Death of Yuri Gagarin

The government's committee for the investigation of the causes of the crash consisted of three subcommittees. Each of these had been assigned a separate task:

• The flight subcommittee was founded to research the preparation of the flight's equipment the preparation of its setup and the assurance of the flights of March 27.
• The mechanics' subcommittee was set up to research the material parts of the aircraft.
• While the medical subcommittee had been set up to evaluate the situation of the pilots during the flight, and to identify the dead.

The report of the committee was classified and its details became known to the public from interviews of its members. The causes and the conditions during the crash remain unclear.

The analysis of the footprint of the cabin's clock and Gagarin's hand proved that the disaster happened in 10:31, around a minute after Gagarin's last contact.[11]

The conclusion of the committee were the following: due to the changes of the air environment during the flight (the details weren't specified) the crew made an abrupt manoeuvre resulting in a spin. Despite the crew's efforts to reinstate the engine in a horizontal direction, the aircraft crashed in the ground resulting in the death of the pilots. No deficiencies or mistakes of the technical materiel of the plane were found. The chemical analysis of the remains and the pilots' blood didn't found any external chemical substance.[12]

Memorial plaque for Yuri Gagarin. Dedicated to the head of "Y.A. Gagarin Astronauts Training Centre" from a NASA representative, dated 21 January 1971.[13]

A KGB committee did a separate research, in order to prove according to "its own line" if any conspiracy, act of terrorism or any bad intent existed. The KGB's report, declassified in March 2003, dismissed various conspiracy theories and instead indicated the actions of airbase personnel contributed to the crash.[14] The report states that an air-traffic controller provided Gagarin with outdated weather information and that by the time of his flight, conditions had deteriorated significantly. Ground crew also left external fuel tanks attached to the aircraft. Gagarin's planned flight activities needed clear weather and no outboard tanks. The investigation concluded Gagarin's aircraft entered a spin, either due to a bird strike or because of a sudden move to avoid another aircraft. Because of the out-of-date weather report, the crew believed their altitude was higher than it was and could not react properly to bring the MiG-15 out of its spin.[7] Another theory, advanced in 2005 by the original crash investigator, hypothesizes that a cabin air vent was accidentally left open by the crew or the previous pilot, leading to oxygen deprivation and leaving the crew incapable of controlling the aircraft.[4] A similar theory, published in Air & Space magazine, is that the crew detected the open vent and followed procedure by executing a rapid dive to a lower altitude. This dive caused them to lose consciousness and crash.[5]

In the 50th anniversary of Gagarin's flight the government released various classified documents with conclusions for the possible causes of his death. The documents revealed that the commission's original conclusion was that Gagarin or Seryogin had manoeuvred sharply, either to avoid a weather balloon or to avoid "entry into the upper limit of the first layer of cloud cover", leading the jet into a "super-critical flight regime and to its stalling in complex meteorological conditions".[15][16][17]

As the official version[18] and the factual proof are unclear, various conspiracy theories and speculations have been published for the crash. This crash is debated until today. There are various speculations for the crash's causes, such as one version that according to it Gagarin died during the flight and a very different one, according to which deep political motives are involved.[19] For comparation, there are some theories that according to them Gagarin's death was ordered by Leonid Brezhnev, because he was supposedly jealous of Gagarin's popularity.[20][21][22][23][24]

Alexei Leonov, who was also a member of a state commission established to investigate Gagarin's death, was conducting parachute training sessions that day and heard "two loud booms in the distance". He believes that a Sukhoi Su-15 was flying below its minimum altitude and, "without realizing it because of the terrible weather conditions, he passed within 10 or 20 meters of Yuri and Seregin's plane while breaking the sound barrier". The resulting turbulence would have sent the MiG-15UTI into an uncontrolled spin. Leonov said the first boom he heard was that of the jet breaking the sound barrier and the second was Gagarin's plane crashing.[25] In a June 2013 interview with Russian television network RT, Leonov said a report on the incident confirmed the presence of a second aircraft, an "unauthorized" Su-15, flying in the area. However, as a condition of being allowed to discuss the declassified report, Leonov was barred from disclosing the name of the Su-15 pilot who was 80 years old and in poor health as of 2013.

According to the head of the Cosmonaut Training Center in 1963–1972, N.F. Kuznetsov, Seryogin was not well at that time: he often vomited and complained for heart pains. During the execution of the manoeuvre, Seryogin again became ill: obviously, he had a heart attack. He unbuckled the seat belts and the parachute harness. Gagarin, performing, did not immediately notice the state of the instructor. Seryogin's body, moving around the cockpit, moved the controls out of neutral, and this blocked some of them. Yuri did not abandon his friend who was trouble and immediately eject. He fought until the end and for almost 10 minutes made circles over Novosyolovo, trying to restore Seryogin to life while piloting the aircraft, and when there was no chance of salvation, he died with him.[26]

The version of a former employee of the Research Institute of Operation and Repair of Aviation Equipment, retired Air Force colonel Igor Kuznetsov has become widespread in the media in the recent years. According to his analysis, one of the ventilation valves could remain half-open in the MiG-15UTI aircraft. Violation of the tightness of the cabin was found only at an altitude of 3-4 thousand meters. To prevent oxygen starvation, the pilots sharply tried to lower the plane to the level recommended by the instructions, to 2 thousand meters, but the rapid drop in pressure caused them to lose consciousness.[27][28][29] Other specialists are disputing the theory, including various reasons, such as:

• it is unlikely that such experienced pilots would panic. Gagarin had much more serious accidents, and the test pilot Seryogin even more so;
• depressurization at this altitude is not a special case in flight and does not pose a threat to the crew. During the Second World War, pilots repeatedly dived on unpressurized aircraft from an altitude of about 4000 m to heights close to the surface of the earth, and did not experience any health or performance impairments.[30]

According to the cosmonaut Vladimir Aksyonov: On the day of the death of Yuri Gagarin, March 27, 1968, Aksyonov underwent a pre-flight medical examination with him at the airfield, but flew on a different plane. Aksyonov's version pays attention to the fact that the crew of Gagarin and Seryogin, having made a mistake in difficult weather conditions, did not orient themselves in the situation, which led to the fall and death of the aircraft. The pilot-cosmonaut clarifies that the weather conditions on the day of the plane crash were difficult, but quite acceptable for performing flight missions. “The cloudiness that day was unusual: the bottom edge of the nearly solid clouds was about 600 meters above the ground. Then, up to a height of 4 thousand meters, the clouds were dense, with small rarefaction. No clouds above the top edge: clear sky and very good visibility. We were even shown photographs of the top edge taken from a meteorological plane, ” notes Aksyonov.

According to him, the last message from the plane of Yuri Gagarin was that they, together with Vladimir Seryogin, completed the flight mission, which they were engaged in over the upper edge of the cloud layer, that is, at an altitude of more than 4 thousand meters.

Aksyonov believes that the pilots made their message, most likely, after exiting the final figure, at low speed in a calm flight, but still at a fairly high altitude. After that, they had to perform a significant reduction, and then prepare and go through the cloud layer.[31][32]

• According to E.A. Shersher: A retired engineer, Air Force veteran Colonel Eduard Aleksandrovich Shersher, based on the results of his research, came to the conclusion that the probable cause of the disaster was an aircraft collision with the ground as a result of an untimely exit from a dive while performing aerobatics not specified in the flight assignment. The catastrophe was facilitated by a complex meteorological situation (continuous multilayer clouds with a lower edge at an altitude of about 600 m), numerous violations of the requirements of the Flight Operations Manual and the Fighter Aviation Combat Training Course.[33]

• According to widespread rumors, Gagarin and Seryogin had a glass of vodka before the flight. According to the official investigation this fact is refuted as no alcohol was found in the blood of the pilots.[34][35]
• There is another rumor, that according to it Gagarin had a conflict with the top leadership of the Soviet Union.[36] After that, according to some versions, the death of Gagarin was organized, according to others - the officially declared disaster was a falsification, and Gagarin was secretly arrested by the special services and after a small plastic surgery on his face was placed in one of the provincial psychiatric hospitals.[37][38] See Soviet space program conspiracy accusations for details.
• There is also a version that Gagarin plotted his own death, after which he lived for many years under another name in a village in Orenburg oblast, where he died due to an accident while hunting in a very old age.[39][40]

These are just a few of the many conspiracy theories that are circulating around the death of Yuri Gagarin.