posted 12-26-2004 09:57 AM               

As 40 years have passed since Gagarin's flight, new sensational details of this event were disclosed: Gagarin was not the first man to fly to space. Three Soviet pilots died in attempts to conquer space before Gagarin's famous space flight, Mikhail Rudenko, senior engineer-experimenter with Experimental Design Office 456 (located in Khimki, in the Moscow region) said on Thursday. According to Rudenko, spacecraft with pilots Ledovskikh, Shaborin and Mitkov at the controls were launched from the Kapustin Yar cosmodrome (in the Astrakhan region) in 1957, 1958 and 1959.

posted 12-27-2004 08:34 AM               

It made for some interesting and enlightning reading. Jim Oberg's closing paragraph though didn't do a very good job at closing the door on this subject...

Paradoxically the hero-worshiping Soviets denied at least one genuine space age hero -- Valentin Bondarenko -- his proper tribute and recognition because of their irrational, insistent secrecy. His tragic death in 1961 in the line of duty was not revealed for a quarter of a century. In the meantime, the Apollo 15 astronauts had left a plaque on the moon in 1971 in honor of fallen space heroes, both American and Russian. Bondarenko's name is not on it, and it should have been. How many other names should also have been there remains to be determined.

posted 12-02-2007 02:12 AM               

There are also hundreds of photographs released of the cosmonauts in training, of preparations for the launch, of the recovery of the capsules. Even during Soviet times censors would make mistakes and release photographs showing unknown cosmonauts or spacecraft. These provided material for Soviet space watchers of the time to penetrate the secrecy around the program. But in all of these hundreds of photographs released before and since the fall of the Soviet Union there is not one to substantiate Ilyushin training as a cosmonaut, let alone his launch.

posted 12-02-2007 11:13 AM               

It's sort of like saying, 'Who cares if a paleontologist finds a fossil of a new species? It would just be another dinosaur.'

posted 12-02-2007 03:56 PM               

A detailed paper trail of historic, financial and technical records is what will eventually provide the airtight proof that the Phantom Cosmonauts are truly phantom.

I personally don't believe any of these stories after some years of intense research. The recorded space-ground conversations do not match the style and protocol that was known some years after the real first flights took place.

However, the documentation when released will demonstrate the coherence of the program. Documentation can:

1. Show the engineering cycle working to correct problems on a flight to flight basis.
   
2. Allow for a comprhensive understanding of the chain of command, duties, and whereabouts of involved personnel.
   
3. Show a linear pattern of the design and building of parts such that there are no gaps for a "Phantom Rocket" to launch a Phantom Cosmonaut.

In summary, we need the reams of data (think dozens of gigabytes of PDF) on everything launched from 1957 through the 1960's in the SU.

This is not a harsh request. Think of what can be gathered from Mercury through Apollo.

posted 12-02-2007 07:15 PM            

A basic chronology of events is:

Despite being a secret state program, rumors got out before a huge event like the first manned space shot - probably too many people involved for it to be otherwise. Rumors were therefore circulating in Moscow in the days and weeks before Gagarin's flight that something big was about to happen.

Amongst the rumors, as often happens when people only have a hint of a story, was speculation that something had already been attempted but perhaps gone wrong. It's possible that whispers about cosmonaut Bondarenko's death in late March, officially a secret but, like the manned flight story, impossible to keep completely quiet, was twisted into a story about a cosmonaut dying in flight.

Around this time Vladimir Ilyushin, son of the famous aircraft designer, had a car accident. He lived close to a Moscow-based British reporter called Dennis Ogden, who got wind of it.

Ogden then put the three elements together:
- rumors of a manned flight soon to take place
- rumors of a cosmonaut dying / injured
- Ilyushin hospitalized after an accident

And, in a probably well-intentioned move, but typical of some reporters, jumped the gun, assumed Ilyushin had been injured while attempting a spaceflight, and wrote a story to that effect.

And that's the whole story. There are no facts to support Ogden's reporting guesswork, and in the subsequent decades nothing substantial to change that viewpoint. Ogden just made a guess too far.

So, I think it's fair to say, case closed.

posted 12-02-2007 08:12 PM               

quote:

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Originally posted by Chris Dubbs:
I just don't see the time to fit in any other failed flights.

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posted 12-03-2007 12:04 AM               

quote:

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Originally posted by Robert Pearlman:
It's sort of like saying, 'Who cares if a paleontologist finds a fossil of a new species? It would just be another dinosaur.'

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Another cosmonaut wouldn't therefore be "a new species". If Buzz Aldrin had been the first to step on the Moon, would that have made any difference? Don't think so.

posted 12-11-2007 05:16 PM               

Gagarin had not completed a full orbit of the Earth. He had in fact landed over 900 miles short.

posted 12-11-2007 05:47 PM               

I understand that John Glenn was the first person to complete a space flight. Gagarin's flight was technically sub-orbital because he did not complete a full lap. Also Titov bailed out, like Gagarin, thus not finishing their flights in the same apparatus which took them into space.

posted 12-23-2007 04:31 PM               

The first part of the book is about official manned and unmanned missions, both American and Soviet. The last part is about not confirmed and tragically concluded missions. This is the first they reported:

On 11.28.1960 at 13.43 CET, 135 days before Gagarin's launch, Judica Cordiglia brothers listened the following morse message: "S.O.S. for the whole world". Professor Heinz Kaminski of the Bochum observatory in Germany confirmed the radio frequency and recorded some signals, but not confirmed the message. Some technical considerations suggested the radio signal came from a spacecraft going away from the earth orbit.

Other listening experiences are reported on the book about uncorfirmed Soviet missions, before and after Gagarin launch.

Reading the book, Judica Cordiglia brothers seem to be careful, technically qualified and absolutely ingenious. Read, for example, chapter 14, where they explain the way they used to discover the secret radio frequency of John Glenn spacecraft.

posted 12-23-2007 05:16 PM               

They have not advanced nor substantiated a single one of their claims; all they have proved is that the bigger the lie you tell, the more people will swallow it. They have the credibility of Bart Sibrel, and their book is a fiction on a par with "The Hitler Diaries."

There is a welter of good, factual books around on the early Soviet space program; might I urge you to set aside that work of fiction and treat yourself to others that reveal the truth of the matter.

posted 07-27-2008 04:55 PM               

I knew the story but I found one of the first indications.

I found the article in the "RAF Flying Review of July 1961). I can send a scan of the article or post it here.

posted 08-12-2008 08:53 PM               

• May 1960 Unnamed cosmonaut lost when his orbiting space capsule veered off course.
  
• November 1960 The brothers picked up an SOS message in Morse code from a troubled spacecraft.
  
• February 1961 Recorded the suffocation of a cosmonaut.
  
• April 1961 Just prior to Yuri Gagarin's flight, a capsule circled the Earth three times before re-entering the Earth's atmosphere.
  
• May 1961 Weak calls for help from an orbiting capsule.
  
• October 1961 A Soviet spacecraft veered off course and vanished into deep space.
  
• November 1962 A space capsule bounced off the Earth's atmosphere during re-entry and disappeared.
  
• November 1963 Unnamed female cosmonaut perished on re-entry.
  
• April 1964 Cosmonaut lost when capsule burnt up on re-entry.

Additionally, if you want to go on a leap to another co-incidental odd story that just might be connected. I wonder of the Keck PA UFO could have been one of these missing capsule missions.

The witnesses report seeing a "crashed acorn shape Volkswagon size space craft in the woods". The military ropes off and evacuates the area and flatbeds an object away. The Soviet Union is not going to admit anything. The US is going to want to tear it apart for intelligence purposes...

posted 08-12-2008 09:11 PM               

quote:

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Originally posted by jeffbassett:
As of extra interest to this topic, there is controversial documentation...

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The Judica-Cordiglia brothers haven't just been well debunked, they have been shown to be verifiable liars, willing eager to make up stories if it gets them press.

As just one example, they report listening in to all of the conversations from John Glenn in orbit, from launch through landing. To quote Jim Oberg, "no radio station in Europe was in range to receive ANY of those signals. Absent a Nobel Prize discovery in the physics of radio propagation, these vivid tales cannot have been based on real events."

posted 08-13-2008 05:37 AM               

Following one of the (unmanned) Zond lunar flights Pavel Popovich told an interviewer how he made a tape recording of his voice, had it placed aboard before launch, and had it played on the craft's way back from the moon, which he said was an hilarious joke on anyone listening in.

In my upcoming book on the first cosmonaut team, written with Rex Hall, I have a photograph of two so-called "phantom cosmonauts" named Belokonov and Mikhailov in the Izvestia newspaper office, taken on 27 May 1963 specifically to refute persistent rumours that they were killed in space flights two years earlier.

posted 08-13-2008 06:47 AM               

Serious spaceflight enthusiasts know that the early days of Soviet-Russian manned spaceflight have been examined in detail by specialists at BIS, who travelled extensively to Russia...

posted 08-13-2008 09:36 AM               

Given the pictures and documentation, I would have to think there is some truth to the brothers story. Given the presses lack of science background, it was not unusual for the US press to want to know why we could not pick up signals through the Earth as it was for other agencies to report such mis-information. I would not debunk a whole story based on such and assumed that such notations are the mistakes that were common in reporting of the time. If the brothers claimed it, then that's another story all together. Just found it and I am unfamiliar so thought I would post it here.

As for Soviet capsules lost and other undocumented flights...

This thread pretty much sums up they can and may have happened. Given the Soviet's public relations machine, I think it is quite possible there are many failed flights not accounted for.

I understand Gagarin ejected after re-entry and descended under his own parachute, as was planned. However for many years the Soviet Union denied this, because the flight would not have been recognized for various FAI world records unless the pilot had accompanied his craft to a landing.

posted 09-29-2009 03:08 PM               

On edit: The following first appeared in the 1969 edition of my booklet "Manned Spaceflight". This is from the updated 1971 edition:

Totally unconfirmed and probably erroneous reports of other Russian deaths from the Torre Bert tracking station in Italy and from West Germany include:

• 18 to 21:5:61 - SCIBOTIN, DOLGLOV (now believed to have died testing ejection seats for Vostok)
  
• 14:10:61 - an unnamed man
  
• 20:10:62 - LODOVSKY
  
• 12:11:62 - BELOKONEV - retros failed to fire
  
• 4:4:64 - IVAN & VIGOLA VALENTIN - on a rendezvous mission.

These deaths are strongly denied by the Russian authorities as having occurred on spaceflights.

Nevertheless, whilst the Soviets remain somewhat secretive about their intentions these stories will persist. For example, the commemorative stamp issued for two cosmonauts was for early balloonists.

posted 09-30-2009 03:00 AM               

quote:

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Originally posted by Aztecdoug:
Gagarin's flight was technically sub-orbital because he did not complete a full lap.

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posted 10-01-2009 03:20 PM               

I recently wrote an article (11 pages, but in Dutch) for the Belgian Aviation History Association. I even found a Russian journalist (Chizhenok, who is working for a US organisation seeking relatives of Russian orphans) to visit Vladimir Ilyushin about this matters (April 2009).

About cosmonauts in space before Gagarin my research gave the following:

• Alexei Ledovsky (+1957) confirmed Mikhail Rudenko
  
• Sergenti Zhiborin (+1958) confirmed Mikhail Rudenko
  
• Andrei Mitkov (+1959) confirmed Mikhail Rudenko (and Herman Oberth)
  
• Alexis Belokonyev (+ April 1960) confirmed journalist/candidate cosmonaut Yaroslaw Golovanov
  
• Vasilli Zavadovsky (+ May 1960) confirmed USAF Col Barney Osfield (CIA)
  
• Ivan Kachur (+ Sept 1960) unconfirmed
  
• Piotr Dolgov (+ Oct 1960) Cordiglia recording-confirmed by other listening stations
  
• Alexis Graciov (Nov 1960) Cordiglia recording- unconfirmed
  
• Gennady Mikhailov (Feb 1961) Cordiglia recording uncorfirmed
  
• Valentin Bondarenko (March 1961) confirmed by family - Gagarin was 16 hours death watcher
  
• Vladimir Illyushin (April 1961) unconfirmed
  
• Yuri Gagarin (April 1961) official the first in space
  
• Ludmilla Serakovna and Nikolay Tokovy (+ May 1961) Cordiglia recording unconfirmed
  
• Ivan Grachov (Oct 1961) unconfirmed

Yaroslav Golovanov wrote the death of cosmonaut Belokonyev in his book "Cosmonaut One".

The Cordiglia brothers mere radio amators who listened to all space activity since the end of the 50 ties. It must be said that the Cordiglia recordings are very controversial.

Most accidents happened at the base Kapustin Yar, were the German captured V2 rockets were tested (followed by the U2 flights of the US), later mission were launched at the base Tjoera Tam (the later Baikonour).

posted 03-02-2010 01:28 PM            

quote:

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Originally posted by paclippr:
Sergei Vladimir Ilyushin, Jr., who purportedly orbited the Earth 5 days earlier then Gagarin...

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posted 04-19-2010 02:51 PM               

On the one hand, none of us would put it past the secretive Soviets to hide the truth about their early space program, manned or unmanned. With the revelation that Gagarin (and Titov) ejected before landing, we realize the Soviet government was willing to lie in order to come out on top. Some would even call that "cheating." Nevertheless, no one disputes that the first man in space was a Soviet. I think our interest in finding out if Gagarin was the first in space or not is more about "setting the record straight" so we can know WHO, indeed, was "FIRST." If it's not correct, they'll have to go back and re-edit any "Star Trek" episodes that referred to Gagarin as the first!