[Medico-criminal examination of damages to clothes in flight accidents]

Examination of cloths is a permanent sphere in the practice of forensic-medical expert and an indispensable expertise stage providing for decision-making on the key issues set before the expert. Although, the examination of cloth in forensic-medical expertise has been productive, research in this field slowed down during the recent decades; definition of new sets of evident informative signs has been also suspended. The methodological potentialities of examination of cloths items were demonstrated by examples of aviation incidents because such incidents reflect the principle variations of impacts, i.e. blow, explosion, fire, compression and chemical factors etc., which are subject to examination in the forensic-medical practice. Identification of mechanism causing damage and other signs on cloths helps a lot the forensic-medical expert in solving quite a number of issues related with circumstances of an incident and with a nature of an impact encountered by a person.