This comprehensive report is based on Soviet-Satellite open sources published 1924-1965. It concerns experimental research in high velocity aerodynamics and gas dynamics. The first section lists facilities and personnel engaged in this field of research; it gives data on wind tunnels, shock tubes, and shock tube flows; a third chapter pertains to measurement techniques (velocity, density, temperature, and pressure). The second section deals with such problems of aerophysics as the state of a gas heated by a shock wave and related phenomena taking place behind a shock wave, such as dissociation, ionization, light emission, radiation, and formation of plasma. It includes chapters on shock tube flows, boundary layer interaction, physical properties of gases at high temperatures, heat transfer, mass transfer, and detonation. The research is based on simulation of the conditions encountered in space flights and reentry by creating highspeed, high-temperature ionized gas flows by means of shock waves produced in supersonic wind tunnels, shock tubes, discharge tubes, and by explosions. Emphasis has been placed on supersonic shock tube investigations. The shock wave methods employed in laboratory studies of the physical and physiochemical properties of various gases heated by shock waves at high temperatures, the specific apparatus, and the auxiliary means characteristic of many laboratories are described. (Author).