To the question Soviet secret expeditions to Antarctica asked by the author Pasha Naumov the best answer is In January 1947, the waters of the Lazarev Sea were quite officially plowed by a Soviet research vessel, belonging, of course, to the Ministry of Defense, called “Slava”. However, some researchers have at their disposal documents that very eloquently indicate that in those harsh years for the fate of the whole world, not only “Glory” was hanging around the shores of Dronning Maud Land.
Few people paid attention to the fact that the Soviet press paid virtually no attention to the exploration of Antarctica by our compatriots in the 40s and early 50s. The quantity and quality of specific documents of that time, open to the outside public, is also not particularly diverse. All information on this matter was exhausted by some in general phrases like: "Antarctica is the country of penguins and eternal ice, it certainly needs to be mastered and studied in order to understand many of the geophysical processes occurring at other ends globe", more like slogans than messages.
However, in the archives Western intelligence services Documents have been found that shed light on some aspects of the first official (rather semi-official, disguised as a study of the fishing situation in Antarctica) Soviet Antarctic expedition of 1946-47, which arrived on the shores of Dronning Maud Land on the diesel-electric ship "Slava". Such famous names as Papanin, Krenkel, Fedorov, Vodopyanov, Mazuruk, Kamanin, Lyapidevsky unexpectedly came to light, and the first of these seven is a rear admiral (almost a marshal!), and the last four are full generals, and not just generals what ("courtiers", so to speak), but those who glorified themselves with specific deeds and are dearly loved by everyone Soviet people polar pilots.
Studying some aspects of the history of the Russian Navy, at some stage you may come across quite interesting things concerning some ships of the Soviet Navy, in particular the Pacific Fleet, which, although they were part of this very fleet, however, starting from 1945, In the waters of the "metropolis" they appeared so rarely that a completely legitimate question arose about the places of their true base. We were talking about three destroyers of Project 45 - “Vysoky”, “Vazhny” and “Impressive”. The destroyers were built in 1945 using captured technology used by the Japanese when designing their Fubuki-class destroyers, intended for navigation in the harsh conditions of the northern and arctic seas.
Project 45 destroyers, later named Vysoky, Vazhny and Impressive, were built in Komsomolsk-on-Amur at plant 199, completed and tested at plant 202 in Vladivostok. They joined the fleet in January-June 1945, but did not take any part in the hostilities against Japan (in August of the same year). In December 1945, all three ships made short visits to Qingdao and Chifoo (China)... And then continuous mysteries begin.
in June 1946, all three destroyers underwent minor repairs, but on the other side of the world - at the Argentine naval base of Rio Grande on Tierra del Fuego. Then one of the destroyers, accompanied by a submarine (many researchers believe that it was K-103 under the command of the famous “submarine ace of the Northern Fleet” A.G. Cherkasov) was allegedly seen off the coast of the French island of Kerguelen, located in the southern part of Indian Ocean.. .
WHAT did Stalin need in distant Antarctica in the first post-war years?
Schirmacher Oasis, where Novolazarevskaya is located - on the grave of the pilot Chilingarov there is a four-blade propeller cast into a concrete pedestal and the date of burial: March 1, 1947.
During the war, captain A.V. Chilingarov served in the ferry air division, which was engaged in delivering aircraft equipment provided by the Americans under Lend-Lease to the front. The commander of this very division was a polar explorer already known to us - Air Force Colonel I. P. Mazuruk, and this division served the longest and most difficult ALSIB air route in the world
Scientists have been trying almost unsuccessfully for several decades to catch signals from brothers in mind. The negative result of these searches has allowed some pundits to argue that we are alone in the Universe and are a unique a unique phenomenon. However, this is not so: there is a lot of evidence that aliens have visited our planet more than once in the past.
THE RIDDLE OF ELONGED SKULLS
There has long been a dispute between ufologists and scientists about the mysterious elongated skulls discovered 85 years ago in Peru. Many ufologists consider these artifacts to be alien skulls, while scientists talk about their artificial deformation. Recently, geneticists from Texas who studied these mysterious skulls made a very sensational statement. Scientists have discovered DNA that does not match any of the samples stored in the human gene bank.
Regarding the remains with unusual elongated skulls, one of the experts, Brian Foster, said: “These were mutations of a mysterious creature: human, primate or animal, hitherto unknown. Some DNA fragments show that we are dealing with new creatures, very far from homo sapiens, Neanderthals and primitive people." So it turns out that genetic code creatures with large elongated skulls have very few features similar to humans. But back in the 90s of the 20th century, some researchers assumed that these were alien skulls.
Here Short story discovering these mysterious skulls. In 1928, Peruvian archaeologist Julio Tello made a sensational discovery on the Paracas Peninsula on the southern coast of Peru. He discovered an ancient cemetery, in the tombs of which were the remains of people with strange elongated skulls. These mysterious skulls were later called the "Skulls of Paracas". Tello extracted more than 300 elongated skulls from the sandy soil; their age was estimated to be 3,000 years old. Of course, these skulls surprised both anthropologists and archaeologists, but they quickly found a completely understandable explanation - artificial deformation.
The skulls lay in the museum for decades, and Robert Connolly, an anthropologist from the University of Liverpool, attracted attention to them. In 1995, he carefully examined the Paracas skulls, photographed the most outstanding specimens and, together with photographs of other outlandish skulls from various museums around the world, demonstrated their images to the general public. All these skulls were so different from ordinary human ones that many started talking about their belonging to aliens who visited our planet in the past.
Skeptics, in turn, said that some of the skulls belonged to various freaks, and some were deliberately deformed. It was the latter that gave the skulls from Paracas such an exotic shape. However, you can deform the skulls in any way you like, but this will not increase the volume of the brain in them. No one has yet learned how to “inflate” skulls. Distinctive feature The number of skulls discovered by Tello was large. They contained at least 2500 cm3 of brain, and the volume of some reached 3500 cubic meters. centimeters. For comparison, we note that a “standard” human skull holds about 1500 cm3 of brain, and the largest known to doctors contained only 1980 cm3.
In addition to a much larger volume, the skulls from Paracas were also distinguished by their mass, which was approximately 60% higher than the average mass of a human skull. They also only had one parietal bone, rather than two like humans. So, these mysterious skulls, even without DNA analysis, were significantly different from human ones.
At one time, Robert Connolly said: “It was enough to measure the skulls, and it became clear that they belonged to creatures with a brain volume exceeding that of a human. They certainly have nothing to do with apes or Neanderthals." 
HAVE YOU TRIED TO BE LIKE THE GODS?
Perhaps the skulls from Paracas belonged to precisely those creatures who unwittingly introduced the fashion for elongated skulls on our planet. The famous researcher and writer Erich von Däniken suggested that ancient people saw aliens with elongated skulls who once flew to Earth and, by deforming the heads of their children, sought to “become like the gods.” The researcher writes about the prevalence of deformed skulls: “They are found in North America, Mexico, Ecuador, Bolivia, Patagonia, Oceania, the steppes of Eurasia, Central and West Africa, Maghreb countries, Western Europe(Brittany, Holland), and of course, in Egypt. The only continent where they are absent is Australia.”
It is worth noting that similar skulls were also discovered in a number of areas in Russia. The most recent finds are associated with the legendary Arkaim. Much has already been written about an “alien woman” with an elongated skull, discovered during excavations in this place, but besides her, two more burials of a male warrior and a 20-year-old youth were found this summer; they had the same deformed skulls. Employees of the Arkaim Museum-Reserve are confident that all the discovered burials have nothing to do with aliens; they were Sarmatians who practiced deformation of skulls. By the way, changing the shape of children’s heads was done using special “ties.” The head of a small child was either tightly tied with cloth (ropes) or enclosed between two planks, which were tied with ropes or bandages.
More recently, Smithsonian archaeologist Damian Waters and his team discovered three elongated skulls in Antarctica (La Pile region)! No ancient human remains had ever been found here before. Regarding this find, Waters said: “We just can’t believe it! We didn't just find human remains in Antarctica, we found elongated skulls! I have to pinch myself every time I wake up, I just can't believe it! This will force us to reconsider our view of human history as a whole!” 
SENSATIONAL FIND ON SIAEND ISLAND
Ufologists reason sensibly: if aliens flew to Earth, they could have suffered an accident here, so their remains may well be discovered either by accident or during archaeological excavations. In the case of the skulls from Paracas (judging by their number), either the ship that crashed on Earth was very large, or the aliens attempted to colonize our planet. In the latter case, they could die from some epidemic or be assimilated (if interbreeding is possible) by earthlings or even exterminated by them.
In addition to the Paracas skulls, the so-called Sealand skull, which is much less known, may be extraterrestrial. It was found relatively recently - in 2007 on the island of Sealand in the village of Olstikke (Denmark). Mysterious skull discovered by repair worker drainpipes in one of the houses. The Sealand skull is approximately 1.5 times larger than a human skull. When you look at him, you immediately notice his huge eye sockets. Scientists suggest that the owner of such impressive eyes could see perfectly in the dark. Due to the smooth surface of the skull, scientists suggested that the mysterious humanoid was well adapted to life in a fairly cool climate.
Using carbon dating, it was possible to establish that the creature to which the mysterious skull belonged lived in the period 1200-1280 AD. But this skull was buried in the ground no earlier than 1900. It can be assumed that this skull was a kind of relic and was preserved for a very long time.
In 2008, the skull was examined by experts from the Veterinary high school Copenhagen, they were unable to identify it, although they stated that it belonged to a mammal. It is worth noting that in historical chronicles there is no description of any earthly creatures with such eyes, but this skull is very suitable for some descriptions of aliens.
Old-timers talk about a local legend, according to which a member of the secret society “Order of the Light of Pegasus” lived in the vicinity of Olstikke.
He kept a number of relics and artifacts, among which was a very unusual-looking skull found in the Balkans. At first it was stored in France and Germany and then was brought to Denmark. It is worth noting that in addition to the skulls mentioned above, there are others, for example, a very unusually shaped skull discovered in 2001 in the Rhodope Mountains. Alas, official science by all means disavows the study of the alleged remains of aliens.
Amazing rescue in ice - that's what newspapers wrote about it 50 years ago. It was then, in December 1958, that a dramatic story unfolded in Antarctica. Soviet pilots found the mysteriously disappeared Belgian polar explorers. Among those rescued was His Highness Prince Antoine de Ligne.
Report by Alexey Zotov.
On the most solemn holiday for any Belgian - Day royal dynasty- there are always a lot of guests at the embassy of this country. The diplomats shake hands with the ambassador and his wife very briefly, almost formally. And only one guest this time lingered near the couple longer than the rest, introducing his colleagues. Russian pilot Viktor Sergeev, holder of the most honorable award of the Kingdom of Belgium - the Order of Leopold.
Bertrand de Crombrugge, Ambassador of Belgium to Russian Federation: “This whole story is very similar to a wonderful fairy tale! Even though half a century has passed, the Belgian people are still grateful to the Russian pilots who, at risk, saved the life of our prince!”
One of these rescue stories happened in December 1958 in distant Antarctica. Soviet polar explorers received a literally desperate signal on the radio: “The plane of the Belgian expedition took off a week ago and has not yet returned to base! Nothing is known about the fate of the pilot and three other crew members!” The crew that flew out to help found out that the missing plane was personally flown by His Highness the Prince of Belgium, Antoine de Ligne, only after covering more than three thousand kilometers - to the Belgian polar station. This search operation is still considered unsurpassedly heroic.
Victor Boyarsky, director of the Russian state museum Arctic and Antarctic: “Looking for people on the ice is an extremely difficult task! Especially when visibility is not so great, and people do not have the opportunity to send a distress signal with a smoke bomb or anything else. It is almost impossible to detect.”
Flight mechanic Viktor Sergeev was the first to shout: “We found it! Get down!” But before the orange tent finally flashed in the snow, the crew of Viktor Perov on the Li-2 plane circled over the dazzling white desert for three days without sleep or rest.
One of the Belgian polar explorers became so weak during ten days of snow captivity that he could not get out of the tent, and only cried when he learned that it was the Russians who saved his life for the second time. The first time was when the fascist concentration camp was liberated, where he spent 4 years. And on the way home, all four lucky ones were then given hot, sweet tea.
And then there were dozens of receptions for the brave crew of the Li-2... They received orders in the Kremlin and at the Belgian Embassy. But the Soviet aviators, following the example of the commander, resolutely refused the royal bounties that came along with the orders.
Lyudmila Perova, widow of the squadron commander Viktor Perov: “They offered him an estate there - he was considered a Belgian nobleman! But then, of course, it didn’t occur to me that it was possible to have an estate somewhere else besides his homeland and live there.”
Viktor Sergeev was the youngest in the crew. Today he is the only living participant in those events.
Viktor Sergeev, former flight mechanic of the Li-2 crew: “If you don’t dream, then it’s still before your eyes... And it’s always in your memory... That hopeless expression on their faces...”
And also that polar brotherhood, strong as centuries-old ice... And that happiness of saved people is as boundless as Antarctica itself.
The only surviving pilot spoke for the first time about mysterious death Soviet "Ila" in Antarctica. 35 years ago, in January 1979, a Soviet plane crashed in Antarctica for the first time in the history of the exploration of the White Continent. After a long investigation, the cause of the disaster was classified, and they tried to quickly forget about the tragic incident.
Only a couple of phrases were reported in the “Time” program: in the area of the Soviet Antarctic station “Molodezhnaya” the crew of Vladimir ZAVARZIN crashed. Of the five crew members, only one survived - navigator Alexander KOSTIKOV. On the eve of the sad date, the reporter " Express newspaper“listened to his story about the events of the recent past.
...The commander of the crew with whom he flew as a navigator in Siberia suggested that 24-year-old Sashka Kostikov go to Antarctica for six months. The graduate of the Moscow Topographical Polytechnic has already managed to work in serious places. On Novaya Zemlya he participated in nuclear tests, conducted geophysical exploration in Spitsbergen, in Central Asia, at the Baikal-Amur Mainline. But after hearing the commander’s words, Sashka doubted - his wife Natasha was expecting a child. And then he waved his hand: “I’m going!” - I wanted to test myself in extreme conditions, and at the same time earn some money.
We celebrated the New Year with a friendly company. We went to the bathhouse and sat down at the table. When the disaster occurred two days later, the commission members kept asking whether the crew was drunk. But how drunk they are - on holiday, polar explorers were entitled to a bottle of vodka for five, but you can’t get drunk with it. As a cultural program, they showed the film “The Dawns Here Are Quiet” - the men, cut off from home, watched the scene where the girls wash themselves in the bathhouse 15 times.
Having slept off, the crew began to get ready for the mission. There was a 10-hour flight ahead, the tanks were filled to capacity.
The sky that day was gloomy, but the weather was quite normal. Everyone who happened to be near the airfield at that time noted that the plane was accelerating for a long time and was difficult - the runway was going uphill. Finally he broke away, and when he rose to a height of 30 meters, a huge snow-vortex pillar grew from the ground along his course. The upward flow of air was so strong that the plane instantly stood upside down on the wing and crashed.
Commander Volodya Zavarzin died instantly - he hit his head on the “horn” of the steering wheel.
Flight mechanic Viktor Shalnov fell on the central control panel and died in the all-terrain vehicle on the way to the station. The co-pilot, Yura Kozlov, was thrown onto the steering column and died a few hours after the disaster. Flight operator Garif Uzikaev was taken to the medical unit in critical condition. Half of his face was crushed, and the radio station that fell on him broke his chest.
Navigator Kostikov was the last to be pulled out of the mangled cabin - the last, as the pilots say. The head is covered in blood, the legs are broken. Everyone thought he was also dead.
Recruitment in New Zealand
The tragic incident at Molodezhnaya was reported to Moscow. Immediately at an emergency meeting of the Politburo, it was decided to take the wounded - Kostikov and Uzikaev - to New Zealand. The Americans provided the aircraft for transportation: the Hercules C-130 was equipped with skids for takeoff from a snowy airfield and wheels for landing in the subtropics. Ten hours later the plane landed at an airfield near the Dunedin hospital.
“I open my eyes and a very plump, dark-skinned woman is sitting in front of me,” recalls San Sanych. “I got scared and said: “Am I in Africa?”
The care for Soviet polar explorers was excellent - keeping the victims in the hospital cost $100 a day. But Uzikaev could not be saved, while Kostikov had to spend almost two months there and undergo five operations. The jaw was pieced together, the bones of the eye socket were restored, like a puzzle. A pin was inserted into the thigh of one leg and the other was cast.
“I vaguely remembered what happened at Molodezhnaya,” says Kostikov.
He didn’t even know what to tell the people who came to see him in the hospital. And he refused offers to stay in New Zealand. After all, his pregnant wife was waiting for him at home.
Before leaving, the hospital staff bought him children's things as a gift, and on February 22, 1979, he returned to Moscow.
At home, it turned out that there was no point in remembering the tragedy in Antarctica. Members of the investigation commission came to Kostikov a couple of times to find out the circumstances of the death of the crew. But no help was offered. They hinted to him: it would be better if he stayed forever with his comrades in Antarctica. Not far from the place of their death, the polar explorers erected an obelisk made of white marble, and at the Donskoye cemetery in Moscow, where capsules with soil from the site of the tragedy were buried, a stele appeared in memory of the brave conquerors of the South Pole.
The investigation commission found that Zavarzin’s crew acted competently. But what happened on January 2, 1979? Experts have put forward a version: the plane was picked up by a wind that suddenly changed its strength, speed and direction, which happens in local latitudes, but nothing is known for certain. The case was classified, and Kostikov was given a non-disclosure agreement. He didn’t realize then what he could divulge. Only in the late 90s, having met with the guys who were at Molodezhnaya in those days, I heard the abbreviation UFO and the story that his plane collided with a taking off “saucer”. By that time, by the way, polar explorers had already developed an international term for such incidents: the crew was “caught” by Antarctica. The mysterious force that members of many expeditions encountered is destructive and inexplicable.
Ufologists all over the world unanimously say that Rear Admiral Richard Bird suffered significant losses in 1947 from some mysterious “flying saucers” made by the Nazis using alien technology. Who were the Americans really facing?
ADMIRAL BYRD'S EXPEDITION
The prehistory of this story begins, so to speak, in “prehistoric” times. Many knowledgeable specialists they claim that certain “ancient high cults” are directly involved here - in a word, magic, occultism and other palmistry.
More “down-to-earth” researchers begin counting from later dates, and specifically from the year 1945, when the captains of two Nazi submarines interned in Argentinean ports reported to the American intelligence services that “received” them that at the end of the war they allegedly carried out some special flights along supplying Hitler's Shangri-La - the mysterious Nazi base in Antarctica.
The American military leadership took this information so seriously that they decided to send an entire fleet led by their most competent polar explorer, Rear Admiral Richard Byrd, to search for this very base, which the Germans themselves called “New Swabia.”
This was the fourth Antarctic expedition of the famous admiral, but unlike first three it was entirely financed by the US Navy, which predetermined the absolute secrecy of its goals and results. The expedition included the escort aircraft carrier Casablanca, converted from a high-speed transport, and on which 18 aircraft and 7 helicopters were based (it would be hard to call them helicopters - very imperfect aircraft with a limited range and extremely low survivability), as well as 12 ships, which accommodated more than 4 thousand people.
The entire operation received the code name “High Jump”, which, according to the admiral’s plan, was supposed to symbolize the last, final blow to the unfinished Third Reich in the ice of Antarctica... (The official report about this expedition in English can be read at this address )
So, the 4th expedition of Admiral Byrd, covered by a fleet so impressive for a simple civilian expedition, landed in Antarctica in the area of Queen Maud Land on February 1, 1947 and began a detailed study of the territory adjacent to the ocean.
In a month, about 50 thousand photographs were taken, or rather 49,563 (data taken from the geophysical yearbook "Brooker Cast", Chicago). Aerial photography covered 60% of the territory that interested Baird, the researchers discovered and mapped several previously unknown mountain plateaus and founded the polar station. But after some time the work was suddenly stopped, and the expedition urgently returned to America.
For more than a year, no one had absolutely any idea about true reasons such a hasty “escape” of Richard Byrd from Antarctica, moreover, no one in the world then even suspected that at the very beginning of March 1947 the expedition had to engage in a real battle with the enemy, whose presence in the area of its research it allegedly did not expect .
From the moment of its return to the United States, the expedition was surrounded by such a dense veil of secrecy that no other scientific expedition of this kind was surrounded, however, some of the more nosy newspapermen still managed to find out that Byrd's squadron returned far from being in full force - it was allegedly off the coast of Antarctica lost at least one ship, 13 aircraft and about forty personnel... Sensation, in a word!
And this very sensation was most properly “formatted” and took its rightful place on the pages of the Belgian popular science magazine “Frey”, and then was reprinted by the West German “Damestish” and found a new breath in the West German “Brisant”.
A certain Karel Lagerfeld informed the public that, having returned from Antarctica, Admiral Byrd gave lengthy explanations at a secret meeting of the Presidential Special Commission in Washington, and its summary was as follows: the ships and planes of the Fourth Antarctic Expedition were attacked ... by strange “flying saucers” that “...emerged from under the water, and moving at great speed, caused significant damage to the expedition.”
According to Admiral Byrd himself, these amazing aircraft were probably produced at Nazi aircraft factories camouflaged in the Antarctic ice, whose designers had mastered some unknown energy used in the engines of these devices... Among other things, Byrd told high-ranking officials the following:
“The United States needs to take defensive action as quickly as possible against enemy fighters flying from the polar regions. When new war America could be attacked by an enemy who has the ability to fly from one pole to the other at incredible speed!"
So, we clearly see that “flying saucers” appeared for the first time precisely in Antarctica, and here some documents, which are in no way related to UFO problems, most directly draw our attention to the fact that it was at the very time when Admiral Byrd’s ships dropped anchor in the Lazarev Sea off the coast of the icy Queen Maud Land, there were already...Soviet warships there!
All domestic encyclopedias and reference books write that capitalist countries began dividing Antarctica among themselves long before the Second World War. How successful they were in this can be judged at least by the fact that the Soviet government, concerned about the agility of the British and Norwegians in the “study” of the southern circumpolar latitudes, in January 1939 declared an official protest to the governments of these countries due to the fact that their Antarctic expeditions “...were engaged in the unreasonable division into sectors of lands once discovered by Russian explorers and navigators...”
When the British and Norwegians, soon bogged down in the battles of the Second World War, had no time for Antarctica, similar notes were sent to the neutral for the time being, but no less aggressive, in his opinion, the United States and Japan.
A new turn in the destructive war, which soon engulfed half the world, temporarily stopped these disputes. But only for a while. A year and a half after the end of hostilities on Pacific Ocean in the hands of the Soviet military were the most detailed aerial photography data of the entire coast of Queen Maud Land, starting from Cape Tyuleny and ending with Lützow-Holm Bay - and this is no less than 3,500 kilometers in a straight line! Few knowledgeable people still claim that the Russians simply took this data after the war from the Germans, who, as is known, carried out two large-scale Antarctic expeditions a year before the Polish military campaign of 1939.
The Russians did not deny this, but they flatly refused to share their booty with other interested parties, citing “national interests.” After the hasty “flight” of the Baird expedition, designed for no less than an 8-month stay in the harsh conditions of low latitudes, and therefore equipped Beyond all measure, America urgently began informal negotiations with the governments of Argentina, Chile, Norway, Australia, New Zealand, Great Britain and France.
In parallel with this, a cautious but persistent campaign in the press begins in the States itself. In one of the central American magazines, Foreign Affairs, former US Minister-Counselor to the USSR George Kennan, who had shortly before urgently left Moscow “for consultations with his government,” published an article in which he very unequivocally expressed his idea of “the need for an early organizing a rebuff to the exorbitantly grown ambitions of the Soviets, who, after the successful end of the war with Germany and Japan, are in a hurry to take advantage of their military and political victories to plant the harmful ideas of communism not only in Eastern Europe and China, but also in... distant Antarctica!"
In response to this statement, which seemed to have the character of the official policy of the White House, Stalin published his own memorandum on the political regime of Antarctica, where he spoke in a rather harsh form about the intentions of the US ruling elite “... to deprive the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics its legal right, based on discoveries in this part of the world by Russian navigators, made back in early XIX centuries..."
At the same time, some other measures were taken to symbolize the protest against the American policy towards Antarctica that was disliked by Stalin. The nature and results of these measures can be judged at least by the fact that after some time, Truman’s Secretary of State, James Byrnes, who, as is known, always advocated the most severe sanctions against the USSR, unexpectedly resigned early, obviously forced to do so. Truman. Byrnes's last words in public office were:
The damned Russians turned out to be impossible to scare. On this issue (referring to Antarctica) they won.
The hype around the Sixth Continent quickly died down after Argentina and France supported the USSR. Truman, having reflected on the balance of power that had created in this region, reluctantly, but still agreed to the participation of Stalin’s representatives at international conference on Antarctica, which was planned to be held in Washington, but stressed that if an agreement on the equal presence of all interested countries is signed, then it must certainly include such an important point as the demilitarization of Antarctica and the prohibition on its territory of any military activity, including storage at Antarctic weapons bases, including nuclear ones, and the development of raw materials necessary for the creation of any weapons should be prohibited too...
However, all these preliminary agreements are the front side of the coin, its obverse, so to speak. Returning to the failed expedition of Admiral Byrd, it should be noted that back in January 1947, the waters of the Lazarev Sea were quite officially plowed by a Soviet research vessel, belonging, of course, to the Ministry of Defense, called “Slava”.
However, some researchers had at their disposal documents that very eloquently testify that in those harsh years for the fate of the whole world, not only “Slava” was hanging out off the coast of Queen Maud Land. Having studied the information received and combined it with data that appeared in the open press in different times history, we can quite reasonably assume that the squadron of Admiral Richard Byrd was opposed by a well-equipped and led by competent polar admirals... The Antarctic Fleet of the USSR Navy!
"FLYING DUTCHES" OF THE SOVIET NAVY
Strange as it may seem, until very recently, for some reason, few people paid attention to the fact that the Soviet press paid virtually no attention to the exploration of Antarctica by our compatriots in the 40s and early 50s. The quantity and quality of specific documents of that time, open to the outside public, is also not particularly diverse.
All information on this matter was limited to some general phrases like: “Antarctica is a country of penguins and eternal ice, it certainly needs to be mastered and studied in order to understand many geophysical processes occurring in other parts of the globe,” more similar to slogans than to messages.
About success foreign countries in matters of studying this very “penguin country” it was written as if it were at least the enterprises of the CIA or the Pentagon; in any case, no interested independent expert-enthusiast, not endowed with the highest confidence of the Soviet government, was able to obtain comprehensive information from the open press.
However, in the archives of Western intelligence services, with whom many Soviet and Polish spies “worked” at one time, and who in our time wished to write their own memoirs, documents were found that shed light on some aspects of the first official (rather semi-official, disguised as the study of industrial situation in Antarctica) of the Soviet Antarctic expedition of 1946-47, which arrived on the shores of Dronning Maud Land on the diesel-electric ship "Slava".
Such famous names suddenly came to light as Papanin, Krenkel, Fedorov, Vodopyanov, Mazuruk, Kamanin, Lyapidevsky, and the first of these seven is a rear admiral (almost a marshal!), and the last four are full generals, and not just generals what kind (“courtiers,” so to speak), but polar pilots who glorified themselves with specific deeds and were ardently loved by all the Soviet people.
Official historiography claims that the first Soviet Antarctic stations were founded only in the early 50s, but the CIA had completely different data, which for some reason has not been completely declassified to this day. And let ufologists all over the world unanimously repeat that Rear Admiral Richard Byrd suffered significant losses in 1947 from some mysterious “flying saucers” made by the Nazis using the technology of mythical aliens, but we now have every reason to believe that that American planes were rebuffed by exactly the same planes, manufactured using the same, precisely American technologies! But more on this a little later.
Studying some aspects of the history of the Russian Navy, at some stage you may come across quite interesting things concerning some ships of the Soviet Navy, in particular the Pacific Fleet, which, although they were part of this very fleet, however, starting from 1945, In the waters of the “metropolis” they appeared so rarely that a completely legitimate question arose about the places of their true base.
For the first time this issue was raised “on the shield” in 1996 in the almanac “Shipbuilding in the USSR” by the famous marine painter from Sevastopol Arkady Zattets. We were talking about three destroyers of Project 45 - “Vysoky”, “Important” and “Impressive”. The destroyers were built in 1945 using captured technology used by the Japanese when designing their Fubuki-class destroyers, intended for navigation in the harsh conditions of the northern and Arctic seas.
“...Over many facts from the very short life of these ships,” writes Zattes, “there has been an impenetrable veil of silence for more than half a century. None of the experts in the history of the Russian fleet and none of the famous collectors of naval photography have a single (!) photo or diagram showing these ships in their equipped form.
Moreover, in the Central State Archives of the Navy there are no documents (for example, an act of exclusion from the fleet) confirming the very fact of service. Meanwhile, both domestic and foreign naval literature (both publicly available, that is, popular, and official) mentions the inclusion of these ships in the Pacific Fleet...
Project 45 destroyers, later named Vysoky, Vazhny and Impressive, were built in Komsomolsk-on-Amur at plant 199, completed and tested at plant 202 in Vladivostok. They joined the fleet in January-June 1945, but did not take any part in the hostilities against Japan (in August of the same year). In December 1945, all three ships made short visits to Qingdao and Chifoo (China)... And then continuous mysteries begin.
Based on fragmentary data (needing unconditional verification), we were able to find out the following. In February 1946, at Plant 202 on three new destroyers, work began on re-equipment according to Project 45 bis - strengthening the hull and installing additional equipment for sailing in difficult conditions high latitudes.
On the destroyer “Vysoky” the keel structures were redesigned to ensure increased stability; on the “Vazhny” the bow towers were dismantled and a hangar for four seaplanes and a catapult were installed instead. There is a version (also in need of verification) that the destroyer "Impressive" during the testing of a captured German missile complex KR-1 (ship-based missile) sank an experimental target ship - the former captured Japanese destroyer Suzuki of the Fubuki class.
According to again unverified data, in June 1946, all three destroyers underwent minor repairs, but on the other side of the world - at the Argentine naval base of Rio Grande on Tierra del Fuego. Then one of the destroyers, accompanied by a submarine (many researchers believe that it was K-103 under the command of the famous “submarine ace of the Northern Fleet” A.G. Cherkasov) was allegedly seen off the coast of the French island of Kerguelen, located in the southern Indian Ocean. .
A wide variety of rumors have circulated and are still circulating around the activities of these three destroyers, however, these rumors have always remained just rumors. As you can see, since mid-1945, everything connected with the history of this division of the “Flying Dutchmen” of the Soviet Navy is inaccurate, vague, vague...
There is not a single reliable image of any of these ships, although they were all based in Vladivostok, where in all years (even those!) there was no shortage of people who wanted to capture the ship on film, but nevertheless realistic images of the “High”, “Important” and we don’t have “impressive”.
In contrast to this fact, we can cite the example of the destroyers of Project 46-bis (a modernized version of Project 45) “Stoikiy” and “Smely”, which were under construction and were assigned to the Pacific Fleet almost simultaneously with the destroyers of Project 45-bis, and soon after that were photographed from different angles, and all the documentation on them was preserved... for the 45 bis project there was complete silence and uncertainty. It was as if these ships had not existed since mid-1945.
Only in issue 5 of the History of the Navy magazine for 1993, in a rather good article by G. A. Barsov, dedicated to the post-war projects of domestic destroyers, three lines (again, vaguely) mention the mysterious trinity...
We hope that the veterans of these ships or the people who worked on them during re-equipment and modernization work at the Vladivostok plant are still alive. And perhaps one of the experts and lovers of naval history will be able to say something additional about the fate of the destroyers, thereby lifting the curtain of silence, which suggests that this very curtain exists for a reason..."
More than five years have passed since the publication of this article, but Arkady Zattets has not received, contrary to expectations, a single message with the help of which he hoped to lift the veil of secrecy over these “flying Dutchmen,” as he put it, of our navy .
But in his article he kept silent about the main thing - as he himself admitted when meeting with another expert on the history of the Russian fleet - Vladimir Rybin (author of the anthology “Russian and Soviet Navy in Combat Operations”), he had long been haunted by the idea of approaching this problem from a completely different angle side: start with studying the so-called “Antarctic program” of the USSR leadership, which began to be implemented immediately after the end of the Second World War.
When Rybin showed Zattets some documents relating to the secret operations of the Stalinist fleet, he agreed with him that all three destroyers could well have been part of the so-called 5th Fleet of the USSR Navy - the Antarctic. And what better candidate for the post of commander of this fleet than the rear admiral (twice Hero Soviet Union, Doctor of Geographical Sciences, member of the Central Committee of the Party) Ivan Dmitrievich Papanin was simply impossible for the savvy Stalin to find...
STATION "NOVOLAZAREVSKAYA"
Without dwelling on the biography of this famous (legendary) Soviet polar explorer, we should draw the attention of those interested to the important fact that all the persons appearing in secret documents regarding the unofficial Soviet (Stalinist) expedition of 1946-47 that worries us, received their general's shoulder straps precisely in 1946, just before the start of the transoceanic campaign to the South Pole (the exception was Vodopyanov, who was demoted from the generals back in 1941 for actually the failure of the strategic bombing of Berlin, but which received its due in full five years later) - this only emphasizes the importance of this expedition personally for Stalin.
WHAT Stalin needed in distant Antarctica in the first post-war years is another question, which we will soon begin to study, but surely these needs were no less significant than for the American President Truman, who sent his own polar wolf - Rear Admiral - on a similar campaign Richard Byrd.
If someone wants to believe that the American fleet was defeated in this campaign by some “unknown forces,” then the easiest way is to assume that these “unknown forces” were Papanin’s naval forces.
It is well known that the Lazarev research station on the shores of Queen Maud Land was founded by our polar explorers in 1951, but this is only the official point of view, and for a long time few people were supposed to know the truth.
In 1951, Papanin was already in Moscow, where he was presented with an important government award for an unknown specific merit, and the honorary and responsible post of head of one of the departments of the USSR Academy of Sciences - the Department of Marine Expeditionary Works, and this position, by the way, is much more important than the one which Papanin held until 1946, being the head of the Main Northern Sea Route: one can perfectly understand that in his new field, Ivan Dmitrievich had an excellent opportunity to compete with all the intelligence departments in the world - almost the entire naval intelligence of the USSR was under his command.
Such a position could be “bought” only by such merits to the “party and the people,” which few could boast of - Marshal Zhukov, for example. But Papanin, unlike the legendary marshal, did not spend a single day on the front line, although he was listed as an admiral in the armed forces. Meanwhile, he managed to win the only battle in history between the USSR Navy and the US Navy at the very beginning of the clearly defined “Cold War” without leading to a new world massacre.
And this happened precisely in the first days of March 1947 on the 70th parallel near the Soviet naval base he secretly founded, which later received the name “Lazarevskaya” and in all reference books in the world is referred to as “research base”...
Eight years ago, the Gidromet publishing house published the memoirs of a certain Vladimir Kuznetsov, one of the members of the first Soviet Antarctic inspection under the auspices of the State Committee for Hydrometeorology of the USSR, which in 1990 carried out an inspection raid on all Antarctic research stations in order to check the implementation of the articles of the 7th International Treaty on Antarctica. In the chapter describing a visit to the Soviet station Novolazarevskaya (formerly Lazarevskaya) there are the following lines:
“...The Schirmacher oasis, where Novolazarevskaya is located, is a narrow string of icy hills that look like camel humps. In the depressions between the hills there are numerous small lakes, which on a sunny day reflect the seemingly serene Antarctic sky. Novolazarevskaya, I think, is the coziest and most lived-in of all our stations in Antarctica.
Strong stone buildings on concrete stilts are picturesquely located on brown hills and delight the eye with their phantasmagoric colors. The houses are very warm. In addition to diesel, energy is provided by numerous wind turbines. There are about four hundred winterers here, in the summer - up to a thousand or more, many with families. The station has an excellent airfield - the oldest airfield in Antarctica and the only one with metal-coated strips and concrete hangar parking areas.
On a rocky hill located between two particularly large lakes there is a cemetery for polar explorers. The long-decommissioned Penguin all-terrain vehicle, driven by a mischievous mechanic to the top of a hill, became a monument that was even depicted on a postage stamp. I climbed the hill. In terms of memoriality, the cemetery is not inferior to many famous cemeteries in the world, Novodevichy, for example, or even Arlington.
I am surprised to see on the grave of pilot Chilingarov a four-blade propeller cast into a concrete pedestal and the date of burial: March 1, 1947. But my questions remain unanswered - the current management of Novolazarevskaya has no idea about the activities of the station in that distant year. This, apparently, is a matter for historians..."
Kuznetsov, undoubtedly, turned out to be right - this is a matter for historians. But his book was published more than ten years ago, and none of these same historians ever bothered to explain to the world WHAT EXACTLY was done at the very beginning of 1947 in Antarctica by a four-bladed propeller, “which clearly belonged to a Soviet aircraft.”
As it was later established, the propeller, “obviously belonging to a Soviet aircraft,” was a product of the American company Bell. Along the way, it turned out that Captain A.V. Chilingarov during the Great Patriotic War served in the ferry air division, which was engaged in the delivery of aircraft equipment provided by the Americans under Lend-Lease to the Soviet-German front.
The commander of this very division was a polar explorer already known to us - Air Force Colonel I.P. Mazuruk, and this division served the longest and heaviest air route in the world ALSIB (short for Alaska - Siberia).
P-63 "KINGCOBRA"
Of all the aviation equipment supplied by the Americans to the USSR during the war, only one type of aircraft was equipped with four-bladed Bell propellers - these were the P-63 Kingcobra fighters of the same company. "Kingcobra", in contrast to the more famous, although and the less advanced Airacobra, was produced by the Americans exclusively on Soviet orders and in accordance with Soviet technical requirements.
It is not surprising that the Americans themselves have always considered the P-63 a “Russian aircraft”, since almost the entire “circulation” of this aircraft ended up in the USSR (it was never accepted into service in America itself due to the presence of similar types of fighters in the US Air Force - “Mustang”, “Corsair” and some others).
Possessing a very high speed, long flight range and a decent practical ceiling, the P-63 was an excellent interceptor, but since by the time deliveries began the war was clearly coming to an end, not a single vehicle of this type made it to the front - Stalin saved these fighters for other things. “Kingcobras,” as one of the memoirists of that time put it, could become Stalin’s Main Reserve in case of an unpredictable change in the military-political situation and the outbreak of war by the United States.
All air defense units of the USSR were equipped with them - of all the fighters in service in the Soviet Union, only the Kingcobra could “reach” the main US strategic bomber in the sky - the B-29 Superfortress. Thus, by 1947, all 2500 P- 63 that fell into the hands of Stalin were in full combat readiness.
Naturally, these aircraft took part in all overt and covert operations of the Soviet Air Force carried out during that period, and one of them was the first Soviet Antarctic expedition under the leadership of Admiral Papanin.
As anyone interested knows, the Kingcobra was perfectly suited for “working” in difficult and even very difficult weather conditions, including polar ones. During the war, absolutely all P-63s were ferried under their own power along ALSIB (from the USA to the USSR), and along this entire complex route, more than five thousand kilometers long (excluding the flight to the Bering Strait over Alaska), out of 2,500 ferried in the fall of 1944 - in the spring of 1945, our pilots lost only 7 aircraft - an indicator simply phenomenal, considering that incomparably more other types of aircraft were lost on the way to the front.
The difficulties the ferrymen had to face over the vast Siberian expanses, which at this time of year were more like the icy deserts of Antarctica, can be imagined from the memoirs of I. Mazuruk himself. Here are his words, taken from a book of memoirs published in 1976:
“In December 1944, the group of 15 Kingcobras I led, due to the fact that the destination airfield Seymchan was closed by fog, had to be landed on the ice of the Kolyma River near the village of Zyryanka... The thermometer showed -53* Celsius, and we had heaters, Naturally, it wasn’t.
But in the morning the entire group took off safely thanks to the flight mechanic of the leading A-20 aircraft, Gennady Sultanov, who called on local residents for help. All night long, the adult population of Zyryanka heated iron stoves installed under the Kingcobras, covered with large pieces of tarpaulin, with wood. Subsequently, the same Sultanov came up with the idea of using ordinary squibs for quick heating in emergency situations..."
By the way, the Americans never thought of this. However, they had their own factory-made heaters, and besides, for each of their planes, unlike us, there were literally ten technicians and mechanics, each of whom serviced a certain piece of equipment.
Almost all “Kingcobras” delivered to the USSR were equipped with a radio compass, which greatly facilitated navigation at night and in the clouds, and in 1945, versions equipped with search radar stations began to arrive, which made it possible not only to fly “blindly”, but also to reach targets located in 50-70 kilometers beyond the horizon, as well as some devices signaling a sudden attack from behind.
The improved engine starting system significantly expanded the range of “operating temperatures”, and the domestically produced KM-10 oxygen mask allowed the pilot to feel excellent at altitudes of up to 16 km (16 km is the theoretical ceiling, practical - 12 km, which was also excellent in those conditions) .
So, you and I can definitely notice that the Kingcobra, if not the ideal combat aircraft for the Antarctic theater of operations, is in any case the most suitable of many others that existed at that time all over the world.
In any case, Stalin, according to the most informed historians, did not have anything better until the moment the MiG-15 jet was put into operation. Considering the rich experience of the famous Mazuruk in polar affairs in general and the successful operation of the Kingcobra in the harsh conditions of Chukotka and Siberia in particular, we can safely assume that already in 1946 this “man and hero”, having received general’s shoulder straps from the hands of Joseph Vissarionovich, commanded quite effective system air defense of the then military Antarctic Soviet base on Dronning Maud Land.
Fragment of the book by Alexander Vladimirovich Biryuk " Great Mystery Ufology"
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