 It is therefore not far-fetched to suggest that Ilyushin's conjectured and ill-fated flight was therefore airbrushed out of official Soviet space history. But could the truth be far darker than mere Cold War paranoia? Just weeks before Gagarin's supposed first spaceflight, two Italian brothers based at an experimental listening station in Turin claimed to have picked up something truly chilling. It was the sound of a cosmonaut suffocating to death