"It seemed to them that they were screaming - in fact, they were wheezing."
The dramatic flight of Vasily Lazarev and Oleg Makarov on April 5, 1975 remained classified for a long time. Due to the crash of the launch vehicle, it became suborbital and lasted 21 minutes 27 seconds. The emergency rescue system was activated. The descent took place in an uncontrolled mode. Astronauts literally fell from a height of 192 kilometers from space … G-forces reached from 21 to 26 g. At some point, Vasily Lazarev and Oleg Makarov lost their eyesight, they had cardiac arrest.
Having landed in the Altai mountains, they almost fell into an abyss. Waiting for the evacuation group, we spent two nights by the fire in the cold.
The wife of flight engineer Oleg Makarov, Valentina Ivanovna, and pilot-cosmonaut, twice Hero of the Soviet Union, Major General Vladimir Dzhanibekov told MK about the fate of the cosmonauts, as well as what they had to endure on that flight.
On April 5, 1975, an experienced crew started from the Baikonur cosmodrome to the Salyut-4 station. In 1973, the spacecraft commander Vasily Lazarev and flight engineer Oleg Makarov had already been in orbit as part of the Soyuz-12 expedition. They were awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.
Vasily Lazarev is a former military doctor. After graduating from the Kharkov Higher Military Aviation School, he became a fighter pilot. As a strato-pilot he took part in test flights on the SS-Volga stratospheric balloon. And in 1966 he got into the second detachment of the Air Force Cosmonaut Training Center.
His wife, Valentina Ivanovna, told us about flight engineer Oleg Makarov:
- Oleg was a very extraordinary person, with a specific mindset, a perfectionist, an excellent student, he had to do everything in one "five" for everything to be perfect. His father was a career soldier, he took part in the Battle of Stalingrad, and reached Berlin. He taught his son to be fair. Oleg had his own opinion on everything. He never backed down from his decision. Didn't do nasty things to anyone, never let down. He was very sarcastic, had a subtle humor.
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He got into the design bureau, headed by Sergey Korolev, as a student at the Bauman Moscow State Technical University. In the famous OKB-1, Oleg Makarov completed his diploma practice. After graduation he came to work for Korolev.
Here I also met my future wife, Valentina Soldatova.
- Oleg saw me somewhere at work, came and said: I'll marry you, - says Valentina Ivanovna. - I did not know him, and in general, he was not the hero of my novel, I liked completely different men. But he had a strong masculinity, he did real masculine deeds, and Oleg managed to win my heart. And he didn't care about the opinion of either mom or dad. He always made his own decisions. Any doubts were alien to him. He had already decided, and that was all. Just made it known; as he himself said, "you don't need to flap your wings."
Of course, it was not easy for me with him. Oleg was a tough man, very strict. He did not like any weakness, negligence, he often said: how can you not?..
- Did he manage to work with the chief designer of rocket and space technology Sergei Pavlovich Korolev?
- Korolev once said: young man, you have a very bad character, but that is why we will work with you together. Oleg was very principled: if he believed that he was right, he did not concede, he did not bow before the authority. In 1960, when we were already married, Korolev sent Oleg to lecture recruits from the first cosmonaut corps on rocketry and flight dynamics. The husband participated in the development of the first manned spacecraft. At that time, nothing was known about this, it was a terrible secret.
In 1966, Oleg Makarov, with the blessing of Korolev, got into the cosmonaut corps. Together with Alexei Leonov, he underwent training under the flight program to the Moon. But after the Americans landed on the moon in July 1969, the Soviet lunar program was curtailed. Oleg Makarov first entered space on Soyuz-12 with Lazarev, at the age of 40.
- Before that, in 1971, when returning to Earth, the cosmonauts Vladislav Volkov, Georgy Dobrovolsky and Viktor Patsaev died. The descent vehicle was depressurized. Was Oleg Grigorievich scared?
- What fear are you talking about? They were possessed people. They had no psychological barrier. Interesting work was the main thing in life for them. When preparing for flights, the husband, for example, was at home on weekends at best. All everyday problems fell on my shoulders. I remember many years later they somehow argued with an already grown-up son, and Lenya told his father: Dad, I saw you for the first time when I was 14 years old. Of course, this was said with irony, but there was some truth in it. When one of the sons behaved badly, I had one argument: when dad comes, you yourself will tell him everything. It was worse than any flogging. And I must say that we have never physically punished children. Everyone loved each other very much.
- How did you know that the next flight, on April 5, 1975, on the Soyuz-18-1 spacecraft went abnormal?
- I was at work. There was no signal. At the 261st second of the flight, the husband quietly said: "Accident." Then, as it seemed to them, they screamed, in fact - wheezed. What happened to them was terrible. Our youngest son Kostya was only one year old then.
At first, the overload went off scale for 10 g, then the terrible figure of 21.3 g and even 26 g appeared on the telemetry tape. Vasily Lazarev and Oleg Makarov suffered from vision failure and cardiac arrest was recorded.
- What is 20 g overload? If your heart weighs 50 grams, multiply this figure by 20. And it should drive blood, which has increased in its mass by 20 times,”says cosmonaut Vladimir Dzhanibekov. - We were tested when the overload reached 12 units. I had the feeling that the lungs were torn away from the chest, the trachea was sticking to the spine. At the same time, they tried to say something, but one wheeze escaped. This, of course, is overloading. I heard that cosmonaut Valery Bykovsky once “walked” at 15-16 g. And, in general, he kept them.
- There is a known case when, during an overload of 15 g, one of the test pilots tore off a kidney …
- And this can be. A colossal weight is acquired. In this case, both vision loss and blood drainage are possible. In the ship, the chair is made a little differently, so the outflow of blood there is not so intense, but nevertheless. Vessels burst. I watched the result. If the astronaut did not take vitamins before the overloads, his back became all purple, as did his arms and legs … Capillaries burst, and not only on the skin. Vasily Lazarev and Oleg Makarov experienced something that no one has ever experienced. They were saved by the fact that the cosmonauts were exposed to such a monstrous overload for a short time, it lasted for several seconds, and then a decline began.
The cosmonauts came to their senses when the parachute system worked. Oleg Makarov turned to Vasily Lazarev, but he did not hear him. The ship's commander temporarily lost his hearing … According to the navigation system, the ship was descending in the Altai region. There was a threat that the crew would land in China. The astronauts checked where the pistol was. And they prepared to burn the secret journal with the expedition program upon landing.
The landing took place on a snow-covered slope in the Altai Mountains. The descent vehicle, having touched the ground, rolled … The cosmonauts did not manage to shoot the parachute - this saved them from death. The dome caught on the treetops and prevented the space shuttle from sliding into a half-kilometer abyss.
Vasily Lazarev and Oleg Makarov had to spend two nights by a fire in the cold before they were evacuated.
- Then, in January 1978, you flew with Oleg Makarov on the Soyuz-27. Did he remember that extreme flight? - we asked Vladimir Dzhanibekov.
- Oleg was very tense internally. But he had a strong character, he was sharpened for his favorite work. And in general, he was a very interesting person.
- Have you made any changes since that emergency landing?
- In case of such an accident, a descent control panel appeared. The astronauts could already take over control of the spacecraft and reduce the overload. The centrifuge has also been modified for these modes.
“On that flight, Oleg took a small wooden dog with him. Then she was constantly in space with him,”says Valentina Ivanovna.
Exhausting training and overloading in space undermined the health of the astronauts. In 1998, Oleg Makarov underwent heart surgery, then several more surgical interventions followed … But the worn out cardiovascular system could no longer be restored. On May 28, 2003, the 71-year-old astronaut died of a heart failure. Even earlier, in 1990, Vasily Lazarev died.
- Oleg Grigorievich left no memories or diaries?
- Our family had a directive: keep your head down. His work was separate, and our life together was separate,”says Valentina Ivanovna. - For a long time, about forty years ago, he tried to write a book, and then abandoned it, saying: “Who needs it? Who will read it? We lived at a time when the turner, who was sharpening the nut, knew that it would be bolted to the common state business. There was a community, and now - every man for himself.
Svetlana Samodelova
