On March 16, 1978, a Tupolev 134 (TU-134) plane on a regular flight from Sofia to Warsaw crashed at 1:52 p.m. in the Brisha River, between the villages of Gabare, Tlacene and Varbitsa.
All 73 people on board died - 7 crew members and 66 passengers - of them 27 Bulgarians and 39 Poles, recalls Ivaylo Nikodimov for "Map of Time".
This is one of the crashes with the most human casualties in the history of Bulgarian civil aviation.
Among the dead are Julieta Shishmanova (coach of the national rhythmic gymnastics team) and her students, Snezhana Mihaylova (pianist), the Bulgarian youth football team, Janusz Wilhelmi (Minister of Culture of Poland), members of the Polish government delegation and the Polish youth basketball team. The causes of the crash have not yet been established.
It is known that after reaching an altitude of 4900 meters, the plane suddenly turned to 1350 and began to descend at a tremendous speed.
Somewhere towards Golyama Brestnitsa, the air traffic controllers who were controlling the flight suddenly noticed that the machine was surprisingly turning left and taking a westward course of 270 degrees. The ground services immediately demanded that the pilots report what was happening.
After another 25 km, the plane deviated to the right with a northern course and disappeared from the radar monitor in the control tower. It was later learned that at 1:52 p.m., a TU-134 plane with the identification LZ-TUB crashed in the area of the village of Tlacene near Vratsa.
“On the day of the tragedy, we were rushed to the scene of the accident”, recalls pathologist Assoc. Prof. Dr. Yordan Kalchev, a member of the special government commission, for nabore.bg.
And he says that they found many bones, badly crushed. The largest piece of body was 17 kg - somewhere in the pelvic area, but they could not determine whether it belonged to a man or a woman. They did not find any muscles. All the softer tissues were scattered into thousands of molecules.
The death certificates were signed according to the flight documents.
“The remains of the plane were the size of my little finger. People seemed to have been specially chopped into pieces. Watches, coins and everything else seemed to have been crushed with a hammer. The machine had disintegrated into thousands of particles.” - these are the memories of the then mayor of the village of Tlacane Nencho Tsonev.
He also says that they spent a whole week searching for the plane's black box. They searched the surrounding area centimeter by centimeter, but in vain. There were no traces of fire at the scene. And the machine's tank was full of 11.5 tons of kerosene and it crashed into the ravine at 850 km/h.
According to one of the versions, the crash was caused intentionally in order to destroy the elite of our rhythmic gymnastics.
In 1979 - a year after the tragic incident, a monument was erected near the crash site with funds from relatives and friends of the deceased and with the assistance of the Bulgarian Aviation Association “Balkan”. This is the only monument in Bulgaria dedicated to the victims of a plane crash in peacetime. It is made of polished granite, 3 meters high, sculptor – unspecified.
Inscriptions on the front of the monument:
ON MARCH 16, 1978, A BULGARIAN CIVIL AVIATION PLANE CRASHED HERE. PLANE CREW Y. YORDANOV, HR. HRISTOV, M. HRISTOV, G. KOSTADINOV, ZH. POPOVA, R. KONDAKLIEVA, V. PASKALEVA.
Inscriptions on the left side of the monument:
R. BOBCHEVA, D. IVANOV, IV. IVANOV, N. LALOVA, AL. HRISTOV, N. KOTSEVA, V. KRASTEVA, V. BOBEVA, Y. KOSTOVA, IV. PETROV, N. TSAKOS, G. KHITROV, T. NENOV, V. KARAMELSKI, A. KARAMELSKA, ST. ZADGORSKI, N. ZADGORSKA, EM. TOPALOVA, R. STEFANOVA, ZHULIETA SHISHMANOVA, SNEZHANA VARBANOVA, M. IVANOV, KR. GEORGIEV, V. KIRILOVA, AL. PETROV, S. POPOVA AND G. DIMITROV.
Inscriptions on the right side of the monument:
J. WILHELMI, J. TABOR, M. SAMET – NIECIKOWSKA, M. KOLASA, T. LECH, CZ. DAWIDCZUK, T. WLODARCZYK, W. STACHOWIAK, L. BATKIEWICZ, M. SKALIK, J. PYRZAK, T. SZTYK, W. GELO, J. ZDANIUK, M. ZURAWSKI, R. BUDKA, F. PISZCZ, W. PISZCZ, H. LUL, L. KOWALCZYK, D. KOTOWSKA, D. EINBERG, K. ORDINSKA, D. SZKORUPA. J. ZAKOSCIELNA, M. KAZMIERCZAK, K. DAIEWSKI, T. WENETIS, W. STASIAK, S. SLAWSKA, S. DUDEK, W. NADZEIAREK, K. OTOCKI, K. SOLICH, A. SIMAN, J. NIGHTINGALE.
At the time of the opening, the monument was surrounded by a metal fence and it was reached through a door, on pavement tiles.