The verdict to the “father” of the Soviet cosmonautics – Moskovskaya Pravda

By the decision of the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR of September 27, 1938, the head of one of the departments of the Jet Research Institute (RNII), Sergei Pavlovich Korolev, was sentenced to 10 years in prison.

Korolev was arrested at home (in apartment No. 11 of house No. 28 on Konyushennaya Street in Moscow) at half past eleven at night on June 27, 1938. As his daughter, Natalya Koroleva, later recalled, in the book “S. P. Korolev. Father”, “clouds” around him began to thicken back in May of this fateful year, and this was due to the fact that the bench tests of cruise missiles that Korolev worked on did not go as smoothly as we would like:

“So, on May 13, 1938, an explosion occurred during testing of the rocket propulsion system. Father participated in the work of the commission headed by M.K. Tikhonravov, who investigated the causes of the accident. On May 27, flight tests were carried out near the city of Noginsk, which included dropping a model of the 301 rocket (an analogue of the 212 rocket, designed for air launch) from an aircraft. The crew of five people on board, including two representatives of the institute, one of whom was the father, suddenly found themselves in an emergency. When resetting the layout, it jammed, and it did not come off the guide. I had to go for a landing with a mock-up skewed under the wing, which, just before landing, suddenly shifted back sharply, almost violating the alignment of the aircraft, which could lead to an accident. Everything ended well, but again a commission was formed, the reasons for the failure were again analyzed with accusations against the designer – my father, whose nerves were already stretched to the limit. On May 26 and 28, my father conducted tests of the propulsion system repaired after the explosion of the 212 rocket at the stand, which were successful. However, the next bench test, scheduled for May 29, almost led to tragedy. A.V. Pallo recalled that, while checking pipeline connections with the mechanics that day, he could not achieve the necessary tightness and suggested that his father change the design of the seal, and before that, refuse to test. The father was very angry and, saying that he would manage without assistants, went to the stand. Everything happened as predicted by A.V. Pallo: a tube was torn out of the joint by pressure, the end of which hit the father on the head. Bloody, he staggered out into the yard, covering the wound with a handkerchief, fell, then got up. VC. Shitov saw him through the window, ran up to him and took him to the first-aid post. They called an ambulance. Nearby was the polyclinic of the factory. Peter Alekseev, but his father asked to be taken to the Botkin hospital, saying that his wife worked there. Mom told me how she was told that an ambulance had brought her husband and that he was wounded, how everything inside her broke, but, pulling herself together, she rushed to the emergency department. Father lay on a gurney, pale and motionless. He received a concussion, and in the parietal-temporal region – a bruised, but without damage to the bone wound. It was only by sheer luck that he survived.”

In part, it was these more frequent emergencies that formed the basis of the future indictment. Of course, during the fabrication of the case, there was also a political component: Sergei Korolev was accused of belonging to a “Trotskyist, wrecking organization.” As reported in the indictment, “during the investigation, Korolev pleaded guilty to having been recruited into the Trotskyite wrecking organization in 1935 by the former technical director of Research Institute No. 3 Langemak (convicted). On the instructions of the anti-Soviet organization, Korolev carried out wrecking work to disrupt the development and commissioning of new types of weapons by the Red Army.

This part of the indictment requires some clarifications and additions. So, according to Natalia Koroleva, the father pleaded guilty only after he was told that if you don’t sign the protocols today, your wife will be arrested tomorrow, and your daughter will be sent to an orphanage. “Technical Director of Research Institute No. 3 Langemak”, who allegedly attracted Korolev to the Trotskyist-sabotage organization in 1935, is the leading designer of powder rockets. He made a major contribution to the creation of rockets for the legendary Katyushas. Georgy Langemak was arrested on November 3, 1937. During the investigation, he also signed crazy protocols in the hope that later a fair Soviet court would figure everything out … However, by decision of the court, Langemak was shot.

Sergei Korolev was more fortunate: by the decision of the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR of September 27, 1938, he was sentenced to 10 years in prison. However, as Natalya Koroleva says, after the petition of the famous pilots Mikhail Gromov and Valentina Grizodubova, her father’s case was sent for review. As a result, on June 13, 1939, the Plenum of the Supreme Court of the USSR overturned the verdict of the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR. The investigation file on Korolev’s charges was transferred to a new investigation, and during the re-investigation, Korolev showed that the testimony he had given during the investigation in 1938 was untrue and false.

However, according to the conclusion of the re-investigation, the materials and documentary data available in the case reveal Korolev that “in 1936 he was developing a gunpowder winged torpedo, knowing in advance that the main parts of this torpedo – devices with photocells – to control the torpedo and aim it at the target cannot be manufactured by the wireline central laboratory. Korolev, in order to load the institute with unnecessary work, intensively developed the missile part of this torpedo in 2 versions. As a result of this test, four torpedoes built by Korolev showed their complete unsuitability, which caused damage to the state in the amount of 120,000 rubles and delayed the development of other, more relevant topics. In 1937, when developing the side compartment of a torpedo (winged), he made a sabotage calculation, as a result of which research work on the creation of a torpedo was disrupted.

In addition, the design engineer was accused of “artificially delaying the production and testing of defense facilities.”

As a result of the revision, the term of imprisonment was reduced to 8 years (the sentence was pronounced in March 1940). After that, Korolev was sent to the Moscow special prison of the NKVD TsKB-29 (before that he had served time in the Kolyma, in the village of Maldyak), where, under the leadership of the also convicted aircraft designer Andrei Tupolev, he took an active part in the creation of the Pe-2 and Tu-2 bombers and at the same time took an initiative developed projects for a guided air torpedo and a new version of a missile interceptor.

In 1942, Korolev was transferred to a “sharashka” in Kazan – OKB-16 at the Kazan Aviation Plant, where he was developing new rocket engines for use in aviation. In July 1944, Korolev was released from prison ahead of schedule with the removal of his criminal record, but without rehabilitation. He was rehabilitated only in 1957. And in the same year, on October 4, a rocket designed by Sergei Korolev launched the first artificial satellite in history into earth orbit.

Sergei Ishkov.