Secret materials on the USSR space program made public
Historians have published documents that relate to the Soviet space program. Proceeding from their declassified documents, during the creation of the first ultra-long Soviet missiles, the designers of the USSR used the technology of Nazi Germany. In addition, dozens of captured German engineers worked together with domestic experts.
So, quite recently the security classification was removed from a document that was in a special folder of the USSR Politburo. This is a report, which was prepared especially for Stalin, about the latest developments of Germany in the field of rocket technology. The document dates from the fall of 44. According to historians, it was this report that opened up a new era in stories our rocket and space program.
The document reported that Soviet troops near the town of Dębice had captured an unusual military ground. During the inspection, it discovered a new, top-secret German weapon - rocket of great power.
The report indicated that when firing at a distance of 250 kilometers, this projectile can reach speeds up to 1,4 kilometers per second and rise to heights up to 90 000 meters. The name of this miracle weapon "V-2". The commission of the People's Commissariat of Defense made a disappointing conclusion that the fight against the new German missile is practically impossible with conventional air defense systems.
According to Andrei Sorokin, director of the State Archive of social and political history, this information made a shocking impression on Joseph Stalin. By a striking coincidence, just one month before the capture of parts of the V-2, the president of the Soviet Academy of Sciences Komarov sent a secret note to the leadership of the USSR.
In this note, Komarov requested immediate funding for the Institute of Reactive aviation named Fedorov. Funds are needed to start work on creating an ultra-long rocket, for a similar project has already been launched in England.
After reading all these documents, Stalin ordered the creation of a special commission that would master the German jet technology and combine Soviet ideas and developments with existing German technologies.
Andrei Sorokin says that at the end of the war, the leadership of the USSR makes a decision to maximally clean up the territory of liberated Germany in search of specialists, specific developments and technologies in order to study this experience, which was considered advanced at that time.
The commission on the results of the work has prepared a report in which it was reported that in the territories of Germany, Czechoslovakia and Austria, Soviet scientists and scouts found 41 powder rocket and 8 liquid rockets. In addition, 32 type of engines with different fuel samples was detected. Detained and brought to the work of 40 by German engineers who worked on the creation of V-1,2 rockets.
One, perhaps, the most interesting document of that period is a letter from a member of the above-mentioned commission to Major General Nosovsky to Marshal Malenkov. In it, the general reports that specialists from the USSR arrive in Germany in extremely bad and dilapidated clothes. In this regard, it is shameful for him to keep the Soviet people on the same job with the Germans. Based on this, Nosovsky requested that thousands of brands 500 be allocated in order to buy normal 1000 clothing to our engineers. The request of the general was fulfilled. Of our belongings that were confiscated in Germany, our missilemen were given over 500 pairs of shoes, around 250 coats and suits, and over a thousand pairs of knitted underwear.
According to Sorokin, those specialists who went to Germany are those who, until then, were mostly in camps. This can explain the terrifying nature of their everyday conditions in which they found themselves in Germany.
Not so long ago the secrecy stamp was removed from one more letter of 1945 of the year. In this letter, designer V.Glushko, on the engines of which about 99% of our missiles have been flying so far, requested the government to leave leading experts in its 25 design office, which the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs plans to transfer to other works as simple prisoners. With similar requests addressed to the top of the country and designer S. Korolyov, who also before the start of work on the rocket subject himself was serving a conclusion.
In the spring of 61, the American and German specialists were completely shocked by the triumph of our rocket men, when the 1 man, who stepped into space, spoke his famous “Go!” To the whole world in Russian.
Information