On March 28, 1968, Soviet newspapers published an obituary on the first page: “The Central Committee of the CPSU and the USSR Council of Ministers report with deep sorrow that on March 27, 1968, as a result of a disaster during a training flight, the world's first space explorer, the famous pilot-cosmonaut USSR, member of the CPSU, deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, Hero of the Soviet Union, Colonel Yuri Alekseevich Gagarin.
Having become the first person in the world to visit space, Gagarin could be the guest of honor and the head of various delegations for the rest of his life. But Yuri was drawn to the sky. After graduating from the Zhukovsky Academy in March 1968, he resumed flights from the Chkalovsky airfield near Moscow to Shchelkovo.
Identification by things
On the morning of March 27, 1968, Gagarin and his instructor, Air Force Colonel Vladimir Seregin, were to fly on a MiG-15UTI training fighter. Half an hour after them, two more MiG-21 fighters were planned to rise into the sky. But Seregin was late, and it turned out that the MiG-21 under the control of the pilot Andreev took off just three minutes after the start of the Gagarin-Seregin crew.
For the last 20 minutes, the crew had to perform aerobatic exercises. But after 13 minutes, Gagarin reported on the completion of the task and asked for permission to return to the base. The crew did not go on the air again.
The search group found the wreckage of the plane in the area of the city of Kirzhach. It was not immediately possible to understand where the bodies of the pilots were. Arseny Mironov, a member of the commission to investigate the disaster, recalled: “In the crater formed from the explosion of the plane, there are twisted ejection seats. That is, the pilots did not eject. In the same place, near the chairs, satchels, where parachutes are packed. And there are no parachutes."
Considering that large fragments of corpses were not found, this gave rise to rumors that Gagarin and Seregin nevertheless ejected, but parachutes were not refueled into the catapults. It soon became clear. KGB officers found two men in a nearby village who ransacked the wreckage to the military. They cut off the parachutes that they wanted to use on the farm.
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And from the pilots really almost nothing remained. As the soldiers from the cordon recalled, the remains of Gagarin and Seryogin were collected in two 12-liter buckets, and they never figured out where whose. DNA examination was impossible in those days. However, the relatives identified the personal belongings of the victims.
Unknown plane
The very next day, a government commission was formed, which was to study 20 versions of the tragedy, and a separate group was created for each.
The commission concluded that the reason for the crash of the MiG-15 was "the execution of a sharp maneuver to prevent a collision with a weather balloon." Because of this maneuver, the plane fell into a tailspin.
It remains unclear who and where launched this probe and why it did not appear in the investigation materials. Along the way, the commission revealed a lot of violations both in the organization of flights and in the technical part. But their promulgation was tantamount to admitting the incompetence of many officials. For example, the commander of the Cosmonaut Training Center, heads of various security services, Air Force Commander-in-Chief Konstantin Vershinin and even a candidate member of the Politburo Dmitry Ustinov.
Independent experts were inclined to think that Gagarin suffered a catastrophe because of a rapprochement not with a probe, but with another plane. According to Lieutenant General Sergei Belotserkovsky and cosmonaut Alexei Leonov, who was a member of the government commission, Gagarin's fighter went into a flat tailspin as a result of falling into the jet trail of another aircraft. In 2013, Leonov, referring to declassified documents, said that this was "not a version, but the real cause of the death of the first cosmonaut." According to him, in the area of Gagarin's flight, the newest Su-15 was tested, which was supposed to fly in the corridor above 10 thousand meters, but violated the flight regime and descended to an altitude of 500 meters. Soaring skyward in the afterburner, the Su-15 flew at a distance of 10-15 meters from the Gagarin MiG and drove it into a spiral.
Another member of the government commission, Arseny Mironov, believes that Gagarin and Seregin went into a tailspin in order to avoid a collision with the MiG-21 under the control of the pilot Andreev. But since both did not have the skills to get the car out of a spin, they did not have enough height.
The investigation materials were classified. And long before the end of the commission's work - the very next day after the disaster - the remains of Gagarin and Seryogin were cremated.
Authorities doubted whether to report the death of the first cosmonaut. Common sense prevailed, and the news of the tragedy was replicated by all the Union, and then the world media.
Farewell to Yura
They decided to bury Gagarin and Seryogin as national heroes, with the announcement of national mourning. This was announced in the USSR before only on the occasion of Stalin's death.
Under the government, a commission was formed to organize the funeral of the pilots. All activities were coordinated with the General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee Leonid Brezhnev. They decided to bury the dead in the Kremlin wall. By the way, Vladimir Seregin received this honor not just "for the company" - an Air Force colonel shot down several German planes during the war years and was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. Farewell to the ashes of the dead was scheduled for March 30 at the Central House of the Soviet Army.
On the guard of honor at the urn with the ashes of the heroes were not ordinary soldiers, but marshals of the Soviet Union and military branches, representatives of the public in Moscow, students of the N. E. Zhukovsky, from which the dead pilots graduated.
Gagarin's funeral became a true demonstration of nationwide grief. A sea of flowers and hundreds of funeral wreaths sent by the embassies of different countries, republics, regions, factories, factories, universities. Tens of thousands of ordinary people also came to say goodbye to cosmonaut number one. Not to mention the people involved in space and aviation. Among them was probably the unwitting culprit of the disaster - the pilot who knocked down the MiG-15 at its peak. However, this has not been officially confirmed.
People's farewell to the heroes lasted until noon. After that, their relatives and friends approached the urns and portraits of the victims. At the funeral, in addition to Gagarin's wife and daughters, his mother was present. But my father refused to come to Moscow. “I’m not going anywhere,” he said, “because I don’t know whose bones will be buried - Yura or Seryogin…”. It was announced to the public that Alexei Ivanovich had a bad heart, so the doctors forbade him to travel to the funeral.
After parting, the urns were taken out into the street and, guarded by a guard of honor, were taken to the House of Unions. There the procession was greeted by the leaders of the Communist Party and the Soviet government. They also moved the urns to the gun carriage, after which they all moved to Red Square.
On the main square of the country, the remains of the heroes were placed on a pedestal in front of the Lenin Mausoleum, and on its platform, together with the head of the USSR, Leonid Brezhnev, the entire Politburo was located. The meeting began. As required by the regulations, representatives of various social groups spoke about the victims. From the party it was the secretary of the CPSU Central Committee Andrei Kirilenko; from science - the president of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR Mstislav Keldysh, from the working class came the mechanic of the Moscow Electromechanical Plant named after Vladimir Ilyich, Hero of Socialist Labor Sergei Antonov, from the Air Force - Lieutenant Colonel Viktor Abramychev, and from the cosmonauts - Andriyan Nikolaev.
At the end of the rally, the leaders of the party moved the urns to the Kremlin wall, in the niches of which Kirilenko installed them. After a minute of silence, the niches in the wall were walled up with marble plaques with the names of the fallen heroes. Astronaut number one has left this Earth forever.
The wife did not believe
On the day of the tragedy, Yuri Gagarin's wife, Valentina, underwent surgery to remove the ulcer and was waiting for her husband, who promised to take her home. The next morning she was told that Yura was no more. By the way, Valentina Gagarina did not believe in the conclusions of the official investigation. After the death of her husband, she wrote her memoirs, but she categorically refuses to be interviewed.
Magazine: Secrets of the USSR No. 5 / S, Prokhor Yezho