As early as 1959 there were rumors that the Soviet space program had been not only too ambitious but also reckless in trying to maintain a technical edge over the NASA space program. By 1957 they had already launched the Sputnik orbital satellite and had beaten the Americans into space, but even before that the Russians were launching dogs, monkeys, and other animals into space to see if they could survive suborbital flight. After World War II and the beginning of the “Cold War” a number of Russians fled their country and were able to immigrate to the US. After what they had seen in their country under Stalin they had little trust in whatever their nation’s programs were doing and even less faith in their government’s concern over the lives of their Cosmonauts. When the Americans quickly followed with the launch of their own “Vanguard” orbital satellite, this only hastened the Russians more.

Truth leaks out

Russian immigrants were receiving secret mail and communications with their families still trapped behind the “Iron Curtain” a nickname for the border of Eastern Bloc countries and free Europe. Rumors began to emerge about lost Cosmonauts out in space who would never return and whose frozen depressurized  corpses would forever orbit the earth or be floating somewhere in interstellar space as a result of miscalculated telemetry or instrument malfunction had come out. The Vostok program was the first known series of manned space missions revealed by the Russians to the west. This was the space program that Yuri Gagarin piloted during the first successful orbital mission which beat the NASA Mercury series in the race to put a man in space, but prior to these known events are the hidden failures.

News of failures

Rumors escaped the Soviet Union alleging that a triple Cosmonaut spacecraft had lifted off and entered orbit but due to malfunction or error in calculations the manned vessel either was not able to re-enter earth’s atmosphere for recovery, or simply left orbit and ventured out into the solar system on an unrecoverable course. From intelligence channels US spy contacts were aware that a large number of animals sent up by rocket from Russian launch pads were largely killed by decompression or high G force re-entries. It was also known that the Russians weren’t too sentimental about their test pilots either as after World War II there was a plethora of war veterans out of work and anxious to fly anything if it meant keeping a job and food on the table. As a result of Stalinist brutality many of these test pilots were sacrificed while testing beyond Mach aircraft and other X project planes.

Cheap and dirty

In order to get a jump on the Americans it was evident that the Soviets would hurriedly rush into design and development phases with little thought to safety or redundant back-up systems that could save lives if an error or malfunction occurred. As a result, hastily conceived and fabricated space craft were rolled out for quick introduction and flight. The Soviets already had an edge over US rocketry by making larger missiles for warfare and they adapted these as booster rockets for three stage orbital flights, but their manned space craft to sit atop the rocket as the payload were in serious question.

Ominous first mission

On April 5, 1961 Sergey Ilyushin, son of the famous aircraft designer was discovered to have predated Yuri Gagarin into orbit, but was killed in flight. On April 12, 1961 the Soviets succeeded in launching another Vostok and Yuri Gagarin would be the first official man in space which preceded the US Mercury mission and flight of Astronaut, Alan Shepherd’s Capsule in August of 1961. Yet there are the unofficial Soviet missions that preceded the success of Gagarin’s flight.

The listening post

Beginning in the late 1950’s two Italian brothers using an abandoned German army bunker in the city of Turin began tapping into Russian Space Program communications. They made controversial recordings that indicated that there were fatalities occurring in the Vostok and other Soviet programs. Even though attempts were made to discredit their work the death of Sergey Ilyushin was not discovered until many years after his fatal mission as the Russians used Gagarin’s successful orbital flight to overshadow the previous failure. The Italian brothers built their listening device from electronic surplus they had purchased and proceeded to assemble an effective device.

In total the Judica-Cordiglia brothers released nine recordings over a period of four years. The details were as follows:

• May 1960, a manned spacecraft reports it is going off course.
• November 28, 1960, a faint SOS Morse Code signal is sent from another troubled spacecraft leaving Earth's orbit.^[3]
• February 1961, a cosmonaut is audibly recorded suffocating to death.
• April 1961, a capsule is recorded orbiting the Earth three times before re-entering the Earth’s atmosphere just days before Yuri Gagarin made his historic flight.
• May 1961, an orbiting spacecraft makes an appeal for help after going out of control.
• October 1961, a cosmonaut loses control of his spacecraft which veers off into deep space.
• November 1962, a space capsule misjudges re-entry bouncing off the Earth’s atmosphere and out into space.
• November 1963, a female cosmonaut dies during re-entry.
• April 1964, another cosmonaut is killed when his capsule burns up in the Earth's atmosphere.

1965 Reader’s Digest article excerpt

In its short span of life, Torre Bert has plucked some remarkable messages from space. On November 28, 1960, for example, there was the cryptic message: "SOS to the entire world." It came from a moving space vehicle and was repeated three times. Amateurs in Texas and Germany picked up the same message. Three days later Russia admitted a launch which had ended in failure - but did not mention a man aboard.

On May 17, 1961, the voices of two men and a woman were heard in desperate conversation - "Conditions growing worse why don't you answer? ... we are going slower... the world will never know about us . . ." Then silence. The same words were picked up in Alaska and Sweden. Their meaning? No one will know until the Russians choose to talk.

Conclusion

Whereas NASA has been forthcoming about their failures and deaths of their American astronauts since the first such event occurred during an Apollo I mock up test when an oxygen fire killed all three astronauts Ed White, Gus Grissom, and Roger Chaffee becoming the first of many unfortunate future disasters, but NASA was transparent over these deaths. Undoubtedly the challenge of space flight is filled with risk, but without courage, dedication, and the quest for knowledge such marvels of these achievements would have been impossible. Perhaps there is no other fate as terrible as being stranded in the cold blackness of space with no prospect of rescue, but to these brave explorers such possibility was worth it.