An interesting UFO incident from 1961 USSR

I havent read anywhere on ATS about this incident and I am having a hard time digging for more info about it. I first read about it in Timothy Goods book "Above Top Secret" and I thought it was an incredible, if not outrageous incident.

Excerpt from a website that I found it on:

1961. The following incident has been reported by several investigators as Alberto Fenoglio (in 1962), British researcher Derek Mansell (in 1965) and the UK UFO magazine Flying Saucer Review (in 1967). The details differs some (very little) but the main story is intact and very intriguing.

An Antov An-2P, a small transport plane, left an airfield at or near Sverdlovsk (Russia), bound for Kurgan, with 4 people aboard (Mansell’s report says 7), mail and luggage. After flying about 128-160 kilometres, and after the pilot has communicated with the ground control the plane disappeared from the radar screen. A search was launched with helicopters and troops, and as the pilot had given a position just moments before the plane vanished, it was found after only two days at the area of Tobelak (Siberia). The plane was found in a small clearing in the forest, too small to have landed there, and it was seemed to have been put down from above gently. No passenger and pilot was to be found, or ever since. All mail was intact and the motor had fuel for another 2 hours of flight and ran fine.

Source (5th paragraph down)

Has anyone heard about this incident? If so, have anymore info about it? It would be greatly appreciated.

[edit on 20-8-2010 by -Blackout-]

I wonder how much we still don't from the USSR and the events of the Cold War.
Can you imagine all the new technologies discovered by the Soviets?

reply to post by Romantic_Rebel


I have no idea - However, Dr Allen Hynek once said that his worst fear was waking up one morning and finding out that the Russians had solved the UFO mystery.

With that said, have you heard about the above case in my OP?

reply to post by -Blackout-


I'm still reading what you posted. There was a thread years back before I joined that discussed aliens in the Soviet Union.

reply to post by -Blackout-


Seems to be a lot of UFO related activity in the Sverdlovsk region:

www.abovetopsecret.com...

www.abovetopsecret.com...

www.abovetopsecret.com...

www.abovetopsecret.com...

Interesting stuff, I'll keep digging and see what I can find. S&F.

ETA: Google Map of the region

Source


TheAssoc.

[edit on 20-8-2010 by TheAssociate]

reply to post by TheAssociate


Yeah, Russia seems to have a lot of little gold nuggets as far as UFO incidents go. Ive found a lot of cases that I have never even heard of.

A lot of folks seem to point toward America and all of the cases here in the good o' U.S of A. However, there are some very very very interesting cases in other countries.

Ive always been curious about Dr Allen Hynek's comment that I quoted in a post above this one and what exactly he meant by it.

reply to post by TheAssociate


Wow, thanks for the source there.

It seems like that area in particular was a UFO hot spot back then:

Link

reply to post by -Blackout-


Here is the Flying Saucer Review, the place that originally reported the incident in the OP. They don't have an online archive, unfortunately, but it appears you can purchase a hard-copy archive. Might be worth it.


TheAssoc.

reply to post by TheAssociate


Thanks again for the info much appreciated.

I have never heard of this event , but it sounds very intriguing and I thank the OP for his/her time and effort to bring us this little snippet of intriguement, if you can get any more facts and details please add to this thread I for one will be watching.

Perfect 'fairy tale' UFO story,
"long ago and far away", and
thus immune to skeptical investigation,
hence un-disprovable and inherently
unexplainable, and 'safe' to believe in.

What more could you want for 'UFO evidence'?

reply to post by JimOberg


Exactly!
Taking place in the mysterious atmosphere of the Soviet Union during the Cold War we are left only with rumors and no hope of rational analysis. The popularity of Soviet UFO stories play on these feelings perfectly, as they let imaginative people invent stories with no hope of them being proven or not.

reply to post by JimOberg


I bet that makes you mad =(

reply to post by Turiddu

reply to post by JimOberg


Does it really make a difference whether it can be proven or debunked? I don't think anyone here is touting the incident as the Holy Grail. It's just an interesting, entertaining story. Lighten up.


TheAssoc.

Originally posted by JimOberg
Perfect 'fairy tale' UFO story, "long ago and far away", and thus immune to skeptical investigation, hence un-disprovable and inherently
unexplainable, and 'safe' to believe in.
What more could you want for 'UFO evidence'?

JimOberg.....

You're a hard man Jim.....

But you do help us sort the "wheat from the chaff"!

According to the UFO-researcher James Oberg, Russians have a taste for making up stories of old war and Space-heroes that can’t confime these storys as they are dead.

www.ufo.se...

Cheers
Maybe...maybe not

Originally posted by TheAssociate
reply to post by Turiddu

 

reply to post by JimOberg

 

Does it really make a difference whether it can be proven or debunked? I don't think anyone here is touting the incident as the Holy Grail. It's just an interesting, entertaining story. Lighten up.

TheAssoc.

TheAssociate.....

Well said!

Kind regards
Maybe...maybe not

Originally posted by Turiddu
reply to post by JimOberg

 

Exactly!
Taking place in the mysterious atmosphere of the Soviet Union during the Cold War we are left only with rumors and no hope of rational analysis. The popularity of Soviet UFO stories play on these feelings perfectly, as they let imaginative people invent stories with no hope of them being proven or not.

As opposed to the serial killer riddled paranoid USA that was the very model of an open and free society. Oh right, no it wasn't really was it? The national Guard gunned down those students at Ohio to pretty much put that one to bed didn't they? Russians went out got drunk, crashed their Tabants into trees, teenagers were misbehaving smoking pot etc, just like anywhere else in the world Just cos the USA and its' pals wanted everyone to think that somehow, the Russians were *different* to the rest of us, didn't actually make it true.

The truth is, strangely enough, in the USSR you weren't treated as a nut job for reposting UFO sightings, unlike in the USA. The facts are, both countries were in the thrall of utterly paranoid Executives who would argue with each other over how fast the raindrops ran down a window in their respective countries. There's still the whiff of the pall of the propaganda war those two launched hanging over both countries when it comes to talking about UFOs and historical incidents.

reply to post by TheAssociate


Yep, well said my friend.

Greetings from Finland!

Yes, the 1961 Antonov-2P case is really intriguing. The story seems to have defied the Soviet cover-up policy very quickly, since it was mentioned in a number of Western books only a few years later. It was told in an article about UFOs in the Swedish popular magazine Teknikens Värld (World of Technics) in 1964 or 1965. There (in my dad's issue) I read about the event as a teenager, 22 years later.

However, the case is scarcely mentioned on the Web - at least in English! It's also embarrassing to see the names misspelled. The plane type was, as I mentioned, an ANTONOV (not Antov) and the Siberian city is called TOBOLSK, not Tobelak!

One of the weirdest places where you can read about it is in this article from Pravda (which, as you maybe know, means "Truth")!

"Black Holes" Devour People
english.pravda.ru...

In the Soviet Union, the authorities generally hushed up cases of unexplained disappearance of people. However, in 1991, the KGB declassified some information about an An-2 airplane, which had vanished from the radar screens thirty years earlier near the city of Sverdlovsk with seven people aboard. Soon, a rescue team in the woods found the wrecks of the disintegrated airplane. Not a trace of bodies or a drop of blood inevitably present after similar crashes was found, only a circle of unclear origin 30 meters in diameter was burnt out on the ground not far from the crash site. Later, the rescuers had to sign papers undertaking recognizance not to disclose anything they had seen.

But if you know Russian it's a lot more easier! A Google search with the words "1961", "Свердловск" (Sverdlovsk), "АН-2П" (An-2P) and "исчез" (disappeared) gives you lots of hits. Too bad, I don't know very much Russian - a systematic study of all the links would require a lot of time. But maybe there are other members who could help?

At least it's obvious that many UFO and other strange incidents from the former Soviet Union are almost totally unknown (even today) to the English only-speaking public. On the German site below the Sverdlovsk case is related, as well as another strange disappearance nine years later.

www.wfg-gk.de...

In February 1970 a Soviet jet fighter pilot told "... have eye contact with a flying disc. A big, round object with oval hatches, gleaming blue." The UFO came closer, and the pilot was told to shoot it down. He reported: "I launched the rockets as ordered- Nothing! - They exploded 600 meters from the aircraft!" Then came a few seconds of silence, and suddenly the men in the control tower heard the pilot yell: "It ... turned ... to right. On collision course! No time to..." Those were the last words from the aviator. He and his aircraft were never seen again.

Has anybody heard this story before?

[edit on 22-8-2010 by Oerdoeg]

[edit on 22-8-2010 by Oerdoeg]

[edit on 22-8-2010 by Oerdoeg]