The village of Klushino near Smolensk, Russia was the birth place of Yuri Gagarin on March 9, 1934. The son of farm workers, Alexey Ivanovich Gagarin and Anna Timofeyevna Gagarina, his two older brothers were shipped to slave labor camps by the German invaders in 1943. Even as a youth he was interested in space and the planets and one of his math and science teachers had flown with the Soviet Air Force during the war and apparently made quite an impression on young Yuri.
Orenburg Pilot School
While serving as an apprentice in a metalworks Gagarin was sent to a technical school in Saratov where he learned to fly. By 1955 he entered piloting training at the Orenburg Pilot School. Here he met and married Valentina Goryacheva and in 1957 was commissioned a Lieutenant in the Soviet Air Force.
Soviet Space Program
His interest in space led him to apply for and be selected with nineteen other men to join the Soviet Space Program. Out of those twenty men, Gagarin and Gherman Titov were chosen to be the first cosmonauts. The selection was based on their outstanding performance and the fact that they were both small men and space was at a premium in the Vostok capsules.
Vostok 1
Yuri Gagarin became the first man to fly in space on April 12, 1961 when Vostok 1 was launched into orbit. Landing safely he became an instant world-wide celebrity, touring the world and making appearances in Great Britain, Canada, Germany, Italy and Japan.
Soyuz 1
That was to be his only space flight. The next year he served as deputy of the Supreme Soviet Union and then returned to the space program to work on designed reusable spacecraft. By 1963 he had been promoted to Colonel of the Soviet Air Force. Though officials tried to keep him away from flying for fear of losing their hero in an accident, he managed to become back up pilot for Vladimir Komarov in Soyuz 1. This was to be his last opportunity for Komarov’s flight ended in the cosmonaut’s death and Gagarin was thereafter banned from space flights.
MiG Pilot
It was not possible to keep Gagarin out of the air. When he became deputy training director at the cosmonaut training base Yuri began re-qualifying as a fighter pilot. On March 27, 1968, he flew out of Chkalovsky Air Base on a routine training flight in a MiG-15UTI with Vladimir Seryogin, his instructor. Both men perished when the plane crashed.
An inquest was held after the men were buried in the walls of the Kremlin in Red Square but though a verdict was presented the crash was never satisfactorily explained. The official verdict suggested that turbulence from another plane, a Su-11 interceptor on afterburners, flying close by caused Gagarin to lose control.
Conspiracy Theory
The KGB investigated a number of conspiracy theories that indicated air base personnel were responsible for the crash by supplying outdated weather information and leaving the outboard fuel tanks attached. The flight required clear weather and no external tanks. It was concluded that Gagarin’s craft had been struck by a bird which caused it to go into a spin and because of outdated weather reports Gagarin not realize how close they were to the ground.
Sukhoi Fighter
Bad weather was also partially responsible for the official theory that a Sukhoi fighter was in the area and without realizing Gagarin’s MiG was in the area passed close to him while breaking the sound barrier. The turbulence that resulted sent Gagarin’s plane into a spin, resulting in the craft crashing.
Final Conclusion
When the Kremlin vetoed a new investigation in 2007, independent Russian investigators began their own research. They recently concluded that an air vent in the cockpit had been left open causing Gagarin’s reaction to sent the MiG into a dive during which he blacked out and crashed the plane into a forested area.
What actually happened will always be open to conjecture and be debated for as long as the space program catches the imagination of the public.
Bibliography
Michael D. Cole – Vostok I: First Human in Space – 1995
Jamie Doran – Starman: the Truth Beghind the Legend of Yuri Gagarin – 1998
Alexey Leonov – Two Sides of the Moon - 2004
AFP Wire Service –Solved: Mystery of the air crash that killed Gagarin – 2007
William Silvester - Most of Bill's writing over the past few years has been for the philatelic press and consists primarily of columns and articles about the ...
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