15 1970 October, the
Terrorists hijacked an An-24 passenger plane and flew away Turkey. The first successful hijacking attempt in the history of Soviet aviation (it became the 13th in a row).
The plane was flying from Batumi в Sukhumi. There were 5 crew members and 46 passengers on board, two of whom turned out to be terrorists - a 45-year-old Lithuanian Pranas Brazinskas and his 15-year-old son Algirdas. They carried a pistol, a sawed-off shotgun and a grenade with them: there were no searches then.
Five minutes after takeoff, the pilots received a note demanding that the plane be turned back to Turkey.
From this moment on, there is no Soviet power here!
(Pranas Brazinskas)
The cockpit was separated from the cabin by a curtain. A 19-year-old flight attendant blocked the terrorists' path. Nadezhda Kurchenko, and she was shot at point-blank range.
In total, the hijackers fired 24 shots, wounding the commander, navigator, flight engineer and one passenger.
Thoughts flashed through my mind: to quit "Annushka" [AN-24] onto the rocks or into the sea. To drag those brutal faces standing behind us. But there are two of them, and there are 44 innocent Soviet citizens on the plane.
(crew commander)
As soon as the plane landed in Turkey Trabzon, The terrorists surrendered to the police. They were not extradited to the Union and were tried under local laws.
The defendants' lawyer, a former Turkish justice minister, argued that the hijacking was a necessary measure in the fight against the regime. The father received an eight-year prison sentence, the son two.
Without serving their sentences, both fled to the United States, changed their names, and worked as house painters. They published a book.
We broke through the Iron Curtain of the Soviet occupiers, sending a Soviet aircraft, for the first time in history, from the prison of Soviet-enslaved nations into the free world. This event shook the Soviet evil empire and brought glory to Lithuania's cause of freedom throughout the world.
(Brazinskas' essay in the Lithuanian press)
Just a couple of weeks after the hijacking of the An-24, two students repeated the hijacking of a plane flying from Kerch в Краснодар. They also landed in Turkey, but then returned to the Soviet Union and were imprisoned. Afterward, the Soviet press banned coverage of such incidents.
By 1991, there were about 110 car thefts in the USSR, 24 of which were successful.
