RUSSIA: Crash of the TU-104

Unless a U.S.S.R. aircraft crashes outside the Iron Curtain, or crashes with foreign passengers aboard, Soviet Russia never announces a flying accident. Last week a TU-104 jet passenger airliner had aboard four West Germans and a Briton (as well as 16 Chinese Communist officials) when it crashed 380 miles east of Moscow on a flight from Peking to Moscow, killing all 65 aboard. It was the first acknowledged crash of Russia’s pride and joy, the Tupolev twinjet, since it went into general service two years ago.