Vladimir Ilyushin

Lieutenant General Vladimir Sergeyevich Ilyushin ( _ru. Владимир Сергеевич Илюшин) (born 31 March 1927) is a son of aircraft designer Sergei Ilyushin and a noted test pilot in the Soviet Union. [cite web |url=http://www.astronautix.com/astros/ilyushin.htm |title=Ilyushin |author=Wade, Mark] He spent most of his career as a test pilot for the Sukhoi OKB.

Spaceflight rumour

Ilyushin is purported to be a cosmonaut; it is alleged he became the first man in space on 7 April 1961. ["Space: The Secret History, Vol. 1 - The Cosmonaut Conspiracy". UFO TV, 2004] This honor is generally attributed to Yuri Gagarin whose spaceflight, Vostok 1, took place on 12 April.

The theories surrounding this alleged orbital spaceflight are that a failure aboard the spacecraft caused controllers to bring the descent capsule down several orbits earlier than intended, which resulted in its landing in the People's Republic of China whereupon the pilot was held by Chinese authorities for a year before being returned to the Soviet Union. The international embarrassment that would have resulted from having their pilot held is cited as the Soviets' reason for not publicizing this flight and instead focusing their adulation on the subsequent successful flight of Gagarin.

Doubts about spaceflight

However, there are reasons to disbelieve this allegation, notably that although both were Communist governments, relations between the Soviets and Chinese were strained, and the propaganda value to the Chinese of a Soviet pilot captured flying over their territory would have given little reason for Chinese complicity in a coverup.

According to Mark Wade, editor of the well known website Encyclopedia Astronautica, "The entire early history of the Soviet manned space program has been declassified and we have piles of memoirs of cosmonauts, engineers, etc who participated. We know who was in the original cosmonaut team, who never flew, was dismissed, or was killed in ground tests. Ilyushin is not one of them." [cite web |url=http://www.myhero.com/explorers/feedback.asp |title=Ilyushin Feedback |publisher=The My Hero Project]

ee also

*Soviet space program conspiracy accusations

References

External links

* [http://www.astronautix.com/astros/ilyushin.htm Encyclopedia Astronautica: Vladimir Sergeyevich Ilyushin]
* [http://www.astronautix.com/astrogrp/phaonaut.htm Encyclopedia Astronautica: Phantom cosmonauts]
* [http://www.lostcosmonauts.com/ Lost Cosmonauts]
* [http://myhero.com/myhero/hero.asp?hero=Ilyushin My Hero Project - Sergei Vladimir Ilyushin, Jr.]