I haven't been on this forum in a long time and now I've read the latest posts and I feel very sorry that the forum has become very "yellowed". It's similar to the "yellow press" online. The discussion here has been reduced to a lot of rumor and gossip that has absolutely nothing to do with reality. I understand that it is very difficult to understand the actual events of another state 60+ years later, but to distort them as much as you do here is no longer possible. I remember well the events in my life back then and am quite capable of judging it from a modern perspective, as I have no distortions related to fiction. I saw and see everything in reality. In addition, I have the ability to judge many things from a professional point of view.
I'm very sorry, but there is a lot of questionable or unreliable information on this resource as well. So much of it is in the form of rumors, myths, and gossip.
How far off judgement is I can illustrate by the example of the last post I read.
Dear Charles, please don't be offended by me, but everything I say is based on 100% reality.
About helicopters
In the memoirs of Boris Slobtsov there is a story about the capture of fugitive prisoners, which gave rise to a number of versions associated with gulag convicts, aka zeks. But there really was an escape! In the State Archives, they managed to find a book of escape registration for 1959, from which it follows that on February 19, a group of three prisoners escaped immediately after Gordo called Vizhay. They will only be caught on February 21, when Gordo and Blinov were already there. Does this have something to do with why the investigation doesn't ask them what exactly happened on the spot at that period?
https://dyatlovpass.com/hakimov
Here we don't care about the date of Feb. 21 but about the one of Feb. 01.
And there:
- BORDYUGOV Albert Aleksandrovich (Бордюгов Альберт Александрович), the Commander of helicopter unit of the 123rd air squadron (Ivdel); flew the Po-2 aircraft and the Mi-1 and Mi-4 helicopters. In February 1959, he took part in the search for geologists of the Northern prospecting party №7 of the Bazhenov expedition in the area of the settlement of Vershina.
- TOLSTOV Andrey Andreevich (Толстов Андрей Андреевич) a pilot of MI-1, air squadron 123 - Ivdel. In February 1959, he took part in the search for geologists of the Northern prospecting party №7 of the Bazhenov expedition in the area of the village of Vershina.
- USTYUZHANIN V. (Устюжанин В.) Commander of the An-2 squadron of the 123rd air squadron - Ivdel. Unconfirmed reports suggest: in February 1959 he took part in the search for geologists of the Northern prospecting party №7 of the Bazhenov expedition in the area of the village of Vershina. In the local newspaper he was mentioned as V. Ustinov by mistake.
This rescue operation in Vershina took place at mid-February, but what is written in the flight logs of 123 Air Squadron around Feb. 01? Did they have missions? How many? When? What were the missions? Who was piloting? Who were the passengers?
Before moving on, I would like to clarify what has already been said:
1. The Vershina settlement is so far away from the place of events on the Dyatlov Pass that it is possible not to talk about it. For example, here is a diagram (based on Google-images, which is a reliable representation of reality and allows you to accurately measure distances) which can explain everything:
https://disk.yandex.ru/i/kFHOmfttSYsSpA The straight line distance is already commensurate with the practical range of the Mi-4 helicopter that was used there. Therefore, we cannot really speak about any connection of these events.
And what was the status of Gladyrev before Mar. 13, 1959?
- GLADYREV Pyotr Vasilyevich (Гладырев Петр Васильевич) (1922-1960) When in 1958 first helicopters entered squadron service, he did transition training for flying a helicopter and on March 13, 1959 he was confirmed as a plane commander of MI-4 helicopter.
That is to say on Feb. 01, 1959, Gladyrev was able to pilot a MI-4 helicopter but he was not registered as an official MI-4 pilot, is that correct?
No. This is a fundamentally erroneous opinion. Earlier than the date when the order of appointment came out, i.e. the completion of retraining, the pilot could not be allowed to fly. In addition, he had to undergo flight training under the supervision of an instructor who was already admitted and had extensive flying experience. Therefore, he had to start flying independently for some time after that.
Gladyrev was only officially confirmed as MI-4 pilot on March 13, 1959, that very same day when Prodanov was appointed head of operational search?
Prodanov was not appointed to that position. This service did not exist at that time or there at all. You made that up yourself. He was the "very first person" in the area, so all the telephone assignments were secondary and insignificant. Don't put too much emphasis on that here, it will only confuse understanding.
Gladyrev who was later "killed along with the crew (6 people were killed in total) in the MI-4 accident in the Ivdel region on July 19, 1960", and accident decimating the 123 Air Squadron?
What do you mean "air squadron 123 was destroyed"? It existed before and continued to exist until 1992, when it was transferred to the second Sverdlovsk Air Company, only changing its name and management. Only one helicopter and crew were killed.
And why did V.V. Potyazhenko lie to Maria Piskareva: "V.V. said that in May he did not refuse to carry bodies to Sverdlovsk, since only there was a requirement to put them in metal containers"?
He didn't lie about anything. You either misunderstood in a bad translation, or you are purposely distorting the meaning. Such distortions in memory are called memory aberrations in psychology. There is nothing surprising about this. When a person is already about 90 years old and is describing events that were 60 years ago, he may also have forgotten episodes and misunderstandings and misconceptions. The same psychology talks about it this way: valid information is replaced by noise information (which has nothing to do with actual information). In life, it is impossible to ward off other (noisy) information, because that is life itself.
It is well established from the radiograms of Ortyukov and the replies of Prodanov that the pilots did refuse to carry the bodies. Why try to undermine the submission to Prodanov's authority? Potyazhenko's correct answer would have been: "we refused to carry bodies to Sverdlovsk but we were obeying Prodanov's order" not we "did not refuse to carry bodies".
You are misrepresenting the original information. Prodanov could not have given any orders to military pilots. That is a different department. Even a general of another branch of the military could not give orders to pilots. I had a case in practice where an infantry general ordered to load equipment and fly. The crew commander replied, "I can load, but I won't take off because it's against flight rules." There it was a matter of overloading the plane and improper alignment of the cargo, and the general wanted to send it off faster. But there was nothing he could do.
In the same way, Potyazhenko would not take the bodies because they were packed in violation of the instructions for transporting such cargo.
That is why your phrase: "Potyazhenko's correct answer would be: "we refused to take the bodies to Sverdlovsk, but we were following Prodanov's order" (c) is false.
What is the role of the helicopter pilots? Why do we have records of all type of activity at any dates but only silence about Feb. 01?
And why should you be told about February 1 in the context of the events at Dyatlov Pass, if no one flew there, because nothing was known yet?
We know what the pilots were doing in the 1940s and the 1970s but not the slightest information about Jan. 30 - Feb. 02, 1959?
Just as it is unknown about so many periods at any other time...
You press so diligently on all the unknowns that it begs the question: what do you want to achieve, to find out what was real, or to prove some fiction of your own? If that's the second part of the question, what does it have to do with actual events?
Here is a very interesting photo about life in the Northern Urals:
![](https://dyatlovpass.com/resources/340/gallery/Northern-Geological-Expedition-164.jpg)
We can see on the same photo a ZIL-157 6x6 truck on the left, a MI-8 helicopter, a tracked vehicle and sledges, the "sledges on iron pipes" that Dryahlyh was mentioning, at the right. Only Mansi reindeers are missing, but we have there all kinds of Russian means of transport used in the Northern regions. A glimpse into everyday life in the Urals.
Only you misjudge the whole thing.
This is not a Mi-8 helicopter, but a Mi-2. I flew one, so I can tell right away.
2. This picture is from a later period, about 10...15 years later, so it makes no sense to judge what was in 1959.
3. Actually, what are you going to compare, prove or decide with this picture? It can't help in any way to understand what happened.
The MI-4 was not a creation of Soviet engineers but a copy of the American Sikorsky H-19 designed in 1949.
Once again, you are giving misleading information. The similarity with the Sikorsky H-19 is only in the same layout. By the way, this layout was originally theoretically proposed by Boris Yuryev back in 1911. He was a student of Professor Nikolai Zhukovsky (by the way, my distant relative). Therefore, the resemblance was only in appearance. Yuryev also invented the "automatic tilt mechanism" in the same 1911, without which no helicopter can fly normally. It was only later Sikorsky added additional nodes (servo blades) to it and patented it in the USA.
So, it is not yet known who copied more from whom.
This development was completely independent and even so the gearbox design, which was in the Mi-4, has been slightly improved for the Mi-6 and later heavy and superheavy helicopters. Until now, the U.S. can not make a similar gearbox, so they "lose" in the class of heavy and super-heavy helicopters.
The MI-4 was operational and reliable since 1953. And it was widely used in Soviet Union untill 1988. There are many photos of MI-4 and other helicopters on dyatlovpass.com. See at "Search photos" and "Northern geological expedition".
MI-4 picking up rescuers at Dyatlov Pass:
![](https://dyatlovpass.com/resources/340/gallery/3S-57.jpg)
Guns and helicopters are the symbol of the lifestyle in the Northern Urals.
Where did you get the guns from there? Where did you get the guns from there? Even the administrative contingent (police, prison guards, and special enterprises, such as the nuclear industry...). The Northern Urals is a lot of minerals, a difficult climate, resilient people, now and developed infrastructure, as applied to that area and expanse. Guns are exotic there, because no one on earth can fight there yet.
The MI-4 could carry 14 fully equipped troops and it determines the maximum size of the hunt party who went after the hikers: no more than 14 henchmen.
Here you are also very inaccurate. The loading of the Mi-4 in the military version was 12 equipped fighters in the low altitude variant (up to 500 m above sea level). Even Slobtsov's group (11 men) was taken to the search site in 2 stages. Six and five men in succession. This was done because their unloading altitudes were close to 1000m, when helicopters' payload capacity drops due to falling air density in the atmosphere.
So I'm surprised that if you don't know much about all the details and specifics of those events and everything that was around them, why do you have to make such "fantasy events" up?
PS. Apparently I will not be able to appear on the forum very quickly, so I will try to answer any questions, but I can't promise that quickly.