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Death of Yuri Gagarin 1st Man in Space 33

Details in Death of Yuri

Gagarin, 1st Man in

Space, Revealed 45 Years

Later

By Robert Z Pearlmen

The circumstances surrounding the death of the
first man in space Yuri Gagarin, who was killed
in a 1968 jet crash, have long been clouded in
theories and rumors. Now, the first man to walk
in space says he can reveal what really happened
to his friend and fellow Russian cosmonaut.
Alexei Leonov, who in 1965 became the
first man to leave a spacecraft and float in the
open vacuum of space, has worked for years to
learn what led to Gagarin's death. He finally tampered with or otherwise left an air vent open Some Russian Incidents,
gained permission and spoke about the details in in the cockpit, leading to Gagarin and Seryogin
an interview released by the state-funded Russia suffering from oxygen deprivation at altitude. failures, and setbacks
Today (RT) television network. For his part, Leonov held for years that
Yuri Gagarin made history by launching he thought the first loud boom he heard was
on the world's first manned spaceflight on April another jet breaking the sound barrier, followed • The Nedelin catastrophe in 1960 was a
disastrous explosion of a fueled rocket being
12, 1961. He died just shy of his Vostok 1 soon thereafter by the sound of Gagarin's jet tested on launchpad, killing many technical
mission's seventh anniversary, on March 27, hitting the ground. personnel, aerospace engineers, and
1968, when the MiG-15 fighter jet that he and
technicians working on the project at the
instructor Vladimir Seryogin were piloting on a Another pilot's error time of the explosion.
routine training flight went down outside a small
• The first official cosmonaut fatality during
town near Moscow. "We knew that a Su-15 [fighter jet] was training occurred on March 23, 1961, when
Leonov, who had been in the vicinity that scheduled to be tested that day, but it was Valentin Bondarenko died in a fire within a
day and reported hearing two loud booms in the supposed to be flying at the altitude of 10,000 low pressure, high oxygen atmosphere.
distance, served on the state commission that meters [33,000 feet] or higher, not 450-500 • The Voskhod program was canceled after
investigated the crash. The official findings meters [1,480-1,640 feet]," Leonov told RT. "It two manned flights owing to the change of
reported Gagarin and Seryogin had maneuvered was a violation of the flight procedure." Soviet leadership and nearly fatal 'close
to avoid colliding with bird or other object, and A new declassified report confirmed that calls' during the second mission. Had the
as a result, entered a tailspin and plummeted to an unauthorized Sukhoi (Su-15) supersonic jet planned further flights gone ahead they
the ground. flew dangerously close to Gagarin's MiG-15. could have given the Soviet space program
"That conclusion is believable to a "While afterburning the aircraft reduced further 'firsts' including a long duration
civilian — [but] not to a professional," Leonov, its echelon at a distance of 10-15 meters [30-50 flight of 20 days, a spacewalk by a woman
now 79, explained to RT. "In fact, everything ft] in the clouds, passing close to Gagarin, and an untethered spacewalk.
went down differently." turning his plane and thus sending it into a • The Soviets continued striving for the first
tailspin — a deep spiral, to be precise — at a lunar mission with the huge N-1 rocket,
Vodka, vent or vertical drop speed of 750 kilometers per hour [470 miles per which exploded on each of four unmanned
hour]," Leonov said in the television interview. tests shortly after launch. The Americans
The official explanation of how Yuri Gagarin Upon seeing the released report, Leonov won the race to land men on the Moon with
died did not go unchallenged, and not by Leonov also realized that his own account of that day Apollo 11 on July 20, 1969.
alone. Many theories, ranging from the technical had been recorded incorrectly. The report • In 1971, the Soyuz 11 mission resulted in the
to the conspiratorial, have been raised in the suggested that he heard the loud booms 15 to 20 deaths of three cosmonauts when the crew
decades since. seconds apart, when it was actually two seconds. capsule depressurized during preparations
The Soviet government, military and "That suggested that the two jets must for re-entry. This accident resulted in the
even the KGB looked into some the claims, have been no less than 50 kilometers apart." only human deaths to occur in space (as
dismissing rumors that Gagarin had been Leonov said. opposed to high atmosphere). The crew
intoxicated, or that he and Seryogin had been Armed with the report's data, a new members aboard Soyuz 11 were Vladislav
"taking potshots at wild deer from their plane, computer simulation was generated, revealing Volkov, Georgi Dobrovolski, and Viktor
causing it to spiral out of control," as Leonov why Gagarin's jet went down. Patsayev.
recounted in "Two Sides of the Moon," the joint- "Now, a jet can sink into a deep spiral if • On April 5, 1975, Soyuz 7K-T No.39, the
biography he penned with U.S. astronaut David a larger, heavier aircraft passes by too close and second stage of a Soyuz rocket carrying 2
Scott in 2004. flips [the jet] over with its backwash. And that is cosmonauts to the Salyut 4 space station
The government's investigations also exactly what happened to Gagarin. That malfunctioned, resulting in the first manned
ruled out sabotage. trajectory was the only one that corresponded launch abort. The cosmonauts were carried
Documents declassified in 2003 revealed with all our input parameters," Leonov told RT. several thousand miles downrange and
that the KGB had suspected air traffic Leonov was allowed to go public with became worried that they would land in
controllers as having contributed inadvertently the story, except for one detail: the Su-15 pilot's China, which the Soviet Union was then
to the crash by providing bad weather data. name. That pilot, who is now 80, is said to be in having difficult relations with. The capsule
Gagarin and Seryogin were led to believe that a poor health. hit a mountain, sliding down a slope and
bank of clouds were higher than they really "I was asked not to disclose the pilot's almost slid off a cliff; however, the
were, leaving them too little time to recover name," Leonov explained. "He is a good test parachute lines snagged on trees and kept
from a spin, the intelligence agency suggested. pilot... It will fix nothing." [] this from happening. As it was, the two
Yet another theory, put forth by a retired suffered severe injuries and the commander,
Soviet Air Force colonel, proposed that the pilot Lazerev, never flew again. []
who had previously flown the MiG-15 jet had