The 20s and 30s of the last century were a difficult time. The country was rebuilding after the civil war and intervention, but the young citizens of the young Soviet Union were already looking to the future. Aviators were the idols of the youth. The pilots declared themselves especially loudly after the rescue of the legendary Chelyuskinites. Of course, various circles and organizations gradually began to appear, uniting enthusiasts for the conquest of the sky. However, the skies of the Soviet youth were clearly not enough, and even then the guys were thinking about rocketry. Naturally, young people on the shores of the Black Sea did not lag behind the advanced trends.
Gleb Tereshchenko. Space Age Prophet
The cosmic dreams of Novorossiysk are inextricably linked with the name of Gleb Tereshchenko and his comrades. Gleb Antonovich was born in Petrograd in 1921, although his father Anton Savvich was a native Novorossian, who was thrown into the chilly northern capital by the service. Little Gleb's health was poor. Doctors advised the family to return to the south. Anton Savvich achieved a transfer to Novorossiysk and began to settle down. Gleb's father built a house at the beginning of Deribasovskaya street (now Chelyuskintsev street) from local materials, crackling stone and cement.
Gleb was already desperately fond of aviation even then. His father, an engineer by training, encouraged these impulses by subscribing to the Samolet magazine for his son. In his native high school number 3 (the former Novorossiysk men's gymnasium), Gleb was an active enthusiast of the aircraft modeling circle, becoming, in fact, the head of this modest organization. Tereshchenko also eagerly absorbed any scientific information on jet technology.
In the 30s, the enthusiasm of young Novorossiys and their parents made it possible to found the Novorossiysk flying club, located in the area of the modern Cape of Love. And, of course, Gleb took a leading position in the flying club and soon, at the age of 16, was approved as an instructor for young aircraft manufacturers, about which he had a corresponding sign from OSOAVIAKHIM. Heading the flying club, Tereshchenko became one of the first Novorossiysk pilots, mastered parachute jumping and even joined the diving profession. He himself created drawings of future aircraft models and developed projects for quite real aircraft, he himself designed parts for his brainchildren and assembled aircraft models.
First steps into the future
In 1937, Gleb Tereshchenko began developing an aircraft model with a jet engine. The leading idea was instantly picked up by other fellow flying club members. The work was in full swing. Therefore, in 1938, the director of the Palace of Pioneers Olga Shandarova invited Gleb and his team to head an experimental rocket model aircraft laboratory. In fact, it was a kind of design bureau, organized by Tereshchenko, in which each led his own circle of work.
Vladimir Nogaytsev developed beam aircraft models and engines. Maria Rassadnikova led the questions of materials to lighten the weight of the models. Frida Gromova dealt exclusively with jet engines. Pavel Fileshi was a staff chemist, experimenting with various mixtures for solid fuel engines. Konstantin Mikhailov, already a student at the Moscow Aviation Institute, where he was admitted, taking into account the Novorossiysk experience, without exams, passed on to his fellow countrymen and colleagues all the most advanced materials on rocketry and aviation.
The "chief designer" of the laboratory was Gleb. Contemporaries familiar with the work of Novorossiysk enthusiasts stated that Tereshchenko thought at the level of the best design bureaus of the Second World War. In 1939, the laboratory's research reached such a level that the Palace of Pioneers had to allocate additional premises to Gleb's team. The activities of the laboratory did not look like a youthful hobby. This is how one of the members of the Tereschensk team, Pavel Fileshi, recalls those days:
“Near the dance floor (city park. - Author's note), on the southern side of it, in 1940, a funnel was dug to demonstrate its possible size from the explosion of a hundred-kilogram bomb. We quite often used this funnel to test the thrust force of missiles … it was necessary to test our next decision … A lighted rocket was thrown to the bottom of the funnel, in which, accelerating along the slopes, it flew out."
Finally, Tereshchenko proposed to start translating ideas, as they say, in metal. For these purposes, his team literally occupied the barn of Father Gleb. The guys spent days and nights there, building an experimental two-seater aircraft of the "Bloch" type. Alas, it was not possible to find the means to create the engine before the war. As a result, the assembled machine remained in the shed until 1943, until a BM-13 rocket hit the structure, i.e. "Katyusha". Fate has a wicked irony.
However, the activities of the laboratory were by no means limited to the construction of the "Flea". After all, the guys were literally eager for "tomorrow". It was just that the plane did not suit them. They dreamed of a rocket plane, future jet aircraft and a full-fledged rocket. Gleb and his team, having exhausted the possibilities of solid-fuel samples experimentally, began in earnest to develop liquid-fueled engines.
The following memories were left by Tereshchenko himself in one of the press materials of those years:
“Let's build rocket planes! My comrades and I were very interested in the rocket engine. A rocket-powered plane can reach tremendous altitude and speed. We worked a lot on the rocket plane model. Our first models whistled into the air, but 20 meters from the start, my model fell and crashed. This did not bother us. Worked again. Now we have become designers for the construction of rocket aircraft models."
Decades later, one of Gleb's comrades, Georgy Maistrenko, a veteran of the Great Patriotic War and Hero of Socialist Labor, recalled:
“I studied with Gleb in the aircraft modeling circle. I remember how he made a rocket model that is almost completely similar to modern Su-type two-keel jet fighters. That was his foresight."
All-Union success
Without access to foreign experience, the Novorossiysk team by 1940 was able to independently develop and implement in metal one of the first flying aircraft models with a jet engine. This was an absolute innovation. In August 1940, the Novorossiys went to the 14th All-Union competition of flying aircraft models in Konstantinovka, where they made a splash, setting a number of records.
The rocket beam model of Vladimir Nogaytsev held out in the air for 1 minute 32 seconds. And the rocket fuselage model of Gleb Tereshchenko was able not only to exceed the speed of 40 m / s, but also fly away completely out of sight. By the way, in the end, after many hours of searching, she was never found.
At those competitions, the nickname "rocket men" stuck for the Novorossiysk. Their tent has become a kind of base for all jet enthusiasts. People flocked there to get background information, to exchange experiences and just out of curiosity. Colonel, scientist in the design of aerospace systems, doctor of technical sciences, professor, and in the 30s, a member of the Moscow aircraft modeling circle, Oleg Aleksandrovich Chembrovsky, recalled that in Moscow the name of Tereshchenko began to sound loudly after those competitions.
As a result, the organizing committee recommended the Novorossiysk laboratory to prepare for publication a collection of articles on the author's solutions to structural issues of jet aircraft construction, but the publication of the collection planned for 1941 did not take place for obvious reasons. At the beginning of the fateful 1941, in one of his articles, Tereshchenko confidently wrote:
"Rockets are the engines of the future, and rocket flight is the problem of flying into world space."
The dawn of the space age seemed to be on the doorstep. The Novorossiysk laboratory, having returned with success, has come to grips with creating a full-fledged jet engine running on liquid fuel. The number of drawings and diagrams expanded, experimental launches became commonplace, but the war interrupted everything.
The tragedy of the Novorossiysk missilemen
The Great Patriotic War will take a bloody ax over the fate of Novorossiysk missilemen. Almost all of them will die in the crucible of that war. Konstantin Mikhailov, who has already entered the Moscow Aviation Institute, will volunteer for the militia. He will die defending the capital.
Frida Gromova, who designed the first models of jet engines, will leave the city after the evacuated flying club. During the crossing in the Ust-Labinsk region, she will fall under the Nazi bombardment. A very young girl will die under bombs.
In 1941, Tereshchenko himself volunteered for the front. Until 1943, Gleb will fight in the vastness of the Kuban. His life will end in February 1943 during the liberation of the Krasnodar Territory. During the fighting in the area of the farmsteads Greeks and Grechanaya Balka, Gleb, after an unsuccessful attack on German positions, will be seriously wounded and will die from blood loss. He will be buried there, in a mass grave.
Nowadays, few people know about the daring jet takeoff of the Novorossiysk rocket team, before which the doors of the best institutes were opened. However, the war not only wiped out the ranks of the Tereshchenko team, but also almost buried their works and their memory. After the complete liberation of Novorossiysk, the capital demanded only one thing from the surviving Novorossiys who were returning home: the factories and the port had to earn money at any cost. Nobody wanted to think about any research of young scientists in the pre-war laboratory.
For the first time, they remembered about the enthusiasts of jet technology only in 1977. In October of that year, a scientific-practical conference "40 years of the aeronautical laboratory of the Novorossiysk Palace of Pioneers" was held in Novorossiysk, in which academicians of the USSR Academy of Sciences and the first rocket designers took part. As it turned out, the metropolitan scientists were quite familiar with the works of Tereshchenko and regarded his research as serious scientific research. Moreover, venerable Soviet experts concluded that drawings, photographs, technical notes of pre-war Novorossiysk teenagers are still relevant today. Too many bold and original solutions were in the works of Tereshchenko and his team. For example, they noted the original design of a controlled stabilizer on one of the jet aircraft models.
Later, several times, the history of the Novorossiysk missile men regained life. But alas, despite the recommendations to publish the works of the guys who are still of scientific interest, the matter did not go further, which, in my opinion, is unfair. After all, the contribution of the Novorossiys to the dawn of the space age was modest, but it was.
