Red Reward

Pride of all the Russias on its completion year ago was the all-metal super-airliner Maxim Gorki. World's largest land-plane, it weighed 42 tons, carried 63 persons, had eight engines, 7,000 h. p., a speed of 150 m. p. h. It cost 5,000,000 rubles (currently $4,350,000) furnished by popular subscription, took two years to build, contained a complete photographic studio, photo-engraving plant, electrically-driven rotary printing press (capacity: 8,000 newspapers per hour), broadcasting studio, sound cinema equipment, cafe-lounge, electric power plant, 16 telephones, observation saloon, business office, sleeping quarters, powerful loudspeaker system. Its chief use: propaganda.

Soaring over Moscow's Red Square one day last week, Maxim Gorki seemed a mighty symbol of Soviet power & progress. A small training plane, gnatlike by comparison, flew alongside it. Spellbound moujiks cheered as giant and gnat disappeared in the hazy distance. Short while later a motorist drove up, babbled excitedly about how he had seen Maxim Gorki crash. Hardly had the news leaked out when instantly Soviet censorship clamped down. Not until ten hours later did the world know that the largest land-plane ever built had really met with disaster.

What happened: Maxim Gorki was flying about half a mile high, carrying a crew of eleven, 36 passengers. Of the latter, nearly all were aviation shockworkers and their families, getting a "joyride" in reward for faithful service. On the ground, at Moscow Central Airdrome, 32 other shockworkers were waiting their turn to go up. Looking up, they saw the pilot of the tiny training plane stunting, in violation of orders. They saw him come out of a loop, crash head on into Maxim Gorki. With the little plane wedged in its wing between two motors, Maxim Gorki began falling. The pilots cut the switches, regained control, began gliding towards the airport.

Suddenly the whole craft disintegrated, spilling men, women, children amid falling fragments. Part of the fuselage landed on a worker's house in Moscow's outskirts, wrecked it from roof to cellar. Wings, motors, equipment, bodies and parts of bodies fell far & wide. Of the 48 on board, all were killed. Also killed was the pilot of the little training plane.

Worst airplane tragedy in history, the Maxim Gorki disaster was Russia's third major air crash. In September 1933 five of her highest aviation officials, along with several other persons, died in a crash near Moscow. Two months later the super-airliner K7, then the world's largest land-plane, killed 14 in a crash at Kharkov. Mournfully last week the Kremlin announced a State funeral for the latest victims, compensation for their families.

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