18.12.2022
The death of Yuri Alexeyevich Gagarin still provokes controversy and is surrounded by a huge number of myths. I have come across the most exotic theories – up to alien abduction of the first cosmonaut.
But among them there are some that are frankly offensive. For example, I often hear the following version: after returning from space Gagarin was engaged only in presidium meetings and drank, so when he was forced (!!!) to return to flight work, he got drunk with grief, and could not cope with the fighter plane and crashed. The saddest thing is that this version, passed on by word of mouth, is also a derivative of the Soviet tradition of concealing any intelligible information. Now we know that Yuri Alekseyevich worked hard in the last months: he made virtual “landings” on the flight simulator “YUG”, finished his diploma and defended it, worked on the book “Psychology and Space”, participated in the training of cosmonauts and was a pilot of the lunar craft from Yevpatoriya. To break the myth, we must first remember what Gagarin’s last flight was like.
As deputy head of the Cosmonaut Training Center, Gagarin had to fly according to his official position, but he almost did not have time for this: for the entire year of 1967 his total flight time with the instructor was 24 hours. The last flight of the year he made on 27 November, and December 2, he filed a report to the head of the CPC Air Force Major-General Nikolai Fedorovich Kuznetsov, which requested until May 1, 1968 to release him from the duties of the deputy to pass the last examination session, work on the thesis project and its defense.
In his report Gagarin added frankly: “I consider it morally unjustifiable to be in the position of deputy director of the military unit 26266 on space flight training, not being able to fly by myself and to control the flight training of the subordinate staff.
In turn, Major General Kuznetsov asked a question to Nikolai Petrovich Kamanin: “In connection with the current situation, I think it makes sense to give Colonel Gagarin the necessary time to complete the training process at the academy named after Professor P. E. Zhukovsky. To postpone his independent flight and further training flights to the most favorable meteorological conditions of the spring-summer period of 1968.
On December 8, Kamanin put a resolution “Agreed” on Kuznetsov’s message and wrote in his diary (I quote from the book “Hidden Space: Book Three”, 1999): “Received Gagarin’s report – he is very offended by the ban on independent flight by plane and asks to be relieved of his position as deputy chief of the CPC, believing that as head of the flight and space training of cosmonauts, he himself is obliged to fly a lot. Now the main task for Gagarin is to finish the Zhukovsky Academy before May 1968, and then we will let him fly, but only if the organization of flights is stricter than the one in which General Kuznetsov was going to do it in November. We’ll have to have a serious talk with Jura.”
So it was decided. Yuri Gagarin resumed his training flights at the Chkalovskiy airfield only on March 13, 1968 – just after his return from Evpatoria. Until March 22 he managed to complete eighteen flights on the familiar MiG-15UTI with an instructor, a total of nine hours. His skills were tested by instructors of 70th separate exploratory air regiment, created specifically for the training of cosmonauts: captain Khmel, section commander Major Lashkov, deputy squadron commander Major Esikov and, finally, squadron commander Lieutenant Colonel Ustenko.
On 27th March Gagarin was admitted to piloting independently the MiG-17 (tail number 19): two round trips of 30 minutes each were planned for him (exercise 4 of KBP IA-67). However, at the last moment they decided to change the plan. We open the diary of Lieutenant General Nikolay Petrovich Kamanin:
After the meeting of the State Commission, General [Nikolai Fyodorovich] Kuznetsov reported to me that tomorrow Gagarin is supposed to be released on an independent flight in a MiG-17 aircraft. Kuznetsov asked me to allow him to personally check Gagarin’s readiness for an independent flight on the UTI MiG-15. I forbade a joint flight of Gagarin and Kuznetsov, directly telling Kuznetsov that he lost his skills as a flight instructor long ago. I allowed the regimental commander, V.S. [Vladimir Sergeevich] Sergegin to check Gagarin’s piloting technique tomorrow, and I ordered General Kuznetsov to personally check Gagarin’s flying arrangements, to analyze and report to me on the air situation and weather conditions. I reserved the right to authorize Gagarin’s independent flight”.
Perhaps this decision was fatal. Later, a member of the cosmonaut squadron Dmitry A. Zaikin, at Kamanin’s request, interviewed all the participants in the events who had seen Gagarin that morning, and among them there is a very remarkable story by the regiment chief of staff Evgeny A. Remizov (I quote from the book by Sergey Mikhailovich Belotserkovsky “Gagarin’s death: facts and speculation”, 1992):
“On the day of the flight, March 27, in the morning, I was in my office. Colonel [Vladimir Sergeevich] Seryogin arrived and summoned me. We started talking about the weather conditions and Yuri Alekseyevich’s preparation for an independent flight. General [Nikolai Fyodorovich] Kuznetsov came and asked to look through Yuri Alekseevich’s flight logs with him. We took the flight booklet and flight logs, started looking at his checks and counted the flight time. At this time Yury Alekseyevich came into the office. He had already changed his clothes in a leather flight jacket and flight suit pants. He looked cheerful and smiled. So without saying a word he blinked at me, nodding his head at General Kuznetsov, who was sitting with his back to him, as if to say: “What, are your superiors checking? I gestured to him that everything was fine. And he left the office.
Then I saw him when he was leaving the headquarters with some pilot, following him to the airfield. The weather that day was such in the morning that it was possible to make a decision to fly a simple option or at elevated minimums. I suggested to General Kuznetsov to go to the weather station, analyze the weather forecast once again and decide the issue of independent flight of Yuri Alekseevich. I put forward my suggestion: “After the flight of Yuri Alekseyevich and Sergeyevich we will put his clearance booklet for an independent flight into the air, and we will not let him leave on that day.
We went to the weather forecasters. According to their reports the weather by that time was as follows: overcast with breaks, lower edge 900 m and upper edge 4000 m, but we expected worse weather conditions. General Kuznetsov agreed with my suggestion and it was decided: to check Yuri Alekseyevich on that day and to release him on the next flying day after the preliminary check flight.
From the weather station we, together with General Kuznetsov P. F., went to the airfield to the plane in which Yuri Alekseyevich was sitting. General Kuznetsov came up to the plane, stood on the stepladder and talked to Yuri Alekseevich about something. I was at this time five meters away from the aircraft and their conversation was not heard, but only observed it. Then General Kuznetsov stepped away from the aircraft and told me that for some reason the start of flights was delayed. We went to the CP [command post] of the regiment.
At that time, V. Seryogin came out of the hut, where the regiment’s CP was located. S. and came towards us. He was somewhat excited and told us: “Now there was a kilometer flight and we were temporarily delayed. But now we were cleared to fly. Vladimir Sergeevich went to Gagarin’s plane and the General and I went to the control room. But we didn’t stay there for long.
After all these negotiations and agreements Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin finally took a seat in the front cabin of MiG-15UTI training plane with number 18 (serial number 612739). Regimental commander Vladimir Sergeyevich Seryogin – in the rear cabin. We took off at 1019 hours.
The radio exchange of call sign 625 with the flight director, judging by the surviving recordings, was clear and brief. At 10:22 Gagarin, at the order of the chief of missions, switched to the third channel.
First mission was simple – exercise 2 of combat training course of fighter aviation (2CBP IA-67), that is one of the basic exercises of the course: aerobatics in the zone with turns, turns of small spiral, dives, U-turns, barrels, flying at evolutionary speed (minimum horizontal flight speed). Gagarin’s report soon followed: “625 finished the task in Zone Twenty, request permission to turn on course 320. “625, permission granted,” replied the supervisor. “Understood, I’m on it,” said Gagarin. After these words, at 10:30 the radio exchange stopped; no more requests were answered by 625.
When it became clear that there was too little fuel left on Gagarin and Seryogin’s plane and it would be problematic for them to return, anxiety gripped everyone. Nikolai Petrovich Kamanin was summoned from the Cosmonaut Training Center. The command was followed to urgently prepare and lift two IL-14 transport helicopters into the air. Then – four helicopters “Mi-4”. And at 14:50 the commander of one of the helicopters reported: “South of the village of Novoselovo, a large crater, smoke and fire can be seen in the forest.”
Kamanin and the generals gathered at the airport immediately flew to the crash site of the MiG. This is what Nikolai Petrovich later wrote in his diary:
“The deep snow in the fields and woods, untouched by the thaw, was still there, with only a few small thaws visible – the situation for finding the white domes of the parachutes was very difficult (in flight I still hoped that the crew had ejected). In a few minutes we were in the area of Novoselovo. At 1-2 km from the village we saw two helicopters on the ground. There was another helicopter in the air in addition to ours: it was circling above the forest, trying to point out to us the point of impact of the aircraft. I have great experience in finding the wreckage of planes from the air and my eyesight never failed me before, but this time I noticed them only from the third turn – a tractor which had already approached the wreckage helped. Our helicopter landed on the edge of the forest, some 800 meters from where the plane had crashed. The snow was over a meter deep, our feet were sinking with every step, and it was very difficult to walk. When we reached the crash site, there were already about three dozen people, led by Lieutenant Colonel Kozlov. The plane fell in a dense forest, its speed at the moment of hitting the ground was 700-800 kilometers per hour. The engine and the front cabin went into the ground for 6-7 meters. The wings, tail, tanks and cockpit were destroyed into tiny pieces, which were scattered in a 200 by 100 meter strip. Many airplane parts, parachutes, pilots’ clothes we found on high tree limbs. Some time later we found a fragment of upper jaw with one gold tooth and one steel tooth. The doctors reported that it was Seryogin’s jaw. There were no signs of Gagarin’s death, but hopes for his salvation were dwindling disastrously. Soon the pilot’s tablet was discovered. There were reasons to believe that this was Gagarin’s plane, but it was impossible to say that Gagarin was dead – the plane could have remained in the cockpit after the ejection and its belonging to Gagarin was still to be proved. It was getting dark quickly and it was impossible to carry out excavations at night and without an emergency committee. Brezhnev and Kosygin were told that Seryogin died and Gagarin’s death was very likely, but we will make a final report about Gagarin’s fate only in the morning of March 28, after a detailed examination of the crash site.
The second examination of the crash site really gave certainty: Yuri Alekseyevich died together with his instructor. The discovered body fragments and the pilots’ clothes were taken to Moscow, where they were cremated in the evening – two urns with ashes were placed for farewell in the Red Banner Hall of the Central House of the Soviet Army (CDSA). Contemporary researchers of the long-standing tragedy have a reasonable question: why was it so hasty to cremate the remains? The answer is simple: information about the crash was released to the media in the morning of March 28, before the second inspection was completed, and the country wanted to pay a fitting farewell to the hero of the space.
The death of Yuri Alexeyevich Gagarin shocked the whole world. Telegrams with words of condolence poured to the families of Gagarin and Sergeyev, heads of state, international organizations, the leaders of political parties expressed their sorrow. Access to the urns was opened on March 29 at 9:00. About forty thousand people said goodbye to the ashes of the victims that day. Party and government leaders, cosmonauts, pilots, workers and collective farmers, scientists and artists, marshals and soldiers stood in a guard of honor.
In the evening, Nikolai Kamanin, Valery Bykovsky, Alexei Leonov and Pavel Popovich appeared live on television to talk about the deaths of Gagarin and Seryogin and share memories of meeting them. The host asked Kamanin, “Did Gagarin need to fly? Could he not have flown?” Nikolai Petrovich answered, “Gagarin could not not fly, for him to live meant to fly. The question of whether a cosmonaut needs to fly, sounds unnatural. It is like asking whether a swimmer needs to swim, and a sailor needs to go to sea? Not every pilot can be a cosmonaut, but a cosmonaut can’t not fly.
On March 30, the hall with ballot boxes had to be opened half an hour earlier – people had been waiting in line since 6am. At 13:00 the Defense Ministry leadership stood guard of honor. At 13:10 the cosmonauts picked up the urns and carried them to the Kommuna Square. After ten minutes the long funeral procession moved along Neglinnaya Street to the House of Unions. All along the way, hundreds of thousands of Muscovites stood mournful of their bereavement. Near the House of Unions, the urns were placed on gun carriages, all the mourners got out of the cars, and the funeral procession headed for Red Square. The urns were followed by relatives, members of the Presidium of the CPSU Central Committee, cosmonauts, marshals, ministers, generals and officers. At 14:30 the urns with the ashes of Yuri Gagarin and Vladimir Sergeyogin were placed in the niches of the Kremlin wall.
On March 28, 1968, in order to establish the circumstances of the air crash, a governmental commission was established, headed by Dmitry Fyodorovich Ustinov, who held the position of Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee. At its first meeting four sub-commissions were formed: ¹ 1 – to study the flight training of the crew, to check the organization and support of the flight on March 27th 1968; ¹ 2 – to study and analyze the material part of the aircraft “MiG-15UTI” ¹ 612739 and its preparation for the flight; ¹ 3 – to check the organization of flight training of cosmonauts in CPC of Air Forces; ¹ 4 – to prepare a general conclusion and report to the CPC of CPSU. Each sub-commission consisted of 12-15 people, including representatives of KGB, government and CPSU Central Committee.
On April 1, the first three subcommissions began active work. The results of the investigation were outlined in twenty-nine volumes, which are still unavailable. That is why the versions were discussed for a long time only on the basis of testimonies of those people who took part in the proceedings.
First of all, the circumstances of the crash were determined. The first was that the airplane was in one piece before it hit the ground. Second – the plane’s engine was running at the moment of impact at rpm sufficient for horizontal flight. Third – the pilots did not try to eject. Fourth – the pilots were in working condition. Fifth – according to the two cockpit watches and the pilots’ wrist watches, the crash occurred at 10:31, that is, 50 seconds after the last radio exchange. Additionally it was confirmed that Yuri Gagarin and Vladimir Sergegin were on the plane absolutely sober – the last time they drank was on March 25, at the fiftieth birthday party of the deputy cosmonauts training center, but in moderation, and they left the celebration early.
Then all sorts of checks of serviceability of equipment with involvement of outside specialists began. They allowed the commission to draw a certain conclusion: “Preparation of the aircraft for flight 27. III. 68 was carried out in full, in accordance with the requirements of the technical operation documentation in force”.
It was much more difficult to establish the condition of the MiG, its engine and equipment during the flight itself. Nevertheless, scientific methods of investigation in aviation had already reached a high level at that time, and it was proved that all systems were functioning within normal limits before the devastating impact on the ground. One of the methods used at the time was the analysis of the prints of the instrument hands on the dials. It was used to reconstruct the readings of the aviation horizon, learn the engine rpm, rudder deflection angles, and so on.
The specialists did their best to use several independent sources of information. Immediately after locating the crash site of the MiG, measures were taken to preserve the situation intact. In addition, immediately began photographing, careful measurements, accurate collection and accounting of all parts of the aircraft. Using the birches standing nearby, the tops of which were cut down by the MiG, it was possible to accurately determine the angle of its trajectory before it hit the ground. The size of the hole formed during the impact made it possible to determine the speed of the flight regardless of the instrument readings.
The possibility of a collision with birds, another airplane, a balloon probe launched to obtain data on the state of the atmosphere was studied just as rigorously. Squads of soldiers scoured the area several times in search of such a balloon or bird remains. The documents governing the flights were studied. The radar sightings of aircraft in the area were compared. The versions about collision have been rejected.
Important information was obtained when studying the condition of the crew, including the moment of impact with the ground. The medics analyzed a tape recording of Gagarin’s speech, studying the dynamics of its frequency spectrum. Experts used finger and shoe prints to determine the pilots’ postures during the impact. Pathologists made a thorough examination of the remains. The commission confirmed the previous assumption: Gagarin and Sergeyevich were fully functional until the very end. Yuri Alekseyevich was holding the engine control knob with his left hand. The feet of both pilots were on the pedals. No traces of poisoning or gases were found, nor were there any signs of characteristic injuries from an explosion or fire.
In March 1987, Professor Sergei Mikhailovich Belotserkovsky and the cosmonaut Aleksey Arkhipovich Leonov, who participated in the investigation, presented their version of the plane crash that took the life of Yuri Gagarin. They reported that a group of specialists in flight dynamics of the Zhukovsky Military Air Engineering Academy made a number of calculations, duplicating them in two organizations. It is noteworthy that the calculations were made on the same BESM-2M computer, on which Yuri Gagarin performed his research on the aerodynamics of the flight of the YUG spaceplane. With the help of modeling it was possible to reconstruct the most probable course of events.
After receiving permission from the flight director to return, Yuri Gagarin had to make a U-turn from heading 70 to heading 320 with a descent. The flight was between two layers of cloud with no visibility of the natural horizon. Then something unexpected happened and the MiG found itself at critical angles of attack in a plumb dive position.
The first reason is that when approaching the upper boundary of the lower cloud layer, which was very “jagged”, with “tongues” of clouds, the pilots could take this “tongue” for an obstacle: another aircraft or a balloon-probe. It cannot be ruled out that there really was an obstacle – for example, a flock of birds. Abrupt approach could have led to a maneuver with taking the handle on itself and crashing the MiG.
The second reason is hitting the trace of the overflying aircraft. The so-called free (or end) vortices run off the end of the wing of each aircraft. Aviators know very well that when flying in formation or refueling in the air, you can not get into the range of the end vortices of the flying ahead car – otherwise there is such a powerful effect of the swirling flow that it is almost impossible to cope with it: the plane goes into a sharp roll and stall.
The third reason is the ascending vertical air flow, which could change the MiG’s streamline in horizontal flight. Taking into account the cold front approaching that day, such phenomena cannot be excluded from the analysis.
A combination of two or all three of these factors could very well have occurred. If the natural horizon is not visible, as it was on Gagarin’s last flight, piloting is difficult and the spatial orientation is based only on instruments, mainly on the aviation horizon. However, a sharp maneuver, especially when accompanied by large dive angles, can lead to large errors in the AGI-1 horizon readings. The pilots could estimate their spatial position correctly only when they came out of the cloud cover, that is, at an altitude of about 400-500 meters. But the point is that such an altitude reserve is not enough to bring the MiG out of a plummeting dive.
To summarize, we can try to recreate the picture that played out during the last minute of the MiG-15UTI flight according to Belotserkovsky – Leonov version. Having reported to the leader about the exercises in the zone and having received permission to return, Yuri Gagarin after the downward spiral began to make a U-turn immediately. This maneuver usually involves a gradual increase in overloads, angles of attack, and roll angles. Near the upper boundary of the lower cloud layer, the aircraft experienced one of the above “impacts”, which resulted in a stall on the wing. Finding themselves in the most difficult situation, both pilots not only did not lose heart, but did everything possible to save themselves. For several seconds Yuri Gagarin and Vladimir Sergegin, keeping their coordinated actions, fought for life, bringing the plane out of dive, even though they were under overload, which increased suddenly to 10-11 g. They were only two hundred meters short of altitude – only two seconds of flight time!
In April 2011, under public pressure, some documents related to the 1968 investigation were declassified, including the “Conclusion and Proposals of the Governmental Commission to clarify the circumstances of the death of Soviet pilot-cosmonaut Colonel Y. Gagarin and Colonel Engineer V. Seryogin. С”. I will quote only the final conclusion (according to the collection “Soviet Space”, 2011):
Based on the analysis of the circumstances of the flight accident and the materials of the investigation, the most probable cause of the crash is the performance of a sharp maneuver to turn away from the balloon-probe or (which is less likely) to prevent entry into the upper edge of the first cloud layer. The abrupt maneuver caused the aircraft to go into overcritical flight mode and stall in a complicated meteorological situation”.
In fact, we are facing a simplified version of Belotserkovsky – Leonov, without the version of an extraneous aircraft, which happened to be in the piloting zone of Gagarin. However Alexey Leonov did not accept the documents that appeared and made a new statement, in which he said that we can be sure: the reason of MiG of Yuri Gagarin falling down was an extraneous fighter-interceptor “Su-15”, which was flying from Zhukovsky airfield and accidentally entered the maneuvering zone. Leonov states that the pilot, who was flying the fighter and violated flight regulations, is still alive but he refused to tell his name referring to state secret.
However, there is another version of the same version. Vladimir Aleksandrovich Shatalov, pilot-cosmonaut, in his book “Cosmic everyday life” (2008) asserts that an extraneous aircraft could have appeared on the opposite course:
“Events could have developed like this. Having completed the mission and reported to ground, Gagarin started turning to 320° course to enter circle over airfield. At that moment the Su-15 aircraft was flying on the opposite course. The flight was going down towards Ramenskoye. The plane was going at supersonic speed. Our friends, who were performing parachute jumps in the region of Kerzhach, heard a pop as the sound wave following the plane went through the area. On oncoming courses, in conditions of broken multi-layered clouds, the pilots could not see each other or could only see each other for a moment as they flew over. The total flight speed of the planes reached more than two thousand kilometers per hour. How could this meeting have taken place? If the oncoming plane was flying somewhat lower, the pilots would instinctively grab the handle on themselves sharply. The large positive g-load could not have brought the plane to overcritical angles of attack at that speed. The airplane would gain altitude sharply, and the pilots could safely fly on, reducing the overload.
If they saw an oncoming plane flying a little higher, the pilot’s natural reaction would also cause them to sharply pull away from themselves. This would coincide with the sound wave passing over them from the plane flying at supersonic speed. The distance between them could literally be measured in meters. In aviation, it is not uncommon for even large planes to collide. A sudden rush of an airplane could lead to destruction of the cockpit lanterns and a severe impact of pilots’ heads against the lantern frame, to an instant depressurization of the cockpit and loss of consciousness by the pilots. We were then flying in simple soft helmets, which could not protect our heads from the impact. There were several such cases in aviation. The depressurization is confirmed by the indication of negative pressure on the dashboard, recorded at the moment of impact with the ground. In addition, the conclusion of the government commission states that it was not possible to find more than 80% of the glazing of the cockpit lantern at the crash site. It could have been destroyed somewhere earlier, far away from the crash site. If these fragments had been found, maybe my version would have been more convincingly confirmed. Attempts to find any objects capable of explaining the cause of death yielded no results. Only a few remnants of weather balloons were found in the deep snow of the forest. Study of their origin convinced the members of the commission that they were launched in earlier days and their condition confirmed their noninvolvement in the collision with the airplane.
Experienced flight instructor Nikolay Konstantinovich Sergeev, who now lives in the USA, suggests that any versions related to a sudden obstacle, which provoked a stall in a dive, should be rejected altogether. In his unpublished book “Yuri Gagarin. The Death of a Legend. How It Was” (2014), he calls attention to two circumstances: the astronaut’s poor flight training and the features of the MiG-15UTI with flight number 18, which was being prepared hastily because of changes in plans to let Gagarin go on a test flight. Based on circumstantial information, Sergeev concluded that the ill-fated MiG was in the process of being converted into an airplane for demonstration catapults:
“On March 15, this twin [two-seat plane] was put in the TECh (technical-operational part, simply workshop) and the control handle (plane handle) in the rear cabin (instructor’s cabin) was removed, so it would not interfere with the officer-parachutist when he catapulted.
That’s what they dragged the plane to the 27th morning for the flights and began “quickly” to prepare it for takeoff. As a result of “quick” preparation the suspended tanks were not removed, the flight data recorder was not filled with paper, the cockpit ventilation valve was not closed! And so on this “quickly prepared” aircraft, without the control knob in the rear cabin they flew to their last flight.
However, any plane crash is always a combination of factors. Although Gagarin was promoted to the honorary title of pilot 1st class, he was still a pilot 3rd class (total flight time since graduation was only 379 hours – ten years!), i.e. he was allowed to fly only in calm, clear weather. After starting the mission in the flying zone Seryogin saw that the weather started to deteriorate sharply and ordered Gagarin to turn back. He started a turn at 320 degrees with a descent and at an altitude of 3900 meters he entered the solid clouds. There the cosmonaut lost his spatial orientation: the plane began to list down and lower its nose. Sergegin easily pedaled the roll and waited until the plane would come out under the clouds, where Gagarin would level it. He could not do it himself due to the lack of a control knob in his cockpit. But the clouds were too low – at an altitude of 450 meters, and Yuri Alekseyevich simply did not have time to cope with the plane. Sergeyev’s opponents point to the fact that the MiG-15UTI passed all the inspections and none of the documents says anything about modification of the rear cabin for ejection. In response, Nikolai Konstantinovich demands to see the technical form of the aircraft, which for some reason is strictly classified. The final point in the dispute between Sergeev and his opponents can only be put by the new examination of the wreckage of MiG-15UTI kept in sealed envelopes in the storehouse of the 13th State Research Institute of the Ministry of Defense (Lubertsy, Moscow Region, in / 75360).
Could Yuri Gagarin leave the plane using catapult? Yes, but the ejection scheme was organized in such a way, that the instructor had to be the first to leave the perishing plane. Probably after leaving the clouds Colonel Sergegin realized that Gagarin simply would not have time to eject after him and made an instant decision – to stay with the cosmonaut until the end.
In any case, until the full report of the Government Commission is declassified and published (that is, all twenty-nine volumes), even the most convincing versions of Yuri Alexeyevich Gagarin’s death remain speculative. We must get to the truth! There should be no blank spots in the history of life and death of the planet’s first cosmonaut.
