The Lost Cosmonauts of the Soviet Union
Did the Soviets leave dead cosmonauts in space?
Was Yuri Gagarin Really the First Man in Space?
On April 12th, 1961, the Soviet Union announced that cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin had become the first man to journey into outer space.
Overnight, the 27-year-old became the most famous man in the world, with his achievements splattered across front pages from Washington to Beijing. With his infectious humor, movie star looks, and impressive charisma, he quickly captured the imagination of an entire generation. He became an undisputed rock star for the Soviets in an era where the Americans dominated 'stardom'.
But not everyone was convinced. Was Yuri Gagarin really the first man in space?
As the conspiracy theories state, western press correspondents in Moscow had been tipped off that a successful space flight had already taken place several days before Gagarin's flight. The Soviet state TV had even prepared to propagate the spectacular worldwide event.
Then, the news was suddenly killed, and Gagarin's flight was announced on the 12th. What happened to the cosmonauts on the earlier flight? Nobody is sure, but the 'lost cosmonaut' theory suggests that there were at least three cosmonauts in space before Gagarin. Of the three, two (one was a woman whose piteous wails became famous later) allegedly died during their missions.
The third, Vladimir Ilyushin, Russia’s greatest test pilot and holder of multiple speed and altitude records, landed in China in a badly injured state. His whereabouts around the time of Yuri Gagarin’s flight were shrouded in mystery.
As for Yuri Gagarin, he never flew into space again. After his initial fame faded, he started to drink heavily as his life spiraled out of control. Later, he died in a mysterious jet crash in 1968 that itself was the subject of many conspiracy theories.
Was he feeling guilty because he was living with a terrible lie? Has a ‘lost’ cosmonaut beaten him to be the first man in space?
The Startling Discovery of Two Brothers
In the late 1950s, two Italian brothers, Achille and Giovanni Judica-Cordiglia, were fascinated by the early space endeavors of the Soviets and Americans. Using borrowed and scavenged equipment from World War II, they set up a listening station on the outskirts of Turin, Italy, that they dubbed Torre Bert.
It was a dream come true for them as they started hearing weak but unmistakably space mission signals from Soviet and American spaceships. As Giovanni said.
"My god, it was unbelievable. We were the first people in all of Europe to listen to the signal of Sputnik 1."
What started as a hobby for the brothers soon became their obsession as their little listening station recorded thousands of hours of flight telemetry and voice communications from Sputnik, Vostok, Explorer, and numerous other Soviet and American programs.
In May 160, just sometime before Gagarin created history, the brothers made headlines in Italy and worldwide, claiming they had heard communications about the secret, clandestine Russian space launches. More disturbing was that all these cosmonauts had died in space, and the Soviets had supposedly concealed the fact.
Are These Messages from an Unreported USSR Mission?
According to the brothers, they picked up messages from an unreported USSR mission in which they heard ragged breathing and the rapid heartbeat of a dying cosmonaut. One of the most infamous recordings was a female cosmonaut screaming in agony from being slowly burnt on re-entry into Earth. As the recording went.
“listen… listen! come in! come in… come in… talk to me! talk to me! I am hot… I am hot! what? forty- five? what? forty-five? fifty? yes… yes… breathing… breathing… oxygen… oxygen… I am hot… isn’t this dangerous? it’s all… yes… how is this? what? talk to me! how should I transmit? yes… what? our transmission begins now… forty-one… this way… yes… I feel hot… I feel hot… it’s all… it’s hot… I feel hot… I can see a flame… I can see a flame! I feel hot… I feel hot… thirty-two… thirty-two… forty-one… am I going to crash? yes… yes… I feel hot… I feel hot! I will re-enter…”
As it appeared, the re-entry was not going well. The ship seemed to be gaining too much heat, as the poor woman was slowly being burned alive by the increasing temperatures. She also gets emotional towards the end, knowing that she will be dead soon.
The Soviets denied all these allegations. The Judica-Cordiglia recordings were dismissed as forgeries, and even later, when the Soviets declassified reports about their space programs, there was no mention of the "lost cosmonauts."
The story of the lost cosmonauts was thus airbrushed into one of the many myths of the Cold War.
Is There Some Truth After All?
The biggest problem of the brothers was that no one else could reproduce them despite having far more sophisticated equipment at their disposal. Powerful listening installations such as Jodrell Bank in the UK and the American’s huge listening station in Turkey had not observed the Russian failures as told by the brothers.
This was also confirmed by Bernard Lovell, the director of Jodrell Bank, who said.
“We have no reason to believe that there have been any unsuccessful manned space attempts by the USSR.”
We could surmise that Lovell was lying, but to what purpose? It was the peak of the cold war, and Americans would never miss this chance to belittle the Soviets.
The second problem comes in the language of the female cosmonaut's recording. She spoke poor Russian, fraught with grammatical errors and many gibberish phrases. Soviet cosmonauts get the highest level of education possible, and it is unlikely that the Soviets would send somebody with such poor command over their language.
That said, it was not that mishaps did not happen. After the fall of the USSR, it was revealed the Soviets covered up many deaths and casualties over the years.
For example, Valentin Bondarenko, a cosmonaut, was killed in 1961 during an experiment involving a low-pressure altitude chamber in which he was burned alive and died 16 hours later. The Soviet government covered up Bondarenko's accident and death.
Similarly, in October 1960, at least 150 people were killed on a launchpad after an explosion of an R-16 ballistic missile. The disaster, later named the Nedelin catastrophe after the chief marshal of the artillery was killed in the accident, was quickly shrouded in a veil of official secrecy.
The pattern of concealing disasters does give some credibility to the “lost cosmonaut” theory, and it is not unreasonable to think the government would also hide dead cosmonauts in a bid to save its image.
And while we might never know the truth, the story of the “lost cosmonauts” does not certainly fall in the realm of the impossible, considering the grim dog-eats-dog realities of the cold war era.
Sources
· The "Lost Cosmonauts" Theory and The Recording That Claims To Back It Up
· Ivan Ivanovich and the Persistent Lost Cosmonaut Conspiracy
· Yuri Gagarin: How the first man in space sparked a conspiracy theory
· The Enduring Myth of Phantom Cosmonauts
· The Lost Cosmonauts-Ken Hunt
· Cosmonaut Crashed into Earth 'Crying In Rage'
· Soviet secrets: Are there dead cosmonauts in orbit above Earth?