It is known. that in the period from 1967 to 19S1, 40 manned Soyuz spacecraft were launched into low-earth orbit. Then the Soyuz T and Soyuz TM spacecraft appeared to deliver crews to the Soviet orbital stations Salyut and Mir, and from February 2003 to the International Space Station Alpha. All "Soyuz" were designated by serial numbers: "Soyuz-1", "Soyuz-2" and so on. But there is one exception: there were two Soyuz at number 18 - just Soyuz-18 and Soyuz-18-1.
Strange number and strange flight
Reference books report that the previous spacecraft, Soyuz-17, launched on January 11, 1975, delivered cosmonauts Alexei Gubarev and Georgy Grechko to the Salyut-4 station. The Soyuz-18 ship "threw" the next crew there - Petr Klimuk and Vitaly Sevastyanov. And about "Soyuz 18-1" it is said that in April 1975, cosmonauts Vasily Lazarev and Oleg Makarov performed … a suborbital flight (this is the movement of the spacecraft along a ballistic trajectory, that is, along the trajectory of an artillery projectile - the ship does not enter orbit around the Earth).
In 1961, two such flights, 15 minutes each, were made by the Americans: in May - Navy Rear Admiral Alan Shepard and in July - Air Force Colonel VIR-JIL Grissom. Their main goal was to somehow smooth out the feeling of defeat for American astronautics after Yuri Gagarin's flight around the Earth.
Well, 14 years later, why did we need this suborbital flight, and even on a Soyuz with a strange double number (and the fact is that the flight did not receive a number, since in the USSR they were assigned only to successful launches)?
Emergency situation
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On the morning of April 5, 1975, the launch of the Soyuz-18 spacecraft was being prepared at the Baikonur cosmodrome. The crew consisted of a colonel, Hero of the Soviet Union Vasily Grigorievich Lazarev and an engineer from the OKB-1 named after SP. Koroleva, Candidate of Technical Sciences, Hero of the Soviet Union Oleg Grigorievich Makarov. Both of them flew together in September 1973 on the Soyuz-12. This time colleagues went to the Salyut-4 station to change the previous crew - Gubarev and Grechko - and work there for more than a dozen days.
At exactly 10:30 am, the commander and flight engineer took their places in the ship's cockpit, and the prelaunch countdown began at the Mission Control Center. The launch went well, the astronauts heard messages broadcast on the radio in the well-known voice of Pyotr Klimuk:
"100 seconds of flight … Roll and deviation from the direction of flight is normal."
“140 seconds. The pressure in the combustion chambers is stable.
Instruments in the Soyuz cockpit showed that the second stage of the launch vehicle had already worked. The aerodynamic fairing was dropped, the ship emerged from the dense layers of the earth's atmosphere.
“260 seconds. All in the ….
The message was interrupted, there was noise interference, then Klimuk's voice was heard again, but somehow weak, and strange sounds were superimposed on it, as if someone (or something) was unsuccessfully trying to imitate human speech. It seemed to the astronauts that such sounds could be produced by a computer trying to transmit some information through voice communication. However, the cosmonauts failed to understand the content of this transmission, which lasted five to seven seconds.
A few more seconds passed, an alarm siren began to howl in the cockpit, and at the same time a red light flashed with the words "Launch Vehicle Accident". By this time, the onboard stopwatch had counted 270 seconds of flight. Before entering orbit, there was still the same amount, but the failure of the third stage meant that the spacecraft would not be able to reach the calculated orbit, so the emergency rescue system should work, the descent vehicle would separate from the rocket and rush to Earth.
And at that moment, against the background of messages from the Control Center, which either sounded normal or completely died down, the astronauts again heard those very strange sounds, similar to an inept imitation of a human voice. The crew again failed to understand their meaning, and it was not clear how an outsider could connect to the radio communication channel.
Incredible landing
When at an altitude of 192 kilometers the descent vehicle was thrown away from the launch vehicle, it tumbled randomly in the first seconds, and at the same time huge overloads occurred. But soon the stabilization system "calmed" the device, and it began to fall smoothly to the Earth. Overloads were replaced by a state of weightlessness. However, soon the cockpit began to vibrate with increasing intensity, and tongues of flame danced in the windows: this descent vehicle entered the dense layers of the atmosphere. Some fireballs swept past like tracer shells. There was a noise that turned into a high-pitched whistle and then a deafening howl. After some time, the cabin was violently shaken several times, and at the same time the cosmonauts felt that the speed of the vehicle's fall was slowing down and a feeling of heaviness returned to them. The vibration diminished and then stopped altogether. Now the cockpit only swayed slightly, which indicated that the parachute was activated.
By this time, Baikonur already knew that an accident had occurred with the launch vehicle. One thought now worried everyone: had the spacecraft's life support system responded properly? But then Lazarev's voice was heard from the speakers, and joyful exclamations were heard in the hall: it means that the cosmonauts are alive, and communication with them is working!
The position of the descent vehicle was determined: it was over the Altai Mountains, not far from the border with China, about two thousand kilometers from Baikonur.
“Attention, you are over Southwest Altai! - handed over to the cosmonauts from the Control Center. - Go down into the mountains, be careful and careful! The search and rescue team is already leaving. Hold on, they will find you soon!"
Lazarev and Makarov understood that the Center's warning was not just empty words. Beneath them were hard-to-reach snow-capped mountain peaks up to three thousand meters high, steep cliffs, steep slopes, abysses. However, the cosmonauts could not make any maneuver. And the cockpit continued to slowly descend, swaying under the canopy of the parachute. All that remained was to rely on the mercy of fate.
But now the crew felt a powerful push, and the descent of the cabin stopped. She finally found herself on solid ground. Now, according to the regulations, one of the cosmonauts must press the button of the device that fires the parachute from the descent vehicle so that the giant dome, under the influence of a gust of wind, does not drag the cabin along the ground, which would be very dangerous given the terrain. But both astronauts were so exhausted that at that moment they simply could not move. Meanwhile, the cockpit was still stationary and almost upright. After a while, Lazarev and Makarov felt that they were already able to move, but some "inner voice" insistently advised them not to touch the parachute release button. Instead, they opened the hatch and climbed out.
What they saw made them uneasy. Some miraculous force hooked the canopy of the parachute to the ledge of the rock overgrown with dense bushes, and only thanks to this, the stretched lines kept the descent vehicle on a steep mountain slope, which dropped off into a deep abyss a few meters below. For some time the cosmonauts silently and motionless stood almost waist-deep in the snow next to the descent vehicle. It was clear to both of them what it would be like if they, following the instructions, separated the parachute from him.
Did they decide to make sure everything was okay?
When night fell, the cosmonauts lit a fire. Soon planes appeared in the sky above them, they signaled that the landing site had been found, and flew away. Lazarev and Makarov were sitting near a dying fire - in silence under a starry sky.
And suddenly they heard a whistle growing in the air and at the same time saw in the sky some kind of luminous object hovering directly above them. The astronauts could not determine its shape, as well as the height above the ground. It was just a bright spot that sparkled with purple light. The object hung there for half a minute, and then, as if making sure everything was in order, disappeared.
"I still not only have no doubt that then we saw a UFO with our own eyes, but I am also quite sure that this object tried to establish contact with us using our radio channel," said Vasily Lazarev in an interview with West German journalists in 1996 year. And he added:
“I think it was only thanks to his intervention that we landed then safe and sound in a mountainous area, the relief of which was more reminiscent of the lunar than the earth.”
When journalists asked Lazarev why neither he nor Makarov, after returning to Baikonur, said nothing about UFOs, he replied that in those days, if pilots or cosmonauts reported that they saw unknown objects or any supernatural phenomena in the sky, they were removed from further flights. Lazarev also reported. that the tape on which their negotiations with the MCC were recorded, and where those same mysterious sounds were clearly heard, was subsequently carefully studied. True, he does not know anything about the results of the research, but he knows that then this film disappeared.
Vadim Ilyin. Secrets of the XX century magazine