Аннотация: Hey, blackguard, be ready with your things! A biographical note about Sergei Pavlovich Korolev.
Hey, blackguard, be ready with your things! A biographical note about Sergei Pavlovich Korolev.
In one of the previous miniatures, I put forward a version that the release of Sergei Pavlovich Korolev was interconnected with the results of Wernher von Braun's activities.
During reading the book by Natalia Koroleva "Sergei Korolev. Father ", I remembered this version.
Natalia Koroleva writes: "The successes achieved in the development of liquid-propellant rocket engines for aircraft prompted the NKVD, in agreement with the People's Commissariat for Aviation Industry, on April 25, 1944 to prepare, and on July 16, 1944 to sign a letter important for the fate of prisoners [letter signed by L. Beria and send to I. Stalin]. (...) The attached list also included the father's surname [Sergei Korolev] ... " [unofficial translation]
It seemed to me interesting that the letter was prepared in April and signed in July 1944 - that is, almost three months later. Slowness and indecision were unusual for L. Beria and I. Stalin.
How to decipher the three-month pause of high-ranking statesmen?
I turned to the memoirs by Boris Chertok. Here is what he writes in book 1 "Rockets and People": "In connection with the bombing of Peenemünde, the Wehrmacht in August 1943 decided to create a reserve research site in Poland ...
The first experimental launch in Blizna in the field was carried out by the 444 test battery on November 5, 1943 ...
Thanks to the actions of Polish partisans and underground fighters, the British secret service received very valuable information about the test site in Poland. They even managed to send a plane to receive the parts of the missiles recovered by the partisans from the crash sites. In addition, the British received the remains of a missile that fell on Sweden.
It was impossible to hesitate any longer, and Churchill turned for help directly to Stalin ... ". [unofficial translation]
While the launches were going on in Poland, while the information came up to the Polish partisans and to the British intelligence, while it came up the leaders of the USSR and was checked, a time passed, and April 1944 came ...
But, nevertheless, there was no complete clarity ...
Boris Chertok quotes Churchill's letter, but I don't read it. I immediately pass to the date of the letter from Churchill to Stalin: July 13, 1944.
Immediately I turn to Natalia Koroleva's book. - On July 16, 1943, after an almost three-month pause, a letter from Beria to Stalin was signed. - "As a result of activity of L.P. Beria and I.V. Stalin , the decision of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of July 27, 1944 was prepared on the early release of the specialists listed in the letter with the removal of their convictions. Under number "18" was the name of the father [Sergei Korolev].". [unofficial translation]
It remains to add to the many strengths of Beria and Stalin a reasonable caution (what if some persons will hit the best city on Earth with a missile?) and a technical intuition (based on a reasonable assessment of important factors: if Churchill himself writes, then ...).
In general, reading the book by Natalia Koroleva confirms my historical version that the release of Sergei Pavlovich Korolev was closely related to the results of the work of Wernher von Braun.
If we recall Wernher von Braun, then in the book by Dennis Pishkevich, translated into Russian, "Wernher von Braun. The Man Who Sold the Moon" there are lines like this:
"One of the most reliable witnesses confirming the importance of Korolev for the development of Soviet missile technology was former Soviet Prime Minister Nikita Khrushchev. In his memoirs, he wrote:
When Stalin was alive, he himself made all decisions on defense issues, especially with regard to nuclear weapons and delivery vehicles.
Soon after Stalin's death, Korolev was invited to the Politburo to give a report on his work. I do not want to exaggerate, but we looked at what he showed, like rams onto a new gate. When he showed us one of his rockets, which looked like a large pipe, we did not believe that it could fly. Korolev invited us to the launch pad and tried to explain to us the principles of the rocket. We were there like peasants at a fair. We walked around the rocket, tapped on it, trying testing its strength, almost tasting it, using a tongue.
We fully trusted comrade Korolev. When he said that his rocket would not only fly, but also fly 7 thousand kilometers, we believed him. "
I did not check these lines with Khrushchev's memoirs (due to Dennis Pishkevich's lack of an exact link to a specific book and page).
But I returned to the book by Natalia Koroleva: "L.L. Kerber also recalled the last meeting with his father in 1965 in his Ostankino house, at the gate of which there was a guard, and the words of the owner of the house, full of sad irony, addressed to him and to S.M. Jaeger: "You know, guys, the most amazing thing is that there is so much in common between this current situation and the then. Sometimes I wake up at night, in a bed, and think: maybe someone has already prepared, gave an order, and these same polite guards will brazenly enter here and say: "Hey, blackguard, be ready [to special trip] with your things!"
The conversation of L.L. Kerber with Sergei Korolev took place in 1965. On January 14, 1966, Sergei Pavlovich Korolev died during a medicine operation.
Natalia Koroleva's book also contains the following fragments: "Flight tests of the Pe-2 aircraft with a jet engine in 1944-1945 continued. They were conducted by pilots A.G. Vasilchenko and A.S. Sevruk, and later my father [Sergei Korolev]. Head of Expedition of Plant No. 22 N.А. Soldatkin recalled that he once saw two men at the factory airfield, busy with something on the plane, and a young guy in uniform smoking not far from them. To the question - who are they? - the guy reluctantly replied that these were "convicts" whom he was guarding. At that moment, the men boarded the plane, started the engines and took off. "They will fly away," said Soldatkin. "They won't fly away," the guy answered phlegmatically, "they don't have enough fuel."
After all, someone could have an assumption that Korolev, having become the head of the space project, could fly away to the Moon ... Who knows if he has enough fuel or not? The plan to touch Soviet people to the Moon was somehow very difficult implementing ...
[MMСCXXXVIII. Sergei Korolev and Wernher von Braun. The era of Mikhail Tukhachevsky and her completion. A historical essay. - June 25, 2021.].
September 6, 2021 17:35
Translation from Russian into English: September 6, 2021 19:24.
Владимир Владимирович Залесский "А ну, падло, собирайся с вещами! Биографическая заметка о Сергее Павловиче Королеве".