The key to a mystery of the «fiery spheres»
(Retold by Evgeniy Buyanov)
Without a solution of this phenomenon’s nature it was almost impossible to discover the secret of Dyatlov’s accident. These events curved into the minds of those who were connected with both facts. At first it was necessary to find out what this phenomenon meant and then to determine if it took place in the night of the accident, how it was connected with the accident’s events and how it affected the course of events.
What was it? The answers for when, where and what they saw during the flight of the «fiery spheres» were given by the testimony of the witnesses. Tokareva, the meteorologist: «On the 17thof February at 6.50 a.m. an unusual phenomenon – a moving star with a train- appeared in the sky. The train looked like thunderstorm cirrus. Then this star had disengaged the train, became even brighter and gradually flew inflating and forming a big sphere shrouded by gauze. Then a star ignited inside the sphere; afterwards a small and not so bright orb appeared from this star. The sphere began to slowly descent and became like a blurred spot. At 7.05 a.m. the big sphere disappeared at all. It was moving from south to northeast».
The «fiery sphere» was seen by the eyewitness Skoryh G.I. in Karaul settlement of Sverdlovsk area and by the militaries Savkin A.D., Malik I.N., Novikov A.S. and Anisimov A.L. near Ivdel; they were in the line duty in the night and told almost same details. The Savkin's evidence: «On the 17th of February, 1959 at 6. 40 a.m. during duty performances I observed the dazzling-white sphere that appeared from the southern direction. Sometimes it was covered with mist; there was a bright point-star inside the sphere. It went northward and was visible during 8-10 minutes».
Here is the note called «The Unusual heavenly phenomenon» of February 18, 1959 from the newspaper «The Tagilsky worker» (signed by the deputy of the telegraph superintendent of Vysokogorsky mine n.a. A.Kisselya): «Yesterday at 6.55a.m. local time a shining sphere appeared in the east – southeast at the height of 20 degrees above the horizon and had the size of a moon visual diameter. The sphere head out to northeast. Maybe at seven o’clock a.m. there was a flash near the sphere and the sphere’s very bright core was seen. The sphere began to shine more intensively; a glowing cloud aroused near it, then it was repulsed towards south. The cloud enlarged upon all eastern part of the firmament. Soon after that there was the second flash, it looked like a crescent. The cloud gradually increased; in the center of it there was a shining point (the force of the luminescence was different). The sphere went east-northeast. The maximum altitude above the horizon – 30 degrees – was reached approximately at 7.05.a.m. Moving on, this unusual phenomenon weakened and got fuzzy. Thinking that it was somehow connected with sputnik, we had switched on the receiving set; however there was no signal recept».
Here is the certificate from George Atmanaki's report who was in Karelin's group:
«… on the 17th of February I and Vladimir Shavkunov got up at 6.00 a.m. to make breakfast for our group. Having lit the fire and made all necessary things, we began to wait for the meals to be ready. The sky was grey; there were no clouds only thin mist that usually lifted at sunrise. Sitting face to the north and casually having turned a head on the east, I had seen in the sky the milky-white blurred spot with dimensions of about 5–6 moon visual diameters at the height of 30 degrees, consisting from several concentric circles. Its form looked like a halo that surrounded the moon in the fair chilled weather. I told my companion to look at this painted moon. He thought for a while and replied that, firstly, there was no moon and, secondly, that it might be at the other part of the sky. Since the moment we had noticed this phenomenon 1–2 minutes passed but I don’t know how long it lasted before this moment and how did it look initially. At this moment in the center of this spot the star burst that had the same form during several seconds, then it began to grow abruptly in size and high-tailing westward. Within several seconds it increased rapidly and it was as big as the moon then,having torn a smoke-cloud or the clouds, it came into a view and looked like an enormous fiery opaline disk of the size of 2–2, 5 lunar diameters surrounded with the same pale corona. After that, remaining the same size, the sphere began to fade until it had merged with the halo surrounding it. The halo in turn sprawled above the sky and went out. The dawn began. The clock showed 6.57 a.m., the phenomenon lasted not more than one and a half minute and impressed us a lot…».
This is how Karelin describes the seen phenomenon in the report: «I had jumped out of a sleeping bag and from a tent without boots, only in the woolen socks and, standing on the branches, saw the big light spot. It was expanding. In the center of the spot a small star appeared and also started to increase. This spot was moving from northeast to southwest and was falling to the ground. Then it disappeared behind the ridge and the forest, having left a light strip in the sky. This phenomenon influenced people in different way: Atmanaki claimed that it seemed that the earth was going to explode because of the crash against some planet; Shavkunov thought that this phenomenon «isn’t so terrific»; I was unimpressed – it was only a meteoritic fall and nothing more. Hardly this phenomenon lasted more than a minute».
Mr. Atmanaki G. V and Mr. Karelin V. G. in Vizhay settlement.
The case also had interesting evidence – the scouts’ telegram containing the information about the observation of the «fiery sphere’s flight» on the 31st of March: «To Mr. Prodanov, Mr. Vishnevsky. On 31.03.59 at 9.30 a.m. local time, on 31.03 at 4.00 a.m. the person on duty Meshcheryakov had noticed a big fiery circle in the southeast direction that was moving toward us during 20 minutes and disappeared behind the high ground 880. Before its’ dipping below the horizon a star appeared in the center of the circle and gradually increased till it became the size of the moon; then the star began to fall down separating from the circle. The unusual phenomenon was observed by many alarmed people. We ask to explain this phenomenon and its safety as under our conditions it makes disturbing impression. Mr. Avenburg, Mr. Potapov, Mr. Sogrin)".
We also know about one more evidence of Mr. Shtrauh that was taken from the article of S.Bogomolov in the newspaper «The Ural worker» of October 31, 1990 and tells about the sighting of a «fiery sphere» that happened in twenty years after the accident with Dyatlov’s group: «On 16.02.79 at 8. 15 p.m. in the northwest part of the horizon there was a bright bluish white flash; it turned into a quickly growing circle of the dazzling light which then formed an ellipse. There was a purple smoky sphere in the center of the flash of size of the full moon, it promptly lifted up and dissolved, not having reached the zenith. The luminous spot-ellipse fell to pieces like the segments of an orange and gradually died away, having left in the sky a gleaming trace. It lasted 6-10 minutes and then it became dark…».
This is interesting. Here are «the segments of an orange» in the sky that were falling!
Finally, the sightings of the «fiery spheres» are known because of the evidences of the taiga hunters (including Mansi ones) hunting in the north of Ural.
Firstly, there was a hypothesis that the «fiery spheres» could be the flights of the surface-to-air missiles. At that time in Ural there already were air defense missile battalions of С-75complex; in a year, on May 1, 1960 the battalion of major Voronov misguided F.Pauers's air scout near Sverdlovsk. It was reported that near the Chistop Mountain there was an early-warning radar station (in 1972–1986 yy.). Therefore on this location an air defense missile battalion could be based before these years. I wasn’t sure in these conclusions as the sighting time of the «fiery spheres» (about 10–22 minutes) didn't correspond with the flight time of the surface-to-air missiles. The attempts to explain this discrepancy as a result of the errors of the timing made by the witnesses, as it was found out later, were incorrect.
The hypothesis about the surface-to-air missile raised a question: «And why to rocket? On what targets»? Indeed this type of fire was a very expensive thing. Allegedly the scouting sondes that the Americans launched to our territory using radio and photo equipment for «espionage» purposes could be the targets. The sondes mostly flied on the western winds of a stratosphere