Неизвестный Янгель

A peak in the Pamirs and a crater on the Moon are named after him. His “products” became the basis of the USSR Strategic Missile Forces. He created the legendary “Satan,” listed in the Guinness Book of Records as “the most powerful intercontinental ballistic missile in the world.” Having graduated from the Moscow Aviation Institute with a degree in aircraft engineering, in his youth Mikhail Yangel worked with the greatest Soviet aircraft designers - the “king of fighters” Polikarpov, Mikoyan, Myasishchev - but the main business of his life was rockets. Under Yangel’s leadership, the first mass-produced medium-range missile R-12 (which caused the Cuban Missile Crisis), the best intercontinental missile of its time R-16 (it was Marshal Nedelin who died during its testing, and Yangel himself only miraculously survived), the first the “global” ICBM R-36, the first “mortar launch” systems, the possibility of which even some of his closest employees did not believe in, declaring: “To throw a colossus weighing more than 200 tons like an apple is pure absurdity!” ", but Yangel created this miracle! - and, finally, the famous R-18, which the Americans nicknamed “SATAN” and which is capable of overcoming any missile defense system. This masterpiece of rocket science was the last work of Mikhail Kuzmich - twice Hero of Socialist Labor, laureate of the Lenin and State Prizes, Academician Yangel died of a fifth heart attack on the day of his 60th birthday....

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