ANSWER
In 1965, Soviet cosmonauts Pavel Belyayev and Alexei Leonov went into the record books with their flight aboard the Voskhod 2. History will remember this flight for the first ever spacewalk, a 20 minute jaunt by Leonov, made all the more interesting because of his difficulty re-entering the capsule after it was over. (Seems his spacesuit had expanded slightly, and he didn't quite fit through the hatch as easily as he had exited.)
What history may not remember is their landing. Their capsule came down over a thousand miles off course, in the midst of a thick forest in the Ural mountains, near the town of Perm. The location was not only remote, but was inaccessible by helicopter, so they had to spend the night in the mountains… surrounded by a pack of hungry wolves. Ever since then, all Soviet, and later Russian, spacecraft have carried with them a shotgun to fend off wild animals.
As you might expect, there is a little more to the story than that. James Oberg, one of the world's foremost authorities on the Russian space program (seriously, look it up) sent this reply to regular reader Marika Theissen…
No Soyuz has carried ‘a sawed off shotgun' -- but they carry a three-barrel gun (picture attached) for emergency landings -- flares, bullets, and yes, shotgun shells. It's the only gun allowed at the International Space Station -- but try to find ANY information on it at NASA's websites . However, there's LOTS of info in my book ‘Star-Crossed Orbits'.
Jim O
www.jamesoberg.com
WHO GOT IT RIGHT: Bob Milligan, Robin Campbell, Tysen Bang, Yanitz Grinell, Marika Thiessen, Marc Quinlivan, David Evans, and Allan Christensen.
