On March 27, 1968, fifty years ago, a plane crash occurred near the village of Novoselovo, in the Kirzhachsky district of the Vladimir region. The MiG-15UTI, a two-seater jet trainer, fell. There were two people on board - two Heroes of the Soviet Union, the pride of Soviet aviation - engineer-colonel Vladimir Seregin and aviation colonel Yuri Gagarin. Both pilots were killed.
Pilot-cosmonaut, the first person to be in space, in the seven years that have passed since the first space flight, Gagarin was a real symbol of the era. On that ill-fated day, he made a training flight - despite the regalia, the rank of colonel, awarded at the age of 29, the Gold Star of the Hero of the Soviet Union, Yuri Gagarin continued to fly. He was only 34 years old - it seemed that his whole life was ahead, there were still many exciting flights and experiments. An absurd tragedy ended the life of the pilot-cosmonaut.
Pilot-instructor Vladimir Seregin died together with Yuri Gagarin. He was 12 years older than the first cosmonaut and received the Gold Star of the Hero of the Soviet Union not for space flights, but at the front. Vladimir Sergeevich Seregin, an engineer-colonel, went through the war as part of an assault aircraft, flew 140 missions of combat significance and 50 reconnaissance missions, for which he was awarded a high award. After the war, Seregin graduated from the Zhukovsky Air Force Academy and served in test aviation. Since March 1967, engineer-colonel Vladimir Seregin commanded a regiment engaged in flight training of cosmonauts at the Air Force Cosmonaut Training Center.
Yuri Alekseevich Gagarin in 1964 was appointed deputy head of the Air Force Cosmonaut Training Center. The long break in flight practice was caused by the cosmonaut's studies at the Zhukovsky Air Force Academy and the defense of his thesis. In addition, Yuri Gagarin had a huge social and political burden - after the first flight into space, he became a super popular figure not only in the Soviet Union, but also in the world.
Constant visits, meetings with the public, with politicians, scientists and cultural figures took up a lot of Yuri Gagarin's time. But, as a person keen on aviation, he dreamed of returning to flying. Therefore, when some free time appeared, Yuri Gagarin returned to flying and began training on the MiG-15UTI with his senior friend Colonel Vladimir Seregin. From March 13 to March 22, 1968, Yuri Gagarin made 18 flights with an instructor pilot with a total duration of 7 hours. In order to start independent flights, Yuri Gagarin had only 2 flights left.
The flights Yuri Gagarin and Vladimir Seregin carried out on the MiG-15UTI aircraft No. 612739. According to available information, it was produced on March 19, 1956 by the Aero Vodokhody plant in Czechoslovakia. In July 1962, the aircraft underwent the first overhaul, and in March 1967, the second overhaul. Four times - in 1957, 1959, 1964 and 1967 - the RD-45FA engine No. 84445A, which was manufactured back in 1954, was also repaired. After the last repair, the engine ran 66 hours 51 minutes, while its MTO was 100 hours.
On the morning of March 27, 1968, at 10:18 am, a MiG-15UTI aircraft under the control of Vladimir Seregin and Yuri Gagarin took off from the Chkalovsky airfield near Moscow to Shchelkovo. At least 20 minutes were allocated to complete the assigned task, but at 10:31 am Yuri Gagarin reported to the ground that the task was over and asked permission to turn around and fly to the airfield. After that, communication with the crew was lost. It soon became clear that the plane was about to run out of fuel, so helicopters were raised in search of the car. As a result of a three-hour search, at about 14:50 Moscow time, 65 kilometers from the Chkalovsky airfield, the wreckage of a MiG-15UTI aircraft was found. The next morning, members of the State Commission arrived at the scene. Found the remains of Vladimir Seregin and Yuri Gagarin, who were identified by their colleagues and relatives. They also found the personal belongings of two pilots, including a wallet with a driver's license and a photograph of Korolyov, a piece of Gagarin's flight jacket with his food stamps.
To investigate the causes of the disaster, a State Commission was created, which included the flight, engineering and medical subcommittees. According to the official version, the plane made a sharp maneuver and fell into a tailspin, but the pilots failed to bring it into horizontal flight and the plane collided with the ground. There were no technical malfunctions in the plane, as well as any foreign substances in the blood of the dead pilots.
The report, prepared by the subcommittees, remained classified, therefore, the true reasons for the disaster, which claimed the lives of the first cosmonaut and the famous test pilot, are still unknown. It was only possible to establish that the disaster occurred at 10:31 Moscow time - right after Yuri Gagarin spoke to the ground and announced the completion of the task.
Aviation Lieutenant General Sergei Mikhailovich Belotserkovsky (1920-2000) supervised the engineering training of Soviet cosmonauts, served at the V. I. N. E. Zhukovsky, where he went from teacher to deputy head of the academy for educational and scientific work. It was he who was the head of the graduation project of Yuri Gagarin. According to General Belotserkovsky, the cause of the disaster was the plane's stalling into a flat spin as a result of the wake of another plane. The catastrophe was accompanied by bad weather conditions, certain flaws in the very design of the aircraft, poor organization of radar observation of flights, and the presence of miscalculations in planning.
Cosmonaut Major General of Aviation Alexei Arkhipovich Leonov believes that Yuri Gagarin and Vladimir Seregin died as a result of the fact that another plane, the Su-15, passed next to their plane. Its pilot, not seeing Gagarin, sank below 400 meters under the clouds, turned on the afterburner and flew nearby, at a distance of 10-15 meters at the speed of sound, as a result of which the plane of Gagarin and Seregin was turned over. According to Alexei Leonov, the Soviet government chose to hide this fact so as not to punish the Su-15 pilot - after all, Gagarin and Seregin could not be returned, and the Su-15 pilot was also a professional subordinate to Andrei Tupolev. If this version were declassified, then, taking into account public opinion, this officer would have to be punished very harshly - the people would have demanded the most serious, possibly the highest punishment for the perpetrator of the death of Soviet cosmonaut number one.
In 1963-1972. The Air Force cosmonaut training center was headed by Major General of Aviation Nikolai Fedorovich Kuznetsov - Hero of the Soviet Union, participant of the Great Patriotic War and the War in Korea, renowned fighter pilot.
Belotserkovsky believed that in those conditions Kuznetsov could and should have canceled the training flight of Seregin and Gagarin, but this did not happen. Gagarin himself, a minute before the collision, when he was negotiating with the land, was in a normal state. Most likely, the plane under his control fell into the trail of another plane or collided with some foreign object - a probe, a flock of birds. Even a horizontal gust of wind, according to experts, could cause the plane to crash.
By the way, General Kuznetsov himself, who headed the Air Force Cosmonaut Training Center, noted that Colonel Seregin most likely had health problems. At the time, he often complained of nausea and heart pains. During the flight, Seregin could have had a heart attack, which caused the colonel to unfasten the seat belts and parachute. Gagarin, who was distracted by the control of the plane, did not notice what was happening with the instructor, and Seregin's body, meanwhile, began to move around the cockpit and moved the controls, blocking some of them. Gagarin did not eject, but tried to circle over Novoselovo for about 10 minutes, hoping that Seregin would come to his senses. As a result, the astronaut died along with his friend, not abandoning his colleague in trouble.
Aviation Lieutenant General Stepan Anastasovich Mikoyan, Honored Test Pilot of the USSR, believed that it was extremely unlikely that the plane of Seregin and Gagarin would hit the trail of a passing plane. According to Mikoyan, the plane most likely collided with a foreign object - a meteorological probe. In favor of this version, according to Mikoyan, it was said that the needle of the device showing the difference between the pressure inside the cabin and outside, froze at around -0.01 atmospheres. That is, the tightness of the cockpit was broken even before the plane hit the ground. In addition, at the crash site, as Mikoyan noted, only two-thirds of the cockpit canopy was collected, which also indicates a collision with some foreign object still in mid-air.
Colonel Igor Kuznetsov, who participated in the investigation into the circumstances of the disaster, believes that by the time of the collision with the ground, the pilots were already unconscious - they lost him, because, noticing the depressurization of the cockpit, they began to decline sharply. The difference in altitude led to the fact that both pilots were in a swoon and lost control of the aircraft.
In addition to the versions put forward by professional pilots and aviation engineers, both then and now there are widespread "popular" versions of the death of Yuri Gagarin, which have a very different and sometimes completely bizarre content. For example, "the people" argued that Seregin and Gagarin allegedly flew drunk, having consumed a glass of vodka. But this dubious version was refuted by the results of the examination - alcohol and other substances in the blood and remains of the dead pilots were not found.
An even more insane version says that Yuri Gagarin allegedly organized an imitation of his own death, because he was tired of the increased attention to his person, and he himself retired to a remote village and died many years later as a result of a hunting accident. Another version of this version claims that in fact Gagarin was arrested by the Soviet special services, who performed plastic surgery on his face and placed him in a closed psychiatric hospital, where he spent the rest of his life. Such versions, of course, do not stand up to criticism.
But there is one more aspect, which, nevertheless, must not be overlooked - the political background of the death of the first cosmonaut. It is known that as soon as the disaster occurred over the village of Novoselovo, in addition to the State Commission consisting of pilots, engineers and doctors, a separate special commission of the USSR State Security Committee was created. She was tasked with finding out whether the death of Gagarin was rigged by some external forces - foreign special services, terrorist organizations, and whether the catastrophe was the result of abuse or negligence of the service personnel. As a result of the investigation of counterintelligence officers, numerous violations in the operation of the airfield were established. Nevertheless, Major General Nikolai Kuznetsov retained the post of head of the USSR Air Force Cosmonaut Training Center and held it for four more years after the disaster, until 1972. At that time, if the guilt of Kuznetsov or his subordinates had been really proven, he, of course, would have lost his position.
The details of the investigation carried out by the KGB of the USSR, of course, remain classified. This circumstance gave rise to many rumors that Gagarin was "removed" either by foreign, or even by the Soviet special services themselves. The first version is argued by the fact that the United States and other Western countries were interested in deteriorating the image of the Soviet state and the death of the first cosmonaut, who became a world-class figure, fit into these plans. The second version explains the catastrophe proceeding from the confrontation within the Soviet elite itself, or the quarrel between Yuri Gagarin and representatives of the Soviet leadership.
Whatever it was, but the tragedy of March 27, 1968 claimed the lives of two prominent Soviet pilots, one of whom was a real military officer and war hero, and the other was the first person in the world to go into outer space. Urns with the ashes of Yuri Gagarin and Vladimir Seregin were buried in the Kremlin wall with military honors. Fifty years have passed, but the memory of Yuri Gagarin, the first cosmonaut, is still preserved by all of humanity. Disclosure of the true details of his death half a century later would have an extremely positive significance for the country and for the further preservation of the memory of the legendary cosmonaut.
