UFOs in World War I: War Stories

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

Hundreds of strange telegrams, reports and protocols have been preserved in the police archives of many provinces. Military men, gendarmes and ordinary citizens reported about certain objects that appeared far from the front line at night, shone with dazzling beams, easily dodged shelling, and landed anywhere.

Russian ufologist Mikhail Gershtein and Belarusian historian Ilya Butov studied this documentary evidence that appeared in 1914-1916. And now they assure: they very much resemble the current ones, only without the now familiar terms - "UFO" and "flying saucer".

People often called the mysterious devices in the sky of the Russian Empire airplanes or airships, pulling what they saw to something more or less familiar and already existing at that time. Although it followed from the testimony of eyewitnesses that the comparison was very arbitrary. The so-called airplanes and airships had multi-colored lights along the sides, powerful searchlights, had the highest maneuverability, and could hover in one place. They looked somehow different - by no means the same whatnots on which people flew then.

Report on the observation of an "illuminated airplane" on the night of 11 (24) August 1914 in the Pskov province

"Pre-revolutionary UFOs" also appeared before the First World War. As long as the time was peaceful, they did not cause much concern. Although the newspapers wrote that some aircraft appeared over the location of military units and shone from the sky. On July 26 and 27, 1914 (hereinafter, all dates are transferred to the new style), "a mysterious airplane flew over Zhitomir for two nights in a row, illuminating the camp disposition of troops with a searchlight."

On August 1, 1914, Germany declared war on Russia. After that, everything unusual in the sky was attributed to the Germans by default. Already on August 11, the commander of the Kazan Military District, Major General Aleksey Alekseevich Mavrin, sent a telegram to the authorities of all provinces: “There are obviously aircraft in the district area. Whenever possible, he ordered the troops to fire at the aircraft."

The order did not prevent the appearance of UFOs even over Kazan itself. A day later, on August 13, another "airplane" was seen over the city, quickly flying "at a very significant altitude." On August 14, at about 11 pm, a group of workers led by technician Kasyanov saw a black apparatus in the shape of a cigar flying quickly and silently over the Malaya Kokshaga River. On the same night, Kazan residents observed "a strange celestial phenomenon: a star is not a star, an airplane is not an airplane … Some bright ring-shaped circle with two rays slowly passed across the sky in the direction from the Arsk field to the mouth of the Kazanka River."

On August 17, the son of a police overseer saw a "flying airplane" illuminated in the middle of the Parat factories area. The father, who arrived at the place, saw him too. The gendarmes searched the factory. But nothing and no one was found.

Bullets don't take them

All attempts to shoot down the "aircraft" were unsuccessful. On August 15, the police fired at an "airplane" flying at a low altitude over Yekaterinoslav (Dnepropetrovsk). By order of the commandant of the city, 25 gendarmes fired two volleys at the apparatus, after which he quickly took off and disappeared.

On September 22, an airplane with two white lights appeared at the Razdelnaya station of the Southern Railway, made a circle over the station, and during this salvo, the latter was illuminated by a searchlight from the airplane from the airplane;

The volost clerk fired three times at the well-visible pilots of the "airplane". Didn't do any harm.

The authorities were particularly concerned about the appearance of "airplanes" in the interior of the country, where there were no domestic devices, and the enemy could only fly through with landings and refueling. It turned out that traitors were operating in the Russian rear, helping the Germans.

Here is what the Minister of Internal Affairs Nikolai Alekseevich Maklakov said in an official telegram dated August 22, 1914: secret enemy aeronautical stations, workshops and gasoline depots. I ask you to take the most urgent search measures."

However, the search did not bring any results either. Reports about "airplanes" came from everywhere - from Finland to the most remote regions of the Far East.

The Echo newspaper, published in Blagoveshchensk, reported that on August 25, 1914, “at about 10 o'clock in the evening, near Kukhterin Lug, the passengers of the Express steamer watched for a rather long time the flight of a spherical body, similar to an airship, which flew from south to north on a significant height, in the direction of the river Zeya, and then quickly rose in height and disappeared from sight. This was reported to the authorities."

A gendarme dossier with details has been preserved. Captain Alexander Silvestrovich Epov told the police: “The object flew parallel to the steamer for five miles, for about one hour, then, ahead of the steamer, began to climb and disappeared without a trace … That it was an airship or a“zeppelin”, I cannot say. But taking into account the invariability of the shape of the flying object, the sharp delineation of its forms, I believe that it was not a cloud or any atmospheric phenomenon, and I admit that it could be a balloon or some kind of aircraft. All this was confirmed by the passengers of the steamer who landed in the city of Zeya-Pristan."

Because because we are pilots

In the gendarme dossiers there are also reports of UFO pilots who supposedly did not differ in any way from ordinary people. A resident of the Orenburg province, a certain Valimukhametov, said that on September 21, 1914, “at about 3-4 o'clock in the morning, he left the cordon on the Abzakovskaya road with hay to the Beloretsky plant. Having driven away from the cordon fifty yards, something lit it up and it became light, better than during the day. Looking up, he saw directly above him a flying object, like a boat, in which sat three people in black high hats; two of them sat in the back, and one in front and controlled the airship. The latter he examined better than the others and noticed well: he was a handsome man with a black, well-curled mustache. The flying object did not make a particular noise, but only puffed like a steam locomotive; when those flying in the airship noticed him, they immediately increased their speed, began to climb faster and disappeared. In front of the flying airship there was a very bright red lantern, the same was behind, there was also one lantern in the middle on both sides, and some very bright mirror was spinning around them. When the airship disappeared, darkness fell again.

According to Valimukhametov, the airship flew no higher than 20 sazhens (42.5 meters - M. G.) from the ground, so he looked at it well and it appeared to him in the form of a huge boat; its direction was from east to southwest. Valimukhametov was very frightened and could not even imagine that it was flying."

We can only guess if it was a miracle of disguise, or if a terrified witness drew a lot in his imagination. The possibility of hallucinations or fiction in some cases is excluded - there were many observers, and they looked at the "pilots" from different points.

After the revolution, attempts to investigate the appearance of the mysterious apparatuses stopped. But the guests themselves, it seems, have not disappeared anywhere. Thirty years later they began to be called UFOs, a few years later - "flying saucers." And the pilots were no longer Germans, but aliens.

Who flew then and is still flying today? There are no answers. There are only observations that cannot be dismissed. So the riddle exists. And it is not fiction.