However, immediately after takeoff, the aircraft crashed on the airfield grounds, killing all thirty people on board (other sources report twenty fatalities based on the number of identified names[1]).

At the time, this was the second-largest aviation disaster on the territory of the USSR (after the ANT-20bis crash earlier that year, with 36 fatalities[2]).

There are reports that Kirensk was an intermediate stop en route to the American Ladd Army Airfield (Fairbanks, Alaska), but the 5th Regiment only ferried aircraft on the Kirensk-Krasnoyarsk segment[3][4] From the memoirs of the squadron commander of the 4th Ferry Aviation Regiment Viktor Mikhailovich Perov [ru]:[4] We gathered at the airfield in a large group.

The aircraft immediately burst into flames, as it had a full fuel load – three thousand one hundred liters of gasoline.

Mazuruk's deputy Fokin remained to investigate the crash, while I immediately flew to Yakutsk with my squadron on the C-47.All the victims (passengers and crew) were buried in Krasnoyarsk at the Troitskoye Cemetery [ru].