Morning of March 27, 1968 - during a routine training flight on a training jet aircraft MiG-15 UTI, the first cosmonaut of the Earth Yuri Gagarin and pilot-instructor Colonel Vladimir Seregin were killed.
According to the planned schedule, on March 27, 1968, Yuri Gagarin, under the control of instructor-pilot Vladimir Seregin, was supposed to perform a test flight on a MiG-15 UTI aircraft in the zone at an altitude of 4200 meters. It is reliably known that the crew took off at 10 hours 19 minutes and after 7 minutes began to perform the exercise, the duration of which was at least 20 minutes. However, after 4 minutes Gagarin reported that he had completed the exercise and asked for permission to return to base. The flight director gave permission, although he did not find out the reason for the premature termination of the flight. Further, as it was established, 68 seconds after the last communication, the MiG-15UTI # 18 plane crashed into the Earth. The crew was killed.
To clarify the causes of the disaster, a government commission was created. However, she did not come to a consensus and did not release any official opinion. In this regard, in subsequent years, a lot of private studies were carried out and many versions of the causes of the tragedy were proposed, but, unfortunately, none of them unambiguously answered all the objective information that was received about the flight and its final stage.
It was also impossible to make an assessment of the objectivity of the commission's work, since all the working materials turned out to be classified and became inaccessible, and the collected remains of the crashed plane were packed and hidden for eternal storage. Why they were removed from further, more thorough research, it was not said about this anywhere. Most likely, this was pursued by the only unseemly goal - to conceal the real circumstances and reasons that led to the disaster.
For the first time, some of the results of the commission's investigation in a free presentation were published only 19 (!) Years later: in Pravda, March 23, 1987 - the article "Two seconds were not enough for them …" and in the journal "Science and Life" No. 5, 1987. - "Last Flight". The authors of the articles, Professor Sergei Belotserkovsky and USSR pilot-cosmonaut Alexei Leonov, reported that the commission adopted the option of stalling the plane into a spin when the crew performed a sharp maneuver for some reason as the basis for making a decision on the causes of the disaster.
It was also argued that after a stall into a tailspin, the crew was fully functional and acted correctly, assuming that they had sufficient headroom. And only the error of the altimeter at 200-300 m led to the fact that the plane with a steep dive came out of the clouds at an altitude of only 400-600 m, at which it was already impossible to avoid meeting the ground.
However, none of these versions had any objective confirmation, and although many members of the commission did not agree with such an explanation of the cause of the tragic consequences, the commission insisted on accepting its proposals. According to a member of the commission, Professor Nikolai Lysenko, "The investigation itself was covered with incomprehensible secrecy: the results obtained were not known to all participants in the investigation."
As a result, despite the thoroughness and depth of research in all areas, the commission's activities were never completed. And most importantly, according to S. Belotserkovsky, the commission was unable to study and generalize all the materials of the working groups without exception. Therefore, the conclusion of the government (Resolution of the Central Committee of the CPSU and the Council of Ministers of November 28, 1968, No. 932-331) was made on the basis of what the commission issued, covering up its inaction:
Promotional video:
“The most likely reason for the deaths of Gagarin and Seregin was the plane's abrupt turn in order to avoid a collision with a balloon-probe; the less likely cause was the plane's head off the top of the clouds. As a result of a sharp turn, the plane reached critical angles of flight, a difficult meteorological situation made it difficult to control the plane, and the crew died."
It is no coincidence that Professor S. Belotserkovsky was forced to make a conclusion on this matter: “Something out of the ordinary happened there. True, even now we do not have a clear picture of this incident … Not a single version, except …, is in accordance with the initial data. " And what is “except”? What did S. Belotserkovsky mean, who, it would seem, reasonably calculated the flight trajectory of the aircraft at the last minute and argued that the crew competently tried to get out of the tailspin and almost achieved it? So what was left unsaid? Probably, the deputy was more clear on this matter. regiment commander Lieutenant Colonel Vladimir Tkachenko: “For twenty-two years, no one has been able to come up with even the most insane version of the cause of the disaster, generalizing contradictory facts. Everything was analyzed: from "air hooliganism" to a meeting with a UFO. No no,I completely exclude the first version … On the technical side, there were no failures either. That's for sure … And only the latest version, no matter how exotic it may seem, gives the only hints at the truth."
Where did this version come from? Was there any reason to assert this? What evidence proved that there was another reason, as they called it - "exotic", and not the one indicated by the commission? It turns out that there were a number of events, the explanation of which could only be associated with the assumptions of S. Belotserkovsky and V. Tkachenko:
1. According to the 1st class pilot, Colonel Alexander Spravtsev, there was no spin at the last minute of the flight - when it hit the ground, the engine made about 11,000 rpm, which is typical for horizontal flight. When entering a spin, the pilot immediately reduces the engine speed. And this was not done. Apparently, even during horizontal flight, exactly that fateful event occurred, after which the crew was not able to normally pilot the plane. In addition, during a spin, the plane crashes at a speed of 100-150 kilometers per hour. Here, the speed when hitting the ground was about 900 kilometers per hour.
2. At the crash site, the right wing anti-flutter device was not found, as well as more than half of the glazing of the cockpit canopy. This could be a consequence of the partial destruction of the aircraft while still in flight due to some kind of force applied to it. As a result, the crew lost (maybe temporarily) consciousness, and then the flight of the aircraft until it hit the ground was uncontrollable. Moreover, the very event of the impact occurred suddenly and instantly, as evidenced by the blood test of the pilots: a normal level of adrenaline. Cosmonaut German Titov, who worked in one of the subcommissions, repeatedly insisted on the need to explain these facts, but the commission did not accept them for consideration.
3. Pilot-cosmonaut Pavel Vinogradov said in an interview with the newspaper "Gordon Boulevard" (March 13, 2013) that a forceful effect on the aircraft took place in the air: “The lantern in their cockpit was not broken by hitting the ground, but during the flight and … from the outside, and a third of the wing console was found far from the crash site, which suggests that it broke off in flight. " By the way, during the investigation, the commission never mentioned this fact. Only once did N. Kamanin, on page 215 of his diary, write that "a hatch from a photo-machine gun was found 5 km from the crash site - a sign of the destruction of the aircraft in the air."
4. A group of expert pilots, which included honored test pilots Sedov, Ilyushin and others, argued that “… It is impossible to explain the movement of the aircraft along the trajectories calculated by the group of flight dynamics by any conscious actions of the crew. Such a movement of the aircraft could most likely have occurred with a temporary loss of performance in the air by the crew due to any impact on the crew. The fact that the aircraft occurred in the air is also evidenced by the identification of a number of structural elements of the aircraft at a considerable distance (up to 800 m) from the place of its fall.
5. In the letter of cosmonauts A. Nikolaev, P. Popovich, V. Bykovsky, G. Titov and P. Belyaev to the secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU D. F. Ustinov, a number of factors were cited that were either ignored by the commission (the absence of 62% of the glazing and anti-flutter device), or arbitrarily unproven interpreted (destruction by trees of the starboard side of the aircraft fuselage, while in reality there were no trees to the right of the aircraft).
Each of these factors and all in the aggregate could indicate the impact on the plane before the last minute of the flight of some destructive reason, which S. Belotserkovsky meant by the definition "except", and V. Tkachenko called more definitely: "encounter with a UFO." In all likelihood, trying to get out of the zone of presence of an unusual object, Gagarin stopped the exercise ahead of schedule, and reported to the flight director. However, he still did not manage to avoid his forceful influence. Most likely, it was not the result of physical contact, as one might imagine, but was the result of the effect of a special form of energy emitted by an object at a distance, or a plasma envelope surrounding the object. In the practice of observing unidentified objects of various forms, many cases of such power energy contacts when meeting aircraft have been recorded, which, as a rule, lead to paralyzing actions of pilots and a crash of aircraft.
Materials for the commission on the "exotic" version were presented by a working group headed by an experienced pilot, Colonel Anatoly Moiseenko, who was tasked with identifying eyewitnesses of the tragedy among the local population. General management was carried out by the deputy chairman of the government commission, General Pushkin. The group was assigned a Mi-2 helicopter, and also included an operator with a camera and a dictaphone to record eyewitness statements.
One of the witnesses with whom Colonel A. Moiseenko spoke, was an employee of the animal nursery, which was located not far from the place of the plane crash. The witness said that at about 10.30 am she heard "something unusual, either cotton, or something similar to cotton." When I looked up, I saw a "lying" plane, which "did not fly as usual, but somehow strangely descended on me, it seemed to fall silently." From the aircraft models shown, she chose the MiG model without hesitation. Thus, it followed that the unguided aircraft fell with the engine inoperative. If this is indeed the case, then it will become clear why there was no fire at the site of the crash, although there was still enough fuel in the tanks.
The fact that the engine did not work was confirmed somewhat later by an employee of the research department of the State Research Institute of the Air Force of the Air Force, Lieutenant Colonel I. Shulinsky, who took part in the investigation of the causes of the death of the MiG-15UTI: “… when the MiG-15 # 18 aircraft came into contact with the ground, there was no temperature gas in the jet tube ". In addition, according to him, "eyewitnesses said that when the plane crashed, there was no usual hum, but only a whistling noise, and no smoke came out of the plane …".
A further survey of local residents showed that before the plane crash, they all saw a luminous ball suddenly appeared in the air. This information was later confirmed by Vitaly Vorobyov, a researcher at the Tekhnologiya NPO, head of the Obninsk ufologists group, who also spoke with witnesses to the tragedy.
So, Anna Yartseva, a resident of the city of Pokrova, said that when that morning she was walking through the forest to the village of Voskresenskoye, all of a sudden, through the tops of the trees, just over her head, she saw a very bright spherical ball of light emitting white rays from itself - as if another sun had shone … Out of fear, the woman rushed to run, but soon fell into the snow and covered her head with her hands. After a while I heard an explosion. Only the next day did she learn that not far from the place where she was, Yuri Gagarin had died. Then I thought about the possible connection between the brightly luminous ball and the disaster that had occurred.
Nikolai Osipov, a resident of the village of Zarechnoye in the Vladimir Region, worked in a logging area near the village of Novoselovo on the morning of March 27. Between ten and eleven in the morning, as he put it, "some kind of devilry that was round and shone like thousands of suns combined" flew over him across the sky. Soon the silhouette of an airplane flashed over the forest, and when it disappeared behind the trees, there was an explosion like a cotton, and a cloud of smoke rose over the forest.
Then a schoolboy from the village of Petushki Yura Semyonov with his friend turned out to be in the forest. They saw a luminous ball, resembling a balloon, over the forest, and watched with interest the flight of an object never seen before. Then there was the noise of a flying plane heading towards this "balloon". It seemed that they were about to collide. But this did not happen, the plane began to fall at a steep angle and, cutting off the tops of trees, crashed into the ground. There was a strong explosion, and a small piece of the plane fell where the guys were recently. Yura's friend picked up this piece and took it home, and then handed it over to the commission.
The forester of the Kirzhach region was also not far from the crash site. He saw how a plane collided in the air with a large luminous ball, and then fell to the ground.
The given evidence was confirmed by other eyewitnesses. One of them, for example, confidently said that he first saw a plane, and then an orange ball approaching it. After that, the balloon, which merged with the plane, flew away abruptly and dissolved.
Was that the merger? Maybe the remains of the plane could tell about this? It is known from the practice of analyzing emergency situations that all objective information obtained during the investigation must be fully used in proving the alleged causes. However, any exclusion of any data requires a compelling justification. Thus, the proof of the cause of the accident must cover ALL the information received and correspond to ALL circumstances and events that occurred at that moment. And in the materials of the commission nothing was said at all about the meeting of the plane with a brightly luminous ball. Apparently, a member of the government commission, Professor, Doctor of Technical Sciences Nikolai Lysenko, was right when he wrote: "The investigation itself was covered with inexplicable secrecy: the results obtained did not become the property of all participants in the investigation."
Of course, to officially recognize by the commission the fact of a collision of an aircraft with a luminous ball in the air - this meant to recognize the flights of unidentified flying objects in our airspace as real. This meant recognizing that in reality they exist - a fact that contradicted the general scientific concept of the Academy of Sciences and the directive of the CPSU Central Committee. In 1968, it was officially believed (and now little has changed) that there are no unidentified flying objects in the Soviet Union, and therefore there are no problems associated with them. For the first time it sounded in the solemn speech of one of the leaders of the country on November 6, 1952 M. Pervukhin: the Americans "… have already reached the handle, they already see flying saucers and green balls of fire in the sky." This was said at a time when the KGB already had a folder with observation materials of unidentified flying objects in the Soviet Union.
At the same time, a group of enthusiasts headed by Associate Professor of the Moscow Aviation Institute F. Siegel, contributing to the influx of new research and the advancement of bold ideas, tried to prove the objectivity of the observed events and their connection with the phenomena not yet known to us. However, on January 8, 1961, the newspaper "Pravda" published an article by academician L. Artsimovich "The myth of flying saucers", who took a sharply negative position on this problem. The article stated: “There is not a single fact that would indicate that mysterious material objects are flying over us. All conversations about this … have the same initial source - unfair and unscientific information … It's time to end the spread of these tales, no matter how exciting they may seem.
The practice of discrediting the problem of unidentified flying objects and unexplained phenomena continued in subsequent years. So:
1. in December 1967, the Department of General and Applied Physics of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, headed by Academician L. Artsimovich, made a decision condemning the study of UFOs in the USSR, declaring it an anti-scientific sensation;
2. Then the lecturers of the Moscow Planetarium V. Bronshtein and I. Shevlyakov began to deliver lectures in which they declared the UFO problem non-existent, and the group of researchers - a harmful, self-styled organization;
3. January 24, 1968 Chairman of the Astro Council of the USSR Academy of Sciences, corresponding member. Of the USSR Academy of Sciences E. Mustel, who already had curious UFO sightings, tried to unfoundedly explain the UFO problem by mass psychosis, reminiscent of influenza epidemics;
4. On February 29, 1968 (a month before the deaths of Gagarin and Seregin!) A devastating article “Flying saucers again?” Appeared in the Pravda newspaper, signed by a corresponding member USSR Academy of Sciences E. Mustel, professor A. Martynov and V. Leshkovtsev. In the article, the UFO problem was called "myth" and "conjecture", and people who took this problem seriously were declared "ignorant of science."
Perhaps this latest publication turned out to be precisely the psychological obstacle that prevented the high Government Commission from overstepping it. Even though all the data pointed to the cause of the death of the First Cosmonaut of the Earth Yuri Gagarin and his instructor Colonel Vladimir Seregin - the approach of the plane with a brightly shining object, the commission did not find the strength and ability to admit this and openly declare in its official Conclusion. After all, only one month has passed since the "setting" article of our scientific officialdom. Could the commission go against the Academy of Sciences and the Central Committee of the CPSU, joining the ranks of those who are "ignorant of science"? In all likelihood, having come to the conclusion that the impact on the MiG-15UTI aircraft of an unknown flying object really occurred, the commission decided to explain the catastrophe with a more "real" reason,replacing the "luminous ball like a thousand suns" by the earthly and all understandable "probe ball". Although this was, to put it mildly, a deliberate lie, it did not violate the established official scientific paradigm.
Naturally, no matter how exotic the reason and the testimony of real eyewitnesses, the commission should have witnessed a version of the plane's meeting with some indefinite luminous ball, which would explain many objective data. It is unusual to take into account what we do not yet understand. But it is there. Maybe that's why all the fragments of the "spark" were sealed in sealed barrels for eternal storage, until the next generations? What's hidden there? Melted edges of a destroyed fuselage? Or incomprehensible traces on the right plane?
But in general, could the event of the meeting of Yuri Gagarin's plane with an unknown flying object, whose existence was ignored in every possible way, be real? To make the statement of this fact convincing, we can cite several of the most characteristic cases inscribed in the history of UFO encounters with aircraft:
1. On May 6, 1949, in the Volsk region of the Saratov region, at an altitude of 15 km, test pilot Arkady Apraksin met in the air with an object representing a "huge cigar" (by the way, for the second time). When approaching it, a bright beam was directed to the plane, under the influence of which the onboard power was turned off, radio communication was lost, the plexiglass lantern was damaged, and the cabin was sealed. The pilot landed the plane with difficulty and lost consciousness. After this incident, he had to spend 2.5 months in the hospital.
2. In September 1967 a UFO in the shape of a cigar dived on the An-24 scheduled flight from Zaporozhye to Volgograd and flew next to the plane. At the same time, the aircraft engines immediately stopped, the interior lighting turned off, and the aircraft began to descend while planning. When it was at a height of about 100 meters above the ground, the UFO soared up and disappeared. The aircraft's engines immediately started working, and he was able to gain altitude again.
3. The incident that happened to Colonel Alexander Kopeikin in 1980 is very similar to the incident with Gagarin's plane. He, while in the L-29 aircraft in the test zone at an altitude of 3000 m, was suddenly overturned by some unknown force and found himself in a protracted spin. Only after many attempts almost at the very ground, when there were almost 100 meters left, was it possible to get the plane out of the tailspin. The pilot decided to gain altitude again and check why he was thrown into a tailspin. In the clear sky at the same altitude, he saw only a cloud and decided to approach it. But, not having time to take the course, I felt that again, as if it had stumbled upon something solid with one wing, the plane again fell into a tailspin, and the instruments failed. I had to use all my skill to go level flight.
4. On April 6, 1984, an instructor-pilot with a cadet, while performing a training flight on a MiG-21 aircraft, received a warning about observing UFO marks on the radar near their flight zone. After a while, the instructor said that the plane seemed to have bumped into something - a jolt was felt, the engine, control systems, and instruments failed. The plane went into a tailspin. The crew was forced to eject. Visually, the UFO was not visible.
All this can mean one thing: it is possible that on March 27, 1968 in the air over Kirzhach, a tragic meeting of the plane of Yuri Gagarin and Vladimir Seregin with an unknown flying object could occur. And the commission had no convincing reason to disregard the testimony of the circumstances of the last minute of the flight of the UTI MiG-15 # 18. This version is still awaiting investigation.
Author: Pruss O. P. - tester of rocket and space technology, leading expert of UNITA "Zond"
Material prepared by I. Kalytyuk