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Tyuratam Missile Test Range
Baikonur Space Launch Site (Cosmodrome)
M. Gruntman,
From Tyuratam Missile Range to Baikonur Cosmodrome (pdf),
or at Acta Astronautica
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.actaastro.2018.12.021
Acta Astronautica, vol. 155, pp. 250-366, 2019
(detailed historical account)
Tyuratam Missile Test Range
Baikonur Space Launch Site – Cosmodrome
Nauchno-Issledovatel'skii Ispytatel'nyi Poligon N.5 (NIIP-5)
or Scientific-Research Test Range N.5
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M. Gruntman, From Tyuratam Missile Range to Baikonur Cosmodrome,
Acta Astronautica, Vol. 155, 250-366, 2019
article pdf (11M)
or http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.actaastro.2018.12.021.
Detailed historical account of establishing Tyuratam/Baikonur, discovery of its location by the United States, and naming Baikonur after Gagarin's flight in 1961 (article abstract and flyer)
From Tyuratam Missile Range to Baikonur Cosmodrome
M. Gruntman, From Tyuratam Missile Range to Baikonur Cosmodrome,
Acta Astronautica, Vol. 155, 250-366, 2019
article pdf (11M)
or http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.actaastro.2018.12.021.
Abstract
The Soviet space port in Kazakhstan, Baikonur cosmodrome, occupies a special place in the history of rocketry and spaceflight. The first intercontinental ballistic missile R-7 successfully lifted off there in August 1957 and reached the Kamchatka peninsula six thousand kilometers away. Six weeks later, a modified R-7 placed the first artificial satellite of the planet Earth, Sputnik, into orbit. In 1961, the first cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin began his space journey from the same launch pad. At that time the Soviet Union publicly identified, as a Cold War deception, the secret space port as Baikonur, a small town 300 km away from the real location of the launch site. American government officials had known the precise location of the launch base since 1957 and called it more accurately Tyuratam after the nearby railroad station. Space publications rarely mention the artificial, decoy nature of the name Baikonur. Most of the general public today, particularly younger generations, never heard about Tyuratam. This article describes establishment of the first cosmodrome and its naming Tyuratam and Baikonur. It includes some never published heretofore historic documents and reconnaissance photographs.
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pdf (11M)
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.actaastro.2018.12.021
What's in a name?
William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet (II, ii)
1. Introduction
In 1961 the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) announced to the world for the first time the location and the name of its secret launch site that had sent to space the first satellites and the first cosmonaut Yuri A. Gagarin. The USSR decided to register the historic Gagarin flight as a world record with the International Aeronautical Federation (Fédération Aéronautique Internationale or FAI). The FAI rules required specifying the geographic coordinates of the launch and landing areas of the cosmonaut as part of the record dossier.
The first space launches took place at a test range of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs). In an ostensible attempt to preserve secrecy of its location and mislead the adversaries, Soviet officials provided geographic coordinates of the launch site, the cosmodrome, that was 300 km downrange trajectories of the launched space vehicles. They also identified a small town there, Baikonur. FAI recorded this inaccurate information for posterity. Mass media made the name of the decoy Baikonur famous and it stuck. The government of Kazakhstan even renamed the missile range residential area Leninsk to Baikonur in 1995. A number of respected reference publications such as world atlases and dictionaries listed erroneous coordinates of the decoy Baikonur as those of historic launches [1].
This Cold War deception was unnecessary because an American U-2 reconnaissance plane had photographed the launch site in early August of 1957. U.S. officials named the missile range Tyuratam after the nearby railroad station and government documents have been calling it that name since then. Publicly, the deception continued as the United States did not reveal its knowledge in order to protect intelligence gathering capabilities. For the Soviet Union, the secrecy from the prying Western eyes was always the way of life. In addition, acknowledging U-2 overflights of Soviet territory would have harmed country's prestige. While some Soviet leaders and military officers knew about the reach of the U-2 program many did not [2-5].
It is not known which Soviet leader made the decision to provide the decoy place and name of the cosmodrome to FAI. Perhaps archival documents will reveal the details in the future. Today, some fragments of the story of finding location of the secret launch base by the United States and its naming by the Soviet Union are scattered in publications. Sometimes, they contain factual inaccuracies. This article describes establishment of the first cosmodrome and its naming Tyuratam and Baikonur. It includes never published heretofore historic documents and reconnaissance photographs.
Download the full article:
pdf (11M)
or
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.actaastro.2018.12.021
2. Poligon—new intercontinental ballistic missile test range
Powerful rockets belong to a category of inherently complex and advanced technologies wherein an isolated creative and gifted inventor cannot succeed alone. Only the concerted effort of numerous well organized professional scientists and engineers can achieve capable practical systems. The USSR was the first to marshal the necessary resources and organize a large-scale development of ballistic missiles [6].
The military-sponsored Jet Propulsion Scientific Research Institute (abbreviated RNII in Russian) employed 400 engineers and technicians in a sprawling complex in Moscow in the early 1930s [6,7]. At that time the Soviet missile program dwarfed the effort of National-Socialist Germany. The latter would later produce the first modern ballistic missile A-4 (V-2). In the same decade of the 1930s political purges set the Soviet rocketry back. The German successes in designing, mass producing, and fielding operational ballistic missiles had demonstrated an extraordinary potential of the new technology. Emerging atomic weapons made long-range missiles especially important for future warfare.
After the end of World War II (WWII) the Soviet Union revitalized its ballistic missile program, beginning with the reproduction of the German A-4. The special decree No. 1017-419 of the USSR Council of Ministers "Matters of the rocket weapons" on May 13, 1946 established the structure of the rocket and space establishment for many years to come [8–10]. Among high priority tasks, the decree called for creation of a special test site, or poligon in Russian (stress on the last syllable, po-li-GON), for the ballistic missile program.
In 1947, the military activated the State Central Test Range N.4 (GTsP N.4) near the settlement Kapustin Yar on the eastern bank of the Volga river 110 km (70 miles) southeast from Stalingrad (Volgograd). General Vasilii I. Voznyuk (1907–1976) would command the test site until 1973. Kapustin Yar, or Kap Yar, as it was commonly called, became the primary proving ground for ballistic missiles in the 1940s and early 1950s. New sites for testing air defense systems and air force weapons (the latter often referred to as Vladimirovka) were established in the adjacent areas. Later, Kap Yar became a space port, a cosmodrome, launching its first satellite, Kosmos 1, into orbit in 1962.
Sergei P. Korolev (1906–1966) directed development of the first Soviet ballistic missiles R-1 (8A11, SS-1, Scunner), R-2 (8Zh38, SS-2, Sibling), and R-3 [11,12]. Vasilii P. Mishin (1917–2001) served as Korolev's key deputy in missile development since mid-1940s and would replace him as chief designer after his death in 1966.
The Kap Yar poligon was adequate for flight tests of these early rockets as well as for development of more capable intermediate range ballistic missiles (IRBM) R-5 (8A62, SS-3, Shyster) also built by Korolev and R-12 (8K63, SS-4, Sandal) being developed by Mikhail K. Yangel (1911–1971) in Yuzhnoe Design Bureau in Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine [13,14]. The ranges of these missiles did not exceed 2000 km (1250 miles).
On December 4, 1950, the Soviet government authorized a feasibility study of intercontinental missiles "with the range 5000–10000 km and warhead mass 1–10 tonne" [15]. (One tonne is a metric ton or 1000 kg.) Two years later the decree No. 443-213ss of the USSR Council of Ministers "On plan of research and development work on long-range rockets for 1953–1955," signed by Joseph Stalin on February 13, 1953, focused Korolev's work on a two-stage ICBM and a two-stage intercontinental winged (cruise) missile [16]. The ballistic and cruise missiles had to deliver 3000-kg (6600-lb) warheads to a distance of 8000 km (5000 miles) with the accuracy of ±15 km (±9 miles). This program would ultimately lead to Korolev's first intercontinental ballistic missile R-7 (8K71, SS-6, Sapwood) and launch of Sputnik.
One year later a different ministry became responsible for the winged missiles. The design bureaus of Semen A. Lavochkin (1900–1960) and Vladimir M. Myasishchev (1902–1978) took over development of the Burya (Tempest in Russian) and Buran (Blizzard) intercontinental cruise missiles, respectively. Many features of Burya and Buran were not unlike those of the supersonic cruise missile Navaho being built by North American Aviation in the United States [17]. At that time both countries considered such cruise missiles as a possible alternative to intercontinental ballistic missiles.
The existing Kap Yar proving ground was too small for intercontinental weapons. Consequently, on March 17, 1954, the decree of the USSR Council of Ministers No. 447-202 "On measures to provide flight tests of articles 'R' on long range" ordered selection of a new larger test site by January 1, 1955 [18]. At the same time another government decree on May 20, 1954 authorized development of the first ICBM R-7 and made it a top national priority.
Kap Yar commander General Voznyuk headed a survey group evaluating possible areas for the new test site. Safety, security, and ICBM range played a major role in determining location of the poligon [19–21]. In addition, the R-7 radio guidance system required three control posts a few hundred kilometers from the launch site which also influenced selection. The radio posts limited yaw deviations of the missile and kept its trajectory in the desired plane. Inertial guidance would become practical several years later.
On February 4, 1955, six officials representing ministries of defense, middle machine building, defense industry, aviation industry, and radiotechnical industry reported the results of site selection [18]. They noted the impossibility of having both the launch site and the impact area 8000 km (5000 miles) away on Soviet territory. Instead, the report proposed to establish a new missile range in Kazakhstan and the impact area 6200 km (3850 miles) away at the Kamchatka peninsula. The required test launches for the full 8000-km range would be conducted at impact areas farther away in the Pacific Ocean.
A week later on February 12, 1955, the new top-secret special-file decree of the USSR Council of Minister No. 292-181 "On new testing range for the USSR Ministry of Defense" authorized "establishment in 1955–1958 of a scientific-research and testing range of the USSR Ministry of Defense for flight development of articles R-7, Burya, and Buran" [22]. The decree placed the headquarters area of the new range "in the Kzyl-Orda and Karaganda administrative regions of the Kazakh SSR [Soviet Socialist Republic] between [the towns of] Novo-Kazalinsk and Dzhusaly." It designated the impact area for tested "articles" on the Ozernoi peninsula at Kamchatka. Fig. 1 shows the locations of the new missile poligon (Tyuratam) and the Kamchatka impact site, codenamed Kama and later, from 1973, Kura. Also shown are the first ballistic missile proving ground Kap Yar, Semipalatinsk nuclear test site, and missile defense test site at Saryshagan activated in 1956 [5,23].
Fig. 1 (see pdf). Main Soviet missile development test centers Kap Yar (Kapustin Yar), Tyuratam (Baikonur), and Saryshagan are located at similar geographic latitudes. Saryshagan primarily supported development of missile defense and air defense systems. The test site Kama (Kura) at the Kamchatka peninsula served as an impact point for launches of the first Soviet ICBM R-7 (SS-6). The military conducted ICBM trials to the full range with impact areas a couple thousand kilometers farther into the Pacific Ocean. Also shown is the main nuclear weapon test site near Semipalatinsk. Original composite satellite photograph (Landsat, mid-1990s to early 2000s) courtesy of NASA WorldWind; image processing, callouts, USSR border (thick white line), and markings by Mike Gruntman.
The decree also directed the Air Force to conduct the first phase of flight trials of Burya and Buran from the Vladimirovka area at Kap Yar. The first winged missiles did indeed fly there but the government canceled their further development before the tests could be moved to a new larger range in Kazakhstan.
3. Construction in the desert
The wheels of government bureaucracy began to turn. On April 29, 1955, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the USSR Council of Ministers issued a top-secret special-file decree No. 827-497ss "On measures to provide construction of a special test site of the Ministry of Defense of the USSR" [24]. It designated the range "NIIP-5 of the Ministry of Defense of the USSR." Here, NIIP-5 stood for Nauchno-Issledovatel'skii i Ispytatel'nyi Poligon N. 5, or Scientific- Research and Test Range N.5. The decree allocated large territories to the new range, 2900 km2 and 4900 km2 in the Kazakhstan's Kzyl-Orda and Karaganda administrative regions, respectively. The government also provided 4600 km2 for temporary use and additionally assigned 4900 km2 to a NIIP-5 branch in the warhead impact area at Kamchatka.
The decree earmarked resources, established responsibilities of various ministries, and outlined tight schedules for this new gigantic national undertaking. As common for a centrally-planned socialist state, the orders dealt with numerous minute supplies of specific construction materials and even quotas for hiring personnel for general stores and canteens of the range. The decree went into such a detail as creation of one additional position for a technician in the secret service KGB (Committee for State Security) office in Kzyl-Orda to support a new line of protected government communications.
The military tasked the 130th Directorate of Engineering Works (Upravlenie Inzhenernykh Rabot, UIR), or the military unit v/ch 12253, to build the new poligon [25,26]. (The Ministry of Defense assigned identifying numbers to military units, e.g., v/ch 12253, with v/ch standing for voinskaya chast', or a military unit.) In the Soviet Army, UIR directorates played the role of engineering headquarters executing construction projects by assigned to them brigades, regiments, and battalions of construction troops and other specialized engineering units. UIR-130 was located in Tashkent, the capital of Uzbekistan and center of the Turkestan military district. Directorate commander Georgii M. Shubnikov (1903–1965) and chief engineer Alexander Yu. Gruntman (1912–1975) had extensive experience of building installations in vast Soviet Central Asia [21,26].
The planners placed the new missile range headquarters with the main residential area on the bank of the Syr Darya river 3 km south from a small railroad station Tyuratam (sometimes spelled Tyura Tam or Tyura-Tam). A tiny settlement near the tracks consisted of "a small station building, two small brick houses, boarding school, dormitory of the rotating train [locomotive] crews, water tower, and several drymud houses of station workers. There were three trees next to the station building and no other vegetation, with monotonous snow-covered [in March] desert beyond the tracks." [A.Yu. Gruntman, 1970, unpublished; 26].
By the time of the April 1955 decree the engineering corps had already fundamentally transformed the area of the new range from its sleepy desolation (Fig. 2). The first platoon of soldiers, supporting surveyors, arrived in January 1955. Chief engineer of UIR-130 Gruntman followed with his senior officers two months later and the directorate staff transferred to Tyuratam from comfortable Tashkent in May. Brigades and battalions of construction troops were pouring in. Numerous specialized automobile, railroad, communications, piping, and airdrome engineering units also joined them at the location [26,27]. Under harsh climate and in primitive living conditions, construction troops had built in a heroic feat the first launch pad for the R-7 and supporting infrastructure by May 1957 [20,21,28,29].
Fig. 2 (see pdf). Top: local people in the area of the missile range in 1950s. Bottom left: surveyors at work in early days of construction. Bottom right: commemorative stone marking the place of the first building at the headquarters area of the range; it reads: "On May 5, 1955, military builders of unit v/ch 12253 laid the foundation of the first building in town of Leninsk." Photographs: top and bottom left from collection of Col. Yu. V. Bonchkovsky, courtesy of Alexander Yu. Bonchkovsky; bottom right: photo (2016) courtesy of Mike Gruntman.
At the peak of construction in those early days more than 20,000 officers and soldiers were building the missile range [26,30,31]. (Construction personnel would peak again at 50 thousand during the work on the Energia-Buran program in 1980s [32].) Creating a major proving ground in a desolate desert with harsh unforgiving climate provided a valuable experience. The military would soon transfer some engineering units from Tyuratam to construction of other Soviet missile centers at Saryshagan and Plesetsk [26,31].
The General Staff of the Soviet Army activated the new NIIP-5 poligon, v/ch 11284, on June 2, 1955, under its first commander Lt. Gen. Alexei I. Nesterenko (1908–1995). This unit of the strategic rocket forces would be disbanded only in December 2011. In 1958 Maj. Gen. Konstantin V. Gerchik (1918–2001) replaced Nesterenko as the commander. Gerchik was severely injured in a major R-16 (8K64, SS-7, Saddler) ICBM accident on October 24, 1960 that killed more than 90 people at Tyuratam [4,33,34]. The tragedy is often referred to as the "Nedelin catastrophe," after the first commander-in-chief of the strategic rocket forces Marshal Mitrofan I. Nedelin (1902–1960) who perished on the launch pad. Then Maj. Gen. Alexander G. Zakharov (1921–2010) assumed command of NIIP-5 from 1961 to 1965. Fig. 3 shows leading military officers of the rocket forces and construction troops who built the missile range in the early days. In 1960, the Minister of Defense designated June 2 as the "official" day of activation of the range. From that time on, it has been celebrated as the birthday of the cosmodrome.
Fig. 3 (see pdf). Leaders of the rocket and construction units that built the Tyuratam Missile Test Range, the future Baikonur space port, in 1950s and early 1960s: (a,d) first Commander (1955–1958) of NIIP-5 Alexei I. Nesterenko; (b) Commander (1951–1965) of UIR-130 Georgii M. Shubnikov; (c) Chief Engineer (1950–1963) of UIR-130 Alexander Yu. Gruntman; (e) second Commander (1958–1960) of NIIP-5 Konstantin V. Gerchik; (f) third Commander (1961–1965) of NIIP-5 Alexander G. Zakharov. Photographs: (a,f) from collection of Col. Yu. V. Bonchkovsky, courtesy of Alexander Yu. Bonchkovsky; (d,e) courtesy of Valerii A. Menshikov; (b,c) from collection of Mike Gruntman.
Formally and informally, the polygon servicemen were divided into the "builders" and "rocketeers," reporting, respectively, to UIR-130 and NIIP-5. Numerous officers and soldiers of construction units had already been working on buildings, installations, and infrastructure in the spring of 1955. In the summer, the growing number of rocketeers began to arrive to Tyuratam as well. They filled various units of the new NIIP-5. In addition first families of officers and non-commissioned officers and civilian employees also appeared at Tyuratam as primitive living conditions steadily improved and first residential housing appeared.
By the end of 1955, the missile range employed 1900 servicemen of rocket units and more than 660 civilians [29]. Construction troops numbered many thousands at that time. Specialists from industry, engineers, technicians, and fitters would spend weeks and months at Tyuratam on temporary assignments, installing equipment. By 1957, engineers from the design bureau of Korolev and its main contractors had joined NIIP-5 officers in preparation for tests of ballistic missiles.
The location of the new proving ground remained a state secret. The government decree from April 29, 1955, instructed security services to establish a special regime of internal passport control in the areas surrounding the vast NIIP-5 territory [24]. The air traffic corridor connecting central Russia with Tashkent along the Syr Darya river was rerouted 50 km south from the river and away from the proving ground. The decree even tasked the KGB and Ministry of Defense to consider elimination of 2-min stops of passing passenger trains at the Tyuratam station. In those days numerous engineers and technicians have been continuously traveling to and from the range by train as air travel was limited to high level officials and few selected specialists. This reality overruled the fancy of central-planners in Moscow, and trains continued to stop at Tyuratam.
The secret missile range did not have an open name yet, only the cryptic post box numbers. The incoming mail was routed through front addresses, such as Tashkent-90 or Kzyl-Orda-50. The military designated the main residential area with the NIIP-5 and UIR-130 headquarters as Site 10. Other numbered sites referred to numerous technical positions, supporting areas, and living quarters scattered across the vast territory. For example, Site 1 referred to the first launch pad (R-7, Sputnik, Gagarin); Site 2 to the assembly and test building nearby; Site 3 to the liquid oxygen plant; Site 6 to the meteorological post; Site 13 to the cemetery; Site 15 to the first airfield (it does not exist now; replaced in 1964 by today's airport Krainii, Site 15a, a few kilometers to the west); Site 17 to the water pumping facilities on the bank of the Syr- Darya river; Site 41 to the R-16 launch pad of the Nedelin accident in 1960; etc.
A 1966 space reconnaissance photograph (Fig. 4) shows the layout of the central area of the range built up in 1950s. The main garrison town, Site 10, is 3 km south from the Tyuratam station of the main Turkestan (Orenburg-Tashkent) rail line. By 1957, construction troops had built the first launch pad 24 km (15 miles) to the north; the liquid nitrogen-oxygen plant; and the assembly and test building (Montazhno- Ispytatel'nyi Korpus, or MIK). Engineers assembled the R-7 ICBMs and its space launcher variants horizontally in MIK, tested them, and then brought on a special rail flatcar to the nearby launch installation, Site 1, and erected for launch.
Fig. 4 (see pdf). Satellite photograph of the range areas first developed in 1950s. The railroad spur and automobile road lead north to the first launch pad (Site 1) from the Tyuratam railroad station on the main Turkestan (Orenburg-Tashkent) rail line. Also shown are the main residential area Site 10; assembly and test building MIK (Site 2); liquid nitrogen-oxygen plant (Site 3); and airport Krainii (Site 15a). Photograph by KH-7 camera (Mission 4033, October 13, 1966) available from the U.S. Geological Survey. Photograph identification, interpretation, and processing by Mike Gruntman.
By mid-1960s, the range facilities would expand to other launch areas 45 km northwest (e.g., Site 90) and 35 km east-northeast (e.g., Sites 41, 42, 43) from Site 1. Construction troops built connecting automobile and rail roads, water pipelines, communications and power lines, and living quarters across the proving ground that housed servicemen, civilians, and visiting specialists from industry.
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Brief history of Tyuratam-Baikonur
The Soviet government established Nauchno-Issledovatel'skii
Ispytatel'nyi Poligon N.5 (NIIIP-5), or Scientific-Research
Test Range N.5 (future Tyuratam or Baikonur) by its decree of 12 February 1955.
The U-2
high-altitude reconnaissance plane found and photographed for the
first time the missile test range on 5 August 1957. The location of
the new rocket center was identified on the World War II German
topographical map near Bf., or
Bahnhof (station in German), Tyuratam. Dino A. Brugioni, an
assistant to the chief of the CIA's Photo-Interpretation Division (PID),
named the launching site Tyuratam, following the intelligence
community practice of naming installations after the nearby towns.
The USSR kept the location of the missile range secret.
Only in 1961
after the launch of the first man to space, Yuri A. Gagarin, the
Soviet Union publicly identified the launch site location as
Baikonur after a small town ... nearly 200 miles (320 km) northeast
away.
See M. Gruntman, Blazing the
Trail. The Early History of Spacecraft and Rocketry, AIAA, 2004
for the historic and technological background
and context. (Many major libraries – more than 500 worldwide –
have the book in their collections.)
Pages 310–323 of the book (in Chapter 14 "Gateways to Heaven" – history of Cape
Canaveral, Vandenberg, Tyuratam-Baikonur, Plesetsk) describe the history of the
establishment and construction of the Tyuratam Missile Test Range (Baikonur Space Launch Site – Cosmodrome).
–
Page 312
from Blazing the Trail
shows parts of the decree of the
USSR Council of Ministers establishing the Tyuratam (Baikonur) Missile Test Range.
–
Pages 320-321
from Blazing the Trail
shows a composite satellite
image of the early Tyuratam (Baikonur) launch complex, the cosmodrome,
obtained by Corona on 30 May 1962. Also shown (zoomed in) are the
first space launching pad (first satellite sputnik, first cosmonaut
Gagarin) and the settlement, later called Leninsk.
–
Page 133
from Intercept 1961
discovery of Tyuratam - Baikonur
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