Pyotr Ivanovich Dolgov (; 21 February 1920 – 1 November 1962) (

Hero of the Soviet Union The title Hero of the Soviet Union () was the highest distinction in the Soviet Union, awarded together with the Order of Lenin personally or collectively for heroic feats in service to the Soviet state and society. The title was awarded both ...

) was a

colonel Colonel ( ; abbreviated as Col., Col, or COL) is a senior military Officer (armed forces), officer rank used in many countries. It is also used in some police forces and paramilitary organizations. In the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, a colon ...

in the Soviet

airborne forces Airborne forces are ground combat units carried by aircraft and airdropped into battle zones, typically by parachute drop. Parachute-qualified infantry and support personnel serving in airborne units are also known as paratroopers. The main ...

. Dolgov died while carrying out a high-altitude

parachute A parachute is a device designed to slow an object's descent through an atmosphere by creating Drag (physics), drag or aerodynamic Lift (force), lift. It is primarily used to safely support people exiting aircraft at height, but also serves va ...

jump from a Volga balloon gondola.Dolgov's year of death is given as both 1961 and 1962 by th
Encyclopedia Astronautica
but as 1962 by Goebel and at warheroes.ru. 1962 is correct, as shown by the ''Der Spiegel'' obituary cited below.

Early life and career

Dolgov was born into a family of

farmer A farmer is a person engaged in agriculture, raising living organisms for food or raw materials. The term usually applies to people who do some combination of raising field crops, orchards, vineyards, poultry, or other livestock. A farmer ...

s in the village of Bogoyavlenskoye (now Dolgovo) in Zemetchinsky District,

Penza Oblast Penza Oblast () is a federal subjects of Russia, federal subject of Russia (an oblast). Its administrative center is the types of inhabited localities in Russia, city of Penza. As of the Russian Census (2010), 2010 Census, its population was ...

. He served with the

Soviet airborne The Soviet Airborne Forces or VDV (from ''Vozdushno-Parachuting, desantnye voyska SSSR'', Russian: Воздушно-десантные войска СССР, ВДВ; Air-landing Forces) was a military branch, separate troops branch of the Soviet ...

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

. In January 1945, Dolgov became a company commander in the 350th Guards Rifle Regiment of the 114th Guards Rifle Division. Dolgov participated in the Budapest Offensive and the

Vienna Offensive The Vienna offensive was an offensive launched by the Soviet 2nd and 3rd Ukrainian Fronts in order to capture Vienna, Austria, during World War II. The offensive lasted from 16 March to 15 April 1945. After several days of street-to-street figh ...

. On 6 April, Dolgov reportedly knocked out a self-propelled gun and killed 40 German soldiers. He was wounded but allegedly refused to leave the battlefield. Dolgov graduated from the Ryazan Higher Airborne Command School in 1947. He worked as a parachute tester. He made 1409 jumps, setting eight world and Soviet records. He reportedly designed the

ejection seat In aircraft, an ejection seat or ejector seat is a system designed to rescue the aircraft pilot, pilot or other aircrew, crew of an aircraft (usually military) in an emergency. In most designs, the seat is propelled out of the aircraft by an exp ...

s for the

Vostok spacecraft Vostok (, translated as "East") was a class of single-pilot crewed spacecraft built by the Soviet Union. The first human spaceflight was accomplished with Vostok 1 on April 12, 1961, by Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin. The Vostok programme ma ...

Death

On 1 November 1962, Dolgov and

Major Major most commonly refers to: * Major (rank), a military rank * Academic major, an academic discipline to which an undergraduate student formally commits * People named Major, including given names, surnames, nicknames * Major and minor in musi ...

Yevgeni Nikolayevich Andreyev ascended in a Volga

balloon A balloon is a flexible membrane bag that can be inflated with a gas, such as helium, hydrogen, nitrous oxide, oxygen, or air. For special purposes, balloons can be filled with smoke, liquid water, granular media (e.g. sand, flour or rice), ...

gondola from

Volsk Volsk () is a town in Saratov Oblast, Russia, located on the right bank of the Volga River, opposite the mouth of the Bolshoy Irgiz (a tributary of the Volga), northeast from Saratov, the administrative center of the oblast. As of the 2021 C ...

, near

Saratov Saratov ( , ; , ) is the largest types of inhabited localities in Russia, city and administrative center of Saratov Oblast, Russia, and a major port on the Volga River. Saratov had a population of 901,361, making it the List of cities and tow ...

, to make high-altitude parachute jumps. Andreyev successfully completed his jump. Dolgov, testing an experimental

pressure suit A pressure suit is a protective suit worn by high-altitude pilots who may fly at altitudes where the air pressure is too low for an unprotected person to survive, even when breathing pure oxygen at positive pressure. Such suits may be either fu ...

, jumped at . The helmet visor of Dolgov's pressure suit hit part of the gondola as he exited, and the suit depressurized, killing him. On 12 December 1962, Dolgov was posthumously named a

. If Dolgov's jump had been successful, he still would not have exceeded the record set by

Joseph Kittinger Joseph William Kittinger II (July 27, 1928 – December 9, 2022) was an officer in the United States Air Force (USAF) who served from 1950 to 1978, and earned Command Pilot status before retiring with the rank of colonel. He held the world rec ...

for the highest-altitude parachute jump in history (, 16 August 1960). The current world record is held by

Alan Eustace Robert Alan Eustace (born December 19, 1956) is an American computer scientist who served as senior vice president of engineering and first senior vice president for knowledge at Google until retiring in 2015. On October 24, 2014, he made a fre ...

(, 24 October 2014).

Legacy

At the time of Dolgov's death, the

Soviet Army The Soviet Ground Forces () was the land warfare service branch of the Soviet Armed Forces from 1946 to 1992. It was preceded by the Red Army. After the Soviet Union ceased to exist in December 1991, the Ground Forces remained under th ...

newspaper ''

Red Star A red star, five-pointed and filled, is a symbol that has often historically been associated with communist ideology, particularly in combination with the hammer and sickle, but is also used as a purely socialist symbol in the 21st century. ...

'' announced that he had died in the course of "carrying out his duties". Over the years there have been false reports that Dolgov actually died on 11 October 1960, in a failed flight of a Vostok spacecraft. A fictionalized version of Dolgov's death (incorrectly dated in February 1961) appears in the short story " The Chief Designer" by Andy Duncan, which was published in ''

Asimov's Science Fiction ''Asimov's Science Fiction'' is an American science fiction magazine edited by Sheila Williams and published by Dell Magazines, which is owned by Penny Press. It was launched as a quarterly by Davis Publications in 1977, after obtaining Isaac ...

'' magazine and was a Hugo finalist.

References

External links

Dolgov at Encyclopedia AstronauticaText of "The Chief Designer"
{{DEFAULTSORT:Dolgov, Pyotr Ivanovich 1920 births 1962 deaths People from Zemetchinsky District People from Morshansky Uyezd Communist Party of the Soviet Union members Soviet Air Force officers Personnel of the Soviet Airborne Forces Soviet balloonists Soviet parachuting pioneers Soviet spaceflight pioneers Space diving Ryazan Guards Higher Airborne Command School alumni Soviet military personnel of World War II Recipients of the Stalin Prize Heroes of the Soviet Union Recipients of the Order of Lenin Recipients of the Order of the Red Banner Recipients of the Order of the Red Star Decompression accidents and incidents Accidental deaths in the Soviet Union