Photo: UFO in the vicinity of Leningrad, captured in 1978.
“I saw a wheel in the sky, the inner diameter of which was 25-30 m, its thickness is about 10 times less than the diameter. It went from the side of the commercial port to Izmailovsky Avenue along the street. Kurlyandskaya, turning smoothly towards Ogorodnikova Avenue near the Sovetskaya Hotel (this is about 250 m from the observation point). On its way passed through a cloud. The clouds were moving in the opposite direction. It passed over the hotel, further to the Trinity Cathedral and was lost in the clouds somewhere near Sadovaya Street. near the "Record" cinema
On September 18, 1968 at the Central Lecture Hall of the Knowledge Society in Leningrad, Boris Fedyushin gave a lecture entitled "Have you visited the Earth from other planets?" In those days, the "alien" topic was of great interest, and the hall was full. One of the listeners was ufologist Gennady Lisov.
When the speaker began to respond to notes from the audience, it turned out that one of them was submitted by the then young senior lieutenant Viktor Demidov. In it, he asked the lecturer's opinion on the nature of the pit he had examined on Lake Korb.
“Fedyushin obviously hesitated and asked the author of the note to come up to him after the lecture,” Gennady Petrovich recalled nowadays. - I also approached Boris Konstantinovich with my own interest, because on that very day they called me from the Baltsudoproekt Central Design Bureau and informed me about the observation of a UFO in the form of a huge ring over Teatralnaya Square the day before! To my surprise, Fedyushin already knew about this event and gave me the phone number of Captain 3rd Rank Yuri Methodievich Raitorovsky, who was tasked with investigating the incident.”
Although strange objects have appeared over the city of three revolutions since its foundation, the“ring”became the subject of the first serious investigation.
“I happened to see something incomprehensible in the sky on September 17, at 20.20, in the area above Leningrad from the side of the commercial port: a very large diameter ring was moving towards the Leninsky district,” wrote mechanic A. A. Zakhvatov to the Pulkovo Observatory. - I watched him for 40 minutes from the roof of my house. The diameter of 20-25 m, like a hoop, moved gradually against the wind, went around in a large circle in the area, ascended into the cloud, came out back without changing its ring-like shape, and gradually disappeared in the other side. I shared it with my comrades at work, but no one could understand anything …”
Ufologists went to visit him and found out the details.
“I was watching TV (broadcasting the match), then I went to the kitchen to have dinner and saw part of the ring through the window. I ran out to the roof (I have a dovecote there, and there is a key to the attic). I saw a wheel in the sky, the inner diameter of which was 25-30 m, its thickness is about 10 times less than the diameter. It went from the side of the commercial port to Izmailovsky Avenue along the street. Kurlyandskaya, smoothly turning to Ogorodnikov Avenue near the hotel "Sovetskaya" (this is about 250 m from the place of observation). On its way passed through a cloud. The clouds moved in the opposite direction. Passed over the hotel, further to the Trinity Cathedral and was lost in the clouds where - then at Sadovaya Street in the area of the "Record" cinema.
The speed was smooth, did not change. The western edge of the ring was darker. The color is dark gray. I started watching at 20.20, finished at 21.00 (I set the time on TV).
Technician-laboratory assistant Tamara Shabashova walked with her daughter along Detskaya Street on Vasilyevsky Island to the store, to Bolshoy Avenue.
“My daughter drew attention to the ring in the sky above the school and asked:
- Mom, what is it? I answered:
- Oh, this is a "flying saucer".
The ring was white and gray, hung above the ground at a height of, probably, 250 m, slightly turned. One side became thinner. I think it was smoke. I walked to the store for about three minutes, it all hung. When they entered the store, two minutes later I went to the window and looked into it, but the ring had already disappeared. The sky in this place was clear of clouds. This phenomenon was also observed by the cashier of the store”.
Tamara Mikhailovna compared the celestial ring with her wedding ring at arm's length: an elementary calculation showed that the object was 73 m in diameter!
“I looked out the window and saw an ellipse above the school, which was hanging motionless about the school garden,” the store cashier Svetlana Chernykh confirmed her story. - I watched for two minutes, then turned away and began to call my friend to the window, but the ring was gone. The color of the ring is smoky gray, the edges are clearly defined."
Mechanical engineer Nikanor Osinkin watched the UFO from Sadovaya Street:
“I saw a grayish ring-shaped body against the bluish background of the sky. The outer and inner contours are clearly delineated against the sky. Moved at a constant speed, heading from the southwest to the northeast. Height 500-1000 m, diameter approximately 50 m, thickness - 5 m. The sky was visible in the hole. The tone of the ring is even, it did not rotate around the axis, it moved progressively. By eye, a perfect ring with straight edges. It seemed to me that the body of a spherical ring was kind of boiling, bubbling, some kind of "ripples", play on the surface. The elevation angle is about 40 degrees. The feeling is that it is a solid, but not massive body. Maybe it is a shell filled with gas. Wall the ring seemed flat, the ring was kept in a vertical plane. I watched for 2-4 minutes. I was amazed at this phenomenon."
After examining this and other evidence, Raitorovsky was able to recreate the route of the UFO flight. At 19.10 he hovered over Vasilievsky Island, then flew to the bay towards the port. At 19.40, the "ring" rose from the level of the rooftops to a great height and, rotating at a speed of 1/4 turn in 10 minutes, flew over the Obukhovsky defense bridge across the Fontanka to Moskovsky prospect. Other eyewitnesses who stood near the "Passage" on Nevsky Prospect saw a UFO flying past the tower of the City Duma towards the Summer Garden.
Yuri Methodievich found out that the "ring" flew over his own house, and just at the moment when the Moscow ufologist Yuri Fomin was visiting him. They only had to look out the window in time to see the subject of study of ufology in all its glory!
Ring-shaped UFOs are quite rare, but not unique. In August 1958, A. Lutskevich saw, against the background of clouds over the town of Chuguev, Kharkiv region, a “ring like a car tire” flying from east to west. No trace of him remained [100].
Another "ring-shaped UFO" appeared on July 23, 1990 in Dnepropetrovsk. The next day, a small note appeared in the local newspaper:
"Yesterday, at about 21:00, traffic on the avenue named after the newspaper Pravda and on the bridge across the Dnieper was paralyzed. Drivers and passengers, leaving their cars, looked in amazement at the evening sky. And on it at an altitude of about 200 m, a black ring smoothly floated … What is amazing, its shape remained at first correct, then the ring became an oval, turned around its axis and changed the direction of movement … Readers reported new and new details: the ring was running over T. Shevchenko Park, the sky was clearly visible through it, landed on the field, having previously flashed ".
The head of the section of the Dnepropetrovsk department of mechanization No. 16 V. Masalov watched the "ring" from his house on Yantarnaya Street.
“When I was finishing drinking tea, I suddenly felt a great desire to go to the window,” he recalled. - Some unknown force forced me to do this. He took a few steps across the room and stopped, holding his breath in surprise: right in front of the house, somewhere at a distance of about 500 m … a flying saucer was hanging. More precisely, not a UFO, as it is usually depicted, it was a dark ring with a diameter of about 15 m, oval shape.
My first thought is about the camera. Faster to capture an unusual sight on film. When I cocked the shutter of the camera, I saw that the UFO was not the only one who called me - people were pouring out onto the balconies of our and neighboring houses. But the ring was in no hurry to disappear. It floated smoothly over the left bank of the city, as it seemed to me, from north to south. I photographed several times … In total, I watched the object from 10 pm for 20 minutes. After that it did not disappear, but melted in the darkness of the night."
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