Ladaboard

Purported Czech information leak

In December 1959, an alleged high-ranking Czech Communist leaked information about many purported unofficial space shots. Aleksei Ledovsky was mentioned as being launched inside a converted R-5A rocket. Three more names of alleged cosmonauts claimed to have perished under similar circumstances were Andrei Mitkov, Sergei Shiborin and Maria Gromova.[2] Also in 1959, pioneering space theoretician Hermann Oberth claimed that a pilot had been killed on a sub-orbital ballistic flight from Kapustin Yar in early 1958. He provided no source for the story.[3] In December 1959, the Italian news agency Continentale repeated the claims that a series of cosmonaut deaths on suborbital flights had been revealed by a high-ranking Czech communist. No other evidence of Soviet sub-orbital manned flights ever came to light

High-altitude equipment tests

A 1959 edition of Ogoniok published an article and photos of three high-altitude parachutists: Colonel Pyotr Dolgov, Ivan Kachur and Alexey Grachov. Official records state that Dolgov was killed on November 1, 1962, while carrying out a high-altitude parachute jump from a Volga balloon gondola. Dolgov jumped at an altitude of 28,640 meters (93,970 feet). The helmet visor of Dolgov's Sokol pressure suit hit part of the gondola as he exited, de-pressurizing the suit and killing him.[4] Kachur is known to have disappeared around this time; his name has become linked to this equipment.[4] Grachov is thought to have been involved, with Dolgov and Kachur, in testing the high-altitude equipment. Russian journalist Yaroslav Golovanov suggested that high-altitude testing was exaggerated into a story that those parachutists died on a space flight.[4] In late 1959, Ogoniok carried pictures of a man identified as Comrade Gennady Zavadovsky testing high-altitude equipment (perhaps with Grachov and others). Zavadovsky would later appear on lists of dead cosmonauts, without a date of death or accident description.[4]

Russian journalist Yaroslav Golovanov, who researched the lost cosmonaut claims in his book "Cosmonaut #1", found and interviewed the real Alexey Timofeyevich Belokonov, a retired high-altitude parachutist. In this interview, Belokonov revealed more about his colleagues Dolgov, Kachur, Mikhailov, Grachov, Zavodovsky and Ilyushin, and confirmed they never flew to space. According to Belokonov, in 1963, after New York Journal American published an article on lost cosmonauts, listing the parachutists among them, Soviet newspapers Izvestia and Krasnaya Zvezda published a refutation that included testimonies and photographs of actual Belokonov, Kachur, Grachov and Zavodovsky. Parachutists also wrote an angry letter to New York Journal American editor William Randolph Hearst, Jr., which he ignored.[4]

t tulppu kirjoitti:Vaimoni on toiminut hyvin.. Kiihtyy hyvin ja jarrut toimii loistavasti. Olen tosi tyytyväinen valintaani.. .