Posted On: June 3, 2022

Here are six Soviet cases from 1959 to 1967. Sorry about the robot voice. For now we are going to do a combination of some live narrator videos and some robot voiced ones. 

By the 1960s, some extraordinary stories, largely unsubstantiated, had reached the Western media. According to science writer Alberto Fenoglio, for example, in an article in an Italian journal devoted to missile and space research, which was subsequently condensed and translated by Robert Pinotti.

1959: UFO Hovers Over Soviet Headquarters Of Tactical Missile Command

Soviet radar and Air Force personnel observed UFOs circling and hovering for over twenty-four hours above Sverdlovsk, headquarters of Tactical Missile Command, in spring 1959. Fighter aircraft sent to intercept reported that the UFOs easily outmaneuvered them and zigzagged to avoid their machine-gun fire.

My Take: The Russian Pilots must have been freaking out as there was nothing they could do about the UFOs.

1961: Russians Fire Missiles at Large UFO Near Rybinsk

Fenoglio, who claims to have obtained his information from Soviet sources in the West, including a well-known diplomat, also described other sensational sightings during this period.

In the summer of 1961, near Rybinsk, 150 kilometers from Moscow, new missile batteries were being set up as part of Moscow’s defense network. A huge disk-shaped object appeared at an estimated altitude of 20000 meters, surrounded by a number of smaller objects.

"A nervous battery commander panicked and gave the order to fire a salvo at the giant disk, reported Fenoglio. The missiles were fired. All exploded when at an estimated distance of some two kilometers from the target, creating a fantastic spectacle in the sky. The third salvo was never fired, for at this point the smaller saucers went into action and stalled the electrical apparatus of the whole missile base. When the smaller UFOs had withdrawn and joined the larger craft, the electrical apparatus was again found to be in working order."

My Take: It’s a worst case scenario for the Soviet Commander where a giant UFO hovers over his base and even his missiles can't touch it.

1961: UFO Stalls Cars On HI way Near Moscow

On August 31st, 1961, several cars were stalled on a highway thirty miles from Moscow when a UFO hovered on top of an overpass for a few minutes. The cars were unable to start their engines until the UFO left the area.

My Take: Very common that UFOs disrupt the electrical systems of cars and planes.

1961: Passengers And Crew Disappear From Aircraft

The following story was obtained directly from the Soviet Embassy in London by the British researcher Derek Mansell in January 1965. The report originated with the Moscow Aviation Institute, and a brief account was first published in the West by Alberto Fenoglio in 1962, but Mansell’s version contains some additional details. The incident is said to have taken place on an unknown date in 1961. According to the report, an Antonov An-2P mail-plane took off from an airfield at or near Sverdlovsk, bound for Kurgan, with seven people on board.

About 80 to 100 miles from Sverdlovsk, just after the pilot had communicated with ground control, the aircraft disappeared from the radar screen. Ground control tried unsuccessfully to regain communications, so a search was launched involving several helicopters and a large detachment of troops. Since the captain had radioed a position during his last communication it did not take too long to recover the plane. The aircraft was found in a small clearing in dense forest, completely intact.

There was no way it could possibly have landed there, and the authorities stated that it looked as if the plane had been put down gently from above. But most puzzling of all was the fact that there was no sign of anyone on board. All the mail was intact, and when the engine was tested it started first time.

The Moscow Aviation Institute report claims that an unidentified object was tracked on radar at the control tower and that strange radio signals were heard at the time of the disappearance. No marks or footprints were found at the site, but according to Fenoglio’s version of events, a thirty meter-wide clearly defined circle of scorched grass and depressed earth was found at a distance of 100 meters from the aircraft.

My Take: This is a horrifying situation. What happened to those people? Where did the Aliens take them?

1964 - 1965: Voskhod I And II

On October 13th, 1964, the crew of Voskhod I, Komarov, Feoktistov and Yegorov, were allegedly ordered to make a premature return to earth after having completed only sixteen orbits. The cosmonauts are quoted as saying that they regretted being ordered back so soon, as they had seen many interesting things and wanted to investigate them more fully. Reporting for a German newspaper, S. R. Oilinger claimed that Moscow sources had told him that Voskhod I, "was repeatedly overtaken by extremely fast flying disks which struck the craft violent shattering blows with their powerful magnetic fields."

There is no hint of any of this in the cosmonauts’ account of the space flight, although they did report some "phenomena," for example, the Aurora Australis: "Columns of yellow light hundreds of kilometers tall, rising at right angles to the black horizon. They fringed the entire visible horizon for about two thousand kilometers. We were so entranced, we did not at once realize the nature of the phenomenon we were observing."

There is also no indication that the cosmonauts were ordered to return prematurely. They report: "When the time was approaching for the descent, we applied by radio requesting that the flight be prolonged for at least another day. We wanted to repeat the whole program, to check and double check our observations, but permission was refused."

Yet the rumors persisted. Researchers Ion Hobana and Julien Weverbergh were told by a Western journalist who attended the Voskhod press conference on October 21st, at the Grand Hall of Moscow University that Vladimir Komarov was very brief in his delivery, although he was chief spokesman, and answered more evasively than usual. During a question put by a journalist about the possibility of meeting unexpected objects in space, Komarov walked out of the hall without further comment.

On March 19th, 1965, the crew of Voskhod II are said to have lost all contact with ground control and were forced to make an emergency landing, 873 miles from the scheduled landing site. Stories circulated in the media that the spacecraft had come down enveloped in flames, its outside radio antenna burned off, the two-man crew having barely escaped with their lives.

At the press conference on March 27th, the cosmonauts avoided questions asking them to confirm reports that they had been harassed by an unidentified object, although they did admit to seeing an "unmanned satellite" about half a mile from their capsule at 5:12 a.m. on March 19th, which they had been unable to identify, and said that it had appeared shortly before they lost contact with ground control.

My Take: I guess that unmanned satellite is Russian code for Aggressive UFOs in space.

1967: UFO Stalks Russian Airliner Over Volgograd

In 1966, the well-known astrophysicist and UFO researcher Dr. Jacques Vallee attended the International Congress of Mathematicians in Moscow and managed to broach the subject of UFOs with a few scientists, he told me in 1986.

This may have encouraged them to take a more open stance on the controversy, possibly contributing to the inauguration on May 17th, 1967, of a semi-official group, headed by Major General Stolyarov, to conduct an investigation into the subject. According to Dr. Vallee, the Soviet Air Force had 15000 reports on file at the time.

One 1967 report, included in the USSR Academy of Sciences Institute of Space Research Report, states that on September 19th, a UFO hovered and maneuvered around an airliner, (Flight 404) over Volgograd, witnessed by frightened crewmen and passengers.

My Take: I would both love to be there and see that sight, and would not want to be there and see that. I imagine, it would have been terrifying at the time.

Resources: Above Top Secret, Timothy Good, 1988

Posted On: June 3, 2022

Here are six Soviet cases from 1959 to 1967. Sorry about the robot voice. For now we are going to do a combination of some live narrator videos and some robot voiced ones. 

By the 1960s, some extraordinary stories, largely unsubstantiated, had reached the Western media. According to science writer Alberto Fenoglio, for example, in an article in an Italian journal devoted to missile and space research, which was subsequently condensed and translated by Robert Pinotti.

1959: UFO Hovers Over Soviet Headquarters Of Tactical Missile Command

Soviet radar and Air Force personnel observed UFOs circling and hovering for over twenty-four hours above Sverdlovsk, headquarters of Tactical Missile Command, in spring 1959. Fighter aircraft sent to intercept reported that the UFOs easily outmaneuvered them and zigzagged to avoid their machine-gun fire.

My Take: The Russian Pilots must have been freaking out as there was nothing they could do about the UFOs.

1961: Russians Fire Missiles at Large UFO Near Rybinsk

Fenoglio, who claims to have obtained his information from Soviet sources in the West, including a well-known diplomat, also described other sensational sightings during this period.

In the summer of 1961, near Rybinsk, 150 kilometers from Moscow, new missile batteries were being set up as part of Moscow’s defense network. A huge disk-shaped object appeared at an estimated altitude of 20000 meters, surrounded by a number of smaller objects.

"A nervous battery commander panicked and gave the order to fire a salvo at the giant disk, reported Fenoglio. The missiles were fired. All exploded when at an estimated distance of some two kilometers from the target, creating a fantastic spectacle in the sky. The third salvo was never fired, for at this point the smaller saucers went into action and stalled the electrical apparatus of the whole missile base. When the smaller UFOs had withdrawn and joined the larger craft, the electrical apparatus was again found to be in working order."

My Take: It’s a worst case scenario for the Soviet Commander where a giant UFO hovers over his base and even his missiles can't touch it.

1961: UFO Stalls Cars On HI way Near Moscow

On August 31st, 1961, several cars were stalled on a highway thirty miles from Moscow when a UFO hovered on top of an overpass for a few minutes. The cars were unable to start their engines until the UFO left the area.

My Take: Very common that UFOs disrupt the electrical systems of cars and planes.

1961: Passengers And Crew Disappear From Aircraft

The following story was obtained directly from the Soviet Embassy in London by the British researcher Derek Mansell in January 1965. The report originated with the Moscow Aviation Institute, and a brief account was first published in the West by Alberto Fenoglio in 1962, but Mansell’s version contains some additional details. The incident is said to have taken place on an unknown date in 1961. According to the report, an Antonov An-2P mail-plane took off from an airfield at or near Sverdlovsk, bound for Kurgan, with seven people on board.

About 80 to 100 miles from Sverdlovsk, just after the pilot had communicated with ground control, the aircraft disappeared from the radar screen. Ground control tried unsuccessfully to regain communications, so a search was launched involving several helicopters and a large detachment of troops. Since the captain had radioed a position during his last communication it did not take too long to recover the plane. The aircraft was found in a small clearing in dense forest, completely intact.

There was no way it could possibly have landed there, and the authorities stated that it looked as if the plane had been put down gently from above. But most puzzling of all was the fact that there was no sign of anyone on board. All the mail was intact, and when the engine was tested it started first time.

The Moscow Aviation Institute report claims that an unidentified object was tracked on radar at the control tower and that strange radio signals were heard at the time of the disappearance. No marks or footprints were found at the site, but according to Fenoglio’s version of events, a thirty meter-wide clearly defined circle of scorched grass and depressed earth was found at a distance of 100 meters from the aircraft.

My Take: This is a horrifying situation. What happened to those people? Where did the Aliens take them?

1964 - 1965: Voskhod I And II

On October 13th, 1964, the crew of Voskhod I, Komarov, Feoktistov and Yegorov, were allegedly ordered to make a premature return to earth after having completed only sixteen orbits. The cosmonauts are quoted as saying that they regretted being ordered back so soon, as they had seen many interesting things and wanted to investigate them more fully. Reporting for a German newspaper, S. R. Oilinger claimed that Moscow sources had told him that Voskhod I, "was repeatedly overtaken by extremely fast flying disks which struck the craft violent shattering blows with their powerful magnetic fields."

There is no hint of any of this in the cosmonauts’ account of the space flight, although they did report some "phenomena," for example, the Aurora Australis: "Columns of yellow light hundreds of kilometers tall, rising at right angles to the black horizon. They fringed the entire visible horizon for about two thousand kilometers. We were so entranced, we did not at once realize the nature of the phenomenon we were observing."

There is also no indication that the cosmonauts were ordered to return prematurely. They report: "When the time was approaching for the descent, we applied by radio requesting that the flight be prolonged for at least another day. We wanted to repeat the whole program, to check and double check our observations, but permission was refused."

Yet the rumors persisted. Researchers Ion Hobana and Julien Weverbergh were told by a Western journalist who attended the Voskhod press conference on October 21st, at the Grand Hall of Moscow University that Vladimir Komarov was very brief in his delivery, although he was chief spokesman, and answered more evasively than usual. During a question put by a journalist about the possibility of meeting unexpected objects in space, Komarov walked out of the hall without further comment.

On March 19th, 1965, the crew of Voskhod II are said to have lost all contact with ground control and were forced to make an emergency landing, 873 miles from the scheduled landing site. Stories circulated in the media that the spacecraft had come down enveloped in flames, its outside radio antenna burned off, the two-man crew having barely escaped with their lives.

At the press conference on March 27th, the cosmonauts avoided questions asking them to confirm reports that they had been harassed by an unidentified object, although they did admit to seeing an "unmanned satellite" about half a mile from their capsule at 5:12 a.m. on March 19th, which they had been unable to identify, and said that it had appeared shortly before they lost contact with ground control.

My Take: I guess that unmanned satellite is Russian code for Aggressive UFOs in space.

1967: UFO Stalks Russian Airliner Over Volgograd

In 1966, the well-known astrophysicist and UFO researcher Dr. Jacques Vallee attended the International Congress of Mathematicians in Moscow and managed to broach the subject of UFOs with a few scientists, he told me in 1986.

This may have encouraged them to take a more open stance on the controversy, possibly contributing to the inauguration on May 17th, 1967, of a semi-official group, headed by Major General Stolyarov, to conduct an investigation into the subject. According to Dr. Vallee, the Soviet Air Force had 15000 reports on file at the time.

One 1967 report, included in the USSR Academy of Sciences Institute of Space Research Report, states that on September 19th, a UFO hovered and maneuvered around an airliner, (Flight 404) over Volgograd, witnessed by frightened crewmen and passengers.

My Take: I would both love to be there and see that sight, and would not want to be there and see that. I imagine, it would have been terrifying at the time.

Resources: Above Top Secret, Timothy Good, 1988