In the early 60s my parents subscribed to Reader’s Digest. One story in there, just before JFK was assassinated, was about some Russian cosmonauts who were stranded in an expanding orbit around earth–they were slowly but surely pulling away from the earth and there was no means of retrieval. This was supposedly documented by some ham radio operators in the free world, who had picked up radio communications from the doomed cosmonauts. The general thrust of the article was, “Look what those evil commies have done now–they don’t even care about their own.” Assuming that the article was a crock, what was the incident that precipitated the story–or am I the only one who hasn’t forgotten about those poor fellers? –chuckleberry, Calgary, Alberta
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Maybe you didn’t forget, Chuck, but you got the details a little cockeyed. Here’s the deal: (1) The story didn’t appear prior to the JFK assassination, but rather in the April 1965 issue–you can read a transcription at www.lostcosmonauts.com. (2) While ham radio operators were peripherally involved, most of the alleged transmissions were picked up by two brothers in Italy who operated an extraordinary homemade space-listening post with a 40-foot octagonal dish antenna. (3) The brothers claimed to have heard signals from not one but three troubled Soviet spacecraft over a seven-month period. Their reports don’t correspond to any known accidents suffered by the Soviet manned space program. But the Russians did cover up at least one cosmonaut death during the 60s and went to bizarre lengths to expunge other cosmonauts from official histories. So if a few folks insist the Russians still haven’t come clean about their early space disasters (see above Web site), it’s not like they’re complete lunatics.
On March 23, 1961, three weeks before Gagarin’s flight, cosmonaut Valentin Bondarenko died horribly after a fire in an oxygen-rich pressure chamber used for training, which started when he carelessly tossed a cotton pad on a hot plate. Bondarenko’s death was not acknowledged until 1986.
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): illustration/Slug Signorino.
