Investigators in Moscow said on Monday that they were unable to retrieve information from the damaged black box of the Su-24 Russian warplane. This is the same plane that was shot down by Turkey on November 24. Kremlin hoped the data would support its version of what happened.
Russia’s Defence Ministry publicly opened the recorder last week, hoping its contents would confirm Moscow’s assertions that the bomber did not stray into Turkish air space and was maliciously downed.
Retrieving the information and a readout of flight data[...]has proven to be impossible because of internal damage.Sergei Bainetov, Deputy Head of Flight Safety of Russian Air Force
Bainetov said 13 of the flight recorder’s 16 microchips had been destroyed and that those remaining were damaged.
The damage was so severe, he said, because of the sheer force with which the plane had hit the ground. A cord that connected the black box and the jet’s avionics was severed after being struck by an air-to-air missile.
The defence ministry will now turn to specialised scientific institutions in the hope that they could get something from the damaged chips, he said. He also mentioned that it was an uncertain process that was likely to take “a lot of time.”
The downing of the Russian SU-24 fighter-bomber by Turkish jets on November 24 was the most serious confrontation between Moscow and a NATO member state in the last 50 years.
Russian President Vladimir Putin accused Turkey of “stabbing Russia in the back” and ordered a raft of retaliatory economic sanctions.
Turkey says the warplane, part of Russia’s Syria-based strike force, strayed into its airspace and ignored repeated warnings to leave. Russia says the plane did not leave Syria and posed no threat to Turkey.
(At The Quint, we are answerable only to our audience. Play an active role in shaping our journalism by becoming a member. Because the truth is worth it.)