Pyotr Dolgov

Pyotr Ivanovich Dolgov (; 21 February 1920 – 1 November 1962) (Hero of the Soviet Union) was a colonel in the Soviet airborne forces. Dolgov died while carrying out a high-altitude parachute jump from a gondola.

Early life and career Dolgov was born into a family of farmers in the village of Bogoyavlenskoye (now Dolgovo) in Zemetchinsky District, Penza Oblast. He served with the Soviet airborne in World War II.

Death On 1 November 1962, Dolgov and Major Yevgeni Nikolayevich Andreyev ascended in a Volga balloon gondola from Volsk, near Saratov, to make high-altitude parachute jumps. Andreyev successfully completed his jump. Dolgov, testing an experimental pressure suit, jumped at . The helmet visor of Dolgov's pressure suit hit part of the gondola as he exited, and the suit depressurized, killing him. On 12 December 1962, Dolgov was posthumously named a Hero of the Soviet Union.

If Dolgov's jump had been successful, he still would not have exceeded the record set by Joseph Kittinger for the highest-altitude parachute jump in history (, 16 August 1960). The current world record is held by Alan Eustace (, 24 October 2014).

Legacy At the time of Dolgov's death, the Soviet Army newspaper Red Star announced that he had died in the course of "carrying out his duties". Over the years there have been false reports that Dolgov actually died on 11 October 1960, in a failed flight of a Vostok spacecraft.

A fictionalized version of Dolgov's death (incorrectly dated in February 1961) appears in the short story "The Chief Designer" by Andy Duncan, which was published in Asimov's Science Fiction magazine and was a Hugo finalist.