The Tu5 does have a pretty good track record of having everyone on board walk away from an accident, leaving behind a big chunk of metal with only a few nicks and dents (and on occasion some lost pride...).
MA had two such incidents. One was in PRG in the early eighties, when a blotched landing led to a very high sinkrate impact with the runway. The fuselage cracked over the main spar, but the landing gear held up, and the aircraft rolled to a stop dragging a drooped tail. Nobody was injured.
The other one was in SKG in the late nineties (the type was withdrawn from service soon after). In part due to a certain blonde distraction on the jumpseat, the crew forgot to lower the landing gear. The day was saved by a pilot of an a/c on hold for takeoff who witnessed the approach, and when he realised they are actually going to land, yelled 'go around' on the twr freq. They could not arrest the sinkrate in time, but the engines were spooled up by the time the plane contacted the runway, and it skid on the flaps and rear fuselage in a nose-up attitude for a hundred metres or so, before getting up in the air again. The crew lowered the gear and circled to make uneventful second landing. (In case anybody wonders, no, the plane could not be used again...)
Of course the price of such sturdiness is carrying an extra 20 tons of metal compared to similar sized western jets. Up till recently I was unaware of the reason, but someone with insider knowledge enlightened me. Most western aircraft design specifications call for any single component to be able to demonstrably withstand 150% of the maximum design load. Because the Russian (Soviet) metallurgic industry was unable to supply raw materials of a sufficiently reliable consistency, the old soviet design specs called for 200%. Now the Russian industry is using the same 150% specs as the rest of the world, resulting in much lighter designs.
Last edited by andrasz; 10th Sep 2010 at 07:47.