Cosmonaut Cover Up (Russian Space Documentary) | Timeline

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on April 12th 1961 the Soviet media reported the successful launch orbit and re-entry of the first man in space cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin celebration erupted worldwide into cosmonaut single orbit and the Soviet Union's landmark achievement Gagarin went on to become one of the greatest heroes in history with a breakup of the former Soviet Union and the rise of democracy in the Russian Federation a shocking truth has been unearthed access to recently declassified documents in the Kremlin archives by Western journalists coupled with newly forthcoming eyewitnesses now confirmed that Yuri Gagarin the symbol and heroic icon of the Soviet empire was not the first man in space this honor belongs to Vladimir elution [Music] it is now clear that the world-famous Soviet test pilot Vladimir Ilyushin was the real first man in space numerous accounts of his flight leapt out at the time and the kremlin archive documents along with the eyewitness accounts only now confirm the accuracy of these original stories after several decades of propaganda lies and official denials the truth about one of humanity's greatest achievements can now be told after more than five years of research the whereabouts of the actual first man in space was learned although now in his 70s retired Air Force general Vladimir Aleutian still works as one of the designers at the Sukhoi design bureau a Moscow based fighter jet manufacturer general Aleutian was a celebrated test pilot of over 145 aircraft including the Sukhoi 27 the premier Russian interceptor fighter jet in piecing together this real-life puzzle of a space mission gone wrong and the subsequent cover-up the producers spent two full days in Russia with Ellucian where he displayed the family museum and offered a glimpse into his amazing life story although Ellucian promised to reveal his story on camera upon the producers arrival in Russia he chose to steadfastly maintained his secrecy oddly he revealed many other facts about his life never before made public that clearly indicated his involvement in the Soviet space program in order to explain Aleutians fear it is important to understand both the dynamics of the former communist Soviet regime and the top military secrecy in the Soviet space program from its earliest beginnings in a feat most experts thought impossible the Soviet Union Russia din the Space Age on October 4th 1957 when the satellite Sputnik weighing in at over 100 kilograms was secretly launched into Earth orbit upon the success of Sputnik people around the world were shocked and dismayed when they realized that the Soviet payload could just as easily have been a nuclear warhead capable of being delivered anywhere on the planet after Sputnik was launched Soviet press published very modest reports some small objects was delivered to the orbit but government clearly was surprised by tremendous outpouring of emotions by international media and finally they thought look this little talk and give in our hands a very important political and propaganda instrument the success of the Sputnik launch was due entirely to the brilliance and determination of the head of the Soviet space program Sergey Korolyov para Luke was not the genius engineer he was not assigned he was a good engineer but he was the genius manager he could to manage all these huge people he will put them together without care enough it was impossible to do something because all these scientists will be like the ants for once and from the outside today mother they will now work together and he create all the put them together like the screen and then they work for him nobody knew about surrogate I don't think that I don't think the name in my time there I don't think the name korolyov was even known he he was always referred to as the designer never by name and he never appeared at any of the press conferences in my day the Nobel Prize Committee approached the Soviet leadership for the purpose of awarding the Nobel Prize to the designer of the sputnik's rocket booster along with the accompanying accolades and money that emanate from the honor however the Soviet government and leader Nikita Khrushchev would not permit the award to go to the individual responsible for the success or allow him to leave the country to accept the award so it's have no reasonable explanation it's even difficult not explain to Americans but to Russians now why nobody wanted to give the name of Carroll or when the Nobel Committee asked this because they want to give him double price and so we stole no no they don't interest in Nobel Prize he is sickly so it is part of the size of this society the part of this society was just recovering from the Stalin history it's the taking a long time by the late 1950s it was clear to both the United States and the Soviet Union that the next space challenge would be to send a human into orbit several highly trained military jet test pilots were chosen by both nations to literally go where no man had gone before the Soviet space program remained a highly secretive branch of the military test pilots became known as cosmonauts Smirnov test on abilities reason America was Rita Walker can is little is cosmos became famous only after they had been in space before then no one was allowed to tell anyone what they did the rule was made so as not to attract attention to those people who become cosmonauts and also to be able to cover up the truth if any accident secured in the 1960s the Soviets were very secretive about their space program pictures would be condensed things in the background would be changed for what appears to be no apparent reason that we can tell that the the Russians were trying to be secretive that they were covering up something and not being totally truthful we have photographs where where we believe a cosmonaut in training has been airbrushed away in October 1960 the most tragic example of the fanatical paranoia of Soviet secrecy occurred a huge new booster rocket appeared to malfunction at the time of launch instead of lifting off it remained fixed in a launch pad ignoring all warnings and flagrantly overriding safety precautions the Kremlin ordered the launch director and engineers to repair the problem immediately in order to get the rocket launched that same day Marshall medallion who was a head of rocket strategic forces personally sitting in the chair next to the rocket was in preparation before the launch he demanded that this chair should be brought next to the rocket and it was completely against all the safety regulations and everyone around knew that this is against the safety regulations but everyone thought look if I wouldn't get place next to the big boss I might be fired net to the next day from my job with more than 200 men inspecting the rocket including the launch director Nadella a huge ball of fire suddenly erupted instantly killing everyone nearby no list of the people who died was ever compiled and no one will ever know just how many people died that day amazingly this historic tragedy was continually denied with the Soviets and the tragic details of this event were not revealed by the Soviet government for almost 30 years other recently Declassified Kremlin documents also indicate that as many as seven cosmonauts were killed in training accidents prior to the guards reported flight cosmonauts Ladakhi shiburin meet coffe Dolgov bella Konev catcher and garage chef were never honored for being the pioneers they were giving their lives in attempts to reach space they will instead remain as mere names and a secret list of cosmonauts who perished in training accidents that was the point at which a lot of these guys became increasingly clear that they had been shafted and they became angry and there was a lot of anger but they couldn't do anything there was no place to go there was no free press there were only family members to hear their stories and after a while they had told those stories and what more could they do proceed East Eastern civilization creation guerrilla said no deal with the drug war everything was built on propaganda and everything was secret it was always this way and everybody knew about it the newspapers and radio said one thing and what really happened was something different what the Soviet propagandists did not understand was that by presenting the difficulties the problems the mistakes the accidents the mishap they could have presented a far better picture also and in fact they did but that to present everything is perfect was in fact to belittle the achievement or solely to belittle the achievement of the Soviet people and to depict it in that light was to underestimate the heroism the struggle the effort of the Soviet people and you know you show completely a completely inept approach as a result of the Soviet Union's reported technological achievements while at the same time hiding its failures positive perception of communist philosophy was at its peak Khrushchev reportedly became obsessed with the idea of being the first to successfully launch a man in space and ordered Korolyov to make it happen regardless of cost at that time Lieutenant Colonel Vladimir Aleutian was unquestionably the Soviet Union's most famous and experienced test pilot II as a test pilot Ellucian said dozens of speed and altitude records and also held the world altitude record of nearly 30 kilometers which he set in 1959 using a Sukhoi 9 military interceptor jet in late 1916 Ellucian was awarded the hero of the soviet union their highest military honor for his altitude records equivalent to the prestigious American Congressional Medal of Honor or a British knighthood this Soviet award was bestowed upon a select few Aleutian himself was the offspring of the most distinguished military and aircraft engineering family in the Soviet Union his father Sergey was one of the most famous heroes in the Soviet Union designing and building many of the fighter and bomber planes including the safety Soviets the invading Nazis at the height of World War two Sergei Ellucian the designer was very much involved World War two fighter planes Soviets the Battle of Stalingrad the il-2 Sturmovik was probably the most famous of all the Russian aircraft a ground attack aircraft so this gave him huge stature under Stalin and of course he took over in addition sara gay Ellucian was also one of the most powerful men in the soviet union having been awarded the hero of the soviet union three times and being a member of the inner sanctum of soviet power as a distinguished deputy leader of their Parliament the Supreme Soviet after world war ii the elder Ilyushin correctly envisioned the future of aircraft manufacturing as requiring the transition from military to civilian production once again Ellucian showed his brilliance in designing and manufacturing some of the best civilian passenger jet airplanes ever made the Aleutian aviation complex was considered by many to be one of the world's finest civilian airplane manufacturing companies Aleutian wood would be respected and in Soviet society not because he had three awards but be why he got the three awards which because of his work which was because of his work as an aircraft designer and his contribution to the develop host for development Soviet Civil Aviation was outstanding the younger Ellucian was always fearful of being lost or stuck in his father's larger-than-life image and set out to free himself from his father's shadow the younger Ellucian did not want to be groomed to take over his father's civilian airplane manufacturing company instead he entered test pilot school then went on to design and test pilot military jet fighters in a final act of defiance Wladimir joined the Sukhoi Aircraft Company in 1952 his father's most bitter personal rival the elder Aleutian is said to have been enraged over his son's actions remaining highly incensed for several years throughout the 1950s the relationship between elder and younger Aleutian was non-existent but ultimately culminated in one of mutual pride and respect for each other's accomplishments Vladimir Aleutian reportedly snubbed the thought of flying in space when it was first offered to him regarding it is fit only for dogs and lab rats the Soviet space capsule was to be operated exclusively by Mission Control engineers via remote control no hands on cosmonaut actions were required which was an uninteresting prospect for the best test pilot of the era still most of Aleutians accomplished fellow test pilots did join the cosmonaut Corps in spite of this obvious handicap at some point shortly after being bestowed the Hero of the Soviet Union Honor Aleutian changed his mind he began to actively pursue the idea of becoming the first man in space Ellucian began to view space as his personal opportunity to separate himself from his larger-than-life father and become an immortal hero on his own and in a field apart from aviation one of the powerful things that the Aleutians brought to Russia was a sense of a dynasty there's a group of families who are significant historically and the Aleutians were searching the enclaves and the fact that it was all in the same sphere in aviation and aerospace sciences was significant it was therefore in my view no accident that Vladimir Aleutian would have been picked as the man for the job I mean it was an obvious choice he was the right age he had the right training he had the name it would have been perfect had it worked and that was what first got me interested in the story was the obvious Nassif of the communist regime to pick pollution for the job as a result of his professional accolades coupled with his family's tremendous political influence lieutenant-colonel Aleutian was ultimately given his chance to become the first man in space Ellucian doggedly engaged in months of intense catch-up training necessary to prepare him for his chance at immortality even though his fellow cosmonauts were well into their second year of spaceflight training Vladimir cateura we're watching crash roads now we'll watch in visual animal addameer whom I knew well was very happy smart and he was always helpful to others during his training because intense detail-oriented and meticulously all assignments he did to perfection and the results were the best of any cosmonaut in training as secretive as a Soviet space program was there were a number of leaks as to Aleutians imminent flight possibly as a result of his enormous celebrity as the man who had been closest to achieving true spaceflight with his altitude records and the natural choice to be the first man in space in early 1961 a photograph of Aleutian wearing space gear was published and it was said he was undergoing training as a cosmonaut my job was to fill all aspects of bloody Muslims Vladimir was a nicest happiest friendliest pilot I have ever seen Vladimir was confident and a torrent and he was ready for this day according to declassified documents Ellucian was put into the capsule named or Assia and launched in top military secrecy early in the morning on Friday April 7th 1961 [Music] I was just so excited to be a part of this whole thing and I was thinking to myself how most people could only read about history and here I was being a part of history at the time the CIA and other military intelligence organizations neither confirmed nor denied the detection of the launch or the flight even after several decades CIA and US State Department documents are still classified on this issue it is presumed that Western intelligence agencies neither wanted to tip their hand as to their capabilities in detecting Soviet launches and orbits nor to reveal their sources earlier in the year just a few months before I had seen photograph of a flat Amir Aleutian wearing space here and referred to as a member of the the cosmonaut group training for Cosmo therefore when I heard the story Vladimir Aleutian had been up in space it fitted now I was so sure at that time that the story was true I tried to get comment from all Soviet sources I could from the press department from Prague from his vest year from tasks from all of them I got the answer we don't know we don't know but subsequently I realized they did know during the flight there was a malfunction in the electrical system knocking out the guidance controls and radio Ellucian lost consciousness during the third orbit just before reentry causing ground control to lose contact with the capsule so I believe what happened was that the Vladimir lucien was put into orbit something went wrong aboard the spacecraft whether the the guidance system or or whatever and that for several hours he was subjected to two conditions that were not conducive to his health unlike the Americans who had their early capsules land in the ocean the Soviet capsules had to land on the hard ground within their borders because the Soviets had not yet perfected proper re-entry and landing procedures cosmonauts were expected to eject between 10,000 and 20,000 feet then parachute to safety according to recently reveal Kremlin documents Ellucian was unable to eject and made a hard landing in the capsule amazingly he survived badly hurt but alive the dynamics of orbital mechanics are such that the capsule could only have returned to Russian soil near the planned landing site on the first or the 17th orbit Ellucian however came down on the third orbit Kremlin archive documents now indicate that Ellucian went off course and crash-landed in mainland China not the Soviet Union he was first detained by villagers then by local authorities and ultimately was held in China as an honored guest of the country regarding the scenario that involve crash landing in China one of the things that the case of documents which I had a chance to rifle through in the archive I did notice quite a few documents referring to Chinese Communist Party officials in this period of time which was not the best period for sino-soviet relations asking questions about the nature of the space program and direct connection to solutions being there those questions that were raised by Chinese Communist Party officials about the Soviet space program were directly connected to a incident on their own soil I think that's certainly for future researchers and investigators a definite path to pursue the worst possible case scenario for the Soviet Union now came true with their mission in shambles and their hero in the hands of their enemies the Soviet leadership was in total confusion about what to do at first there were many indications that the Soviets were going to publicize the flight ultimately they refused to acknowledge the foreign reports and later forcefully but sloppily denied the story all together with several conflicting and contradictory excuses by that time however it was too late the story had been broken wide open denis ogden the Moscow correspondent with a london-based communist newspaper The Daily Worker was among the first to get the Aleutian story published and he still refuses to reveal his informant to this day but Ogden did confirm that this source had been a well-placed informant that he trusted fully The Times had a story very similar to the one I had I'm not surprised that Hungarians other correspondents published such stories or knew of such stories all correspondence news such stories and we were constantly exchanging phone calls have you heard this have you heard that what do you think golly that doesn't surprise me at all there was one of a French reporter that was there on that day one from Bulgaria various American Air Force people made comments that an attempt was made and those sources were independent you know they wasn't it wasn't a case of one source and then another by picking it up they were separate sources for several decades the Soviets angrily and profusely denied these stories as fabrications and lies and had propaganda writers discredit slander and defame the reputations of these reporters and correspondents it was only after the collapse of communism and the breakup of the former Soviet Union that access to Kremlin archive documents and memos confirmed the truthfulness and accuracy of these stories about Vladimir elution I first heard about the Aleutian story from Russian colleagues who basically whispered it I got a clear sense that there was something about this story which I hadn't heard about in the West that needed to be pursued but it took I guess from the first time I heard about it to the time when I was able to get access to some documents that took about eight years in a society that was built around secrets the archives are you know the most important resource to be protected not necessarily to preserve the memory but to preserve the fictions so that's one of the reasons why getting access to archival material is still difficult to the state with the advent of Russian democracy and the availability of substantiating documentation Aleutians story can now be appreciated in full finally I was able to finagle my way into a library which gave me an opportunity to read some things that I wouldn't have been able to get access to otherwise and that helped me conclude some of the things that I wrote in the story there were really three types of documents there was the pre-launch documentation there was the catastrophe and there were documents pertaining to discussions that took place after the event back in April 1961 the Soviet media was becoming more and more vociferous contradictory and utterly confusing and denying that illusion was in fact the first man in space at first the story released by the Soviets proclaimed that Ellucian was never a part of the cosmonaut Corps and that he was in excellent health then they admitted that Ellucian was a cosmonaut in training but was in a car accident the month before and couldn't be the first man in space then they reported that Ellucian was not a cosmonaut in training because he had been in a car accident back in 1959 which was later modified and changed by the Soviet media to mid 1960 and that Aleutian was in a coma from the time of the accident until March of 1960 won numerous contradictions of this nature added to the skepticism of Western journalists at that time not the least of which was a photo taken of a healthy Aleutian in December of 1960 just four months before his spaceflight the photo showed Aleutian receiving the Hero of the Soviet Union award for his altitude record obviously he was not in a coma at that time the Soviet government never could produce Aleutian himself during this time to refute the alleged flight but always maintained its insistence through the media that Aleutian was not the first man in space they the confused stories about illusion simply demonstrate the point that I made several times that the Soviet Union was its own worst enemy the talk of Soviet propaganda being efficient effective is just nonsense I don't believe I never believed that the story of its Soviet Union was good at propaganda it was not to explain how Aleutian could be in mainland China at that time the Communists controlled government media and the Soviet Union reported that Aleutian was sent to a rehabilitation hospital in China there were also contradictions and falsehoods given by the Soviets regarding even this story there were two reports on Blatter Marilu shin being injured and being sent to China one of them had him in a Peking Hospital one of them had him in a Hangzhou hospital it's very doubtful to me that somebody in a car accident in a Soviet Union especially the son of a famous aviation designer and somebody himself a test pilot a military test pilot would be sent to a Chinese hospital for recuperation I never heard of anybody being sent from the Soviet Union to China for medical treatment and the medical facilities available in the Soviet Union perfectly satisfactory probably better than those available in China and the second point was but of course in from during the sector during and towards the end of the 50s and in the early sixties Soviet Chinese relations were very strained and I really couldn't conceive that someone like Ellucian would would be sent there I find it difficult to understand obviously the Soviets were caught in a no-win situation Khrushchev could not simply cover up this failure with sheer propaganda but when kaliesha came to power he make our society much less closed but before everything was secret now still many things remain secret which had no explanation because for example keep they told why we have to talk to all the world about our failures it will not help us all the failures very known only to a narrow circle and you know there was kind of oral history you know you could learn from trends what happened at the launch but it was amazing that now in retrospect we did not have more failures I think the way government tried to hide the failures was really detrimental for the program people wonder why today not disclose catastrophes well I mean the easy answer of courses that was embarrassing Marxist Leninist economics and Marxist Leninist politics prided itself on being a scientific objective analysis of human and natural law and if you are really good at your Marxist Leninist theory then nothing in the real world should be less than perfect so it was a great embarrassment not only to disclose this fact externally but to have to admit it internally in the halls of power I think they were put in a situation then that that they didn't have somebody they can present to the public and here Khrushchev had been using the space program as it has one of his big propaganda hammers and to have this kind of failure it was intolerable in an almost unbelievable coincidence on Saturday April 8th 1961 the day after Aleutians ill-fated mission an internal meeting was quickly scheduled by Korolyov for various members of the military and government for the purpose of introducing the next first man in space lieutenant yuri gagarin this meeting however was not acknowledged until after Gagarin's flight and the film documentation was not released for several years after the fight any of six splendidly trained cosmonauts but it must be done the Air Force command recommends Senior Lieutenant Yuri Gagarin for the first flight in space with German seat off as the backup in hindsight it is very difficult to even imagine that the cosmonaut chosen to be the very first man in space would be named so hastily and on a Saturday with only three or four days of preparation before the most historic launch in human history was to take place by comparison to the heroic record-setting test pilot Ellucian Gagarin was not even in the same league he had just recently graduated from flight school and was considered a novice pilot without a single noteworthy achievement to his credit Gagarin was however young articulate attractive and a committed member of the Communist Party allow me to show the Soviet government the communist pipe and people that I will carry out with honor the task entrusted to me and that I will be able to overcome all difficulties I may encounter the way a good communist truth five days after the aleutian flight the successful Gagarin mission was reported in the Soviet media it is noteworthy to point out that Khrushchev was in Moscow at the time of Ilyushins flight but was on vacation to a remote resort on the Black Sea at the time of Gagarin's launch Khrushchev was caught totally by surprise when told about Gagarin flight by phone and he immediately returned to Moscow then arranged a tremendous hero celebration with the Garen some Soviet experts now believe that Khrushchev was so overwrought with the Aleutians failure that he had to go on vacation and that Korolyov took things into his own hands to launch Gagarin no matter what the consequences without even bothering to tell Khrushchev in the event there might have been another failure Yuri Gagarin was clearly in political peace Khrushchev and the Soviet Union used to the maximum after he if the flight he was welcome back in Moscow he went on a tour of the world he went to London he was a spokesman of the Soviet Union he was the typical being portrayed as the typical Soviet person you know young aggressive bright courageous you know everything that they wanted to portray communism to be an interesting note in a recently Declassified State Department document reveals that the leaders of almost every country sent Khrushchev gifts and congratulatory letters over Gagarin successful flight with China being the sole exception choosing to remain mysteriously quiet during the entire affair however China did send congratulatory letters to the Soviet leadership on all subsequent Soviet space missions perhaps this was the subtle way China could tell the world that they knew Gagarin was not the first man in space with a successful flight of Gagarin the aleutian flight became a non-event as for those who knew the truth about elution such as reporter Dennis Ogden his informant and the space program engineers and technicians involved in the flight each was forced to participate in a conspiracy of silence driven by fear I got a call a call from my superior he told me in no uncertain terms to destroy everything I had on dragomir and to just keep quiet about the whole affair from the tone of his voice I knew clearly that if I didn't do exactly as he said my family and I would have one-way tickets and a permanent address change to Siberia I was summoned to the press department to meet the head of the press department man called Harlan he had been instructed by the Central Committee to conduct an investigation into my story he said leading across the table I only want to know one thing who told you I said I'm sorry I can't tell you why not journalistic ethics and then he blew up in a big way and he said yes but we we want to know who told you because this person has done great harm had I been what was called him Moscow of bourgeois correspondent a non-communist correspondent I'm sure I would have been expelled there's no doubt about that but it would have been very embarrassing for them to expel a communist correspondent through all the years of propaganda and denials the story of Vladimir Ilyushin in a space flight have been relegated to the garbage can of hoaxes myths and fabrications generated by overzealous and imaginative Western reporters Ogden himself was branded as a fantasy writer and flat-out liar the Soviets however went to extraordinary measures to find out who Ogden's informant was Ogden was constantly followed by the KGB in hopes of capturing his informant both Ogden and his informant feared for their very lives I went to a reception and as I and I sensed that one of my binders was close behind and as I walked through the door straight ahead of me was my informant and I knew that if my minder saw him and me together that was it he would know and I fortunately fortunately my informant saw my minder and realized the situation and just ignored me since both China and the Soviet Union were hostile to the West no Press reports were ever made available an Aleutian stay in China nor on any swap for his release while it is still unclear as to what kind of deal was struck between the Soviet Union and China to get Ellucian back in either in exchange of spies or money or both Ellucian finally and quietly came home about a year after his flight and shortly thereafter resumed working in his home for the Sukhoi aircraft company in a very low-key manner vladimir Ellucian was in a position that I believe was problematic for Khrushchev in the government first off he was a vane very famous person in his own right as a test pilot he was famous because of the family that he was born into and they and the what would you consider to be the elite within the Soviet Union so I think what came down was it was a joint decision that Vladimir would just basically just be quietly the brilliant Soviet space designer Sergey Korolyov also suffered once again from the Asteria and secrecy surrounding the Soviet space program he was again denied his duel just like Ellucian was Sergei Korolev was the chief designer of the rocket and spacecraft used for the Gagarin flight the first manned flights the Nobel Committee wanted to give this person a Nobel Prize for the accomplishment it was a tremendous accomplishment but under Khrushchev and the tight regime at the time even those that follow Khrushchev there was no release of his name at all until in fact his death in 1966 it is indeed hard to believe that koroliov went to his grave in 1966 having been cheated out of not just one but two Nobel Prizes for his brilliance because koroliov lived in a society where paranoia and cover-ups were the norm the world never knew or appreciated his unparalleled contribution to space exploration during his lifetime looking back at the stories of personalities khrushchev personality the korolev personality the gagarin personality the aleutian personality probably the most interesting element of it was the Shakespearean character of there were the life that was led after these events by Gagarin and Aleutian of course if Gagarin was not the first in space he was probably aware of that fact at some point and that may have led to his demise alcoholism and lack of control and public apparently he became very difficult for the Communist Party to cope with because he would say things in public that were an embarrassment if not outright dangerous there were even reports of Gagarin throwing a glass of champagne in the face of Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev at a government function shortly thereafter in March 1968 Gagarin died in the highly suspicious and mysterious mik jet crash in perhaps the ultimate twist of fate Vladimir Ilyushin was appointed to lead the committee investigating the crash whose report was inconclusive and left many nagging questions Ellucian himself reported that Gagarin's body was never found and only a finger of the once great hero was recovered from the wreckage leading many experts to question whether or not Gagarin may well have been murdered by the KGB at Brezhnev's instructions meanwhile the true conquering hero must continue to live wrestling the memory of the life that was due him a life that was led by a lucien was actually quite significant I mean he did not only work as a test pilot after the fact but he also became a significant designer and I think it's kind of tragic that the one man who the world acknowledges still today as the great hero actually may have been a fabrication and that's kind of a sad end to the story that the two guys went different ways and each in one sense got the reverse of what you would have expected the hero wound up being the tragic figure and the one that they tried to bury turned out to actually make a lasting contribution even though this gentle giant of a man must face the statues of Gagarin visit the buildings that bear Gagarin's name and participate in the ceremonies that hail Gagarin as the first man in space Vladimir Ilyushin knows in his heart that it was his accomplishment that broke new ground not only in the space race of the Cold War but in the human quest for knowledge adventure and conquest I moved to America several years ago and I am so happy that the Soviet Union and that the communism are finished and now I don't have to keep quiet to protect the Soviet Union's good name so if the KGB wants to come after me ill and I'll be waiting for them to spit in their faces after what they did to value them with the truth at last unveiled Vladimir Ilyushin deserves to be recognized as the space pioneer and hero he is rather than as a footnote in a falsified history [Music]

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Channel: Timeline - World History Documentaries

Views: 173,392

Rating: 4.573977 out of 5

Keywords: Channel 4 documentary, TV Shows - Topic, 2017 documentary, russian astronaut lost in space, History, Documentary Movies - Topic, soviet union, Documentary, Full Documentary, russian cosmonaut documentary, documentary history, first russian cosmonaut, lost cosmonauts, phenomenon stolen glory, BBC documentary, cosmonauts documentary, stories, Full length Documentaries, vladimir ilyushin, history documentary, real, space program, Documentaries, cosmonaut cover up

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Length: 50min 11sec (3011 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 08 2018

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