On paper, SSSR-11747 was a civilian Aeroflot cargo plane. In reality, the four-engine turboprop was part of a military air transport detachment under the direct command of the Soviet Chief Military Advisor in Angola. The detachment belonged to the 369th Military Transport Aviation Regiment, 7th Military Transport Aviation Division, based in Dzhankoy, Crimea. Its An-12s flew support missions for FAPLA -- the People's Armed Forces of Liberation of Angola -- as the Soviet-backed government fought UNITA rebels and their South African allies across the country's southeast. On its final flight, the aircraft carried eight Soviet crew members, four Soviet military passengers, nine Angolan officers, and two tank diesel engines headed to Luanda for repair. It was a routine logistics run in a war that had been grinding since 1975.

The An-12 departed Cuito Cuanavale at 11:20 a.m. and climbed to roughly 10,000 feet. Fifteen minutes into the flight, an explosion ripped into the port side near the wing and engines. Black box recordings captured the crew's response: Lukyanov called in the damage, reported engine failures, and announced his intention to divert to Menongue. But the blast had loosened the two massive tank engines in the cargo hold, shifting the aircraft's centre of gravity and forcing it into a port-side bank. The crew fought to level the plane and complete the turn. They ran out of time. When the port wing exploded and tore free, the aircraft fell burning into the savanna, its wreckage scattered near the road that connected the two towns it had just tried to fly between.

Villagers and members of the local people's defence organization reported seeing a missile trail rise from the ground just before the explosion. Soviet investigators later recovered fragments of a surface-to-air missile from the aircraft's fuselage, along with traces of explosive material. The weapon was identified as having come from a 9K31 Strela-1 system -- a vehicle-mounted, short-range guided missile launcher of Soviet manufacture. Several Strela-1 units had been captured by the South African Defence Force during earlier incursions into Angola. Years later, SADF Colonel Andre Diedericks confirmed in his memoir, Journey Without Boundaries, that he had ordered the missile launch. His South African Reconnaissance Commando team had crossed into Cuando Cubango province with UNITA escort and deployed the captured system around the Menongue area.

Within twelve hours of the crash, the BBC, Voice of America's African Service, and UNITA's own radio station Galo Negro all carried nearly identical reports: UNITA had shot down a Cuban military cargo plane with Cuban personnel aboard. The next day, UNITA officially claimed responsibility. The narrative was convenient -- it credited the rebel movement with a military success while concealing South African involvement. Only later did intelligence sources reveal the Strela-1 connection and the South African special forces team behind it. The deception was characteristic of the broader conflict, in which multiple foreign powers -- Soviet, Cuban, South African, American -- operated through local proxies while maintaining plausible distance from the killing.

Ten days after the shoot-down, on December 5, 1985, a Cuban-reinforced infantry battalion moved to secure the crash site for investigation. They were ambushed along the Menongue-Cuito Cuanavale road by a combined SADF and UNITA force. Two Soviet-crewed Mi-8 helicopters were called in for close air support. One was shot down, killing its Soviet crew and two Angolan soldiers from the 29th Airborne Assault Brigade who had been manning door-mounted guns. The road between Menongue and Cuito Cuanavale earned a grim reputation during the war, and this stretch of it justified the name locals gave it: the Road of Death. In 1987, a memorial bearing the names and images of the An-12's crew was erected in Dzhankoy, the Crimean city where most of them had lived.