The Lost Cosmonauts are cosmonauts who allegedly entered outer space, but whose existence has never been acknowledged by either the Soviet or Russian space authorities.

Proponents of the Lost Cosmonauts theory concede that Yuri Gagarin was the first man to survive space travel, but claim that the Soviet Union attempted to launch two or more manned space flights prior to Gagarin's, and that at least two cosmonauts died in the attempts. Another cosmonaut, Vladimir Ilyushin, is believed to have landed off-course and was held by the Chinese government. The Soviet government supposedly suppressed this information, to prevent bad publicity during the height of the Cold War.

Aleksei Ledovsky (late 1957)
In December 1959, a "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.


Serenti Shiborin (February, 1958)
Pioneering space theoretician Hermann Oberth claimed in 1959 that a pilot had been killed on a sub-orbital ballistic flight from Kapustin Yar in early 1958. He never provided a source for the story. In December 1959, the Italian news agency Continentale reported that a series of cosmonaut deaths on suborbital flights had been revealed by a high-ranking Czech communist. Among these were Serenti Shiborin, said to have perished in 1958. No other evidence of Soviet sub-orbital manned flights ever came to light.


Andrei Mitkov (January, 1959)
In December 1959, a "High-ranking Czech communist" leaked much information about many of these 'unofficial' launches, and Andrei Mitkov was, like Ledovsky, mentioned as being launched inside of an R-5A conversion.


Mirya Gromova (1959)
In December 1959, again a "High-ranking Czech communist" leaked information about many of these 'unofficial' launches, including that of Mirya Gromova, a woman who purportedly flew "some sort of 'space aeroplane' into oblivion", never to be seen or heard from again. If the story of Gromova is true, her craft most likely disintegrated upon re-entry from a sub-orbital flight. The 'Space Aeroplane' would likely be a Cosmonaut training vehicle, intended for high-altitude operation.


Unknown man (May 15, 1960)
Robert A. Heinlein wrote in his 1960 article "'Pravda' means 'justice'" (reprinted in Expanded Universe) that on 15 May 1960, while traveling in the Soviet Union, in Vilnius (called by its Polish name "Wilno" throughout the article; Vilnius is far away from Soviet rocket launch sites), he was told by Red Army cadets that the Soviet Union had launched a man into orbit that day, but that later the same day it was denied by officials and that no issues of the Pravda national newspaper could be found in Vilnius or, reportedly, other Soviet cities.

Heinlein wrote that there was an orbital launch, later said to be unmanned, on that day, but that the retro-rockets had fired while the vehicle was at the wrong altitude, making recovery efforts unsuccessful.

According to Gagarin's biography these rumours were likely started as a result of two Vostok missions, equipped with dummies and human voice tape recordings, to check if the radio worked, that were made just prior to Gagarin's flight.

According to the NASA NSSDC Master Catalog, on 15 May 1960, Sputnik 4 with "a self-sustaining biological cabin with a dummy of a man" was launched.


Ivan Kachur (September 27, 1960)
A 1959 edition of Ogonyok carried images of three men, Piotr Dolgov, Ivan Kachur and Alexis Graciov(?), testing high-altitude equipment. Kachur is known to have disappeared around this time; his name has become linked to this equipment.


Piotr Dolgov (October 11, 1960)
Piotr Dolgov was a colonel in the Soviet Air Force.

Over the years there have been false reports that Dolgov was actually killed on October 11, 1960, in a failed flight of a Vostok spacecraft. Such a flight would have occurred six months prior to the historic Vostok 1 flight of Yuri Gagarin on April 12, 1961. These reports would make Dolgov a phantom cosmonaut, one of a few whose identity is documented, although he was not a member of the cosmonaut team.

Officially he 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 space suit hit part of the gondola as he exited, de-pressurizing the suit and killing him.


Alexis Graciov (December, 1960)

V. Zavadovsky (1960/61)
In late 1959, Ogonyok carried pictures of a certain 'Comrade V. Zavadovsky' testing high-altitude equipment (perhaps with Graciov and others). Zavadovsky would later appear on lists of 'dead cosmonauts', without a date of death or accident description[citation needed].

However, in a US press conference on 23 February 1962, Col. Barney Oldfield revealed that a space cabin had been orbiting the earth since about 1960, as it had become jammed into its booster rocket. Korabl Sputnik 1, as it was known, was a prototype of the later Zenit and Vostok manned launchers. The onboard TDU had ordered the retro rockets to fire, but had instead malfunctioned and done the inverse - putting the craft into a higher orbit. The re-entry capsule was apparently without even a heatshield. The Soviet Union claimed the capsule had been unmanned.


Ludmila and Nikolay/Anatoly Tokovy (1961)
Supposedly a married couple - Ludmila Tokovy and "Nikolay" or "Anatoly" Tokovy

TASS later reported that an unmanned satellite roughly the size of a London bus had been launched, but had disintegrated during re-entry.


The Torre Bert Recordings
Regardless of the existence of either Nikolay/Anatoly Tokovy, the Torre Bert listening station in northern Italy purported to have picked up a transmission of a woman's voice, sounding confused and frightened as her craft began to break up upon reentry. Presumably the voice was Ludmila's, though no one knows how or why this name has become attached to the voice on the tape. The interpretation of the tape can be found at the website.


Gennady Mikhailov (February 2, 1961)
Alleged first human in orbit, Gennady Mikhailov may have died in orbit due to heart failure. This rumor may have been derived from reports in the French and Italian press, claiming that Sputnik 7 (launched 4 February, not 2) was a manned mission. According to the TASS news agency it was a failed Venus probe. This is believed to be the source of the Torre Bert recording of both heartbeats and breathing. Both files can be found at the Lost Cosmonauts Web site.


Unknown couple (February 24, 1961)
There were reports of a couple launched on February 17 aboard a 'Lunik' spacecraft orbiting the earth, reporting "Everything is satisfactory, we are orbiting the earth" at regular intervals.

On February 24, there were some garbled verbal transmissions about something the couple could see outside their ship, and had to urgently communicate to Earth. What happened is unclear, but communication was lost. Around the same time the listening station at Torre Bert apparently picked up an SOS signal from a craft in space. As the signal got weaker, it was assumed whatever craft it was disappeared into deep space.


Valentin Bondarenko (March 23, 1961)
One of the incidents that fuels the "lost cosmonaut" stories is the death of Valentin Bondarenko. A member of the original cosmonaut program, Bondarenko died in a training accident on the ground, when a high-oxygen pressurised chamber he was in caught fire on 23 March 1961. He was erased from official Soviet pictures and descriptive materials of their cosmonaut program, leading to all manner of speculation about him and other cosmonauts whose histories were less than perfectly known. The true nature of his accident was not revealed until the 1980s.


Vladimir Ilyushin (April 7, 1961)
Vladimir Ilyushin, son of Soviet airplane designer Sergey Ilyushin, was a Soviet pilot and is purported to have been a cosmonaut, alleged by some to have actually been the first man in space on 7 April 1961––an honor generally attributed to Yuri Gagarin on 12 April.

The theories surrounding this alleged orbital flight are that a failure aboard the spacecraft caused controllers to bring the descending capsule down several orbits earlier than intended, resulting in its landing in the People's Republic of China. The pilot was then held by Chinese authorities for a year before being returned to the Soviet Union. The international embarrassment that would have resulted from such an incident is cited as the Soviets' reason for not publicizing this flight, instead focusing their publicizing efforts on the subsequent successful flight of Yuri Gagarin.

Alexis Belokoniov (November, 1962)
Alexis Belokoniov is reportedly one of three (two men and a woman) cosmonauts aboard a November flight. The Torre Bert tower in Italy allegedly picked up a frantic set of messages relayed by the three occupants. 'Conditions growing worse why don't you answer? ... we are going slower... the world will never know about us . . '

No one is interested in this?

I believe every word, having seen Soviet hardware close-up.

I remember reading that some unnamed Russian cosmonaut was in space before Gagarin but died during re-entry as a result of a boneheaded mistake on the Russians part.  I was never sure whether it was a conspiracy theory, or whether there was any truth to it.  I wouldn't put it past them, but if true, I'd expect the CIA to know and call them on it.

This stuff fascinates me.

Very interesting.  This is the first I've heard of it.

It is interesting and very believable in my opinion. Can you imagine the horror in orbiting the Earth and coming to the realization that you would not be returning?

Same here, interesting.

I'm very interested in stuff like this.


The tore bert recordings are very errie to listen to , realizing that most likely someone is dying slowly in the recording of the woman on re-entry.

Alot of guys in the soviet space interviews cry when on camera about the losses.....

Can you imagine slowly drifting out to space knowing you'll never return?

had heard of this before, but have never seen such a detailed info on it. Great post

Reference is made to this in the movie "K19: Widowmaker".



Good movie.

I was starting 1st grade in 1960 and was dumb/young  enough to believe all the crap put forth about all the marvels and science of spaceflight..

About a dozen years ago I did the tourist thing down in Florida and toured the sights where much of the early stuff happened.
What a bunch of cobbed together junk . Looking back it is surpriseing that we never killed off any of the mercury guys

We did. Gus Grissom

There are a lot of things that the CIA does not talk about because it would reveal sources.  Is there a need to call out the Russkies on this?  Not at this time.

yeah, I was going along with it until the "drifted into deep space" line.

You don't just launch into orbit and "drift away" as if on an ebbing tide.  It takes a shit-ton of energy to get into low earth orbit, and a shit-ton more to get to escape velocity.   On the other hand, its very easy to screw up and have your orbit around earth's CG intersect the outer fringes of the atmosphere.

Not saying the russkies didn't cover up some boners, and people died, but some of that reads like Art Bell material.

Interest tag.

Interesting.

It certainly wouldn't suprise me they did it to cover up mistakes. God forbid they admit they did something wrong.

We know of a few cosmonaut deaths.. IIRC they were far surpassing us in space fatalities until the shuttle crashes.  I wonder why they'd cover some up and not others.

ETA- this got me out on google some.  There's a lot of disagreement on the truth of the "phantom cosmonauts".  The "First in Orbit" section on the lostcosmonauts.com site contains two audio tracks claiming to be telemetry data (breath and heartbeat) from a dying cosmonaut.  Other sources claim specifically that the heartbeat recording isn't of the format used by Soviet telemetry data of that type, and that the craft launched at the time was an unmanned and unsuccessful attempt at a Venus probe.  

While it certainly is a compelling story, it seems that it may just be a story.  Once the Soviet records were declassified we did find out about previously unknown cosmonaut losses, but the rumors that floated around previously seem to have come to nothing.

Check this site out for some more info, as well as this one.

True however according to NASA, if you reenter the atmospere at a wrong angle you will build up enough speed to 'bounce' off the atmospere into deep space. Think of a sling shot manuver. They use the technique to get enough delta vee to get some slower space probes on their way.

There are stories and rumors of this going the other way - secret U.S. astronaut flights. It would not surprise me either.

The rumor I heard was that two USAF astronauts died when their spacecraft re-entered at the wrong angle (excessive g-forces?). The rumor first started by someone involved in a quick dash mission to a Central American country (jungle) to retrieve a black box on board the capsule, leaving the Astronauts there.

There was a thread about this very subject a while ago.

me too

Apollo 13 was a pretty close shave.


Theodore Cordy Freeman - October 31, 1964, Theodore Freeman was killed when a goose smashed through the cockpit canopy of his T-38 Talon jet trainer.

Charles Bassett-Gemini Astronauts Bassett and Elliott See died on February 28, 1966, in the crash of a T-38 trainer jet.
See acted as backup pilot for Gemini 5 and was in line to fly as Prime Crew Pilot for Gemini 8 but was promoted to be
the command pilot of Gemini 9.

Apollo 1-January 27, 1967-Command Pilot Virgil I. "Gus" Grissom, Senior Pilot Ed White and Pilot Roger B. Chaffee. All three died in the cabin fire.

Clifton Curtis 'C.C.' Williams-October 5, 1967-Killed after a mechanical failure caused the flight controls in a T-38 he was piloting to stop responding.
Williams served on the backup crew for Gemini X and had been assigned to the back-up crew for what would be the Apollo 9 mission.
This crew placement would have most likely led to an assignment as Lunar Module pilot for Apollo 12.

Michael James Adams -November 15 1967- His X-15 broke up in a 15g Mach 3.93 dive.

Robert Henry Lawrence, Jr.- December 8, 1967- Crash of an F-104 Starfighter at Edwards Air Force Base, California investigating the gliding flight of various unpowered spacecraft returning to Earth from orbit, such as the North American X-15 rocket-plane. His research was instrumental in proving the steep-descent gliding concept that would later be employed with the Space Shuttle. First Black astronaut.

Space Shuttle Challenger-January 28, 1986-STS-51-L crew: Michael J. Smith, Dick Scobee, Ronald McNair, Ellison Onizuka, Christa McAuliffe, Gregory Jarvis, Judith Resnik.

Space Shuttle Columbia-February 1, 2003 - STS-107-David Brown, Laurel Clark, Michael Anderson, Ilan Ramon, Rick Husband, Kalpana Chawla, William McCool.

I have read stories like this as well. Supposedly, there're STILL a few cosmonauts orbiting the earth in there soyuz capsules. There are in such a high orbit they will never return to earth.

3crowns: Thank you for posting information. What a lonely ending for many brave cosmonauts

I believe our ability back then, just as now, is beyond what the public is lead to believe.

Lost Cosmonauts

Very interesting stuff.  There is so much we don't know.

Life is very expendable to socialists.  We would be wise to remember that.

That would be freaky...knowing that there are dead dudes floating around up there...

not to be morbid, but , would they decompose in a vaccuum environment?

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On a somewhat related note, I just found this page.  It's an article on Soyuz emergency descent sites.  Some of them were in the US.  


Some Soyuz markings:

I highly doubt that. They have to adjust the ISS to avoid tiny bits of debris. If they can track those, they would also know if any other spacecraft the just orbiting around.

  There were some Italian HAM radio guys that documented a lot of radio traffic from fatal flights of Russian Cosmonauts. It was posted here on arfcom.  This is just one more reason I have no respect for Russians. They sent human beings to their death because monkeys were probably too expensive.  

LINK

Yup. There's enough atmospheric drag at most any altitude below 500miles to bring down a space capsule... given enough time.

HERE IS A LINK to a chart on the Web site heavens-above.com that shows how the ISS loses and gains altitude over time. The sharp altitude increases are due to  booster rockets and the Space Shuttle, pushing it into higher a orbit.

Very well said.  Escape velocity is a very high energy thing.

I wouldn't doubt the soviets would cover up any losses as they took massive risks at that time.  Acknowledging failures publicly would have been bad for morale.  Although, our space shuttle program has proven more deadly than I ever expected it would.

The articles I read were in reference to the Soviet Lunar program.

cool

Very interesting read.

I've always been intrigued by this sort of thing.

Have check out some other sites on this.

Thanks for posting it.

Fixed.

All Socialist/Communist/Liberals have no respect for individual rights.

You mean the same guys who missed the fall of the Berlin Wall and the fall of the Soviet Union? Those guys? Those omnipotent supergeniuses?

Just a small point to consider:  the "skip off the atmosphere" scenario only is possible if you are coming in from a non-orbital trajectory.  The Apollo capsules were returning from the Moon, and were moving considerably faster than low-earth-orbit velocities.  They did not drop into orbit and then re-enter; they used the re-entry to provide the entire delta-v.

You are not going to manufacture positive delta-v by dropping out of a stable orbit and then skip off the atmosphere into space.

Umm, that was Farscape, and no.

Pretty cool stuff.

Well what really happened is that the first guys in space pissed off the aliens that are running the show up there.

A universal treaty was hammered out so that we could venture into space and the payment was that, at a future date, leaders would be put into office to turn us into slaves and the aliens get to reap the benefits.

I read a couple reports the even Yuri Gagarin's death, in a 2 seat variant of the MiG 19 IIRC, was considered suspicious at the time.

The only thing that mattered to the Soviets was the glory of 1st place in the space race.  Hell some of their subs didn't have lead shielding around the reactor to get more speed out of the boats, what's the difference?

I wouldn't be a bit surprised if hundreds of people died getting their man in space first.

The stories I've read were that Gagarin had started drinking and they were worried he would blab he wasn't the first into space… then his MiG crashed and he died a hero.

I read a story about this in the late 80's or early 90's with group photos where the guys had been airbrushed out when they went missing , they had 4-5 versions of the same picture each with less astronauts in it. gotta love the Russians . them there is this from here in the US the Russians are not the only ones hiding stuff watch this videoUS space secrets

As a history nut, I love this stuff.

I can't imagine what we will be finding out about Gulf Wars 1 and 2 in 30 years....

Wonder if they cleared those landing sites with us?

From my understanding , several soviet spacecraft did re-enter earth's atmosphere and were burnt up quite badly.

Looks like being an early Cosmonaut was a bit unhealthy......