The Mystery of 09303

The huge, 14-wheel AN-22, the Soviet Union's equivalent of the C-5A, lifted off smoothly from Iceland's Keflavik airfield. Minutes later a sister ship followed, bearing the same blue and white colors. The two giant Soviet aircraft, heavily laden, were on the second leg of an 8,000-mile journey from northern Russia to deliver relief supplies to earthquake-stricken Peru.

When the second plane put down at its next refueling stop in Halifax, N.S., its crew immediately wondered why the first had not yet arrived. So did U.S. Air Force radarmen, who had been monitoring the course of both flights. The answer, apparently, was that No. 09303 --one of 20 such operational planes in the Soviet fleet--had crashed into the North Atlantic off the southeastern tip of Greenland.

Precisely what happened to the AN-22, which carried about 25 crewmen and passengers, may never be known. U.S. rescue craft took the lead in searching the icy waters near the plane's last recorded radio signal. They located a life raft and some debris but later concluded that neither came from the missing plane. The Soviets, obviously distressed at the loss of an expensive piece of strategic equipment, rushed eight Tu-95 reconnaissance bombers into the area to join the search. The AN-22, which made its debut in experimental form in 1965, was developed to haul heavy equipment to frontier areas. Until the U.S. C-5A was introduced in 1968, it held the world record for lifting off air cargo (221,443 Ibs.).

Whirring Cameras. The plane was ideally suited to Moscow's catch-up relief effort in Peru, where more than 50,000 people perished and 800,000 were left homeless by June's earthquake. The Soviets did not send their first big supply shipments until nearly four weeks after the disaster struck. By that time the massive U.S. effort, which began almost immediately, was doing much to mend U.S.-Peruvian relations, and the Russians were anxious to keep the Americans from getting too much credit. Soviet aid began arriving in force aboard AN-22s and smaller AN-12s. The aid included a field hospital complete with doctors, nurses, cooks, bakers and drivers, two eleven-ton helicopters, 100 prefabricated houses, food, clothing and medicine.

The unaccustomed air runs to South America have presented the Russians with a rare opportunity. Observers at Keflavik noted that Soviet pilots, while approaching the jointly operated U.S.Danish airfield, regularly made an unnecessarily wide circle, taking care to keep their wings level and the plane steady. The observers suspected that the Soviets were carefully photographing the field--one that Russian planes almost never visit--and their suspicions were confirmed when they saw men in the tail camera ports of some planes. It may be assumed that the cameramen also keep busy when Moscow's mercy fleet circles Halifax and Bogota, Colombia, two other refueling stops along the way.

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