1966 Yak-28 crash over Berlin

50 years ago, on April 6, 1966, both engines failed in a Soviet Yak-28 bomber flying over Berlin. Pilot Captain Boris Kapustin and navigator Senior Lieutenant Yuri Yanov refused to eject and managed to take the plane away from residential areas. It fell into Lake Stössensee in the British sector of West Berlin. Both pilots were killed.

At the funeral ceremony on April 8, the mayor of West Berlin, the future Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany, Willy Brandt, said: “We can assume that both of them at decisive moments were aware of the danger of falling into densely populated areas and, in agreement with the ground surveillance service, turned the plane towards Lake Stössensee. This meant a refusal from my own salvation. I say this with gratitude for the sacrifice that averted the catastrophe."

On May 10, Kapustin and Yanov were posthumously awarded the Order of the Red Banner. In 1967, composer Oscar Feltsman and poet Robert Rozhdestvensky wrote the song "Great Sky" about the feat of the pilots.