The UFO pursuit of planes, unfortunately, has a series of sad and mysterious endings. And we can only guess about many of the episodes in the history of aviation, since communication with the crews of such aircraft was cut off unexpectedly, and few of the victims managed to send at least a fragment of the "SOS!" Signal to the ground.
The first and perhaps the most heroic death was the death of Soviet stratonauts - Vasenko, Fedoseyenko and Usyskin, when their stratospheric balloon, for some unknown reason, slipped out of the lines, and the capsule with the crashed stones rushed to the ground from a height of 22,000 meters …
Even 10 years ago (or rather, 15) we, beating ourselves in the chest with our fists, declared that we live "in the best country." By the way, it is not so bad to live in the best country in the world. This is the basis of patriotism, and no Zulu will say that he lives in the worst and most backward country. Homeland is homeland, and it is dear to all normal people. And especially when the homeland demonstrates outstanding success, say, in space exploration or the conquest of Everest …
We can no longer imagine the enthusiasm with which in the 1930s Soviet people followed the successes of polar explorers, pilots … stratonauts! Among the favorites of the people were both Chelyuskinites and Chkalov … Only now Vasenko, Fedoseyenko and Usyskin did not have time to fall in love. And these were true heroes!
In Saransk, at the station square, a monument to the heroes of the stratonauts was erected. There are streets named after them …
Records, records … “We want to give names to all our records,” the famous song says.
The first altitude record was not set by us. The first stratospheric balloon was built in Belgium by Auguste Picard. He and Paul Kipfer on May 27, 1931, ascended on a stratospheric balloon to an altitude of more than 15 kilometers. And in 1932, Picard rose above the ground, breaking the mark of 16 kilometers! In those years, when the planes were crawling at the mark of 1-2 kilometers, it truly seemed to storm the air ocean.
The whole world watched these flights with bated breath. And very intently - the Soviet engineer Vasenko. And Andrei Bogdanovich thought: why not build our Soviet stratospheric balloon and break Picard's record?
Promotional video:
Pilot Pavel Fedorovich Fedoseenko responded to Vasenko's idea. It was very tempting to fly higher than anyone in the world!..
The first Soviet stratospheric balloon was called "Osoaviakhim-1" (Fedoseenko worked at Osoaviakhim). After analyzing the design data of the Picard stratospheric balloon, Vasenko proposed his own: the volume of the ball is one and a half times larger, and accordingly the relative weight of the cabin decreased. This made it possible to reach a greater height than Picard.
The idea spread. Already many scientists and journalists knew that in Leningrad two enthusiasts were preparing to conquer the stratosphere. Leningrad factories gladly agreed to help and made everything they needed. A special monetary and material fund "Storming the Stratosphere" was opened in the country, so the work was not carried out on mere sheer enthusiasm, as we often do. Many scientists took an active part in the program. For example, Professor N. A. Rynin. The famous physicist A. F. Ioffe is an academician himself! - blessed the project. And he proposed the candidacy of a stratonaut-physicist - Ilya Davidovich Usyskin. Thus, there were three stratonauts …
The diameter of the gondola was 2.5 meters. It had to fit everything. The cockpit was attached to the shell with eight slings.
We decided to start in Moscow. The stratospheric balloon construction was transported to the capital.
While work was going on and the flight was being prepared, Picard's record was broken! And he beat the Soviet stratospheric balloon "USSR-1", built according to the plan of the Office of the Air Force: on September 30, 1933, it rose to the mark of 19 kilometers! The stratonauts Prokofiev, Birnbaum and Godunov brought glory to their homeland.
The eternal competition between the two capitals affected: the flight of the stratospheric balloon "Osoaviakhim-1", which was supposed to take place in the same year, 1933, was postponed for unknown reasons. So the Moscow authorities decided. Fedoseenko achieved the cancellation of this decision, and in January 1934 the stratospheric balloon was ready to start.
On January 30 at 9 o'clock in the morning "Osoaviakhim-1" started! His flight was followed by many, including the organizing committee of the 17th Party Congress, which was held in those days in Moscow. Maybe because of him, the autumn start was postponed?
An hour and a quarter later, the stratospheric balloon reached the mark of 19 kilometers. Fedoseenko, the pilot of the stratospheric balloon, confirmed this exciting event on the radio with a message. He conveyed greetings to the Central Committee of the CPSU (b) and personally to Stalin.
In another half hour, the mark was 20 kilometers 500 meters! It was a real record! "We are storming the twenty-first kilometer!" - said Pavel Fedorovich Fedoseenko. And he sent greetings to Stalin, Molotov, Voroshilov, Kaganovich, Kirov.
At 12 noon, after greetings to the Leninist Komsomol, the Pravda newspaper, the Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper and the Leningrad proletariat, something happened on board the stratospheric balloon. Unfortunately, we will never know exactly what it is.
There is a version that the shell began to lose gas from strong heating by the sun. There is an opinion that, having succumbed to the desire not only to beat, but also to significantly overlap the records of his predecessors, Fedoseyenko dumped the lead ballast, which was necessary during the descent of the apparatus: it was necessary to extinguish the descent speed, that is, in fact, the fall …
Radio communication began to be interrupted, and after a few minutes it was completely stopped. The height at which the stratosphere was at that time was 22 kilometers.
Then a complete riddle begins with a tragic outcome.
Attempts to restore radio communications were unsuccessful. In Moscow, all those who followed the flight were worried. Knowing that it would be time for the stratospheric balloon to descend to the ground, a string of cars with aeronautics specialists and doctors set off for the Kolomna area. But there was no descent. Everyone gazed anxiously at the winter sky … This went on until darkness fell. It seemed that the stratospheric balloon had sunk into obscurity.
Only late at night did the news come that the cockpit with the balloonists had fallen significantly east of the intended area. It happened at about 16:00, when twilight already falls in the winter season.
The gondola fell in the village of Potizh-Ostrog, across the river. Several lines were torn off, the shell, most likely, simply slipped out of the rest.
The version with the loss of gas jacket is eliminated. Otherwise, the stratospheric balloon should have long ago either fallen without a carrier, or descended. Losing gas for four hours?.. Even more than four hours: the fall occurred at about 16 hours and a quarter.
What force, what air storm could break the lines?
What, in fact, did the stratospheric balloon reach?..
The commission, which began to work immediately, as soon as it reached the place of the fall, concluded that at first one line broke - probably because the stratospheric balloon was descending with great speed, that is, it was falling. Hanging sideways, the gondola cut off other lines. It did not come off at a huge, but at a low altitude - two kilometers …
This “small height” did not make the tragedy any easier.
“I felt someone's hand,” said an eyewitness. "She was still warm."
The whole village ran across the river, and this eyewitness stuck his hand through the window of the crumpled cab …
One of the dead bodies was terribly mutilated: "beyond recognition"!
The heroes were posthumously awarded the Orders of Lenin and buried urns with ashes in the Kremlin wall.
But these riddles are not riddles. But the riddle is more complicated.
The Gomel radio amateur at 12 hours 45 minutes received a radiogram:
"Attention, says the stratospheric balloon, the Sirius transmitter. Inform about this … The stratospheric balloon got into the precipitation zone, iced over, we are in a hopeless position. We are covered with ice, we are falling … We are waiting for a blow. My two comrades are in a bad state … I finish, a blow is coming soon."
If they had already fallen and at the same time felt bad, why did they fall for three and a half hours? Why was the radio communication cut off? Why did it resume after forty-five minutes?..
The strict commission, whose conclusions did not fit the episode with the radiogram, recognized the radiogram, the authenticity of which could not be doubted, as a hoax undertaken by any foreign radio station, with the aim of … "to discredit the feat of the stratonauts."
This conclusion, as simple as it is absurd, explains nothing at all. According to the theory of probability, both our radio amateurs and foreign ones could tune in to the stratospheric balloon wave, but there should have been only a few of them. And it’s very unlikely that someone was joking so cruelly … And the time was not like that: not only in the Soviet country they followed the heroes' exploits, and discredit, denigrate the heroic deeds …
Very soon the time of "foreign spies" and "saboteurs" came, a wave of repressions swept across the country.
And if there really was a radiogram?.. What if the stratospheric balloon really got into unusual atmospheric conditions?.. I wonder what "precipitation" could have been in January at an altitude of 22 kilometers?..
It could well be that the stratospheric balloon fell into something similar to one of the "energy holes", and at 16 o'clock "fell out" of it. Unless, of course, something even more incredible happened.
In Saransk, in the Museum of Local Lore, there is a wealth of material about the event itself and about the life of the stratonauts - Vasenko, Fedoseenko and Usyskin. Ilya Usyskin is from Saransk …
Three lives were lost, and the people lost three remarkable explorers, pioneers of airways, now used by both military and civilian aviators.
True, it has not been proven that it was the UFO that was responsible for the accident. It is possible that here the strato-nauts encountered what is called an “anomalous geographic point” or “zone”, because the same researchers proved the possibility of aircrafts staying at a specified altitude during the flight of the stratospheric balloon, and decades of aviation flights in the stratospheric layer have confirmed this. If there is no "zone" or UFO impact, no air flow can destroy the aircraft.
"Secrets of UFOs", A. Varakin and others.