20.12.2022
Why did Yuri Gagarin choose to serve in the polar region, if he really had a choice? Soviet biographers claimed that the future cosmonaut always went where it was hardest, because that was a particular trait of his heroic character.
Post-Soviet biographers believe the young lieutenant was motivated purely by mercenary concerns: service in the North was better paid, where it was faster to get seniority and a regular military rank. Both of them were partially right, but only partially. Gagarin learned to combine romance with pragmatism, so his choice seems quite logical. Overcoming difficulties, adventure – is not only romance, but also an opportunity to gain a unique experience, to try himself in an extreme situation, to determine the limits of his own skills. Pragmatism is not only considerations of material benefit, rapid career growth, but also the understanding that special skills give an advantage in the competition when entering the next professional level. If Gagarin was really going to become a test pilot, he had to look for a place where he would again have the opportunity to prove himself the best of the best, and then… whatever happens.
Before leaving, Yuri stopped by his parents to introduce his young wife to them. In Gzhatsk they spent only five days: from November, 9 till November, 14. It is clear that all of them passed in celebrations and endless conversations. The elder Gagarins, of course, were happy for their son. By that time they had overcome their need, had again started a farm, as in the village. One could say that there was finally a more or less peaceful period in the lives of Yuri and his relatives.
The proximity of the border created special conditions of service. Several crews were constantly at the airfield, ready to take off at any minute to intercept air targets. The pilots’ training system was built accordingly which was already complicated by natural conditions: constant darkness in the polar night, homogeneous landscape without any clear guidelines. Most of the flights were made by instrument and required maximum concentration.
Although Yuri Gagarin went to Moscow to be selected as a cosmonaut from Luostari, the period of his life there (from November 1957 to March 1960) is poorly studied. Researchers have only a few fragmentary testimonies of his comrades-in-arms and documents of a general nature, without details. Probably, the scarcity of materials due to the specifics of the border service in the postwar period, many details which are still classified. Nevertheless, the researcher Vyacheslav Sergeevich Viliamsky, the younger brother of the deputy commander of the 769th aviation regiment, based on scraps of information and memories managed to reconstruct the years of the future cosmonaut’s stay in Luostari. To his book “Yuri Gagarin in the Arctic Circle”, published in limited edition in 2016, we will refer in this chapter as necessary.
The 769th Aviation Regiment (in hr 74479) was a “training regiment” (“second line”); it sent college graduates to learn how to fly jet fighters in poor visibility and in the absence of landmarks. The regiment was commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Pavel Ivanovich Babushkin.
The young lieutenants reached the regiment’s location well after midnight, but the garrison hotel was waiting for them. There were already graduates of CHVAUL Venedikt Kiselev, Nikolay Repin, Aleksey Ilyin and Ivan Doronin. Gagarin was lodged in one room with Valentin Zlobin and Ufa Tatar Saligjan Baybekov. Semyon Dmitrievich Kazakov, Komsomgorsor of the garrison, who was on duty at that time, met the newcomers. He testified that because of the lack of beds we had to move two beds together and at first sleep in threes.
In the morning, after breakfast, the lieutenants reported to the commander. Lieutenant Colonel Nikolai Sergeevich Viliamsky, the regiment’s deputy commander for flight training, met them. He congratulated the pilots on their arrival, told the young men about the traditions of the regiment and wished them to be worthy heirs of the glory of war. Gagarin would later write (“The Road to Space”, 1961): “We were in the advanced outpost of the northern frontiers of our Motherland, and we should have been as skilled, brave pilots as Boris Safonov, Sergei Kurzenkov, Zakhar Sorokin, Alexei Khlobystov and many other heroes of the Great Patriotic War – our older brothers in arms.”
After getting acquainted the newcomers were distributed among the squadrons. Yuri Gagarin got into the third squadron, which was commanded by Captain Andrey Pulkherov, Boris Vdovin was the deputy commander, and the flight was headed by Senior Lieutenant Leonid Vasiliev, who considered himself an “old timer” of the North. The life of the garrison in Luostari during the winter period was vividly described by journalist Oleg Chechin in his essay “Gagarin the Naval Aviator:
“Waiting for the first glimmers of sunshine sometimes seemed unbearable, especially when lingering snowstorms swept single-story wooden houses almost to the roof.
On such days, the chimneys were blowing twenty-four hours a day, and snowdrifts blocked tightly the only road linking the garrison to the nearest town. At times the streets inside the garrison were also blocked with snow. Then the aviators would follow the footsteps of the snow drifts to the regiment headquarters, the airfield and the Officers’ Club. Life there was colored with bright colors when they celebrated the winter holidays – the New Year, the Day of the Soviet Army, and March 8. Yuri Gagarin considered the latter holiday his own, because he was born on March 9, 1934. On this day he and his friends enjoyed cross-country skiing for 10 kilometers, played Russian hockey with a ball to the point of exhaustion, and in the evening he enthusiastically sang in the chorus at the amateur performance.
Due to the disorder of his life Yuri Gagarin could not immediately take his wife Valentina with him. For almost a year he lived without her in a barrack-type hotel, more like a hostel.
The young pilots called it meaningfully: “The Golden Bug”. There were cases when, after heating the stove for the night in their “room,” the guests fell asleep in the heat and waking up in the morning, could not drink a glass of water, frozen during the night in the decanter. Nevertheless, the young men quickly mastered the conditions of their new accommodations and joined in the household chores, taking turns chopping wood for the stove, putting it into the furnace along with the coal, carrying water, and keeping things clean and tidy. After passing their credits, the young pilots became equal members of the regiment. On a par with the other officers they went on duty, were on duty at the command post, the airfield, the military commandant’s office. In their free time they played basketball. Despite the fact that Gagarin was the shortest in the basketball team, he soon became its captain, as he had been before. The team under his leadership won prizes in inter-division competitions.
Just as habitually Jury was involved in social work. In January 1958 the regiment Komsomol office charged Gagarin with organizing a debate on the theme “There is always a place for a heroic deed in life. For some time he led political classes with the sailors from the airfield team; in addition, he sang in the regimental choir. In March 1958 the darkness of the polar winter began to thin. By that time the young pilots had passed the full course of theoretical training and were allowed to fly. As in the school, the flights were divided into several stages: “take-off”, “control”, “control and demonstration”, “demonstration”, and “independent”. Each stage has its own specific tasks. For example, the “take-off” stage includes: takeoff and landing, flying in circles and around the flight area, flying at different altitudes, changing the flight mode, flying with a crosswind, simulating engine failure, and so on in the same vein. All this was performed on two-seat “MiG-15UTI” airplanes under guidance of an experienced pilot of the regiment. Leonid Vasiliev, a flight commander, acted as Yuri Gagarin’s instructor. They made their first flight on March 21, 1958.
The control and test flights were performed on the same MiG-15UTI with Lieutenant-Colonel Nikolay Viliamsky. He recollected: “More than once I had to make flights with Gagarin ‘…’ on different types of training in simple and difficult conditions, day and night, at high and low altitudes, to perform aerial combat and to intercept the ‘enemy’ over the sea. Gagarin quickly grasped and mastered the most difficult elements of flight training, acted accurately and proactively, could concentrate, at the right moment make the right decision. He was undoubtedly an outstanding pilot.
Gagarin made his first solo flight on MiG-15 fighter jet on April 6. The flight was planned by Viliamsky not far from the aerodrome area by a big circle at a certain altitude “under simple weather conditions”, but soon after the flight a wall of solid fog appeared in front of the fighter, and then it started raining with snow. Nevertheless, Gagarin successfully completed the mission. Immediately after landing he was congratulated on his first solo flight by Major Vladimir Reshetov and Captain Anatoly Roslyakov, which is depicted in a photograph found in many sources. In this connection the following appeal appeared in the unit’s combat sheet, issued under the name “Lightning”: “Comrades aviators! Today Lieutenant Gagarin, the pilot, showed high endurance and skill on his first solo flight. Learn to fly like officer Gagarin!”
Gradually the young pilots increased the load, complicating tasks, giving unexpected introductions. The intensity of flights increased. Pilots were flying in two shifts: by day and at night. In this hard work Gagarin was gaining unique experience, becoming a real fighter pilot. But his studies were not easy and painless. In his book “The Road to Space,” Yuri Gagarin recounted an incident when his life was in danger:
“Soon an unpleasant incident happened to me. I was flying by instrument. The weather forecasters said the weather was fine for the whole day – nothing seemed to suggest bad weather. When I completed the last exercise, it suddenly began to darken. The islands and bays disappeared below. I understood: snowcharges were approaching – the most unpleasant thing in the North, not only in the sky, but also on the ground. I asked the airfield: what’s the weather like? They answered: tolerable so far, but visibility is getting worse by the minute, the reserve landing pad has already been overwhelmed by snow waves. “Well, let’s bet and beat the weather,” I thought decisively and immediately saw that there was not much fuel left. The most important thing in such a situation is to keep my mind clear and in presence of mind.
Involuntarily I remembered a recent case with Vasiliev and how he found a way out of a similar situation. I quickly calculated in my mind the shortest route to the airfield, taking into account all the decisive data: strong headwind, altitude, time, fuel reserve. Breaking through the blinding snow mud, I followed the orders of the flight director precisely. I realized that the integrity of my machine and my own life were in my hands and depended on how accurately I would follow the commands of the flight director, who was more experienced than I was. His serenity carried over to me.
The instruments showed that the plane entered the airfield area. But I could not calculate the landing from the move, as I could not see the ground. I had to, however tense my nerves were, make one more round, get on the drive radio and again plan the landing. With a feeling of relief I saw the unfolding gray ribbon of landing strip. It was now safe to land.
