On November 19, 1968, the system of "partial-orbital bombardment" consisting of the R-36orb carrier rocket and the orbital block was put into service. The first regiment, armed with R-36orb missiles, took up combat duty on August 25, 1969 at the Baikonur cosmodrome. A. V. Mileev was appointed commander of the regiment.
The regiment consisted of 18 silo launchers, combined into three combat launch complexes (6 silos in each complex). The shafts had a diameter of 8.3 and a height of 41.5 m. The distance between the silo launchers was 6-10 km.
The regiment remained the only one in the Strategic Missile Forces armed with these missiles: the design was unsuccessful. In 1968-1971, R-36orb launches were carried out no more than 1-2 times a year to check and maintain the combat readiness of the system. On August 8, 1971, the last launch was carried out along a partially orbital trajectory.
A holy place, however, is never empty: real UFOs began to fly to the R-36orb regiment, which four years ago created colorful sickles over the south of Russia!
“In the summer of 1971 in Leninsk (Baikonur cosmodrome), returning from the canteen after lunch, we stopped at the unit headquarters to talk,” said V. Denisov from Voronezh. - Someone from our group of officers saw a UFO sparkling in the rays of the sun, shaped like a saucer. At first, she hung at an altitude of 2.5-3 km above the launch pad, then headed towards us. After hanging over us for about 5 minutes, she turned 80 degrees and went towards the headquarters of the landfill. The commander of the B-s unit, who was in our group, ran to the headquarters to the phone and called the chief of staff of the polygon P-chu: “A flying saucer is flying towards us!” P-ich replied: “I know. fire on her. I did not allow …
And now about the case, which I was not a witness.
At night, a "flying saucer" with a diameter of about 30 m landed at the space launch in Baikonur near the sentry. The latter summoned the chief of the guard. Together with the wakeful shift, they shouted, rustled towards the "saucer", but to no avail. The chief of the guard fired several shots in her direction. She rose silently and, flying at a low altitude of 500 meters, sat down again.
The chief of the guard reported to the officer on duty, who, having made sure of the authenticity of the events, called the officer on duty at the range, the latter - to the headquarters of the missile forces. That same night, the deputy commander-in-chief of the missile forces arrived. Result: the composition of the guard was warned of non-disclosure, its chief was removed from the landfill."
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Over time, UFOs have become almost familiar guests for the military and civilian personnel of the cosmodrome. In early January 1978, a group of soldiers (about 8 people) and a lieutenant at about 20.00 observed an object hanging at an altitude of 100-200 m, which had the form of a "mixture of an airship and a helicopter." It was presumably of light metal and did not glow. After this phenomenon occurred, the military brought to the attention of the personnel so that everyone would report immediately if they saw "devices of an incomprehensible shape."
On May 28, 1978, at about 22 o'clock, the chief of the guard, Lieutenant B., received a message from the sentry: a glowing spot appeared above the building at an altitude of 500-1000 m, which hung for two minutes, then disappeared. About two hours later, the second hour of the same post reported that he saw two luminous spots, which then merged into one spot.
About 20 employees of the design bureau on June 28, 1978, at 22.00, saw a bright orange spot. It increased in size, and then hovered for 10-15 minutes, and 4 bright points separated from it, which circled above it. Then the spot flew away very quickly, in about a few seconds, with three dots flying into it. One of the points flew away on its own in the other direction. On the same day, at 2-2.30 am, two soldiers at the post saw a cigar-shaped flattened body, which hung for about 30 minutes at an altitude within a kilometer. It began to glow over the entire surface with unusual colors and disappeared.
On September 23, 1978, at exactly 20.30, an orange ball about 1 / 6-1 / 5 of the diameter of the Moon flew over Leninsk from northwest to southeast at an altitude of up to a kilometer. The ball flew silently, along a straight trajectory, for about 10 seconds, and then disappeared with lightning speed. He could not fly away behind the clouds, since the sky was clear, and the stars were visible in the direction of his flight.
On December 26, 1978, at 5:00 am, a group of five engineers and industry representatives saw an ellipsoidal body, bordered by 5-6 lights of indeterminate shape and color. It flew for 1-2 minutes, then disappeared beyond the horizon. The size of the body was ten times the brightest stars (Fig. 23).
On July 27, 1979, at 23.00, a very bright "star" was noticed, which began chaotic, slow movements in the sky in various directions, while a contrail remained behind it. The movements of the "star" were observed for almost 40 minutes, then the observations stopped. An hour later, the observation was resumed, but the strange "star" was gone. The "star" was very bright and stood out sharply from all the stars in the firmament.
On August 12, 1979, from about 22.00 to 22.30, those present on the city dance floor watched an orange ball hanging over the city. The ball hung motionless in one place for about 30 minutes, then disappeared.
Oleg Akhmetov, an employee of the city newspaper "Baikonur", in 1984 saw a cigar-shaped object with small windows. UFO flew between the city and the launch sites.
“In 1987, during my service at the Baikonur cosmodrome, I was in military service,” said a former military man who did not want to identify himself. - In the evening the officers ran home as usual, and I was left alone. It was boring, there was no radio, the cigarettes ran out, and I went out into the street …
I suddenly saw a small bright star, directly above me. Something drew me to look at her. Suddenly, a small ray separated from the star and began to slowly rotate clockwise. The beam was probably about a millimeter in size. It seemed strange to me. But then I noticed that the ray began to grow, one revolution of it took several minutes, I no longer remember. When it reached 7-8 mm in size, I noticed that the beam leaves a halo behind it. Just like on the radar screen. I lay there for about 2 hours, did not sleep a wink. The result is that the beam expanded to the horizon, and the whole sky became slightly illuminated, I would even say, in a haze. The version that it was timed to coincide with some kind of secret launch or removal is not suitable, I would know. At that time there was nothing more secret “Energy.” I thought for a long time about the nature of what I saw, but I could not find an answer. From time to time I remember this, but I cannot understand.
I told this story to my friends. Many were skeptical of her, saying that you fell asleep and you dreamed. The fact that it was not a launch - it was ironclad, there was a bullet there every other day, and I know what it looks like”.
One of the UFO sightings over Baikonur even influenced the history of aviation in the Soviet Union. According to the technical assignment of the space NPO Energia, it was proposed to build an aircraft vehicle that could transport not only rocket tanks, but also the Buran orbital ship to the launch site. After all, it is impossible to transport the central block of the Energia launch vehicle with a diameter of 8 m on ordinary roads.
At first, it was proposed to use a bunch of two Mi-26 helicopters, capable of carrying a load of up to 40 tons, but the last word remained with the professor of MAI Sergey Yeger. He proposed a "thermoplane" - an apparatus "lighter than air", which in appearance resembled a "flying saucer".
The authors of the project found a "hint" unexpectedly. A large, biconvex "plate" appeared over Baikonur. The security platoon leader sent his soldiers to the field on alarm and ordered them to open fire, but the UFO did not pay attention to this. Hanging over the cosmodrome, after a while he disappeared over the horizon.
According to calculations, in order to lift a load of 500 tons, the diameter of the man-made "saucer" should be about 200 m. As a result, there was not enough money to create a lifting vehicle. Perhaps the required amount would have been found, but then time put an end to the Buran project.
Although the "Soviet UFO" never took off, there were plenty of other "saucers" over the Energia-Buran launch site. In November 1990, from 12 to 4 a.m. UFOs hovered over her regularly. Although the "plate" appeared for 10 days in a row, none of the Specialists was able to determine what kind of object was hanging over them. But they were sure of one thing: it was not a probe, not a comet, not part of a burning rocket, or a spy satellite. Radars and other technical means did not detect UFOs.
On April 3, 1990, in the area of site No. 6 (the territory of the meteorological service), an oblong, ellipsoidal object with a brown rim appeared. It moved silently from northeast to southwest. After a while, two more objects of the same type quickly passed the same course at the same altitude.
“It was at 4.30 pm local time,” said Major AV Polyakov, head of the cosmodrome's meteorological service. - I went to the station - the soldiers say they saw something strange. And then an ellipsoidal gray object with a narrow brown stripe across appeared in the sky."
By order of Polyakov, the MRL-5 radar was switched on. The observation was carried out by the operator I. V. Dolbilin in the presence of the senior researcher B. Shchepilov.
"Sasha runs in and shouts: 'Turn on the locator!" - the operator later recalled. Travel speed - up to 500 km / h. We ask the flight director - reports that there is only one helicopter in the atmosphere. And there are four goals! Gradually, the objects merged into one target and left the detection zone."
On the all-round view indicator, the targets in terms of the size of the radio echo were larger than conventional aircraft. After two minutes of observation, three distant objects merged into one object. The flare was not local, as happens when an aircraft is detected in the sky, but was a solid column 1.5 km high from the earth's surface. As if a giant iron pillar was rolling on the ground …
Perhaps this very case was recalled by the commander of the Military Space Forces Colonel-General V. Ivanov in 1993:
“There was a case about five years ago, when three objects passed at a high altitude a little to the side of Baikonur, which were clearly visible on the radar screen. What it was, we still do not know, but it is for sure that it is not airplanes. Like everyone else, this problem is not indifferent to me. I cannot simply reject the possibility of the existence of UFOs, as many do."
In the summer of 1990, N. Yalanskaya also had a chance to see a UFO over Leninsk:
“I saw an object in the form of a rectangle flying along a zigzag path, silently and very quickly. Bright lights shone around the perimeter. It became scary, caught my breath. And a week later, while fishing, a large shiny ball hovered over our car. They lit him with flashlights and disappeared. You know, they say that before unsuccessful launches, UFOs appear in the sky …"
Such conversations did not appear from scratch. The rocketman Alexander Guryanov, who survived the explosion of the Zenit complex, mentioned the appearance of a UFO:
“It happened on October 4, 1990. The day was just filled with coincidences and incomprehensible incidents. Just before the launch, a dog howl was heard in the area. We still laughed at this and wondered where so many dogs came from in the steppe. In the sky, one of the guys saw a UFO …
We went down to the underground rooms and got to work. The monitors clearly showed what was happening on the surface. Here is a rocket lying lying on the rails from the hangar, here it is aiming at the sky, on a fiery tail, takes off from the ground … And then it all happened. The rocket began to "dance", smoke poured out of it, and we saw that it tumbled to one side, right into the shaft for diverting the jet stream. A shock wave rushed to the cameras - a cloud of dust and compressed air. Deathly silence reigned in the room. Everyone who was near the screens, they turned pale as a sheet, then the lights went out, and the floor shook under my feet. I fell to my knees - I don't remember, either from surprise, or from this frantic shaking. mine, trying to get to us. There was 20 m of concrete above us,but it seemed such an insignificant defense when hundreds of tons of kerosene raged overhead! I can't say how many seconds it went on - time seemed to have stopped …
As soon as we realized that the structures survived, the fear of death receded, and everyone rushed to their jobs. Jumping out into the corridor, I saw the entire site staff rushing about. It seemed that many did not understand where and why they were running. I fussed around the equipment, trying to take the readings of the sensors, until I realized that there were simply no such sensors at the top - they were burnt to ashes …”.
When the fire stopped at the top, people came to the surface and realized: if the rocket exploded not in the mine, but a little higher, the victims would have been inevitable. The steel trusses were twisted like burnt matches. The body of "Zenith" was torn to pieces the size of a palm and scattered around.
The picture of destruction fully corresponded to the word "nightmare". The launch pad weighing 663 tons was torn from the arm-thick mountings and thrown upwards, from where it fell onto the launch structure along with the cable mast pipe. Having collapsed downward, it broke through two floors. Everything on the ground floor burned out, but the fire extinguishing system blocked the fire from further inland. The blast wave swept through the six-story underground structure. Armored doors flew like leaves, sweeping away everything in their path. One of the four lighting masts around the launch pad had been blown halfway down and looked like a drooping molten candle. A television camera died on it. The second mast skewed from the violent blow. The 100-meter lightning rods survived. In the nearby structures buried in the ground, wooden doors were knocked out, in some places the entrances were destroyed.
People who watched the launch from a distance of 4-5 km were knocked down by the blast wave. All the windows in the building of the living area were shattered, but none of the people were injured at the start or around.
“In the summer of 1991, hundreds of people saw UFOs over the cosmodrome, including my daughter Marina,” said Lieutenant Colonel of the Medical Service Valery Bogdanov, who served in the Baikonur military hospital from 1979 to 1996. “In broad daylight, a light pink column of ideal cylindrical shape appeared over our hospital. At first it stood upright and then slowly turned 90 degrees. So he hung in the sky for a couple of hours, and then disappeared. In the city they talked about this for a whole week…”.
Fireballs more than once landed in the steppe next to the cosmodrome, depriving the launch sites of electricity. Officially, everyone who tried to find out something about UFO visits to Leninsk and Baikonur received a laconic military response:
“As a result of many years of observations of the air situation in the area of the Baikonur cosmodrome, no reliable data on the appearance of unidentified flying objects has been registered. First deputy commander of military unit 57275 G. Lysenkov."
Mikhail Gershtein
