Phantom cosmonauts

The lost Cosmonautes or phantom Cosmonautes are cosmonauts of which it is known as that they accomplished (or tried to carry out) a space voyage before the historical flight of Youri Gagarine, but whose flights would have been held secret by the Soviet Union not to tarnish the image of the country whereas the race with space started with their advantage.
Although the Soviet files are now accessible, and that testimonys of the pioneers of then is not choked any more by the military secrecy of the time, no formal evidence brought forever to these assertions.

It is however obvious that these stories - proven or hypothetical - largely benefitted from the climate of the Cold war to thrive in the form of anti-Soviet propaganda, any political operation being justifiable at that time to discredit the adversary.

Although Youri Gagarine is undoubtedly the first man to have survived a space mission, the most precise charges towards Soviet are those to have carried out two launchings inhabited before, launchings which would have cost the life two cosmonauts whose history would have lost the name. A rumor affirms as for it that one of the two predecessors of Gagarine would have been victim of a failure of the launcher which would have obliged it to land urgently on the Chinese territory, where it would have been retained some time before being exchanged in the greatest secrecy.

Also let us note that these not proven assertions are indirectly the fruit of the secrecy even of which Soviet surrounded their program, and who pushed them to falsify certain documents of the time, in particular with regard to the death - proven and become official after nearly 30 years of dissimulation - of two of the cosmonauts selected in the first group to which Gagarine belongbelonged and Titov: Grigori Nelyubov (excluded from the group) and Valentine Bondarenko (deceased at the time of a drive).

Supposed incidents

May 15th, 1960

Robert Heinlein wrote in 1960 that the May 15th 1960, whereas he travelled in Soviet Union, of the juniors by the Red Army told him that the Soviet Union today had just put into orbit a manned vessel. But a little later the same day, this information was officially refuted and, note the writer, no number of the Pravda was available this day, neither in the city where it was (Vilnius), nor in the other big cities of the country. Heinlein wrote that this day, an orbital flight (declared uninhabited later) was tried, but that a bad lighting of the retrorockets had involved the loss of the capsule on its return, preventing any help.

According to a biography of Gagarine, these rumors were born owing to the fact that two of the Vostok missions preceding its historical flight were equipped with mannequins and a system allowing the retransmission, with aims of radio operator tests, of a preregistered voice. (This same test system of radio transmission had been used during the flights of capsules Zond towards the moon, making one moment accept American that Soviet had preceded Apollo 8 for the first inhabited lunar orbital flight).

February 4th, 1961

The French and Italian press claimed that Sputnik 7, launched the February 4th 1961 was a live mission, whose occupant had died in orbit. Actually, it was about a Venusian probe remained orbits about it after a failure.

April 7th, 1961

Vladimir Iliouchine, wire of the manufacturer of plane Sergueï Iliouchine, was a pilot supposed to have been cosmonaut, and first man in space the April 7th 1961, a few days before the official success of Youri Gagarine.

This theory claims that this orbital flight had to be amputee of several orbits by the controllers of flight following a failure of the feeding system out of oxygen of the capsule, making lose consciousness with its passenger before his third revolution, which leads the control room to make urgently go down again that Ci to the top of the territory of the Popular republic of China, where the pilot, after being seriously wounded with the spinal column at the time of the crash landing of the capsule Rossiya, fault of being itself ejected among that Ci after the re-entry in the atmosphere, following his loss of consciousness, would have been retained nearly one year by the authorities Chinese, with the title " of honourable invité" , officially for medical reason, and more semi-officially for espionage. The embarrassment which the public advertisement of the retention of a Soviet pilot by the powerful Chinese neighbor would have caused would have been a sufficient reason to conceal to it (half) success of the flight, and quickly to hide this adventure by the success of a new shooting, that for which Youri Gagarine became famous.

This theory was born the April 10th 1961 under the feather from Dennis Ogden, press correspondent British of the communist newspaper The Daily Worker . Although Iliouchine was undoubtedly largest and most known of the Soviet test pilots, no Russian official information it forever connected to the space program. Relevant information is that of a serious wound to the leg which Iliouchine at the time of an car accident accepted, the June 5th 1960: the pilot had to even undergo care lasting more than one year with Moscow… and was sent to follow a rehabilitation to Hangzhou, to China, to profit there from Eastern medicine. This information was confirmed by a Soviet defector Leonid Vladimirov, engineer, who had personal contacts with Iliouchine, as it tells it in 1973 in its book the great Russian space bluff .
This theory knew a renewal of credibility after being confirmed (without any new proof) by Sergueï Khrouchtchev, proper son of the former Soviet leader Nikita Khrouchtchev, and was the object of several documentary after the declassification of the files of the Kremlin to the Western public during the collapse of the iron curtain.

Other allegations

May 16th, 1961 in an audio recording a cosmonaut describes a strong heat, a fire and announces that it will try to return. The recording is available on the site of Judica-Cordiglia just like a denial.

The cosmonauts following - realities or imaginary - during the years were introduced like hidden victims of the Soviet space program, without no beginning of proof however never being able to be brought like confirmation.

Supposed deceased in suborbital flights

  • Aleksei Ledovsky (at the end of 1957)
  • Serenti Shiborin (February 1958)
  • Andrei Mitkov (January 1959)

Supposed deceased in orbital flights

See too

Related articles

External bonds

  • Vladimir Iliouchine
  • lost cosmonauts
  • Encyclopedia Astronautica: the phantom cosmonauts
  • Straight Dopes one " lost" cosmonauts
  • Oberg chapter one Dead Cosmonauts
  • Investigation into the Soviet space disasters, by James Oberg

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