Design Of A Manned Rocket Airplane.

Not a standalone book but the “1 March 1881” special number (Nos. 10–11, April–May 1918) of the history journal Byloye, devoted to the assassination of Tsar Alexander II.

Kibalchich wrote his project for a rocket-powered “aeronautical apparatus” in prison on 23 March 1881, ten days before his execution, and asked in vain to hear the verdict of the experts; instead the gendarmerie sealed it in an envelope sewn into his case file, where it stayed shut for 36 years until the police archive was opened in August 1917.

Byloye printed it here for the first time: the editor’s introduction begins on page 113, the design itself on page 115 with its diagram (Chart 1) on page 118, and an assessment by the engineer Nikolai Rynin on page 122, crediting Kibalchich with priority for applying the rocket principle to flight while faulting the absence of calculations. The same issue carries Vera Figner’s memoir of Sofia Perovskaya and newly opened police and ministerial papers on the case. The design is also recounted in the year-end 1925 double number of Vestnik Znaniya, also in this collection.