How Yakut hunters forged light and durable knives from the wreckage of an alien ship
The Yakut taiga is fraught with many mysteries. And one of them has not yet been disclosed: what kind of unidentified flying object crashed at the beginning of the 20th century on the distant mountain Ket-Kap, which translated into Russian means very strange: "The ship fell."
The fact that a UFO fell in Yakutia became known in 1928. According to one of the legends, this place was opened for the general public by the pilot Nikolai Oleinikov, who once suffered an accident in the mountains of Yakutia, but managed to survive. Getting out of the taiga, he found the remains of a local hunter, and next to his body - an unusual knife: it was strong, sharp and very light. Taking the knife for himself, the pilot even specially came to Moscow and met with the aircraft designer Andrey Tupolev to find out from what metal the find was forged.
However, Moscow engineers were never able to determine what material the blade was made of. The knife itself was taken from the pilot, and everything that was connected with it was classified. In principle, this turn of events was logical. Before the war, Soviet aircraft designers were developing duralumin, and any finds of lightweight and durable materials should have interested them.
The ship is hooked
But in Yakutia, the popularity of Mount Ket-Kap is associated primarily with the geologist M. Carpenter, who in the pre-war years was looking for gold on the Aldan for the Land of Soviets. In the scientific work of 1934 "Geology and gold content of the Uchuro-Chyulba region of the Yakut ASSR" in the description of the Ket-Kap ridge, he cited the story of the local tungus (Even) Dmitry Martynov, who told the scientist that the mountain ridge was named after the only mountain of the same name. Martynov said that the word “ket”, “kete” is an abbreviated Yakut word “keter”, which means “to hook”, “to fall”, and the word “kap” means “ship”. The mountain is called so because many years ago a sky ship caught on to its char, fell and crashed. For a long time, the Aim Tunguses willingly collected the fragments of its metal sheathing:they forged strong knives and palms from unusual iron - a kind of cold steel with a long shaft.
The carpenter reported that he personally visited the top of Mount Ket-Kap, which is located in the upper reaches of the Char-chakhan stream, in 1932, but geologists had no time to look for the wreckage of the crashed ship. The expedition was very difficult, scientists on reindeer covered almost 700 kilometers from the Nezametny mine (now Aldan) to the Uchura mountain ranges. And the tasks they faced were completely different. But in honor of the event, geologists named one of the loaches of the mountain Airplane.
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Japanese? Or the Americans?
This story could have disappeared forever, if in 40 years the geologist of VSEGEI Aleksey Shpagin did not recall it. The scientist considered that the story requires additional investigation and confirmation. With his submission, the famous Russian ufologist, head of the Ufological Commission of the Russian Geographical Society Mikhail Gershtein became interested in information. Unfortunately, after many years it is difficult to determine the exact time of the incident. Tungus Martynov in 1932 said that the ship crashed "many years ago", most likely, referring back to pre-revolutionary times. There were several versions of what happened on Mount Ket-Kap.
Local historian Vladilen Tugolukov suggested that the legend might not be about an air ship, but about an ordinary ship. He considered that in the Ket-Kap mountains the Cossacks could have crashed a river vessel - a koch, which was dragged from the Mai River to the Uchur River or Aim, and therefore he was thrown halfway. However, this version does not explain the presence of light, durable knives made of an unknown metal among the Tungus and Yakuts. If the Cossacks had thrown a river ship among the forest, they would most likely have removed everything that was of value from it. And iron on Aldan was highly valued.
It could be an airship that could be launched from a Japanese warship to explore Russian territories and which drifted inland from the coast of the Sea of Okhotsk, where it crashed in the rocks. Indeed, at the beginning of the 20th century, Japan had airships - they were produced by Isaburo Yamado, founded in 1894. This firm still produces weather balloons and balloons.
There was a version that the airship could belong to the Americans, who at the beginning of the 20th century had serious views of the Far East: they were interested in furs and gold. It is possible that such an airship could really be sent, if not in search of gold, then, for example, as a rescue expedition for geologists in distress in the taiga. By the way, just such a turn of events is described in Alexei Tolstoy's novel "The Hyperboloid of Engineer Garin", in which a wealthy engineer Garin from America sends a rescue airship for his teacher, geologist Mantsev, who discovered the golden olivine belt in Kamchatka. However, the accident of the airship could not explain the presence of an unusual knife in the Tunguska hunter.
The version that a plane crashed in the mountains near Aldan at the beginning of the twentieth century could not explain it. Firstly, airplanes appeared in these parts only before the war itself, and secondly, none of the old-time pilots interviewed by enthusiasts remembered such a case. And thirdly, aircraft skin in those years was more often made of wood and fabric than iron. And iron in this case would be the most common. It was not for nothing that the pilot Oleinikov consulted with Tupolev: the hardware was unfamiliar to the aircraft designers! So maybe the Yakut taiga was visited by a guest from distant worlds - an alien ship?
UFO over Siberia
Ufologist Gerstein sifted through newspaper archives and found a lot of evidence that in the past and in the century before last, the Far East was indeed visited by different aircraft. For example, in 1913, the governor of Kamchatka received a report from the residents of Gizhiga (now the Magadan region), who wrote that the Koryaks from the Opyka and Hyatt camps at the end of January on the Palpolsky valley in the afternoon, in clear weather, saw an airship with 12 passengers flying to the east.
In the same year, it was reported from Okhotsk that on January 19, at five o'clock in the evening, three moving points were noticed above the horizon. One of them separated and hovered over the city, and looked like an "airplane of unknown design", and then flew away towards the mountains.
Gerstein found an interesting message in the newspaper "Zabaikalskie oblastnye vedomosti" for 1897. Residents of the distant village of Kyakhta reported seeing a strange flying machine that did not resemble a meteor. The apparatus had spread wings, the body was the size of a hut, and the speed was high. Moreover, the eyewitnesses - the father and son of Igumnova - saw the moment of "spreading the wings" and the coincidental change in the speed of the aircraft. Moreover, the witnesses described that the wings were rounded, integral and some parts were located below others. The sky was absolutely clear, witnesses saw the unidentified object for about a quarter of an hour. He flew from north to south and disappeared into the sky over the village of Kudarinskaya.
Who will solve the mystery of Ket-Kapa
Of course, the Yakut hunters and Evens tried to explain the origin of light and durable knives by the fall of a meteorite and even by the assumption of the collapse of an alien spacecraft. Paradoxical as it may seem, but these two versions most plausibly explain where the extraterrestrial metal comes from. But, in order to confirm or deny this or that version, long and expensive expeditions to the area of Mount Ket-Kap are needed, which is literally near the devil on the kulichki - on the border of Yakutia and the Khabarovsk Territory - and from which to the nearest settlement - Aldan - 400 kilometers, and to Yakutsk - 500 kilometers. There are few people willing to go this way. Difficult landing, deep taiga, mountains, wild animals and hordes of mosquitoes - this is what awaits those who wish to solve the mystery of the distant Yakut mountain.
Author: Alexander Lavrentiev