Continuing the USSR History...
Flap moves towards Russia 1961-65
After 1959 the UFO-flap moved east to the Baltics and Russia and almost ceased completely in Poland (one sighting in 1960 where in October the whole town of Poznan sees an object descend over the city and changes direction several times. And in 1963 when metall-balls the size of hazelnuts fell over Warsaw on the night between 22nd and 23rd of April. The metal-”balls” was gleaming red by heat. This ”balls” covered the streets and noise of cracking electricity was heard. I haven’t found any investigation confirming the information of metal. Editor). Some interesting incidents occured over Romania too, mostly involving connected discs and burned grass from landing. But as I said, the flap was moving eastward.
1961. On August 31st several cars were stalled on a higway 30 miles from Moscow (Russia) when a UFO reportedly hovered on top of an overpass for a few minutes. The cars were unable to start their engines until the UFO left the area.
This doesn’t sound particularly astonashing you say, but this report was one of the first to be taken seriously by the USSR Academy of Sciences Institute of Space Research. (Timothy Good Above Top Secret, page 231)
1960. During the summer of 1961 near Rybinsk, 10 kilometres from Moscow, new surface-to-air missile batteries were being set up as part of Moscows’s air-defence network. A huge, disc-shaped object alledgly appeared at an estimated altitude of 20,000 metres, surrounded by number of smaller objects. ”A nervous battery commander panicked and gave - unauthorized - the order to fire a salvo at the giant disc” reported science writer Alberto Fenoglio in a Italian journal Ibid about space research in the 60’s. Missiles were fired and exploded some two kilometres from the target, followed by a second salva. As the third salva was about to be launched the smaller UFO’s stalled the electrical apparatus of the whole missile base. The elctrical apparatus didn’t work again until the big UFO and its smaller companions disappeared.
What do we say about these fantastic report?
In Timothy Good’s book Above Top Secret he says that the Italian science paper is a respected journal and it would be unlikely that they would write such a story if it wasn’t aný substance behind it. Well, it could also be the opposite, they did the same as Good. They didn’t check the original source (as it is exremely hard to do) and trusted some other source - just as Good.
1961. The following incident has been reported by several investigators as Alberto Fenoglio (in 1962), British researcher Derek Mansell (in 1965) and the UK UFO magazine Flying Saucer Review (in 1967). The details differs some (very little) but the main story is intact and very intriguing.
An Antov An-2P, a small transport plane, left an airfield at or near Sverdlovsk (Russia), bound for Kurgan, with 4 people aboard (Mansell’s report says 7), mail and luggage. After flying about 128-160 kilometres, and after the pilot has communicated with the ground control the plane disappeared from the radar screen. A search was launched with helicopters and troops, and as the pilot had given a position just moments before the plane vanished, it was found after only two days at the area of Tobelak (Siberia). The plane was found in a small clearing in the forest, too small to have landed there, and it was seemed to have been put down from above gently. No passanger and pilot was to be found, or ever since. All mail was intact and the motor had fuel for another 2 hours of flight and ran fine. The Moscow Institute report claims that an unidentified object was tracked by radar and that strange radio-signals were picked up at the time of disappearence. A circular burnt patch was found 100 metres away from the grounded plane.
1961. Irkutsk (Russia). A rocket-like object on four legs was seen on the ground, together with two UFO-nauts. A doctor in the nearby laboratory was said to have taken a photo. (Flying Saucer Review, May 1967)
1962. On September 24th both passengers and pilots of a TU 104 which landed at Moscow from central Asia said that they had seen disc-like objects circling round their plane and then disappearing at a greater speed than their own. (Phénoménes Spatiaux, December 1966)
1964. On July 12th a group of people on the way to Moscow from leningrad (Russia) by TU 104 saw a large bright metal disc gliding under their aircraft. A well-known UFOlogist was on board, Dr. Vyacheslav Zaitsev, who declered that the disc had a dome in its central part which looked like a cabin. (Psychic Discoveries behind the Iron Curtain)
1965. Dr. Ludmila Tsehanovich, a geodetical astronomer in Caucasus, sees a glittering disc with a dome in form of a cabin. (Psychic Discoveries behind the Iron Curtain)
1965. Three astronomers in Latvia (Baltics), R. Vitolniek and two of his collegues at the Ogre Observatory, were studying the nocturnal clouds when they saw a star-like object drifting slowly westwards. Through binoculars the light seemed to have a sharp triangular definition but through the telescope it appeared to be a combination of four smaller objects consisting of a central sphere, two diameters of which further away were three more, similar spheres drifting slowly around the one in the middle. After 20 minutes the astronomers observed how the three external spheres went away from the central one and the whole group became invisable as they moved too far away. They had dull green colour of a ruby, 5 km up, 60 degrees over the north-west horizon. (Hearing report)
Austronauts
According to the UFO-researcher James Oberg, Russians have a taste for making up stories of old war and Space-heroes that can’t confime these storys as they are dead. The storys is that the ”heroes” knew much about the UFO-topic than we have been told, but was reluctant to tell the public. As I can understand his view in this discussion I think reports about UFO-sightings by austronauts recorded in the 60’s and early 70’s can be of interest as those astronauts were still alive back then (and many still are). But I can still find the same problem as with some of the most spectacular romours of the western austronauts (like Neils Armstrong seeing an armada of UFO-ships on the ridge of a crater on the Moon) - most of the austronauts has not gone public with the storys that are attached to them. Both the crews on Voskhod 1 (October 12th 1964, Moscow time) and 2 (March 18th 1965, Moscow time) are said to have seen unidentied cylindrical objects in orbit, as McDevitt of the US Gimini spaceprobe. On the press conference for Voskhod 1, the chief cosmonaut and spokesman Komarov walked out without answering when a western journalist asked him if they had encountered UFO’s in space. Komarov died 4 years later in the accident with Soyoz 1.
The Voskhod 2 did an ”extra” journey around the globe (cosmonaut Pavel Beljajev was the first to walk in space on this flight) due to technical problems, and landed in the Urals after 8 orbits. No one of the crew has ever mentioned, to my knowledge, anything about an identical cylinder-object as McDevitt’s...
Governments involment prior 1967
Through 1965-66 astronomers sees discs over monastarys and pilots are ”locking” on targets as the ground control confirmes the sightings. Ordinary civilians report discs over Moscow and southern Russia as the flap gets more intense. But what about the governments involment?
Well, as Timothy Good says in his new book Above Top Secret there were unconfirmed rumours that the US, Brittain, France and USSR met in Geneva in 1955 where they agreed on a policy of secrecy on the UFO problem. There is nothing to substantiate this. But a lead could be a column by the American journalist Dorothy Kilgallen 1954 which read:
”Flying saucers are regarded as of such vital importance that they will be the subject of a special hush-hush-meeting of the world military heads next summer.” (Timothy Good, Above Top Secret)
An ex-officer of the French Secret Service, George Langelaan, stated to a former deputy chief of the Brittish MI6 in 1965 that at least the US Secret Service (CIA) and the USSR Secret Service (KGB) had collaborated on the UFO-question. But there isn’t any offical recognition until 1967 when the father of USSR UFO-research gets on the stage - Felix Zigel. With this I’ld like to close part 1 of this history lesson of UFO’s behind the Iron Curtain and I hope you stay tuned for part 2 that will come in mid-November.
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