Aeroflot Flight 10 (1957)

Aeroflot Flight 10 was an aviation disaster involving an Ilyushin Il-12 aircraft operated by Aeroflot, which occurred on Wednesday, 18 December 1957 30 kilometers west of Birobidzhan, resulting in the deaths of 27 people.

The Il-12P with factory number 30015 and serial number 015 was manufactured by the "Banner of Labor" plant (Moscow) on 28 February 1947. The airliner received the tail number USSR-L1309 and was delivered to the Main Directorate of Civil Air Fleet under the Council of Ministers of the USSR, which initially assigned it to the Vnukovo aviation detachment of MUTA. In April of the same year, the aircraft was transferred to the 1st Irkutsk (134th) air transport detachment of the East Siberian Territorial Directorate of the Civil Air Fleet. The aircraft had accumulated a total of 10,436 flight hours.^[1]

In June 1958, the completely destroyed and burned-out airliner was found on the northwestern slope of Mount Poktoy, 30 kilometers west of Birobidzhan. The crash site was examined by an investigation commission on 15 June. Entering a descent in a spiral, the IL-12 with engines running at an 85° angle and a right bank crashed into a hillside with a 45° slope, killing all 27 people on board. According to available data, this is the largest air disaster in the Jewish Autonomous Region.^[2]