The space era began in April 1961, when Yuri Gagarin flew into the orbit of our planet. But six months before his flight, a ground-based radio station caught mysterious signals from space asking for help. Didn't the Soviet government hide the predecessor of the first cosmonaut?
For the historical moment, manned space flight, Yuri Gagarin did not prepare any speeches or witty jokes. When on April 12, 1961, at 09:07 Moscow time, the engines roared at the launch vehicle of his Vostok-1 spacecraft, he simply shouted: "Let's go!" Then, without any problems, he made one revolution around the Earth and by 11.00 landed safely in the Saratov region near the village of Smelovka.
"The implications for international politics and propaganda were enormous because American astronauts were still waiting for the first launch," says writer and space explorer H. J. P. in his book Man and Space. Arnold (HJP Arnold). The head of the Soviet state Nikita Khrushchev actively used the success of Gagarin for political purposes.
Paranoia and intrigue
After the launch of the satellite in 1957, the Soviet Union seemed to have every possible victory in its hands. The USSR had a good rocket carrier, leading specialists in the person of chief designer Sergei Korolev, and not least a system of power, in which they did not talk about the tasks set and everything unnecessary was carefully hidden. So, the world should not have learned that there were human casualties already in preparation for the space mission. One test pilot died while testing the ejection system for "Vostok", the other - Valentin Bondarenko - from the cosmonaut corps burned down during training in the isolation chamber.
The incomprehensible intrigues of politicians and influential chiefs of design bureaus led to senseless turns and non-conceptual decisions, in which huge sums of money irrevocably disappeared. Billions have gone into making the results faster, and so that they can be used for propaganda.
Instead of ground tests, test runs of untested vehicles were carried out. If everything went well, socialism would have another argument in the dispute about superiority over capitalism, and if not, then nothing was reported to anyone. There was also silence about the accident of a test unmanned spacecraft on July 23, 1960, about the fact that on December 1 of the same year a ship with dogs burned down while re-entering the atmosphere, about the failed launch of another ship just three weeks later. Several months were left before Gagarin's flight …
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However, other flights preceding his mission were successful, during which they also tested the connection between the ship and the Earth using tape recordings. Those who followed the Soviet cosmonautics in the West were also confused by the fact that the Vostok was in no way different in size, power and basic design elements from the spy satellites that also moved around the Earth. Replacing them on radar screens was not difficult.
But the Russians, first of all, were themselves to blame for the fact that there were so many rumors. The world did not even have to know the names of the cosmonauts who were being prepared for an important mission, especially since no one should have known about the timing and purposes of the preparatory flights. As well as fatal accidents in training and those who were suspended from them for lack of discipline. The fact that the Russians would stop at nothing in their paranoid secrecy was later proved by the end of their lunar program. When the Americans were the first on the moon, Soviet propaganda began to assert that the USSR had no such goal at all … And in the end it turned out that many stopped believing in the real successes of the Soviet Union.
Space wiretapping
Signals of Soviet spacecraft in the 60s were tried to catch and listen to not only professionals, but also amateurs. If the former, as a rule, were silent about their results, then the latter no longer. Some of the best were the Italian brothers Achille and Giovanni Battista Judica-Cordigliovi. In 1957, near Turin, in an old German bunker left over from the Second World War, they established a station. Despite the cheap equipment, the brothers were able to achieve some success, so that some professionals even envied them: the Italians not only presented the signals from the first Soviet and American satellites to the world, but were also able to make records. With the help of other hobbyists, the Italians created a network that could surprisingly pinpoint the location of the object sending the signals. The results of the work of these amateurs were also appreciated by NASA, where they were then invited to look at the local equipment.
But the brothers did not rest on this. They claimed that on November 28, 1960, that is, six months before Gagarin's flight, they had caught a signal for help. It was said that something similar happened again on February 2, 1961, when they received a recording of a person's uneven heartbeat. Soon after Gagarin, on May 17, 1961, the Italians even recorded a female voice talking to a ground station, it followed from the conversation that the ship had lost its heat shield and it was on fire when returning to the atmosphere. An entry in Russian is still available on the Internet today, and it gives off a frost on the skin. Immediately after that, on May 23, 1961, the Soviet agency TASS reported that a huge automatic satellite had burned out in the dense layers of the atmosphere. And although it was not possible to verify this information from independent sources, it is interesting,that at about the same time (May 20), the British Jodrell Bank radio telescope caught unknown signals. Local scientists determined by the signal frequency that it was the Soviet satellite "Venera-1" launched to Venus on October 4th. The craft was lost shortly after it reached Earth's orbit.
Most experts strongly disagree with the statements of Italian radio amateurs. At best, they admit that the brothers misinterpreted the signals from unmanned satellites, which is certainly unlikely given their success with signals from other missions.
alternative history
Some also doubt that Gagarin was the first to successfully complete the space exploration mission. They argue that in fact the first cosmonaut to return to Earth was test pilot Vladimir Ilyushin, the son of the legendary aircraft designer.
Ilyushin was born on March 31, 1927. He was a test pilot at the Sukhoi design bureau. In July 1959, he set a world record on a combat aircraft, having taken an altitude of 28,857 meters. For this Ilyushin received a Hero of the Soviet Union.
But then strange things began to happen around the figure of the young Ilyushin. Just two days before Gagarin's flight, the British communist newspaper Daily Mail published an article by its Moscow correspondent Dennise Ogden, which claimed that a manned flight had taken place in the USSR, during which the cosmonaut was seriously wounded. The next day, French journalist Eduard Brobovski sent a message from Moscow that the unknown pilot was Vladimir Ilyushin. Then Gagarin flew, and Brobowski said that this was either not true, or a red herring, which should hide the previous failure. In response to Brobowski's reports, TASS reported on May 1 that Ilyushin had had a serious accident even earlier, and now he is being treated in China. They said that a drunk driver drove into his car head-on. But why did the famous pilot, the son of an even more famous designer and hero of the USSR, prefer the doctors of the lagging China over Soviet specialists? Nobody really explained this.
The strange circumstances of Ilyushin's accident immediately served as a basis for the emergence of an alternative version, according to which the son of a famous dad very quickly replenished the detachment of the first cosmonauts and immediately became a candidate for the first flight. Gagarin (at best) had to replace him. Ilyushin was supposed to fly on April 7, 1961 on the ship "Russia". Too hasty preparation took its toll, and the astronaut in orbit lost consciousness. From the ground, they could not bring him to his senses, and the only possible decision was made at the flight control center: to start an automatic descent.
The Vostok spacecraft were designed in such a way that the astronaut had to eject before landing. And this, apparently, could only be done while being conscious. Thus, Ilyushin fell together with the cab and was seriously injured. Due to unfavorable conditions, the flight also ended in China.
However, most astronautics historians oppose this version, including because the presence of a heavy ship in orbit was not recorded even by American stations at that time. When the Russian archives were declassified, many skeletons were found in the closet, but the story with Ilyushin was not there. Ilyushin then rose to the rank of general, set new records, and received various awards. He died on March 1st, 2010.
Gagarin's flight itself also tried to refute. Hungarian journalist István Nemere, in his book Gagarin - A Cosmic Lie (1990), presented evidence that should follow that the first manned flight into space was a huge lie. But most of these arguments can be easily refuted, in addition, there is a number of objective evidence (including records of American radars) confirming the presence of a spacecraft with an astronaut in orbit.
Jan A. Novák