20.12.2022
Many Soviet sources claim that Yuri Gagarin’s main problem during his training at the Saratov Aeroclub was a total lack of time.
For example, Lydia Obukhova in “The Favorite of the Century” (1979) quotes the memories of former “industrialist” Alexander Gavrilovich Shikin: “After lunch we rest for an hour or two, and he would run to the sports field, prepare for competitions, gather the guys. Then I joined the flying club. We sit down to do our homework, and he goes off to do other things. Late at night, he’d bring us the blueprints for an airplane wing and show us. He knew that nobody would let him fly an airplane right away, we needed theory and theory. It seemed boring to others: we had many applicants for the flying club, but he was the only one to graduate. So it turns out that at ten p.m. we already go to bed and have a rest, and Yuri only prepares lessons for the next day. His memory was enormous, of course. But it’s not just one memory.
In reality, there were many more problems. And some of them seemed insurmountable. First of all – the director of the technical school, Sergei Ivanovich Rodionov, was not going to change the program for the sake of the interests of several “industrialists” who had decided at the last moment to “escape” from metallurgy to aviation. In February 1955, after passing the session, the L-41 group was sent to pedagogical practice in Leningrad. There they were to teach classes to the students of the vocational schools in the specialty of “mold maker foundry worker” as masters of apprenticeship.
It is clear that because of their departure, the “pupils” could not attend theoretical classes at the flying club, which would inevitably have affected their performance. Gagarin displayed his usual diligence again by taking with him on his trip the illustrated “Pilot’s Guide to Operating and Piloting the Yak-18 with M-11FR Engine” (1953) in order to continue his theoretical studies.
Yuri Gagarin and Fyodor Petrunin found themselves at Vulkan factory (present address – 4 Novoladozhskaya Street, Malaya Nevka bank), which produced carding machines and was famous for its advanced casting methods that allowed to save metal considerably. The practice began with a small incident, described by Matvey Abramovich Arkind, then head of the foundry. One day he was walking through the yard and suddenly noticed a disturbance. At the entrance to the shop, at the wide doors wide open, he saw a flock of young workers crowding around two unfamiliar “dapper” young men. “What’s the matter?! – Arkind shouted. – ‘Places at once! Who are you? Trainees? If that’s how you think you’re going to start your practice, I won’t even let you in the shop.” They quickly dropped their cigarettes and, with their heads bowed down, followed Matvey Abramovich into his office.
There is one remarkable detail in the story (I have quoted it almost in full): Gagarin smokes cigarettes! How it doesn’t fit the image of an ideal cosmonaut! In fact, there is no big secret: Yuri Alekseyevich really smoked, but as far as we know, he never picked up a bad habit.
The trainees were accommodated in the plant’s dormitory at Petrogradskaya St., Bolshaya Prospect, 37. There is an order of the trade school No. 52 of February 14, 1955: “To put the student of the Saratov Industrial Technical School, Gagarin, on the board from February 14 to March 30, as a foreman of the group of moulders for practical training.
Yuri Gagarin was given a special area to carry out his practice. He was assigned a group of children from the 52nd vocational school, with whom he had to work. At the end of practice he was to hold an “open lesson” under the supervision of the admissions committee. The chairman of the admissions committee was Matvey Abramovich Arkind. What was the task? When you prepare a model for molding, you have to give an exact flow chart for the students to follow as they cast. According to the standard, after casting and gouging, the defect rate should have been about 20%, which was considered a good result for that level of production. However, Gagarin had optimized the scheme so that at the “open class”, there was not a single defective piece among the items received!
The plant and the school also remembered Yury as an avid basketball fan, who immediately accustomed his charges to this sport. In addition, he helped librarian Sofya Matveyevna Fish to hold a readers’ conference, where he made a short report on. Tsiolkovsky. Apparently, this topic continued to fascinate him and Gagarin felt competent enough in it to speak without special training.
Of course, he liked Leningrad very much, but he saw only a glimpse of the sights of the city on the Neva, because he was in a hurry to return to Saratov and “worked in three shifts” to complete his program as soon as possible. On March 24, a week before the formal end of his internship, he left. Perhaps it was his early return that saved him from the inevitable expulsion from the Aeroclub. In contemporary sources one can find a statement that Gagarin allegedly missed three months of theoretical classes, so he was expelled along with the other “industrialists” and only persistent walking through the instances helped him to recover. For example, Vladimir Ivanovich Rossoshansky in his book “Guys from our city” (2004) describes it this way:
“Gagarin decided not to give up. He started, as they say, pounding the doorsteps of the Aeroclub, walking on the heels of the authorities. One day he met S. Safronov – a Hero of the Soviet Union and asked him for help in getting reinstated in the club.
The story is remarkable and complimentary, but it immediately shows a serious factual inaccuracy: Major Sergey Safronov was not just an “employee of the flying club”, but a flight commander. Later he was even called one of the mentors of the future cosmonaut (he mentioned the major in his autobiographical book), but as Vladislav Kats found out, Safronov could not remember Gagarin’s cadet, because usually “difficult” mentees are remembered, and Yuri was quite “normal”. Consequently, the story told to Rossoshansky most likely appeared after the fact – as part of a new version of an old “legend”. We find no mention of the three-month absence and Gagarin’s expulsion in the memoirs of Viktor Porokhni, who was just expelled; in his book “The Road to Baikonur” (1977) he writes: “The trip to Leningrad took us away from the flying club for a long time, and some guys left it. Yuri did not leave the flying club. And we used to call him a double-blooded guy, his single-mindedness won him over again”. There is nothing about this in the surviving testimonies of the other “flyers”. Apparently, having returned earlier than others from Leningrad, Gagarin was able to show his instructors that he did not fall behind in theoretical disciplines, and immediately returned to the learning process. However, the solution to one problem led to another. The closer was the time of flights, the more time was spent on preparations for them, and it began to affect his thesis. Gagarin began to fall behind schedule. On this occasion, he was even summoned for a conversation by the deputy director of the technical school Vadim Filippov (the same one who last year, taking advantage of the absence of Rodionov, gave permission for “industrialists” to enter the flying club) and said that if Yuri did not catch up, he will be recalled from the flying club. Gagarin had to catch up. They say he lost weight and got emaciated. Some joked about him: “The loons moan too…” Still, he pulled through.
In March and April the aeroclub conducted so-called commander’s flights to train the personnel. Yury at that time was appointed foreman of the group for his diligence in theoretical studies. The flight instructor Dmitry Martyanov (by the way, he was only two years and eight months older than Gagarin, so he quickly became friends with him) invited cadets to take part in the flights as passengers in the free cabin (“instead of ballast”). He later recalled (I quote from an interview on February 4, 1983): “Yuri was one of the first to fly with me on the commander’s flights. He tolerated the flight well. It was felt that he wanted to feel the stress of the flight. He loved the heavy loads and when I began to entrust him with the control of the plane he quickly mastered the technique of piloting.
May and June 1955 were the most difficult months for Gagarin. Time was compressed. And it was then that Gagarin made the final decision about where to go next. Judge for yourself.
From May 3 to 9, the placement committee at the technical school was busy assigning young professionals. The foundrymen were offered jobs at ten regional and provincial departments of labor reserves, and the top scorers had the right to choose their place of assignment before the others. Yuri Gagarin was among them, but refused the privilege, saying, “You guys choose, but I decided to become a pilot. As a result, he was assigned to the distant Tomsk, to the 71st Vocational School. But, as we now know, he did not go there.
In May, parachute jumps were scheduled at a sports airfield in the village of Dubki (Saratov region). The date was postponed several times due to bad weather, and still Gagarin went there each time, afraid to miss this mandatory stage before receiving official clearance to fly. He had to get up at midnight, wait for the company bus at the aeroclub fence, arrive at the airfield by 3 a.m. and find time to get back to the technical school by 9 a.m. Once Gagarin overslept the bus, woke up a student Khramov, who was in charge of the technical school motorcycle, and asked him for a ride to the airfield – they quickly drove, but the jumps did not take place again.
The girls did not believe me. Only when we began to put on our parachutes were they convinced that I wasn’t lying. I didn’t have a good time with the straps and carbines, just like they did. I was not used to it. I had a big knapsack on the back with the main parachute. On the front there was also a smaller backpack with a reserve parachute. I couldn’t sit, nor stand up, nor turn around. I wonder how I would manage in the air with all this equipment. It sort of tied my hands and feet.
Since childhood I have disliked waiting, especially if I knew that a difficulty or danger lay ahead. It is better to meet it bravely than to shirk and delay. Therefore I was glad when after the first “target jump” Dmitry Pavlovich [Martyanov] shouted.
It took my breath away! After all, it was my first flight, which should have ended with a parachute jump. I don’t even remember how we took off, how the plane reached the desired height. I just saw the instructor shake his hand: “Get out on the wing”. Well, I somehow got out of the cabin, stood on the plane and grasped the edge of the cabin with both hands. I was afraid to even look at the ground: it was somewhere below, far away. Creepy.
I pushed off the rough side of the plane, as I was taught, and rushed down, as if into the abyss. I pulled the ring. The parachute didn’t open. I wanted to scream but I couldn’t: the air was clogging my breath. My hand involuntarily reached for the ring of the reserve parachute. Where was it? Where? And suddenly I felt a strong pull. And silence. I was swinging gently in the sky under white canopy of the main parachute. Of course, it opened on time – I thought about reserve parachute too early. Thus aviation taught me my first lesson: being in the air don’t doubt your technique, don’t make hasty decisions”.
It remains to add that the three-seat “Po-2” (“U-2SP”), from which Gagarin jumped, was piloted by Yegor Spiridonov Surikov, who read the “flight instructor” course on the material part of aircraft, and the instructor was, as mentioned above, Dmitry Martyanov. All this is good, but nobody released Yury from the current classes at the technical school. Two days later, on May 20, he gave his diploma project to the consultant Zuckerman, head of the foundry department of the Serp i Molot plant, for a review.
On May 23rd order No.33 of Saratov regional flying club of DOSAAF was issued: “About admission of cadet-pilots of primary training to the training flights on Yak-18”. The cadet-pilots of primary education, who were examined by the medical-flight and credentials committee, completed their personal files, passed theoretical exams with marks not lower than “good”, completed the ground training on the exercises of the first task of CULP-1951 and performed a parachute jump, are allowed to make training flights on Yak-18 and are assigned to the flying training by the flying instructor staff of the flying club. CULP-1951 stands for “Course of Training and Flight Training” developed in 1951. Ground exercises of the first task for “Yak-18” included: checking the knowledge of aviation equipment, studying the instructions for flight operations and checking the knowledge of the aircraft piloting instructions.
The next exercise, which consisted of a test of piloting technique, was to be conducted in the air – on the plane with an instructor. In order to start it Yuri had to leave in a week, on May 30, as a member of the 2nd link of the 6th flight group to the Dubki airfield. So that nothing distracted them from their first flights, the cadets were transferred to the camp regime, i.e. they settled in tents in the middle of an oak grove, did their internal service and prepared their aviation equipment. However, the diploma defense was scheduled for June, a demanding event that required prior strenuous preparation with “trimming tails.” How do you find yourself in two places at once? The instructor Martyanov, who had already had time to feel the problems of Gagarin, agreed to fly with him at odd hours – at hours when Yuri could come to the airfield. It remained to fix his “special attitude” in a document, and the novice pilot wrote an application to the head of the flying club – Lieutenant Colonel Grigory Kirillovich Denisenko, a Hero of the Soviet Union – with a request to give him a month leave for final exams and defense of his thesis.
Denisenko recalled (I quote from Pavel Mitskevich’s article “Gagarin Could Have Become a Foundryman, Not a Pilot” published in Komsomolskaya Pravda – Belarus on February 4, 2015): “At that time it was forbidden to take kids from other educational institutions. After the war, the country needed mid-level specialists to set up production. The state paid for the training of a foundry worker, his job was already waiting for him, and he was going to be a pilot. I had to stand up for the guy. I saw that he was striving for his goal. Why not help? I could tell right away that he wanted to be an aviator. I told him to come, but with a diploma with honours. Then I would take care of him. Pet – that means you will stay a foundry worker. Because a pilot must be literate. In aviation there are no C’s at all – only good and excellent. With “C” marks there is nothing to do in the air. And Gagarin graduated with honors.
On May 25 Yuri held a final meeting of the physics club, dedicated to new discoveries in science. The time for business as usual was coming to an end, the “industrialists” were entering the “finishing line.
Soon Gagarin received feedback on his thesis from his advisor Zuckerman and his grades:
“In carrying out the project, the student skillfully used data from technical literature and the experience of Soviet foundries and advanced factories.
The student independently solved a number of technical issues, as well as issues of accounting, planning and organization of production. The project presented indicates that the student is well prepared and is able to solve technical and methodical issues independently and thoughtfully.
To come back to Dubki as soon as possible, Yury signed up for the first day of thesis defense of L-41 group – on the 23rd of June. Researcher Vladimir Ivanovich Rossoshansky reconstructed the events of that day as follows:
“It rained heavily the night before. The graduates rose early, had a snack, dressed festively, and set off at a scramble to the technical college.
Jumping over another puddle, the group leader Arkady Balashov dropped the graduation project together with the drawings into the mud. Everyone gasped: three months of hard work had been lost. No one could do anything to correct it: everything was covered in mud and water. What to do? Gagarin, I am told, suggested that the whole group go to the deputy director V.G. Filippov: maybe he could persuade the members of the State Qualification Commission to let Balashov take part in the defense in such a “wet and dirty form”. And so they did.
Members of the commission allowed Balashov to defend the first and Gagarin the second.
Their defense was brilliant. Their group mates were also happy: V. С. Porokhnya, F. I. Petrunin, E. V. Steshin, A. G. Shikin and A. I. Medvedev. They, too, defended their diploma projects with distinction and received diplomas with honors.
Now a diploma with honors from Saratov Industrial College in the name of Yuri Alekseevich Gagarin is exhibited in the museum of Star City. Any industrialist, once there, will stop by the Gagarin diploma and be proud of it as his own, because he, an industrialist, and Gagarin came from the same walls of the Industrial Technical School.
In an excerpt from a summary report of a fourth-year student of the foundry department, group L-41 Gagarin Y. A.: “excellent” in 32 subjects and only one mark of “four” – in psychology. Below is the conclusion: “Assign the qualification of foundry technician, master of industrial training and issue a diploma with honors.
By the way, the staff of technical school persuaded the teacher of pedagogic and psychology Zinaida Nikolayevna Shaposhnikova to put a mark “five” to Gagarinu, but she remained adamant, believing that Yury knows her subjects on good, but not on excellent. It is funny that Gagarin’s last book as a cosmonaut is devoted just to psychology. The day after the defense, the “industrialists,” along with several teachers, went to the Volga Cossack Island, where they celebrated the successful graduation of the technical school. Work awaited them in different cities of the Soviet Union (for example, Viktor Porokhnia was leaving for Stalino, and Evgeny Steshin for Sverdlovsk), and only Gagarin was in a hurry to the airfield.
After parting with his old friends, he immediately found new ones. Yury Gundarev stood out among the cadets who had experience of flying Yak-18 independently in the Atkarsk training center, so he was appointed foreman of the flight group. His handwritten memoirs (1983) have been preserved:
“After graduating from school I arrived directly at the airfield, where I was appointed a foreman of the flying squadron in absentia. After a conversation with the squadron commander [initial training] Velikanov Anatoly Vasilievich, I was introduced to the cadets of the flying squadron. Everyone was already settled in their new place and the next day they began ground training. Yuri Alekseyevich arrived a few days later than I did. I asked him: “Why were you late?” – “I was defending my diploma, I just barely made it.” All this was said with such a joy and an open smile. The guys were all different, and we hardly knew each other, but somehow I liked Yura immediately, there was something unusual about him – this open smile, honest eyes – and I thought to myself that he would never fail and will not leave a comrade in need.
The Aeroclub Command demanded discipline in the squadron and that they prepare more for the upcoming flights, but some of them went AWOL in the village of Dubki for dancing after lights out, for which they were punished; naturally, it was me as the squadron leader who got in trouble in the first place. Then I decided to talk to Gagarin, how to go on, how to keep the guys from misbehaving. Yuri suggested: “Let’s hold a Komsomol meeting and tell off the negligent ones in front of everyone, while without command, and if we can’t, then invite the squadron commander Velikanov and the link commander Sergey Ivanovich Safronov. I said to him: “Your idea – and you will be the Komsomol leader. We couldn’t have a Komsomol organization as such, because we were all registered at school, at the plant, but Yury and I talked to Sokolov Peter Vladimirovich beforehand, and he approved the idea. This helped improve discipline, and we did not lose any of them, even though some of us were threatened with expulsion. And it’s all thanks to Gagarin, he turned out to be a great assistant and comrade.
