Pyotr Ivanovich Dolgov (russian: Пётр Иванович Долгов; 21 February 1920 – 1 November 1962) (

Hero of the Soviet Union The title Hero of the Soviet Union (russian: Герой Советского Союза, translit=Geroy Sovietskogo Soyuza) was the highest distinction in the Soviet Union, awarded together with the Order of Lenin personally or collectively for ...

) was a

colonel Colonel (abbreviated as Col., Col or COL) is a senior military 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 colonel was typically in charge of ...

in the Soviet

Airborne forces Airborne forces, airborne troops, or airborne infantry are ground combat units carried by aircraft and airdropped into battle zones, typically by parachute drop or air assault. Parachute-qualified infantry and support personnel serving in ai ...

. Dolgov died while carrying out a high-altitude

parachute A parachute is a device used to slow the motion of an object through an atmosphere by creating drag or, in a ram-air parachute, aerodynamic lift. A major application is to support people, for recreation or as a safety device for aviators, who ...

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 mig ...

s in the village of Bogoyavlenskoye (now Dolgovo) in

Zemetchinsky District Zemetchinsky District (russian: Земе́тчинский райо́н) is an administrativeLaw #774-ZPO and municipalLaw #690-ZPO district (raion), one of the administrative divisions of Penza Oblast, twenty-seven in Penza Oblast, Russia. It is l ...

Penza Oblast Penza Oblast (russian: Пе́нзенская о́бласть, ''Penzenskaya oblast'') is a federal subject of Russia (an oblast). Its administrative center is the city of Penza. As of the 2010 Census, its population was 1,386,186. Geogr ...

. 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 A ...

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

. 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 fi ...

. 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 The General V.F. Margelov Ryazan Guards Higher Airborne twice Red Banner Order of Suvorov Command School (RGVVDKU) () is a military educational institute of the Russian Ministry of Defense, situated in Ryazan, about southeast of Moscow. It was f ...

in 1947. He worked as a parachute tester. He made 1409 jumps, setting 8 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 ex ...

s for the

Vostok spacecraft Vostok (russian: Восток, 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 ...

Death

On 1 November 1962, Dolgov and

major Major (commandant in certain jurisdictions) is a military rank of commissioned officer status, with corresponding ranks existing in many military forces throughout the world. When used unhyphenated and in conjunction with no other indicators ...

Yevgeni Nikolayevich Andreyev Yevgeny Nikolayevich Andreyev (russian: Евгений Андреев; 4 September 1926 – 9 February 2000) was a colonel in the Soviet Air Force. He set an official record for the longest-distance free-fall parachute jump on 1 November 1962, whi ...

ascended in a Volga

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

gondola from

Volsk Volsk (russian: Вольск) 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. ...

, near

Saratov Saratov (, ; rus, Сара́тов, a=Ru-Saratov.ogg, p=sɐˈratəf) is the largest city and administrative center of Saratov Oblast, Russia, and a major port on the Volga River upstream (north) of Volgograd. Saratov had a population of 901,36 ...

, 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 breathing pure oxygen at positive pressure. Such suits may be either full-pr ...

, 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) served as a United States Air Force (USAF) officer from 1950 to 1978. He was a fighter pilot who earned Command Pilot status and retired as a colonel. He held the world record for ...

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

Alan Eustace Robert Alan Eustace (born 1956/1957) is an American computer scientist who served as Senior Vice President of Engineering at Google until retiring in 2015. On October 24, 2014, he made a free-fall jump from the stratosphere, breaking Felix Baum ...

(, 24 October 2014).

Legacy

At the time of Dolgov's death, the

Soviet Army uk, Радянська армія , image = File:Communist star with golden border and red rims.svg , alt = , caption = Emblem of the Soviet Army , start_date ...

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. I ...

'' 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 which publishes science fiction and fantasy named after science fiction author Isaac Asimov. It is currently published by Penny Publications. From January 2017, the publication ...

'' magazine and was a

Hugo Hugo or HUGO may refer to: Arts and entertainment * ''Hugo'' (film), a 2011 film directed by Martin Scorsese * Hugo Award, a science fiction and fantasy award named after Hugo Gernsback * Hugo (franchise), a children's media franchise based on ...

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 spaceflight pioneers Space diving Ryazan Guards Higher Airborne Command School alumni Soviet military personnel of World War II Stalin Prize winners 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