I previously marked two areas that were hardest hit - the parking area on the northwest corner of the station building, and on the platform just south of the station.
I can add two more areas that were most hard hit. Two passenger cars of a parked train had shattered windows and damaged interiors. And there was another area on the platform, this time to the north of the station building.
I've been doing some checking about how the missile itself would work. What I'm presenting can't even be called speculation but
guesswork from a non-expert, so take everything in that spirit.
The Tochka-U is a "quasi ballistic missile." It can maneuver after the boost phase is over. The purpose is to shorten flight time (and therefore warning time) and as a countermeasure to anti-missile defense.
I've found a single, pretty crude, diagram showing the path of a quasi ballistic missile; which is part of a YT video:
The black line represents a ballistic trajectory and the blue line one example of a quasi ballistic trajectory.
Since the maneuvers all happen after the boost phase is over, it stands to reason that control surfaces are used to maneuver, rather than a swiveling rocket engine. The four grid structures seen in these illustrations of a model Tochka-U would
seem to be those control surfaces. I don't have verification of that.
Below is the rear section that was found. As far as I know only one was found.
I think it likely that the missile would be heading nearly vertically down when the warhead bursts open. This would make it easier to aim and keep the pattern tight. If that's true, it shouldn't be expected that the rear section would be found all that far from where the bomblets hit.
It looks to me as if it were falling vertically - engine end down - when it hit. This makes sense to me because without the warhead it would lose stability... both aerodynamically and because of altered center of gravity. Without the weight of the warhead the thing would fall rocket engine down, because the engine is heavy. It looks to me as if the engine end is crushed and there's a big divot in the grass. It then tipped over and fell on it's side.
Note, the nose of the rocket section is coincidently pointing at the station as if it had come from the southwest. It would be easy to make the naïve conclusion that it was heading that way in horizontal flight and then pooped out as the engine ran out of fuel. A cartoon-physics
Wile E.
Coyote type rocket, in other words.
That's not how it works, though.
Diagram of warhead with submunitions - bomblets.
I'm guessing that the thing labeled number 5 is the low explosive bursting charge. It just scatters the bomblets outward. The bursting charge goes off at about 7,000 feet altitude.
Mock up of same.
Another mockup. Grey things are the bomblets. There would be a lot more in a real warhead. Many were omitted to show the interior more clearly.
https://armamentresearch.com/soviet-9n24-submunitions-documented-in-ukraine-2022/
Figure 1 A photograph shared by the DSNS Mobile Rescue Centre showing 49 unexploded 9N24 submunitions—a 9N123K cargo warhead carries 50 submunitions (source: DSNS via ARES CONMAT Database).
The 9N24 is a high explosive fragmentation (HE-FRAG) submunition weighing 7.45 kg. It contains 1.45 kg of A-IX-2 explosive composition (73% RDX, 23% powdered aluminum, 4% wax phlegmatiser) surrounded by 18 partially pre-fragmented fragmentation rings, generating approximately 316 fragments upon detonation.
There were four scattered areas that were hardest hit. I'm guessing that each area of devastation represents a hit from a single bomblet.
I speculate... or guess... that these four bomblets were on the far northwest edge of a more or less circular pattern. Most of the bomblets hit short of the station, in other words. If this is true it stands to reason that the bomblets on the edge of the pattern would be more scattered - a looser pattern - then those in the center of the pattern.
I've been puzzled as to why casualties were so relatively low among a packed crowd of thousands. Maybe this is why.
If there
were two missiles - as I think likely - and both missiles had been dead on target, the crowd would have been hit by... how many bomblets? 20? 30?
