On February 28, 1984, under the Committee of the All-Russian Scientific and Technological Organization for Environmental Protection (chaired by Academician B. N. Laskorin), the Commission on Anomalous Phenomena (AY) in the Environment was established. The initiative from below was supported by the military: they were tired of the creative impotence of Platov and Migulin, who had lost the trust of not only ufologists, but also ordinary citizens (Fig. 65). Naturally, the military in the bureau of the commission were introduced (in full accordance with old recommendations) "their own people".
The first "test of strength" of the alternative commission was the next grandiose spectacle that took place in the skies over the USSR and Eastern Europe. It is like in a mirror almost repeated the events of 20 years ago.
On December 2, 1983, at 21.40-22.00, an object or a group of bright glowing multi-colored objects flew over Eastern Europe, Ukraine and Russia. The body - or bodies - moved along the same trajectory, from north-north-west to east-south-east, dragging trails behind them.
This time, the flight trajectory was traced not only over the USSR, but also over the territory of Eastern Europe. Two years after the celestial procession crossed the sky over the GDR, a note by astronomer Dietmar Boehme appeared in the Astronomie und Raumfahrt:
“On the evening of December 2, 1983, a celestial phenomenon was observed over remote regions of the GDR, which is assessed as extraordinary … At 19:45 ± 1 minute (21.45 Moscow time - MG), two bright points appeared on the east near the horizon, which, moving to the north, constantly increasing the height. When the peak of its trajectory passed at a maximum distance of 1-2 degrees from the North Star, 7 star-like objects were noticed, which continued their way towards the east and disappeared into the haze of the horizon (Fig. 66) …
A plume several degrees long stretched behind the luminous objects. It is also characteristic that the phenomenon passed completely silently and throughout its duration (80 ± 15 seconds) the distance between the objects did not change. Four other observers noted an explosive detachment of units, which was not noticed in Nessa and Grosspostwitz … From the presented observational data, it is possible to establish with sufficient accuracy the speed (2 km / s) and the height of the objects (150 km). Some upward bias in the data is not excluded.
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In my impression as an observer and according to estimates in some reports, we can talk about the debris of a spacecraft hull burning in the earth's atmosphere …"
The speed calculated by the German astronomer immediately ruled out the meteorite origin of the body, since the minimum speed for meteorites entering the Earth's atmosphere is 11.2 km / s, that is, the second cosmic speed. But for a satellite descending from orbit, the speed is really suitable.
Ufologists Ryszard Grundman and Bronislav Rzhepetskiy said that on the evening of December 2, "several UFOs" were seen in the areas where military airfields were located. They flew alone and in groups, glowing with red, green and white light, leaving behind them well-distinguishable contrails. The altitude of the flight was, according to rough estimates, from 10 to 15,000 m. It was estimated "by eye", because none of the radars recorded these objects.
At the same time, the civilian pilot Mikolajczyk from the town of Mielec reported on the radio that an object had just flown under him. He flew 60 meters lower, glowed faintly in front, and behind him was a trail of bright flame. At the same time, the object did not make any sound. Soon Mikolajczyk was told from the ground that such an object could not appear in the area of his training, since according to the description it looked most like a military plane, but no military unit had conducted flights in this area.
Since the object flew along the 52nd parallel, it crossed Poland later than Germany. Nevertheless, some Polish eyewitnesses speak of one object, albeit with two "tails". Is the body, divided into 7 parts over the GDR, again "gathered" into one whole? Since the "bolide" flew over the territory of the USSR at the same altitude as over the GDR - 120-150 km, this apparently means that we are talking about different objects: some flew high, others - low. The ceiling of the An-2 flight, on which Mikolajczyk flew, is not too high, and it is impossible to confuse the position of the UFO - below or above oneself. Observing the object, he could miss the spectacle unfolding at an altitude of 150 km.
Two bodies with tails or trains have already been seen over Belarus:
“About 300 meters away from us, at an altitude of about 30-40 m, a strange structure flew over the rooftops,” said an eyewitness from the village of Pochanovo, Baranovichi district, Brest region. - The exact outlines were not visible, but two balls or just luminous circles made a huge impression on us. Tongues of bluish flame emanated from these balls … The balls were positioned at an angle relative to each other; the smaller ball was in front of and higher than the second, large ball. They flew parallel to the ground, from west to east. Their speed was low: in 40-45 seconds they flew about 2 km. The phenomenon was observed from different places at the same time by five people."
Obviously, the tendency outlined over Poland continued here: the "two tails" seen by R. Kurchevsky were only the predecessors of the disintegration of the object into two bodies independent of each other. Over Russia and Ukraine, the disintegration continued.
N. Erpylev, the coordinator of optical observations of artificial earth satellites, said that the phenomenon was seen at many satellite observation stations.
“Optical instruments helped to trace how the luminous object split into several parts,” he said. - The brightest of them was of the order of the 4th magnitude, that is, it exceeded Venus in brightness in its brightest phase. The angular velocity of the group of objects was approximately 0.8 degrees per second."
A resident of Sevsk L. Nesterova reported the silent movement of a luminous ball with a long tail on December 2. N. Kutsaya from Trubchevsk saw two bright luminous balls: one large, the second about half the size. After a while, trails of fire followed them. S. Vorobyov and others (Klintsovsky district, the village of Rudnya-Vorobyevka), L. Davydova (Bryansk) at about 10 pm also noticed two silently flying fireballs. One was ahead, the other was slightly behind. I. Mogilevtseva in the village of Kokino saw four glowing balls (two in front and two in the back), behind which stretched bright red tails. Their speed was small, it seemed that they could be overtaken by running. A few moments later, the outlines of a “ship” with blue light appeared in the “portholes”, the number of which was about 10. All these bodies were moving towards Bryansk. The spouses Romanovich, being in the area of Partizan Square, noticed 7-8 luminous rectangular objects located in a row moving from the side of the TV center in the direction of the Fokinsky district. There was a train behind them, and a bright ball was on top. The relative position of the objects did not change, which, according to observers, indicated their mutual connection. In this case, one of the downward beams was observed.
A student O. Kiselev and a student of the Bryansk Polytechnic School G. Titov saw luminous bodies floating from the side of the television center with a ray directed to the ground. In their opinion, a certain “construction” was also visible. An interesting letter was sent by I. Lemeshko from Klimov, who, together with his son, observed 5 luminous bodies. In their opinion, there was also a certain affection between them.
If you look at this evidence with an open mind, it seems that one body first split in two and then shattered into even smaller pieces.
Having learned about the incident, AF Pugach, an employee of the Main Astronomical Observatory of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR, turned to eyewitnesses. Kiev astronomers processed more than 600 letters that came after the publication, and made a "composite" of the phenomenon:
“At first, everything looked like the fire of an ordinary flare rocket launched by someone in the western sky. This fire moved smoothly towards the zenith. Soon a second fire appeared next to him, moving in a parallel course. Each of them seemed to be overgrown with a swarm of less bright lights. For some estimates, the number of objects that shone reached several dozen. Behind each of them was a whitish tail 10-20 degrees long. The angular size of the entire group was 2-3 degrees. The light range of objects was of exceptional interest. Yellow-orange-red bodies predominated, but in many letters bursts of purple, white, green, blue, crimson shades and their various combinations were noted. In the initial part of the tail, where the glow was more intense, many saw flashes similar to sparklers of a Bengal fire. All objects seemed to be connected into one whole and moved parallel to each other. In complete silence, they crossed the entire sky in 3 minutes and became invisible near the horizon in the southeastern part of the sky."
The analysis showed that a group of bodies was walking over Ukraine from the north-west-west to the south-east-east at an altitude of 120 to 150 km with an average speed of 5-6 km / s, overcoming about 1200 km over its territory. It took them only about 4 minutes, so eyewitnesses from different areas indicated almost the same time.
The only phenomenon that meets all the features of the phenomenon well is the descent of a satellite from orbit. Just at this time, the satellite "Kosmos-1509" went out of orbit, which was declared to be the culprit of the celestial show. Czech astrophysicist Jiri Grigar also came to the conclusion that it entered the atmosphere and burned up an artificial body. He, however, attributed the "balls" to the combustion of the remnants of the Gorizont-8 launch vehicle. Everything would be fine if it were not for a number of observations and facts that "fall out" beyond the scope of the satellite hypothesis.
Astronomers from Kharkov carried out their own analysis. In their opinion, the average speed of movement of objects was about 5 km / s, and to the south of Kharkov it even increased more than 2 times! This contradicts the picture of the fall of the satellite, which was only supposed to slow down due to the resistance of the atmosphere.
As in 1963, among hundreds of letters and stories, there were testimonies that did not fit into the picture of the disintegration and combustion of the satellite. They have accumulated "about two percent" in the Commission on AL. Some argued that the bodies flew below the clouds and the flight was accompanied by sounds - whistles, rustles, thunderous rumbles. Although there were even pilots among the authors of such letters, the AJ Commission did not recognize this evidence as credible.
Among the eyewitnesses of the phenomenon, whom I managed to find, there was also a pilot - navigator of the An-24 aircraft Veniamin Grigorievich S, who that evening was in the air near Donetsk. The plane flew at an altitude of 5700 m at MK = 75 degrees (that is, the object crossed the sky directly in front of them). He described the object as a geometrically regular body in the form of a trapezoid, followed by a short forked train 1.5-2 times the length of the object. This is completely inconsistent with the picture of the collapse of the satellite, although the trajectory of the object's flight on its diagram exactly coincides with that calculated by the Kiev scientists.
It is difficult to say at this time whether the evidence that does not fit into the picture of the satellite's combustion is "noise" typical of mass observations. The commission, however, did not care about this: before it there was a chance to loudly declare itself. It was used one hundred percent.
P. Popovich, the Deputy Chairman of the AY Commission, pilot-cosmonaut of the USSR, gave journalists several examples of "real anomalies":
“I'll tell you about a reliable event investigated by the Gorky section of our Commission. It happened on March 27 last year, at about 18:00 Moscow time. The usual surveillance radars of the Gorky airport found an object that they could not identify. That is, the flying object did not respond to the request "friend or foe". "Worked" only in the mode of reflection of the radar signal. He walked about 70 km southeast of Gorky. Moved towards the airport. Then he turned a little to the east and flew not through the airport itself, but approximately at a distance of 7-10 km from it. It was found that the object's flight altitude did not exceed one kilometer. The speed is approximately 180-200 km / h. Gorky air dispatcher A. Shushkin saw him with his own eyes. According to the dispatcher, it was the size of the fuselage of an IL-14 aircraft. But without any sign of wings,tail unit. "Cigar" of light gray, steel color slowly floated in the sky … The phenomenon lasted 40 minutes. At a distance of 30-40 km northeast of the airfield, the radar stations lost sight of it."
According to updated data, the observation of Alexander Ivanovich Shushkin took place not on March 27, but on March 28. The UFO flew at an altitude of 400-500 m and after 10 seconds disappeared from the field of view of the air traffic controller.
In another publication, Pavel Romanovich gave a more dramatic example:
“During the flight of the Yak-40 aircraft, in the section between the settlements of Medvezhye and Nadym, the crew noticed a round, very shiny foreign body, which was quickly approaching and after a while turned out to be right on the course. Every minute the size of this body increased. And when it seemed that the collision was already inevitable, the object soared up in front of the very nose of the plane, without causing him any harm. This incident occurred in January 1978."
The former cosmonaut in 1984 admitted that during a flight over Cuba, an unidentified triangular-shaped object caught up with them and overtook them.
“It happened in 1978, when we flew from Washington to Moscow at an altitude of 10,200 m,” he told Valery Uvarov today. - And suddenly, looking through the window, I noticed that above us, in a parallel course, a regular isosceles triangle of bright white color, resembling a sail, shining in the sun was flying. He moved plane forward. If we flew at a speed of about 950 km / h, then this triangle flew at a speed of 1500 km / h or more, because it was overtaking us. I drew the attention of all passengers and crew to this facility. Unfortunately, all the time while the object was in our field of vision, and after it disappeared, we could not come to a conclusion - what it is. The object has remained unidentified. We couldn't compare it with anything. It didn't look like a plane. Not a single plane has such shapes. And he didn't look like a ball either. This is the only incident in my life that aroused my genuine interest in this problem."
Articles in the newspapers, sensational at that time, had the desired result: more than 12 thousand letters were sent to the address of the Commission on the ALE. Among them were messages from the military, which for one reason or another were not included in the Grid / Galaxy dossier.
Of course, not all letters to the Commission were of any interest to ufologists. The Leningrad branch of the Commission calculated that out of about a thousand letters sent from Moscow for their further analysis, 89 percent of the messages actually observed something, the rest contained religious discourses (0.5 percent), absurd statements by the mentally ill (2 percent), discussions in general about the universe, aliens and their spaceships (5 percent), arguments that UFOs are an active preparation for aggression by the imperialists (0.8 percent), jokes about "saucers" (0.5 percent), suggestions from their own Services Commission (1 percent), poltergeist reports (0.25 percent). 1.25 percent of the messages were written in Ukrainian, Estonian, Lithuanian and Latvian. They were never translated during the work of the Commission,and we had to do this while preparing the "Chronicle of anomalous phenomena." Interestingly, only 1 percent of emails were anonymous.
Out of 89 percent of letters describing various observations, in the overwhelming majority of cases, we are talking about various missile launches in 1983-1985. Only the famous event "Exactly at 4.10" (the launch of a sea-launched rocket on September 7, 1984 from the Barents Sea, mistaken for a UFO) was devoted to 7 percent of letters, and another 5 percent was devoted to another launch (December 27, 1984).
The statistics for the Moscow region were almost the same: out of 3568 letters containing descriptions of some phenomena, in 1977 it was possible to identify what he saw as launches and other manifestations of human technical activity, 51 letters told about known natural phenomena, and only 1540 messages it was about something unrecognizable without additional investigation (Fig. 67).
The military, of course, had full access to a powerful stream of letters to the AY Commission, and some of its employees even carried out state budget work to study UFOs for NII-22. Sometimes it came to the ridiculous: the manuscripts and other materials about UFOs, known to all ufologists, once fell into the hands of the army, were immediately decorated with formidable secrets. When the military questioned UFO eyewitnesses, they showed them a set of tables with drawings of various anomalous phenomena, developed by the ufologist Valentin Golts and well known to his colleagues. The officers began to consider it secret!
Mikhail Gershtein