and Stewart airbases, and if they were, then, given their slowness, it is unlikely that after 15 minutes they would have appeared over the scene. Of course, we must not forget that the existing opinion about the shameless lies of representatives of the Air Force about everything related to UFOs may not be without foundation.

New Jersey residents claim to have seen these helicopters and jets. So they are all lying? But what's the point of such a lie? And if this is true, then where, from where and why did these cars fly? And who controlled them?

The North Vietnamese have a negligible number of aircraft and even fewer helicopters. Nevertheless, at the end of June 1968, a whole array of some strange lights appeared over the Ben Hai River, and one of the mysterious helicopters, as reported, was even shot down. Newsweek Vietnam correspondent Robert Stoke was at the scene. Here is his message (NEWSWEEK, July 1, 1968):

"Captain William Bates was on radio duty at Regimental Headquarters in the village of Dong Ha. At 11 p.m., the Marine forward watch radioed that their observer had detected thirteen yellow-white lights with an electronic telescope, floating in a westerly direction at an altitude of 500 to 1000 feet above the Ben Hai River, which flows in the middle of the demilitarized zone.Bates immediately contacted the command to find out if there were any planes or helicopters in the observation area.Having received a negative answer, the captain contacted the Alpha 2 anti-aircraft radar station, the northernmost military unit 1 Corps Less than a minute later, an answer came from the station about strange glare in all 360 degrees of all-round visibility.

Around 1:00 a.m. Air Force and Marine Corps planes were already over Da Nang and began pursuing unidentified objects. After 45 minutes, the Marine Corps pilot reported the destruction of the helicopter. However, when a reconnaissance aircraft equipped with infrared equipment passed over these areas, it did not find burning debris anywhere.

In June, these objects were intercepted almost every night by radar over the demilitarized zone. And it was never possible to identify, and there is hardly any reason to consider them really Vietnamese aircraft or helicopters. If this were the case, it would be surprising why the North Vietnamese suddenly stopped using them, since after June 1968 they did not appear again.

A few weeks after this series of incidents, mysterious helicopters appeared over the state of Maryland. At about 8:20 p.m. on Tuesday, August 19, 1968, an oval object girdled in the center with red and white glittering lights hovered over Rosecroft Restreck near Phelps Cons, Maryland. One of the many witnesses, Geese I. Donovan, stated that she also saw at least seven helicopters circling the site. “I noticed this,” she said, “because I have never seen so many helicopters in the air.”

Maybe our Air Force is secretly hunting for flying saucers in helicopters, not finding anything better? We do, of course, use fighter jets frequently, albeit unsuccessfully, to chase unidentified objects, but neither I nor many Air Force officers with whom I have spoken have even heard of the use of helicopters for this purpose, not even by word of mouth.

Helicopters are very expensive machines and difficult to fly. It is for these reasons that the World War II prediction that "helicopters will be in every garage" did not come true. UFO hunting operations require several helicopters to be constantly on standby for immediate departure. I've been snooping around many of our air bases and have not found even a hint of this kind of operation.

I have come to the conclusion that the unidentified helicopters are in the same category as the flying ghosts of 1934 and the tiny plane in Calgary.

They are part of the whole UFO phenomenon, not proof of our hunt for unidentified objects.

Since 1982, thousands of UFO photographs have been taken. Many of them recorded vague spots and streaks of light, but many were clearly "solid" objects, similar to machines of some kind with portholes, hatches and other clearly distinguishable parts. And here another problem arises. With a negligible exception, no two UFO images are the same. I have received hundreds of photographs in the mail and collected hundreds of others during my travels. Since photographs are so easily counterfeited, I have usually avoided taking too much care of both the photographs themselves and their authors. However, I myself took two very similar photographs in two different areas.

Over the past three years, I have interviewed thousands of eyewitnesses in person, by phone, and by mail. At the same time, many of those who gave descriptions of sparkling, changing "soft" objects said the same thing. But I have rarely heard two independent witnesses describe in one word what they saw as a "solid" object. I have heard of tiny saw-sounding objects circling over mines in Ohio, and giant gondola-shaped machines with many rows of windows hovering over the Kaitatini Mountains in northern New Jersey. And it seems that there were as many different forms of objects as there were witnesses. However, I reassure myself time and time again that the witnesses were reliable and simply told honestly what they saw.

And if we take as a basis that the witnesses are telling the truth, then we can safely assume that UFOs appear in billions of different sizes and shapes. Or they don't have any shape at all. And that brings us back to the old psychological warfare gambit. If there are continuous contradictions in the description of objects, then few people will take this phenomenon seriously, but if people, say, in Brazil, Iowa and Australia begin to give the same testimony, then this can immediately alert both scientists and the military.

PROJECT BLUE BOOK REPORT 14 tried to solve this problem. Air Force specialists put 434 unidentified object reports into a computer in an attempt to get a basic model. They received 12 basic types of objects. Of the thousands of reports that are available, 1,200 or 1,200,000 different types of UFOs can be obtained with equal success. And those 12 types of objects that are described in REPORT 14 were not observed at all after 1955.

Our catalog of UFO types to date contains flying cubes, triangles, hexagons, cones, spheres, objects shaped like giant metal insects and flying jellyfish. We have UFOs with wheels, wings, antennae, bulging domes, flat portholes, and none at all. We have objects of all colors of the spectrum. There are gigantic "cigars" with multiple portholes that spew blue fire from their tails. ("Flying saucer base," the proponents of the alien version assure us.) We have wheelless cars driving through desert areas a few inches above the ground. We also have unmarked piston and jet aircraft and unidentified helicopters roaming over the flask areas. In other words, we have everything but the basic model, which would appear regularly in different years and in different places. And all this forces us to make two inevitable conclusions to choose from:

1. All witnesses are either wrong or lying.

2. Some unknown super-civilization produces thousands of different types of flying machines and sends them to our planet.

The governments of all countries of the world stubbornly adhere to the first conclusion, UFO enthusiasts to the second.

As for me, I do not adhere to either one or the other. Moreover, I suggest a third alternative. I believe that some "solid" objects definitely only exist as a temporary transmog. They are disco and cigar-shaped. They leave distinct traces on the ground after landing.

Witnesses touched them and even went inside. These "hard" objects are nothing more than baits, just like the airships and planes of yesterday, the purpose of which is to cover and ensure the operation of a huge number of "soft" objects. Therefore, for me, the main interest are "soft" objects.

They are the key to unraveling the whole mystery.

There are countless reports of objects changing size and shape right before the eyes of witnesses, or splitting into several small objects, each of which flew off in a different direction. In some cases, the reverse process took place: several small objects were combined into one large one, which then calmly continued its flight.

Many times witnesses have said to me in a mysterious low voice, “You know, I don't think the things I saw were machines. I have a strong impression that they are alive.”

Researchers such as John Bessor and Ivan T. Sanderson have openly discussed the possibility that some UFOs are indeed living beings. Of course, there is no direct evidence, this statement can be challenged, like any other. Make your own choice. Each point of view has its strengths, but after analyzing all the data, none of them can be adopted without a very legitimate doubt.

Specialists have reconstructed the Tu-154 take-off scheme according to the testimony of the flight recorder, Kommersant newspaper reports. The result seemed unusual to the experts - it turned out that when the navigator warned the pilots about the fall, they did not react to it in any way. The sensors of the liner did not record the logical movement of the steering wheel "towards itself" in the current situation.

ON THIS TOPIC

Moreover, a source close to the investigation said that "until the collision with water, they responded to the crew's control actions in a timely and regular manner." A pilot's emotional statement about the flaps may indicate a non-critical delay in the order to retract them, but not a technical malfunction.

Aviation experts suggested that the behavior of the pilots was strongly affected by the fact that the flight was made at night. “A few seconds after leaving the well-lit and marked strip, you cross the also illuminated coastline and immediately fall into a black hole,” said one of the experts. In such a situation, the pilot must trust only the readings of the sensors, and not his own vestibular apparatus.

However, the on-board systems of the Tu-154 recorded that the commander manually corrected the flight path for a long time. This indicates his loss of orientation. Many experts criticize the inaction of the co-pilot Alexander Rovensky, but his behavior is explained by the fear of taking the helm from the senior major Volkov.

However, a number of experts deny the "illusory" version of the fall of the Tu-154. They explain the resulting scheme of the tragedy by a malfunction of the parameter registration system.

We add that the behavior of the pilot's body has long been studied by such a science as aviation psychology. However, experts still have not been able to establish why the captain of the aircraft instinctively violates the flight path. Experts say that fatigue, stress and malaise can contribute to disorientation. According to statistics, every tenth plane crash in the world is due to illusions.

“Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. We have a small problem. All four engines stopped. We're doing everything damn possible to get them up and running again. I'm sure you're not entirely in distress."

There are a lot of real dangers to flying airplanes. All of them are well studied. Dozens of cases of aircraft collisions with birds a year, as a rule, do not lead to catastrophes or accidents at all, and even more so do not serve as a reason for bans to restrict flights to countries where there are birds. Cumulonimbus clouds are a deadly threat to aircraft, yet hundreds of aircraft daily simply bypass these pockets at a safe distance (about 50 kilometers in the middle between clouds, or 15 kilometers away from a single cloud). To list such phenomena is not the topic of the material, believe me, their presence in nature does not reduce the overall safety of flights.

For a detailed clarification of the issue, I talked on the phone with Valery Georgievich Shelkovnikov, Member of the Board of the World Aviation Safety Foundation, and President of the Consultative and Analytical Agency " Flight Safety ". I present the results of our private conversation below in my own words and from myself, because there is no way to separate the words of an expert from the words of a journalist:

The eruption of the Eyjafjallajokull volcano and subsequent events related to the cancellation of flights in Europe amused me a lot. I am not against aviation security at all. Moreover, if a person can even joke about this topic, then he still does not know what an aviation accident is. However, I will continue the topic. The mythologization of volcanic eruptions and the hysteria of the press forced airlines to stop or postpone flights in those state territories where "clouds" of volcanic ash fell.

So was there a real danger to flights, or was there a collective air hysteria, the beginning of which was laid by journalists, and then the domino effect worked? Let's try to figure it out.

Indeed, the ingress of a large amount of abrasive dust into aircraft engines (and it does not matter what origin) can cause a fire in the engines due to instantaneous overheating and subsequent destruction of the turbine bearings. At a rotational speed of several thousand revolutions per minute, they will simply melt from friction. Therefore, when an aircraft hits a column of volcanic dust, such a situation is quite possible.

Another thing is the special structure of volcanic dust. In addition to rock particles thrown out by the explosion, it also consists of amorphous particles (by the way, glass is also amorphous) of extremely irregular shape. If you look at volcanic dust under a microscope, you can clearly see that it consists of "ribbons", "stars" and other particles that have a very large surface with a small weight. Those. thanks to this feature, it can remain in the air many times longer without dissipating. For due to electrification and other interactions of ash particles, such clouds dissipate extremely reluctantly.

Also, its feature is its "stickiness", i.e. the ability to stick to various objects or clog various holes. Moreover, the particles, being excellent nuclei of condensation, after a while become absolutely outwardly indistinguishable from an ordinary cloud.

Another thing is that even at a distance of already "hundreds" of kilometers from the volcano, the dust becomes so rare and fine that the probability of an aircraft failure for this reason becomes only "theoretically" possible. And at a distance of a thousand kilometers or more, volcanic dust can only slightly cloud the air, which is nevertheless clearly visible to the naked eye, because sunrises and sunsets become most beautiful due to the special refraction of the sun's rays in the dusty air.

Those who have been to Egypt are well aware of sandstorms over Hurghada airport. Suspension of sand in the air, and especially the concentration and size of particles in the air, are several orders of magnitude higher than the concentration of dust over Europe. And in Australia, flights in the conditions of global dust storms are stopped only in cases of extreme deterioration in visibility. These examples can be continued indefinitely. And now, attention!!! The only difference is that, unlike volcanic dust, the rest of the dangerous phenomena are well studied, and there are clear recommendations for their avoidance, as well as a clear regulation of prohibitions and permits “depending on”.

Let me now present my consistent version of what happened.

The influence of volcanic ash on the flight of aircraft has always been an understudied thing. Of course, volcanologists stubbornly studied each eruption, and meteorologists had a fairly clear idea of ​​the direction and speed of ash expansion, but no one betrayed the fate of these particles in the slightest, because already a few hundred kilometers from the volcano in the direction of the wind, the ash already represented nothing more than an interesting optical illusion. Yes, and civil aviation knew before that only a couple of cases when planes actually fell into very dense clouds of ash, and because of this, engines stopped and other unpleasant things happened. Of course, volcanic ash as a dangerous phenomenon was included in all textbooks and instructions.

In practice, both pilots and air traffic controllers were rather derisive about these points of instruction and did not study them well enough. Because of the rarity and exoticism. And it was these same aviation officials, who grew up from former pilots and air traffic controllers, who practically did not allocate money for the study of these phenomena in the interests of civil aviation, which, instead of “accurate” knowledge, instantly acquired myths and legends. In general, there was some frank nonsense in meteorology. Thanks to blind faith in "computers" and "satellites" around the world, the number of weather stations with "live" people has decreased by about 60% -70%. And the existing "automated systems" can only build hypothetical mathematical models that have nothing to do with the real state of affairs.

So, journalists inflated the topic, and the international aviation authorities, in particular Eurocontrol, instantly fell for it. Not only that, when aviation officials began to turn to numerous experts in this field, they (experts) rather vindictively reported something like this: “This phenomenon is certainly dangerous, but not well understood. Our equipment practically does not allow us to distinguish clouds of dangerous concentration of volcanic dust from ordinary ones. So where these clouds are, and whether they actually exist, we do not know.

And then it got even funnier. The danger zone was actually quite local (several hundred kilometers in diameter and duration), but in reality, hundreds and hundreds of thousands of square kilometers of the earth and water surface fell into the “closure” zone. At the same time, all levels from “0” to 35,000 feet (approximately 12 km) were also absolutely closed in altitudes, although even the most reinsurers predicted a dangerous closure of altitudes only from altitudes of 22,000 feet. In short, the flight ban took on an absolute character, because even its initiators could no longer do anything. The domino effect worked.

In addition, an absolutely unexpected thing was revealed. It was possible to fly in ash-free zones, and in some cases deviations from the route or an increase in its duration by several hundred kilometers did not play any role, but modern automated systems simply were not able to reschedule en masse. Yes, and it became impossible to do it individually. Automation, automation, and more automation. Specialists in "manual" scheduling simply died out like dinosaurs, and modern airlines simply do not have such specialists. Those who are in the subject should imagine that drawing up even a regular class schedule at a university is already an action between science, art and mysticism. There was no talk of redrawing the timetable over Europe. There was a mess. I absolutely do not condemn any measures related to flight safety, but admit that in the 21st century it is quite funny to close half a continent for the sake of one mountain with smoke. Let them be strong.

The "American" help only caught up with additional horror in Europe, and finally deprived the European aviation officials of the remnants of their will.

As for Russia as part of Europe, there was no panic at all. The fact is that the long-term study of the Kuriles (as a zone of constant eruptions) has brought a sufficient amount of knowledge and skills to determine the dangers of flights. Therefore, Russia flew on its territory without problems.

Although in Russia the so-called “Storm Ring of Alerts” was previously destroyed, i.e. hundreds and hundreds of weather stations were closed, where underpaid weather forecasters sat, and the accuracy of predictions and warnings about dangerous phenomena was unprecedentedly high.

As for the “underfunded” scientists, we can immediately confidently say that they will be allocated very large amounts of money for research, as compensation for past torments. But the fact that this will violate world harmony, because this money will be taken away from other areas - this is really bad. Business and charity don't go well together, do they?

Nevertheless, that the leading scientists immediately wrote off and phoned each other and worked out a common position, I have no doubt about it. The Internet, mobile communications and e-mail in terms of communications - work wonders. Moreover, I have such information. Not for nothing that I, at least for a short time, but stayed a geologist-geophysicist. So business will receive prices from science in full.

And as an epilogue for those who took my words like “funny” and “funny” literally, I give a short excerpt from Sergey Melnichenko’s article “History of the British Airways 9 flight”.

They were able to see the runway lights through a small scratch on the windshield, but the aircraft's landing lights were not on. After landing, they were unable to taxi because the apron lighting caused their windshields to become frosted. The city of Edinburgh was waiting for a tugboat to pull it off the runway...

It was subsequently determined that the aircraft had entered an ash cloud. Since the ash cloud was dry, it did not appear on the weather radar, which can only reflect the moisture in the clouds. The cloud acted as a sandblasting machine and made the surface of the windshields matte. Once in the engines, the ash melted in the combustion chambers and settled on the inside of the power plant.

Since the engines began to cool down due to their stop, after the aircraft left the ash cloud, the melted ash began to solidify and, under the pressure of air, began to fly out of the engines, which allowed them to be started again. The restart was made possible due to the fact that one of the on-board batteries remained in working order.

All 263 people on board survived.

Take care of yourself. Viktor Galenko, air traffic controller, navigator, geologist-geophysicist

According to Eurocontrol, on April 18, 2010, approximately 5,000 flights were recorded in European airspace. For comparison: before the volcanic eruption in Iceland on Sunday, there were about 24,000 flights. Thus, air traffic fell by about 6 times. About 63,000 flights have been canceled since April 15. Below is a table with data on the decrease in the number of flights in European airspace:

Currently, air traffic services are not provided for civil aviation aircraft in most countries in Europe, including Austria, Belgium, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, almost all of France and Germany, as well as Hungary, Ireland, northern Italy, the Netherlands , Norway, Poland, Romania, Serbia, Slovenia, Slovakia, northern Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the UK.

In some countries on this list, the upper airspace is open due to the spread of the ash cloud, however, given the complete closure of the airspace over the territory of other countries, it is not possible to use the permitted sections of the upper airspace.

The airspace of territories and countries such as southern Europe, including part of Spain, Portugal, the southern part of the Balkans, southern part of Italy, Bulgaria, Greece and Turkey remain open and have normal air traffic.

Approximately 30% of the total number of scheduled flights will be performed today over 50% of the total territory of Europe.

As of the morning of April 19, all air zones of Ukraine are open. Airports in Ukraine for the departure and arrival of aircraft operate as normal, but a number of airports in Europe remain closed. It is allowed to operate flights according to the rules of visual flights before nightfall. Further possible changes in the airspace of Ukraine due to the movement of a cloud of volcanic ash (volcanic eruption in Iceland) will be informed. Ukrainian airlines report that flights are not carried out only to closed airports in Europe, flights to all open airports in the world have been resumed.