Mountain of the Dead (11 page)

Many commentators have stated that the nearest airbase was close to Sverdlovsk, almost 372 miles (600km) away. However, there was an airbase that was only one-third of this distance away. Yugorsk Sovetsky airbase (also known as Pionerskiy, Komsomolskiy-2 and Yugorsk-2) lay 125 miles (202km) to the south-east of the Kholat Syakhl pass. It became operational in 1952 with the formation of an Interceptor Aviation Regiment, 763 IAP, in June that year. The base was finally closed in 1998. In 1959 it was home to one squadron of Yak-25M (NATO codename Flashlight-A) and two squadrons of MiG-17 (NATO codename Fresco) fighter aircraft. The long-range Yak-25M Flashlight-A had a range of 2,560km (1,600 miles) and the MiG-17 Fresco had a range of 2,060km (1,290 miles), so Kholat Syakhl was well within the range of these aircraft, and regular missions were flown over the northern Ural Mountains. The function of 763 IAP was air defence of the northern Urals region, which in reality meant that in the event of a war breaking out with NATO, their primary task was the interception of the American bombers of Strategic Air Command coming in to attack from the direction of the Polar icecap.

As these aircraft of 763 IAP regularly flew over the northern Urals, one of the theories is that one or more aircraft flew close to the Dyatlov group tent. The engines of both types of aircraft made a considerable noise (the MiG-17 Frescos had afterburners) and it is suggested that one or more aircraft may have flown relatively low over the area where the group were camped; the shock may have forced them out of the tent quickly as they did not know what had caused the sound. However, there is a possibility that they may have feared the loud noise setting off a potential avalanche. These were early interceptors without the highly sophisticated computerised flying systems of the twenty-first century and it is very unlikely that these aircraft would have been flying too low at night in a mountainous region. However, even at height the engines made a loud noise audible at ground level. The sound of these types of engine make a low rumbling noise from some distance away and a variation of the theory is that the low rumbling of one or more overflying aircraft may have been mistaken by the party inside the tent for the start of an avalanche. They may have slashed their way out of the tent to find that they could not see or hear any more, which could have made them think that an avalanche was starting and so they took the decision to get away from the tent just in case. Nevertheless, despite the wish to get away from the tent as fast as possible, it would have been thought that they would at least have made sure they were protected against the elements.

Neither the Yak-25M Flashlight-A
nor the MiG-17 Fresco aircraft operated by 763 IAP carried bombs; they were purely interceptor aircraft. (See Chapter 7 for Tu-95 air mines.)

One theory is that the group were victims of the test firing of a missile or rocket, which had either passed very close to them or landed and exploded not far away. This theory is tied in with the theory regarding ‘lights’ or ‘light orbs’ in the night skies around the area (see below).

After the Second World War great effort was put into research and production of all types of missiles, with the emphasis on long-range missiles tipped with nuclear warheads, which become known as ICBMs (Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles). Using captured German scientists and a substantial amount of captured German V2 technology, a large area in the Astrakhan region near to Volgograd at Kapustin Yar was established to develop, research and launch new missiles. In 1955 another large site was also established at Baikonur in Kazakhstan (referred to by the Americans as Tyuratam) to test ICBMs and also carry out associated space research.

In 1959 the later Space Cosmodrome at Plesetsk in the Archangelsk Oblast (region) had only recently been established as a military base (with the Russian code name Angara) for the R-7 Semyorka ICBM. There were several rough groups of rockets and missiles used by the Soviet military in 1959, including strategic missiles of various ranges, air-to-air and air-to-surface missiles, surface-to-air missiles; naval missiles and army rockets (including tactical anti-tank weapons). For the purposes of any relevance to the Dyatlov mystery, most of these can be discounted.

Naval missiles were only just being developed. These were tested at sea (initially the Black Sea), although examples were fired from sea to ranges on land, but the northern Urals contained no ranges for these sea-launched missiles. The first anti-ship missile, P-15 Termit (NATO codenamed SS-N-2 Styx), only had a range of 24 miles (40km). Similarly air-to-air missiles were in a fairly early stage of development. The area was regularly overflown by the MiG-17 Frescos and Yak-25M Flashlight-As of 763 IAP at Yugorsk Sovetsky (see Air force,
above); in 1959, however, these aircraft had 37mm cannon fitted as their standard offensive armament.

The use of army rockets (including anti-tank missiles) would have been possible. However, it was not an area known for the use of these types of weapons by the army and neither was it used for army exercises in this period.

This leaves two main possibilities, which are regularly suggested in connection with the Dyatlov incident: surface-to-air missiles and ICBMs.

The S-75 Dvina system (NATO codename SA-2 Guideline) was the missile that brought down the U-2 spy aircraft flown by Gary Powers near Sverdlovsk on 1 May 1960. The S-75 was deployed from 1957 onwards. This highly successful anti-aircraft missile was deployed in batteries, which although were mobile in that everything could be disassembled in one place and reassembled in another place fairly quickly, they were complex systems that worked in conjunction with radar and thus would be better described as located on semi-static sites. Mention has been made on some websites that a ‘Dvina
missile’ may have been responsible for what happened to the Dyatlov group, but it is extremely unlikely: by early 1959 the testing phase of the initial missile type was over and, in any event, testing was first carried out near to the plants where they were made, notably at the Rzhevka site near the Leningrad (now St Petersburg) production plant. Final testing of these missiles was carried out at Kapustin Yar in Kazakhstan. When the S-75 was deployed, the batteries were located close to possible targets that could be attacked from the air, i.e. cities, manufacturing plants, military installations. They were also placed along the possible routes that it was expected an air attack might come from – either the United States or other NATO forces in the West. There were numerous batteries in the Sverdlovsk region as there were many targets of value there. However, the main point about these missiles is that the first models only had a range of 13 to 14 miles (22 to 24km). For the Dyatlov group to have been close to one of these falling to the ground with its explosive warhead, they would have had to have been within range of a launch site. There is no evidence of such a launch site at the time in the area. As testing was complete on the missiles by 1959, there was no requirement to take them to such an awkward location and test them and, added to which, given their range of only 13 to 14 miles (22 to 24km), there was nothing there for them to protect. It is possible that the place where the Dyatlov group were found at Kholat Syakhl could have fallen under the route of a possible air attack by US bomber aircraft coming in over the Polar icecap, but for an S-75 site to be established it would have required considerable logistics to set it up in such an awkward location and it would have been virtually impossible to conceal its presence from people in the area.

The only ICBM in use by the Soviet Union in 1959 was the R-7 Semyorka, which was only becoming operational in 1958–59 with an estimated ten operational examples. Test firings of this ICBM began in August 1957 and up to 1959 there were approximately twenty test firings. Without exception, all of them were fired from the rangehead at Baikonur and landed 3,500 miles away in the impact area in the Kamchatka peninsula, i.e. in a completely different eastward direction to the location of the Dyatlov group. There were some failures of these test launches but none of them went anywhere near the Urals. There is, however, one unsubstantiated reference to the launch of an R-7 from the Angara military base at Plesetsk on 9 February 1959.
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This is highly relevant, but as it was an operational military matter (i.e. the launch of an ICBM from a military site), checking its veracity is another matter. The official acceptance of the R-7 into military service was announced in a decree on 20 January 1960 but several examples were operational before then. The later (from 1960) military derivative of the R-7, the R-7A, was given the NATO codename SS-6 Sapwood.

The theory that a test firing from Baikonur of a ballistic missile that went astray was partially laid to rest by an article about the Dyatlov group deaths in a local Ekaterinburg newspaper
Oblastnaya Gazeta
dated 30 January 1999. In an article entitled ‘Already Forty Years’ it was stated:

In the period under consideration (between 25 January to 5 February 1959) no launches of ballistic missiles or space rockets were made from the Baikonur Cosmodrome. The north Urals is located many hundreds of kilometres away from missile lanes. We assert unambiguously that no falls of a rocket or its fragments is possible in the area in question.

At first sight, what is stated in this article appears to be borne out by examining the lists of launches that were made. The R-7 Semyorka with the nearest launch dates took place on 24 December 1958 (recorded as a failure) and 17 March 1959. No reference is made in the article to the launch of an R-7 in military service at Angara, Plesetsk on 9 February 1959.

It is also worth considering the launch of intermediate range missiles from Kapustin Yar. Kholat Syakhl was just beyond the official range of these missiles. However, an R-5M was actually launched from the test site at Kapustin Yar on 2 February 1959. The R-5M was an intermediate range weapon with a maximum range of 1,200km (745 miles) and the Dyatlov group were beyond its range as they were 1,700km (1,060 miles) away to the north-east. The R-5M test launches had ranges of between 1,083km (672 miles) and 1,200km (745 miles) aimed towards a point near Priaralsk Karakum, 150 miles north-east of the Aral Sea. There appears to have been no launch of a 1,500km R-12 (NATO codename SS-4 Sandal) and the nearest date examples of this missile launch were 30 December 1958 and 30 March 1959.

Despite this launch of the R-5M on 2 February 1959, what is stated in the article extract above is true – that the northern Urals was hundreds of kilometres from missile test lanes and that nothing was launched from Baikonur between the relevant dates of the Dyatlov group trip, allowing for the unsubstantiated launch of the R-7 from Angara, Plesetsk on 9 February 1959.

There is mention in a few studies of the Dyatlov incident of rockets with sodium trails being observed in the northern Urals, with the launches having taken place in the Kola Peninsula with the impact area located in the Tyumen Oblast in the Arctic Urals. This had first been suggested in a letter to a Moscow newspaper by Alexsey Koskin, an engineer and tourist who had visited the pass many times. He said that the ‘lights’ which were observed were sodium trails from these rockets, which were testing satellites and were coming down in the Nadym test field hundreds of kilometres to the north-east of Kholat Syakhl. The suggestion is that one of these test launches came down in the Ivdel area. While this is possible, there is a lack of evidence to back it up in the form of what rockets were involved and exactly where they were being launched from.

Overall, the possibility that a rocket or missile had landed close by is unlikely, as there was no signs of the blast from an explosion or any debris that one would have expected to find if any size of rocket or missile had landed and exploded. Trips within the area in later years (in the Chistop test field) have found debris that appears to be military-type rockets, but after the tragedy nothing was seen or found.

The suggestion that a rocket or missile had landed close by or even some distance away still does not explain the behaviour of the group and why they were found so far from the tent in the circumstances they were found in. Assuming a tremendous explosion occurred within an area close to the tent, why were only three of the group subjected to such massive internal injuries? It can be understood that a loud explosion and flames may have caused them to exit the tent in the manner they did, but the rush to get so far away is incomprehensible, particularly as nothing was found near enough to the tent to make them do this.

The hypothesis of the worst of the injuries being caused by the testing of some type of sound weapon or infrasonic weapon is based more on an attempt to explain how the injuries may have been caused rather than any evidence at Kholat Syakhl or the immediate area that might lead to a conclusion that such a weapon (assuming it existed) was actually used.

The adherents of this theory point to the work of Dr Vladimir Gavreau, who was originally born in Russia but was actually a French scientist. Other than his work on an infrasonic whistle, the link with the Dyatlov group deaths is tenuous to say the least and appears to be based on the fact that he was born in Russia and had a connection with infrasonics. The emphasis on Gavreau appears to be that if he was working on infrasonics with a potential military application then so must the Soviets, although there is absolutely no evidence whatsoever to back this up.
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From 1948 into the 1960s Gavreau was living and working in France, based in Marseille. He worked on robotics with potential military applications and presented various papers, including one on 16 November 1959 with Albert Calaora on acoustics. During this period in the late 1950s (and into the 1960s), Dr Gavreau also conducted a number of experiments in sound waves. It should be stressed that these experiments were primarily in the acoustic range as opposed to purely infrasonic, as is sometimes implied. During his research, Gavreau discovered that the nausea being experienced by himself and other workers within the building where they carried out their research was due to a large ventilator fan being driven by a low-speed motor that had not been fixed properly to its mountings. The resulting vibrations were giving off a very low frequency sound, which had been affecting them.