Vitaly volovich a classified pole. "Volovich?" Advanced medicine. Gagarin "
In the Kremlin, Vitaly Volovich was awarded the "Sovereign Eagle" and the Order Star - attributes of the International Prize of St. Andrew the First-Called "For Faith and Loyalty". This is only a small fraction of everything that this amazing person did in his life. The circle of his interests and the circle of his friends is extensive, you can write and talk about him for a long time. But we will confine ourselves to its largest and most outstanding deeds and events, since space in this publication will still be small.
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Famous polar explorer and explorer Vitaly Volovich and no less famous polar explorer Vladimir Chukov
The resort boy, the son of the head physician of Kislovodsk, Vitaly Volovich studied at the Kislovodsk school No. 1. In connection with the move of his parents to a new place of work, he graduated from high school in Sochi on June 20, 1941, and at the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, he entered the Leningrad Military Medical Academy named after S. M. Kirov. Cadet Volovich in September - November 1941, took part in the defense of Leningrad. He was on duty on the roofs of houses, together with other cadets he put out incendiary bombs and caught saboteurs who, with flashlights and rockets from the roofs of houses, gave signals and aimed German bombers at targets. After graduating from the Military Medical Academy. CM. Kirov (already in Samarkand), where Vitaly Georgievich graduated in 1946, was assigned to the rank of captain of the medical service in the airborne troops in the town of Efremov near Tula, to the post of doctor of the 351st battalion of the Airborne Troops. In the battalion, he treated soldiers and officers, jumped with a parachute. One day, going to Tula in the old "nurse" for medicines, he did not suspect that today he would receive a ticket to heaven. The young regimental doctor has long dreamed of parachuting. While he was waiting for the chief of the medical battalion, a tall, fair-haired major came up. We introduced ourselves to each other: "Captain Volovich of the Guard!" - "Burenin". It turned out that this is the same famous Pavel Ivanovich Burenin, who in 1946 was the first to jump to Bunge Island in the Arctic, which inspired the poet Marshak to write a poem. "Have you been to the Arctic?" Burenin asked. "No". - "Would you like to?" - "Highly!" - "Did you jump with a parachute?" - "74 jumps!" - "Do you know the surgery?" - "I know!" - "Fought?" - such a question was asked by men in the post-war years. It sounded like a password. A positive answer automatically meant: "your man."
"Yes". "I'll put in a word." - A few months later, Vitaly Georgievich is called by the authorities. The commander asks: "Have you been to the North Pole?" - "Never!" - "Get ready, departure in an hour." And the first to whom he fell into the hands was the famous pilot Mikhail Vasilyevich Vodopyanov. “Your job is to act like an ambulance. You will be Sklifosovsky. Just keep in mind: it's top secret! " Volovich was appointed the expedition's flagship physician. In the event of a plane crash, he had to jump with a parachute and provide first aid to the pilots. In 1949 Vitaly Georgievich was seconded to the General Directorate of the Northern Sea Route as a flagship doctor (The flagship doctor is in charge of the medical department, both in medical and hygienic terms. He is looking for measures to preserve the health of the teams during the campaign to prevent diseases). Volovich had to treat the members of the expedition, but the main thing was & 8213, if necessary, to provide emergency assistance to aircraft crews in the event of an accident or forced landing on a drifting ice floe, and from that time on, for many years he linked his life with the Arctic. In 1949 and 1950 he took part in high-latitude air expeditions in the Central Polar Basin.
Once in the expedition of the Northern Sea Route, the paratrooper along the way fulfilled a particularly important state task: on May 9, 1949, together with A.P. Medvedev, he made a parachute jump to the North Pole. For this world's first parachute jump to the North Pole, they were awarded the Order of the Red Banner.
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Drifting station "North Pole" -3 - "native" house of V. Volovich
As a flagship doctor, Volovich took part in the high-latitude expeditions "North-4" and "North-5". In 1952 V.G. Volovich went to work at the State Research and Testing Institute of Aviation Medicine of the USSR Ministry of Defense, where he began in the laboratory of shock overloads to solve the problem of life support for flight crews and cosmonauts after the forced abandonment of aircraft and the development of rescue equipment for flight personnel of aircraft of various types. As head of the survival laboratory, Volovich organized dozens of challenging expeditions to the Arctic, taiga, deserts, mountains, jungles of Vietnam, to the tropical zone of the Indian, Pacific and Atlantic oceans. There, in conditions of autonomous existence, as close as possible to real ones, the most complex experiments on survival were carried out. During these tests, human behavior was studied in extreme environmental conditions, the peculiarities of the influence on the body of various adverse natural factors, standard and experimental emergency equipment, emergency food rations, etc. were tested. The materials obtained made it possible to develop memos, instructions for pilots and cosmonauts, recommendations on the behavior and use of natural resources to maintain life in extreme conditions. For more than 40 years, Vitaly Georgievich has been dealing with the survival of pilots, astronauts and, in general, any people who find themselves in extreme conditions. Volovich is the author of medical research on human survival, carried out in the conditions of autonomous sailing on life-saving craft in the tropical zone of three oceans. He supervised and directly participated in studies aimed at studying the possibilities of autonomous existence in the conditions of deserts and jungles, preparing the first Russian cosmonauts to survive in case of landing in an off-design area. By order of the aviation of the fleet, he developed technologies to save pilots from sharks. And in Afghanistan, our soldiers and officers survived according to Volovich's methods. Another - and no less famous - page in V.G. Volovich's biography was work at the Research Institute of Aviation Medicine, solving problems of survival of pilots after emergencies. Later, this activity led him to the tutelage and examinations of the first astronaut candidates. (This part of Volovich's activity became the reason for another, albeit not quite official, but inherently solid definition - V.G. Volovich - this is The father of survival medicine. In 1959 Vitaly Georgievich was transferred to a special research laboratory dealing with the problems of the survival of pilots, and subsequently of cosmonauts, after a forced landing and splashdown. In 1960, he organized and led a group of paratroopers to provide medical assistance and medical examination of astronauts at the landing site. In 1960 V.G. Volovich headed a group of parachutists who participated in the search and rescue operations for astronauts. Vitaly Georgievich was the first doctor who performed a medical examination of Yuri Gagarin after his return to Earth. He examined cosmonauts A. Nikolaev and V. Bykovsky at the landing site, descending to them by parachute.
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Medical examination by Yuri Gagarin on the plane after space flight. Left - doctor Gagarin - V.G. Volovich
Since 1971 Vitaly Georgievich headed the research laboratory and under his leadership and direct participation, as an experimenter and test engineer, over 40 expeditions to the Arctic, Arctic, taiga, deserts and mountains were carried out. After demobilization in 1983 Vitaly Georgievich went to work at the Institute of Biomedical Problems as a senior researcher, where he was responsible for a number of scientific topics related to the problem of human life support in the extreme conditions of the hot desert and the Arctic, took part in testing and developing special emergency equipment. Carried out scientific management of scientific and sports expeditions: "Man and the Desert", "Komsomolskaya Pravda", "Soviet Russia", "Metelitsa", repeatedly conducted training sessions with cosmonauts on survival in the desert, mountainous terrain and afloat. 1988-1991 VG Volovich supervised the implementation of the joint Soviet-Indian experiment "Khimdom" - "Physiological reactions of the human body to the rapid change of climate from tropical to Arctic", which was carried out in India and in the Kola Arctic with the participation of Indian military personnel. In 1999 50 years have passed since the historic jump to the Pole. Viktor Georgievich Volovich noted this event at the North Pole among the ice and snow of the Arctic. From 1999 to the end of life VG Volovich worked at the State Research Testing Institute of Military Medicine. In 1998-2000, he regularly lectured at the Faculty of Fundamental Medicine of the Moscow State University. MV Lomonosov in the training courses "Medical Ecology" and "Space Medicine". He made reports at all-Union and international conferences on aviation and space biology and medicine. Repeatedly traveled abroad as part of scientific expeditions to conduct research on the survival of flight personnel and astronauts and test special equipment in the jungle and tropical oceans. Peru Vitaly Georgievich owns more than 250 published scientific works, including 15 monographs, as well as co-authored textbooks and teaching aids on aviation and space medicine. The most famous of them are "Life support of aircraft crews after a forced landing and splashdown", "Man in extreme conditions", "One on one with nature", "Academy of survival". He is one of the co-authors of the joint Soviet-American work Fundamentals of Space Biology and Medicine. He wrote a number of scientific and artistic stories: "30th Meridian", "A Year at the Pole", "On the Verge of Risk" and many others. At the end of 1998, his dramatic story about work at the drifting station "North Pole-2" - "Secret Pole" was published.
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By no means all the books written by V.G. Volovich
In his multifaceted activity, V.G. Volovich once had a chance to become ... a film actor (!). The documentary film "Historical Detective" (Secret Diary of the People's Commissar) was filmed. In this film, unknown details of the life and tragic death of the famous polar explorer, People's Commissar of the USSR Navy Pyotr Shirshov were revealed. This man took part in the Chelyuskin epic, drifted at the station "North Pole-1". However, his nationwide fame did not prevent Stalin from arresting the wife of the People's Commissar - actress Yevgeny Garkush. The hero-polar explorer became a hostage of the leader and died under strange circumstances ... V.G. Volovich starred as People's Commissar Shirshov
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Polar explorer Vitaly Volovich as People's Commissar Pyotr Shirshov.
One of the correspondents of Rossiyskaya Gazeta asked Vitaly Georgievich: “I've tried to count all your professions: a professional soldier, parachutist, doctor, polar explorer, writer, scientist. Have you missed anything? " Vitaly Volovich: “I also worked as a cook. Don't laugh - I'm quite serious. At the research station "North Pole-2", and my position was officially "doctor-cook". "Did you know how to cook?" Volovich: “So Mikhail Vasilyevich Vodopyanov, inviting him to the station, also asked about this. I say, otherwise! - I can fry the eggs. But he adapted: he fed and healed. They drifted on an ice floe in the Arctic Ocean, at the 76th latitude. There was not enough gas and gasoline, the tents were leaking, at night the temperature inside the tent was minus 25 °. None of the relatives knew where we were. Everything was classified. " "And the jump to the pole?" Volovich: “There was a cold war. Famous scientists, the best pilots were sent on the high-latitude expedition "North-4" with the task of getting an answer to the question: how to protect the Arctic? The central camp was located 80 km from the pole, we had two planes. I was a doctor on an area of \u200b\u200b20 million square meters. km. There were no other doctors there. "Are the chances of a doctor in those latitudes good at landing alive next to a patient?" Volovich: “The risk is huge. Then there was still no warm and light equipment, guided parachutes. Not breaking your legs when landing on hummocks is a great success. But I knew what I was going for. And so, on May 9, we are already going to celebrate the holiday, when suddenly I was summoned to the tent of the head of the expedition: do you want to take part in the jump to the North Pole? Of course I want! In general, on the plane - we then had an American C-47 - and to the pole! Two jumped: Andrei Medvedev and Vitaly Volovich. We chose a suitable site, threw smoke bombs, and left the American Douglas from 600 meters. Exact time: May 9, 1949, 05.13. " "And how was the event celebrated?" Volovich: “But how! I took with me on the plane a flask of alcohol, an onion, and a piece of bacon. We took pictures of each other in turn with my FED, although it was forbidden - everything was classified. Let me emphasize: this was not our personal record with Medvedev. This is a record and priority of the country " P.P. Zakharov (based on materials from the Information Center of the Parachute Portal, books by V.G. Volovich, publications by E. Svetlova, Hosting from uCoz, А..RU, Q.ksam.chuk, Wikipedia RU, sport-aktive.su. Photo : archive of V.G. Volovich, Agency "Photo ITAR-TASS", Internet publications).
The modern polar odyssey was preceded by research from the first half of the last century. "SP-32" and the pioneers - the famous Papanin residents, having lived on the ice for 11 and 9 months, respectively, covered approximately the same path, having overcome 2850 and 2500 km. Both teams of polar explorers needed help in evacuation.
And there were others in between. And if in 1937 - 1938. the whole country followed the SP-1 drift of the heroes-Papanin, then even the relatives of the polar explorers did not know about the first post-war drifting station “SP-2”. She did not appear in any documents. All correspondence was encrypted. It was a "secret pole," as one of the expedition members called his book of memoirs about work at the station, published almost half a century later.
Only by the end of the last century were stories about "SP-2" beginning to emerge. Some argued that it was created as a bridgehead in the center of the Arctic for an attack on America, as if it were based on 4 strategic bombers "Tu-4". Others write: the collected data were so secret that after wintering they were burned, and even there were no scientific publications. Still others say that before flying to the Arctic, the head of SP-2, Mikhail Mikhailovich Somov, received an order: if the station approaches the shores of America and the Yankees detect it, blow up the ice floe and destroy all polar explorers ...
Now you can tell any were-tales. Indeed, of all those who wintered half a century ago on the SP-2, only Professor Gudkovich and Doctor Volovich remained.
“Glavsevmorput had Tu-4s, only disarmed,” Gudkovich said. - We flew them on ice reconnaissance. They could stay in the air for a day without refueling. But such heavy four-engine "flying fortresses" have never landed on fragile drifting ice. He would not have stood them. Well, as for scientific results, there are as many as four volumes, and they, of course, have been published. And many more articles have been published in various scientific journals. Then we managed to collect very valuable material.
Recently, people, mostly unfamiliar with the Arctic, like to write that earlier all polar explorers worked "for war", and the Arctic Ocean was studied only so that it could become an arena of hostilities. Our data, of course, were used by the military, at many stations there were hydroacoustics who tried to track submarines - Soviet and American ... But our expeditions in the Arctic, even during the Cold War, worked for the science and practical use of the Arctic Ocean and the seas of the Soviet Arctic, along which passed and now passes our national transport highway - the Northern Sea Route.
Another member of the SP-2 expedition, Vitaly Volovich, believes that the operation was of a military nature.
We did not know that then, he said. - Then they didn't talk about it anywhere. Everything was "top secret." Photos of that time I have - nothing at all. There was no camera, and it was "not recommended." I just started a notebook and for the first time in my life began to keep a diary. There was a sheet, which was later taken from me. There were five "top secret" seals. However, at first they confiscated all the records, but when the station's drift was declared open (in 1955), the guys from the first department of the KGB invited me and solemnly presented my diary.
For 376 days, the station "North Pole-2" covered about 2.5 thousand km, on average winding about 7 km per day. And all along this winding path, unique observations were made. Scientific research in such a volume has never been conducted at the North Pole throughout the year. During the wintering, SP-2 managed to collect so much data on the currents, take so many water samples, and monitor the temperature and salinity of the ocean along the entire winding path, which made it possible to present a completely different picture of currents and ice movement. According to these data, changing the idea of \u200b\u200bthe Arctic Ocean, it turned out that between the shores of Eastern Siberia, Alaska and the North Pole, a vortex drives ice in a huge circle with a diameter of 1.5 thousand km.
The heroic exploration of the Arctic by Soviet polar explorers was largely forced. And not only because a significant part of the territory of the USSR belongs to the polar lands. The Soviet leadership understood that in the event of a military conflict, a potential adversary would easily "close the gates" on the main sea routes - in the Baltic and in the Bosphorus Strait from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean Sea. In those years, the Soviet Union for the first time had to think about the development of the Northern Sea Route - a navigable highway through the Arctic seas, giving the navy the opportunity to maneuver.
Vitaly Volovich said:
The Arctic Ocean was supposed to become a kind of Mediterranean Sea of \u200b\u200bthe third world war. And it was necessary to know everything about the nature of the Central Polar Basin.
And Professor Gudkovich took out a green-bound brochure with the stamps "Top secret", "For official use", numerous numbers-codes printed in red pencil, and smiles, remembering that his candidate's thesis was declassified quite recently. The dissertation is titled “Ice Drift in the Central Arctic Basin”. When I started work at SP-2, I didn’t think that this work would become the basis for my dissertation. After all, he started at the station ... as a musher - a dog sled leader.
The fact that the polar explorers were engaged not only in science is evidenced by the following fact: unnecessary conversations with the mainland to the station's radio operators were prohibited. Every word sent on the air was thought out. The classified station was spinning close to the Americans. And those were the times of the Cold War, and there was also a hot war in Korea. Moscow feared that the Americans would find the SP-2 from their planes or spot it on the air. Polar explorers were forbidden to talk to the house, and relatives in Leningrad could not contact the ice floe. Once a month, a coded message came from the institute's radio center to the ice floe that the relatives of the polar explorers were safe and sound, and the same meager radiogram was sent to the Arctic Institute. Even during the expedition, polar explorers were strictly forbidden to keep diaries, so as not to leave any evidence of work at the station. True, some taboos were violated and the records were secretly kept. Thanks to them, several books-memoirs of winterers of the first post-war drifting station were later published.
Zalman Gudkovich greatly regretted that he was disciplined and did not violate the ban. And, the doctor and part-time cook of the station, Vitaly Volovich, on the contrary, kept records. His diary began on October 28, 1950 and finished on April 11, 1951. Thanks to him, we know how the researchers lived on "SP-2".
Anything happened there. Once during the takeoff of the Si-47, a part of the airfield's ice surface broke off right under the nose of an aircraft running along the runway. The plane still managed to take off. But as soon as it rose 10 meters, an engine flew away from the plane, the car crashed onto the ice.
It's good that another plane took off 10 minutes before that. His commander was informed of the disaster by radio. He immediately turned the winged machine around, put them on the ice and took the wounded to the mainland, including the head of the air expedition, a participant in the rescue of the Chelyuskinites, Hero of the Soviet Union Mikhail Vodopyanov.
Once they were almost left without radio communication. The radio operators' tent caught fire from kerosene gas. In addition to the walkie-talkie, it contained suitcases with observation logs. They managed to get them out, but the radio was not saved. Communication has been lost. If something happened, no one would even know about the fate of the station. But from the burnt remains and the transmitters removed from the aerological probes, the radio operators managed to assemble a new radio in a few days. And "SP-2" again got a connection with the mainland.
And how many times has the ice been broken! Once the camp remained on a tiny fragment - 30 by 40 meters!
"SP-2" drifted in the eastern part of the Arctic, at a distance of no more than 1000 km from the coast of Alaska. The mission of the members of this expedition becomes clear if we remember the situation in those years. The beginning of the "cold war" and as the USA and the USSR accumulate nuclear weapons, the threat of its transition to a "hot one" grows. Both sides were actively developing plans for delivering nuclear strikes on the territory of the "potential enemy". And delivery vehicles at that time were clearly lagging behind the capabilities of weapons. In 1950, neither America nor the Soviet Union had aircraft capable of covering the distance to the point of attack and returning without refueling. Therefore, in the 1950s. both countries were actively exploring the possibility of creating so-called jump aerodromes in the ice of the Arctic.
It is known that Operation Icicle was carried out in 1952 on the initiative and under the leadership of the US Air Force Major Flitcher. A whole floating air base (code name T-3) was created on the giant ice floe, capable of receiving heavy aircraft. It can be assumed that the tasks of "SP-2" something in common with the functions of the subordinates of Major Flitcher.
Vitaly Volovich believes that the Arctic - "it was just a short road along which the combat forces of both states were to be directed."
Naturally, in such a situation, we had to thoroughly study not only the nature of the Arctic, not only its parameters, but also the possibilities to fly planes there, jump with a parachute, and land heavy machines on unprepared ice floes. Conduct air navigation ...
Meteorological, hydrological and aeronautical observations are all the more valuable the longer they are carried out continuously. From this point of view, the drifting station provides invaluable opportunities. And the data of meteorologists is a weather forecast not only for citizens, but also for the military aviation and navy. Underwater and under-ice currents explored by hydrologists make it possible to more accurately plot the course of submarines.
Vitaly Volovich, a participant in that polar expedition, is sure that “then we were just preparing for war in the North and across the North. There you had to be able to fly, navigate, bomb, communicate, jump with a parachute. And in general - to fight. "
Apparently, in the early 1950s, the SP-2 fulfilled the most important strategic task - it proved the possibility of delivering equipment and cargo to ice airfields. Judging by the fact that the next two expeditions - "SP-3" and "SP-4" - widely used this method, the tests were successful.
By the way, in April 1954, an unprecedented concentration of Soviet researchers was observed in the Arctic. Two drifting stations were founded in different regions at once - "SP-3" and "SP-4". In those years, the United States and the USSR were actively studying the possibilities of the emerging nuclear submarine fleet under the ice crust of the Arctic Ocean. Later, Soviet and American submarines firmly mastered the under-ice depths, and the drifting stations had another task. It is known that along the Arctic coast of the USSR there was a dense cordon of American nuclear submarines with the task of tracking all the movements of our boats. For the same purpose, a whole network of hydroacoustic tracking stations was built. The North Pole expeditions were entrusted to partially control the activities of that entire huge system.
In addition, the drifting stations served as reference points for our submarines during their ice sailing. For this purpose, a special device was installed on each "joint venture" - a "noisemaker", which gave conditional signals, reminiscent of the natural sounds of the sea and ice fields.
Note that the war in the Arctic could seem "the safest" (they say, people do not live there) only to a complete layman. The consequences of the fighting at the North Pole would soon be felt by the entire planet. One or two “accidental” nuclear explosions are enough for the Arctic ice to start melting, contaminating the Arctic Ocean with radioactive substances. The level of the World Ocean would rise, flooding large cities on the coast ...
Fortunately, this did not happen, and hopefully will not happen in the future. But in the late 1940s, the United States and the USSR were seriously preparing for a third world war.
The Americans, dropping atomic bombs on Japanese cities, strenuously improved the means of their delivery to enemy territory, meaning by it the USSR. According to their new "Arctic doctrine", it was the Central Polar Basin that was to become the theater of military operations. There was the shortest route for bombing and missile strikes against vital centers of the Soviet Union.
“If a new world war breaks out, modern types of weapons - jet aircraft, intercontinental missiles, missile-carrying submarines - will turn the Arctic Ocean into the Mediterranean Sea of \u200b\u200bWorld War III,” the US strategists believed. And they intensively studied the Arctic.
Several times a week, the aircraft of the US Air Force Special Detachment B-29 flew along the route Fairbanks - Acclavik - North Pole - Cape Barroy - Fairbanks. In accordance with the secret mission, the White Partridge, during these 13-19 hour flights, conducted meteorological observations, investigated the circulation and heat balance of the atmosphere, tested new devices, equipment, clothing and food rations of the military. The drifting islands discovered in the Arctic were especially studied for their use as air bases.
The clear threat left the Soviet Union no choice but an immediate response. Therefore, questions of national security were added to the purely scientific functions of Soviet drifting stations. When in 1991 the last of them, SP-31, was evacuated and the Soviet Arctic expedition was practically liquidated, it was more a political step than a forced one from lack of money.
At that time it seemed to everyone that the "cold war" and acute rivalry, the armed confrontation between the USA and the USSR, were forever behind. Perhaps the liquidation of "SP-31" became an element of the disarmament policy pursued by the Soviet Union and the closure of the station was one of the conditions on which the States agreed to provide our country with economic assistance? As it really was, we probably won't know ...
On April 25, 2003, our country returned to the "crown" of the planet. The 32nd and first Russian drifting station "North Pole" did not "survive" quite a bit before the closure of the 32nd and first Russian drifting station, scheduled for the end of March 2004. By March 6, when the hummock shaft practically destroyed "SP-32" in half an hour, scientific observations were generally completed, the results - diskettes, computers, records - were packed. 12 polar explorers and a ton of cargo (practically all "science") were saved by helicopters.
The statement by the participants of the SP-32 expedition of the tremendous geopolitical meaning of Russia's return to the Arctic inspires hope that the national security of our Fatherland will be ensured in this vital area.
Madmen blaze the trail
on which the judicious will follow.F.M. Dostoevsky
Vitaly Georgievich Volovich (08/20/1923 - 09/05/2013.) - famous polar explorer, participant of four Arctic expeditions, flagship doctor of High-latitude air expeditions, participant of the world's first parachute jump to the North Pole (1949); a military doctor - he was the first to examine Yuri Gagarin after returning from space, the founder of survival medicine in the USSR, the author of numerous books and diaries.
There are many legendary names in the history of the development of the Arctic. But some of them are heard by the “general public” (G. Ya. Sedov, ID Papanin, O. Yu. Schmidt, polar pilots of the 1930s), while others are honored only by connoisseurs of the history of the “kingdom of eternal ice”. And not because we are "Ivans who do not remember kinship": the fact is that most of the polar operations in which they participated were of a secret nature. In Vitaly Volovich, this is the name of one of his books - "The Secret Pole", and he himself lamented that at one time he could not even boast of the government awards he had received (they awarded the heroes of the Arctic "in a quiet way"). And Vitaly Georgievich has a lot of them: he is a holder of the Orders of Lenin, the Red Banner, the Red Banner of Labor, the Patriotic War, three Orders of the Red Star (front-line soldier!). In the 21st century, when the secrecy label was removed from most of the operations, Vitaly Georgievich was publicly awarded the "Sovereign Eagle" and the Order Star of St. Andrew the First-Called (the main Russian order, established by Peter the Great). In addition, V.G. Volovich - Doctor of Medical Sciences, Professor, Full Member of the Russian Academy of Cosmonautics. K.E. Tsiolkovsky, member of the Union of Journalists of Russia.
Historians would call Vitaly Volovich's biography "contextual", that is, inscribed in the context of his time. He, like all the boys of that generation, dreamed of the sky and travel, but after school he entered the Leningrad Military Medical Academy. But the graduation ball at school coincided with the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, and therefore cadet Volovich with fellow students put out "lighters" on the roofs of houses in Leningrad and caught saboteurs. Vitaly graduated from the Academy after the war, with the rank of captain of the medical service, and was assigned to the landing troops near Tula. Probably, he would have served in the role of a military doctor, training paratroopers, and further, but "His Majesty accident" intervened. His fate was decided by a meeting with Pavel Ivanovich Burenin, who in 1946 in the central Arctic was the first to land from the USSR flying boat N-341. Then the captain of the medical service. Burenin performed his official duty - he jumped with a parachute to rescue a patient at the polar station. In 1948, Burenin was able to discern his successor in his young colleague. Vitaly Volovich was seconded to the North-4 High-Latitude Air Expedition. Vitaly Georgievich later recalled: “I was a doctor on an area of \u200b\u200b20 million square meters. km ". The task of the doctor is to come to the aid of the patient when the plane is not able to land, which means - in difficult weather conditions or in the absence of a flat platform. The young military doctor assessed the situation soberly: “The risk is huge. Not breaking my legs when landing on the hummocks is a great success, but ... I knew what I was going for. "
Landing on the "crown of the planet"
As soon as the wounds of the Second World War began to heal (a tragic and heroic page in the history of the Arctic!), The "hot" one was replaced by the "cold war", and the polar world became the arena of struggle between the former allies. Interestingly, the United States did not conduct high-latitude expeditions in the Arctic, pitying its fellow citizens (living in the absence of heat and communications was considered "inhuman" heroism). The Statesmen conducted reconnaissance by aircraft, regularly flying from their mainland to the Pole. One such abandoned plane, stuffed with the latest reconnaissance equipment for those times, was found by our polar explorers. The Soviet people were capable of more. Including - the feat of knowing the unknown. For example, landing on the "top of the planet". Note that the Americans did the same only thirty years later - in 1981.
The leader of the North-4 expedition was the legendary General Alexander Alekseevich Kuznetsov (nicknamed "the quietest" - he did not raise his voice at anyone, even scolding his subordinates). And it was he who made the decision to carry out a landing operation on the pole and selected candidates: an experienced paratrooper Andrei Medvedev (749 parachute jumps!) And a twenty-five-year-old military doctor Vitaly Volovich (by this time - 74 jumps, and in his entire life V.G. Volovich made 175 jumps, and in the most extreme conditions). There were some curiosities. Everything was so classified that in the telegram instructing A. Medvedev to appear at his destination, it was written "to arrive with your camera." Medvedev was quite surprised: personal photographic equipment was strictly prohibited! It turned out that the ransomware hinted at another piece of equipment - a parachute!
The historical landing was timed to the Victory Day. At noon on May 9, 1949, a C-47 polar aviation aircraft piloted by N. Metlitsky's crew (co-pilot V. Shcherbina, navigator M. Shcherpakov) took off from Base number two, and an hour later Volovich and Medvedev made a jump at a geographical point where the compass, wherever you turn it, always points to the south ...
We landed, or rather - "got frozen" safely. As Vitaly Volovich recalls, they were photographed by his FET, despite the prohibitions. This was followed by a "small banquet": they took a sip from a flask, ate lard and onions. Soon a plane arrived for the pioneers of the parachute conquest of the Pole. Vitaly Volovich was awarded the Order of the Red Banner for “fulfilling a special government assignment”. But - secretly! And, what is even more offensive, to this day in the Guinness Book of Records it is written that the "northernmost jump" was first made by Americans Jack Wheeler and Rocky Parsons on April 15, 1981.
The high-latitude air expeditions of the Glavsevmorput proved that it is possible to work in the Arctic. The second drifting station after the Papaninsky was sent to the Arctic. True, unlike SP-1, the work of the SP-2 station was of a secret nature. So secret that even its name in the documents was different - "Point 36". It was given by the polar aviator Viktor Mikhailovich Perov, who found a pack ice floe (its number on the map was 36) to locate the station. The ice floe served the polar explorers faithfully for a whole year (from April 1, 1950 to April 11, 1951), and then, as in the first expedition, the cracks grew so much that they had to urgently leave Point 36. On this ice floe, the members of the expedition covered 2600 km, having survived all seasons and all kinds of weather conditions. Vitaly Georgievich Volovich worked at the station for over six months as a doctor and a cook.
Expedition "North Pole-2" in many respects repeated the legendary on the ice 1937-1938.
However, the SP-2 had its own differences. The whole world followed Papanin's epic, "the four of the brave" (the five, if you count the dog Merry) were popularly beloved heroes. But the work of the station "North Pole-2" is not only not reflected in the posters and postage envelopes of that time - even the families of polar explorers did not know about the expedition. The head of the joint venture was Mikhail Mikhailovich Somov, a descendant of Pushkin's second Danzas. But unlike the ancestors of the period of romanticism, Mikhail Somov had to bear a terrible burden of responsibility for the fate of the expedition. Terrible not because of the Arctic dangers, but because if the ice floe were carried into the waters of the United States (and they began to drift near the Bering Strait), it would have to be destroyed together with the team. Mikhail Mikhailovich admitted this to Volovich at a time when there was no longer any danger of drifting to the shores of the United States ...
Cooking at the SP-2 station was assigned the responsibility of Doctor Vitaly Volovich. Vitaly Georgievich recalled his "chef debut": "Not counting on my chef's talents, I leaned on snacks, setting the table with all kinds of canned food from freshly brought supplies." “I am gradually learning the basics of culinary art. While dumplings prepared in huge quantities are helping me out, "Volovich admitted. However, the menu of the members of the drifting station includes not only “dumplings in broth, fried dumplings”, but also “Ukrainian borscht, sauerkraut cabbage soup with loin, venison stew” and even “melange omelette”, nelma fish soup and other culinary delights ... And in the New Year's menu there were even granular caviar, raw smoked sausage and chocolates. Thus, food at the drifting station "North Pole-2", although it differed in less variety and quantity than that of, was nevertheless quite balanced and rational.
A creative man, Volovich composed half-joking rules for polar cocks, which included the following points:
"1. They are not born with a polar coco. He is appointed by his superiors, regardless of knowledge, abilities and main specialty.
2. Criticism is the driving force behind the culinary arts. Remember that the eater is always right, even if he is wrong.
4. Create, experiment, do not spare the stomachs of your charges.
6. When preparing dumplings - remember: they, like a submarine, must emerge.
13. Do not spare sugar for compote, for it, like a kiss, should be not only hot, but also sweet. "
All jokes, but the polar cook had to rise before anyone else, start work in the galley, where the morning temperature was -30 ° -40 °, and feed eleven tired and frozen men three times a day. The doctor cooked, if necessary healed the body, but more often the soul.
"The doctor hits a chord, and the shocked polar bears cry with delight."
When the difficulties of life in the Arctic are listed, they usually name the cold, winds, darkness of the polar night, encounters with wild animals. But they forget about another danger, which is much more difficult to cope with than with frost. It's sensory hunger. The monotony and monotony of life, isolation from the world, lack of positive emotions and other factors lead to mental disorders. It is no coincidence that cases of suicide among radio operators and polar explorers at remote stations are not uncommon in the Arctic. And for those drifting on SP-2, the main depressing moment was "radio silence", complete isolation from the world. There was no connection with relatives, only service messages were transmitted. That is, there was a radio, polar explorers could even listen to news and music programs. But it was strictly forbidden to get in touch ourselves. Vitaly Georgievich, as a doctor, took preventive measures against possible depression. In order to relieve psychological stress, he finds something to do for himself and his colleagues. For example, he built "the famous Eskimo igloo, sung by the polar luminaries Amundsen, Rasmussen, Stafansson." The construction turned out to be quite successful and brought a lot of positive emotions to the polar explorers. Another "remedy for melancholy" was evenings with friends. “Evening gatherings are the best medicine for nerves. … A large cigarette box is covered with a clean towel, the remains of Moscow products are taken out of the store, hard smoked sausage is cut, fresh onions and garlic appear on the table, ”Volovich writes in his diaries. On his own initiative for the New Year (and holidays are the best psychological relief for winterers), the station members published a wall newspaper. They called it "In the Ice". The newspaper contained only one article written by M. Somov, and drawings depicting New Year's dreams - the dreams of each of the expedition members.
By the way, the dream of Vitaly Georgievich himself came true, and he dreamed that he would be delivered to the ice ... a piano! At first, they tried to persuade the supplies to deliver the tool ("A piano? Two hundred and fifty kilograms!"), Painting them a heartbreaking picture: "There is eternal ice around .. the doctor takes a chord, and the shocked polar bears are crying with delight." The arguments did not work: "well, let them cry, since they are so sensitive." The situation was changed ... the song! It was like this: on July 12, 1950, an emergency happened at SP-2. Due to faulty kerosene gas (they heated the tents). This sad story, however, became a reason for jokes. Vitaly Georgievich, playing up the situation, remade Utyosov's song about "The Beautiful Marquise" in an Arctic way. In his parody, there was a radio conversation between the head of Glavsevmorput and M.M.Somov, aka Mikh. Micah.
- Hello, Micah. Micah! What news?
How are you drifting?
I hope everything goes without incident
And the faithful ice floe is safe?
The song ended like this:
- Hello, Micah. Micah, Glavsevmorput in sorrow.
It's hard for all the bosses, -
How did you get into terrible trouble?
How did this all happen?
- We were cleaning the airfield,
Suddenly there was a terrible thunder
It burst somewhere around the edges,
And the ice floe burst to hell,
A push came to the radio,
A bag fell on the kerosene gas
And blazed up in a moment
Behind him is a tent tarp.
We were on the far side
Suddenly we see - the radio is on fire;
While we were racing at full speed
The fire devoured everything and went out,
The engine had time to melt
And the cover burned out on the engine.
And the rest on an ice floe in the ocean
All is well, all is well.
The song went to the mainland, and even Leonid Utyosov himself sang it. Well, Volovich got the coveted piano ...
Of course, the doctor also had more juicy jokes and practical jokes. For example, he managed to convince one of his colleagues that the Leningrad factory "Red Triangle" will produce not only galoshes, but also rubber women (faces, figures like movie stars are filled with hot water), and soon several copies will be transferred to the station. And this is not entertainment - this is an experiment, it will be necessary to write reports on the testing of prototypes ...
At the same time, experienced polar explorers, such as Papanin and Vodopyanov, respected the "musician and lead singer" Volovich for "toughness in danger, courage in daring enterprises." “Vitaly Volovich? - This is our legend! " - wrote in his book "Notes of a Polar Pilot" by the ace of the Arctic aviation Mikhail Kaminskoy.
“Advanced Medicine. Gagarin "
After working in the Arctic expeditions, Vitaly Volovich was engaged in the preparation and post-flight adaptation of cosmonauts. He was very worried about the space pioneers: “The comfort of the first spacecraft was comparable only to a tin can. Gagarin, Titov, Popovich could not move their hand. " The most exciting event in his life is his meeting with Yuri Gagarin, who returned from orbit. Dr. Volovich was the first to examine the cosmonaut: “I listened, measured the pressure: 130 to 75, pulse 60 beats per minute. As if not conquered space, but flew from Sochi to Moscow. " Yuri signed an autograph to his doctor: “Advanced medicine. Gagarin ".
In subsequent years, Vitaly Georgievich worked at the Institute of Aerospace Medicine. He has conducted more than 40 expeditions to various parts of the world, studying models of human survival in extreme conditions. Vitaly Georgievich said that they were thrown from an airplane into the ocean (Indian, Pacific, Atlantic) or mountains (Pamir, Tien Shan, Caucasus) and left to fight for life. The author of these lines saw at Dr. Volovich's houses shark jaws and other trophies from extreme landings. The research resulted in the written books, manuals, and films. So a new science was born in the USSR - survival medicine.
Vitaly Georgievich retired at 89 years old. In the last year of his life, he still willingly communicated with journalists, publishers of his books, worried about what textbooks students use to study life safety ... In one of his interviews, he wrote: “We must love people. We must try to help. " This was the motto of his life, life "under the heading of secrecy."
Books by V.G. Volovich:
Retired Colonel of the Medical Service, Doctor of Medicine, Professor. The first person in the world to make a parachute jump to the North Pole in 1949, together with A.P. Medvedev.
Biography
He studied at the Kislovodsk school No. 1. In connection with the move of his parents to a new place of work, he graduated from high school in Sochi on June 20, 1941, and two days later, at the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, he entered the Leningrad Military Medical Academy named after S. M. Kirov.
From September to November 1941, as a cadet, he took part in the defense of Leningrad. He was on duty on the roofs of houses, together with other cadets he put out incendiary bombs and caught saboteurs who, with flashlights and rockets from the roofs of houses, gave signals and target designations to German bombers. In November, the academy was transferred to Samarkand, where Vitaly Georgievich graduated from it in 1946, after being assigned by the captain of the medical service to the airborne troops in the town of Efremov near Tula, to the post of doctor of the battalion of the 351st PDV. In the battalion, he treated soldiers and officers, jumped with a parachute. A year later, he had 74 jumps. He has 175 of them.
Since 1959, Vitaly Georgievich was transferred to a special research laboratory dealing with the problems of the survival of pilots, and subsequently of cosmonauts, after a forced landing and splashdown. In 1960, he organized and led a group of paratroopers to provide medical assistance and medical examination of astronauts at the landing site. I personally conducted medical examinations of cosmonauts Yuri Gagarin, German Titov, Andriyan Nikolaev and Valery Bykovsky.
Since 1971, Vitaly Georgievich has headed a research laboratory and under his leadership and direct participation, as an experimenter and tester, more than 40 expeditions to the Arctic, Arctic, taiga, deserts and mountains were carried out.
After demobilization in 1983, Vitaly Georgievich went to work in the position of a senior researcher, where he was responsible for a number of scientific topics related to the problem of human life support in the extreme conditions of the hot desert and the Arctic, took part in testing and developing special emergency equipment. Carried out scientific management of scientific and sports expeditions: "Man and the Desert", "Komsomolskaya Pravda", "Soviet Russia", "Metelitsa", repeatedly conducted training sessions with cosmonauts on survival in the desert, mountainous terrain and afloat.
In 1988-1991 he supervised the implementation of the joint Soviet-Indian experiment "Khimdom" - "Physiological reactions of the human body to a rapid change from a tropical climate to an Arctic", which was carried out in India and the Kola Arctic with the participation of Indian military personnel.
From 1999 until the end of his life, V.G. Volovich worked at the State Research and Testing Institute of Military Medicine. In 1998-2000, he regularly lectured at the Faculty of Fundamental Medicine of the Moscow State University. MV Lomonosov in the training courses "Medical Ecology" and "Space Medicine". He made reports at all-Union and international conferences on aviation and space biology and medicine. Repeatedly traveled abroad as part of scientific expeditions to conduct research on the survival of flight personnel and astronauts and to test special equipment in the jungle and tropical oceans. Died on September 5, 2013 at the 91st year of life.
Proceedings
Author of 19 books and about 300 scientific papers. The most famous of them are "Life support of aircraft crews after a forced landing and splashdown", "Man in extreme conditions", "One on one with nature", "Academy of survival". He is one of the co-authors of the joint Soviet-American work "Foundations of Space Biology and Medicine".
