Who cut the straps of Gagarin's parachute

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Every 5 years to the day, I meet with astronauts, engineers and pilots who investigated the fateful March 27, 1968 crash of the MiG-15UTI training flight manned by Yury Gagarin and Vladmiri Seregin. Time and time again, they recount their personal theories of how the tragedy unfolded.

How strange, indeed. One would expect a more uniform opinion. The Soviet State Panel launched a detailed investigation into the crash. Hundreds of specialists rushed to the scene to clarify how the world's most beloved man died. But silence ensued. Their conclusions were never released to the public.

Why are the Panel's conclusions still classified today? Why is a lone obituary signed by the Political Bureau the only official document about the death of Gagarin and Seregin? The obituary does not contain a single word about the reason for the pilots' deaths, only: "As a result of a catastrophe while on a training flight......" What happened on that fateful March day? What caused the deaths of these two experienced pilots manning an aircraft that they knew well how to fly?

To a large extent, this article relies on materials gathered by Igor Ivanovich Kuznezov.

Gargarin's last photo. It's thought the photo was made on March 27 before the MiG-15UTI's take-off.

In 1968, Kuznezov, a 33-year-old major and aviation equipment specialist at the Defense Ministry's Scientific Research Institute, was a member of the Engineering Sub-Commission tasked with examining the crash of Gagarin's MiG-15UTI. At the time, the Institute had highly advanced methods of investigating aircraft crashes. Years later, Kuznezov began re-investigating the tragedy with new technical knowledge and a better understanding about how people behave in extreme aviation situations.

The forest was trampled in a three-kilometer radius

We should begin with the 1968 Soviet State Panel that refused to disclose its conclusions publicly. But be that as it may, all theories and rumors of what transpired are based on the accounts of specialists who participated in the investigation of the incident.

The "State Panel for Determining the Circumstances Surrounding the Death of Soviet Pilot and Astronaut, Hero of the Soviet Union Colonel Gagarin and Hero of the Soviet Union, engineer and Colonel Seregin" was established by the Soviet Central Committee on March 28 – the day after the crash. The Panel consisted of four sub-commissions: 1. Flight Sub-Commission: Examining the Crew's Flight Preparation, Checking the Pilots' Organization and Safety on March 27; 2.Engineering Sub-Commission: Examining and Analyzing the MiG-15UTI Aircraft; 3. Medical Sub-Commission: Evaluating the Pilots' Condition Before and During the Flight, and the Official Identification of the Deceased; 4. KGB Sub-Commission: Determining if the Catastrophe was the Result of a Conspiracy, Terrorism, or Malicious Intent.

The sub-commissions left no stone unturned.

Imagine the thick Kirzhach forests. It was the end of March – a harsh winter with snow at waist-level. A 6-meter crater spanned the earth. The crash had been tremendous – so strong that the 5-ton aircraft burst into pieces like a crystal vase falling onto a concrete floor.

Broken pieces of the MiG-15UTI were saturated in fuel, mixed with snow and dirt. Soldiers combed the forests repeatedly searching for clues of what transpired. They searched up to 5 kilometers from the crater to the east, south and west; and up to 12 kilometers to the north. The budding green grass was trampled by mid-April over a radius of three kilometers from the crater. The ground was combed with a tiny sift nearby. Remarkably, investigators were able to gather 90 percent of the aircraft. On average, only 40 percent of aircrafts are recovered from crash sites; 60 percent is a rare feat.

The investigators weren't able to locate the crash site right away. They searched the area by plane, hunting the pilots' white dome-like parachutes. But they were nowhere to be found. The team later found the cater in the thick of the forest. Within 6 hours, they cordoned off the crash site. The first specialists to examine the area on March 28 were shocked. The crew had no parachutes. Their straps were not torn. They had been cut off deliberately.

Theory № 1. Terrorism. How else can the loss be explained? Someone cut off the parachutes so the pilots could not land safely. The enemy had set everything up so the pilots could not escape.

The parachutes' mysterious disappearance led to numerous conjectures. Some even asserted that General Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party Leonid Brezhnev had ordered Gagarin's killing, because he envied his popularity. But the truth proved much simpler than anyone supposed.

Few knew that three days after the crash, KGB agents had found the parachutes in a neighboring village. The Panel's work was already confidential and no information was leaked to the public. Engineers in one sub-commission weren't even allowed to discuss the case among themselves. But the explanation was rather boring. Before the area was cordoned off, looters from a neighboring village had discovered the aircraft and stolen the parachutes. Apparently, they thought the fabric would be of use around the farm. If the villagers had known who manned the aircraft, they would likely not have stolen anything.

When the parachutes were brought to the laboratory – they were covered in brown spots. Needless to say, the experts were shocked. "Blood?!" they thought. "There wasn't any blood at the crash site!" Indeed, the pilots' bodies had been crushed due to the enormous impact. But upon closer observation, they discovered it wasn't blood after all. The villagers had hidden the parachutes under piles of manure. And yet another confirmation of the Panel's scrupulousness – they had found a jaybird's corpse in the soil near the crash site.

Theory № 2. Investigators immediately assumed that the aircraft had hit a bird and gone into a nosedive. They called in a group of ornithologists and learned not only that the aircraft hadn't hit a bird, but that the jaybird had been killed by a goshawk. They also discovered from which side the jaybird had been attacked.

It wasn't a lucky day

Another sub-commission determined what the pilots had done each second before the flight. They learned how they had behaved earlier that day by speaking with acquaintances.

In 2003, we talked about the results of the investigation led by Soviet special agents. The wife of a local technician who checked the aircraft before take-off was even included in a list of potential suspects. Years before, she had made contact at the "Khimka Reservoir's Sunny Meadow Harbor with Dorothy Katterman, wife the of the cultural affairs attache at the U.S. embassy." But they checked with their sources and discovered that the meeting had been purely accidental.

Valentina Tereshkova accompanied Valentina Gagarina long after the tragedy.

Theory № 3. Seregin and Gagarin were drunk. They were heroes, playing pranks in the sky and no one could get in their way. But their recklessness caught up with them.

The truth be told, two days before the crash, Gagarin and Seregin had several shots of alcohol at a birthday party at the Kryshkevich Astronaut Training Center. They drank up and went home. But on March 26, neither one had a single drink.

All-in-all, the town had pretty much written Gagarin off as an alcoholic already. One should mention, though, that he had good reason to drink. After becoming the first man in space in April 12, 1961, Gagarin attended one feast after another – with party and military heads and at foreign receptions. Everyone wanted to meet the world’s first astronaut. And most importantly they wanted to drink with him.

"Don't be so pretentious! You don't want to raise your glass with us?!" With time, Gagarin learned to handle these provocative remarks. And, in 1967, he was only 33. Gagarin did not turn sour from official ceremonies. He wanted to go back to space, and needed to know how to pilot an aircraft to do so.

But March 27 was an unlucky day for Gagarin and Seregin. First, something went wrong with Gagarin's car and he had to take the bus to the Chkalov Aerodrome. Then when he got inside, he realized that he did not have his pass.

"Don't go home! They'll let you in without your pass! Everyone knows you!" said his co-pilots.

"No, that's not right!" Gagarin said, and went home. But pilots consider "having to go back" a bad omen. His colleagues tried to convince him to cancel his training flight, but he refused.

Seregin also had a bad morning after an unpleasant conversation with Astronaut Training Center chief General Kuznezov after his pre-flight medical examination. He was sullen boarding the aircraft.

Theory № 4. Our irresponsibility is to blame. The aircraft was old, worn-down and the meteorological agencies did not check to see if the weather permitted training flights.

This is partially true – and the aircraft making meteorological surveillance had landed only a minute before Gagarin's aircraft took off. At the time, MiG-15UTI aircrafts did not have black boxes. They had loggers on board instead that tracked the aircraft's speed and altitude. But for some reason, someone forgot to put paper in Gagarin's logger that day.

Two radio-locators were supposed to guide the flight. One was supposed to track the aircrafts' course, and the other – its altitude. This is of the utmost importance. At any one time at any one area, 7 machines functioned with the MiG-15UTI at various altitudes. But the radio-locator wasn't working that day. And the course monitor wasn't photographed every 30 seconds as was the accepted norm. Inconsequential details?

The Panel determined that these small details did not affect the training flight. They reported that the aircraft was in perfect condition before the crash. But the missing logger and radio-locator prevented them from drawing an accurate picture of what transpired.

However, there is one detail that no one paid any attention to initially. A fateful detail... But we'll discuss this issue in our next article.

No bodies remained. At the funeral, mourners bid farewell to urns with the pilots' ashes.

Theory № 5. An authoritative researcher of the tragedy Lieutenant Sergey Mikhailovich Belozerkovskiy told me persuasively that the MiG-15UTI entered the vortical stream of a passing aircraft, lost control, corkscrewed and crashed. Renowned astronaut Aleksey Arkhipovish Leonov supports this theory.

So could it have been the "human factor" after all? Could a pilot who worked in the same flying zone as Gagarin been responsible for his death? Possibly. But there is not one drop of evidence supporting this theory.

Theory № 6. Astronaut Gherman Stepanovich Titov told me that he believes the aircraft crashed with a weather balloon, which were frequently launched to collect data about the weather. A weather balloon is a balloon filled with gas attached to heavy capsule with supplementary devises. He supposes that a weather balloon hit the aircraft's lighting cover. Depressurization resulted and the aircraft went into a nosedive.

"When I retire, I'll wander around the Kirzhach forests and find that weather balloon," Titov said. Unfortunately, he passed away in 2000.

But an important fact should be emphasized. Soldiers did find tens of weather balloons in the area where the aircraft fell. But they were all old. Moreover, the engineers found 94 percent of the aircraft's lighting cover, which they pasted back together. If the glass had burst at a high altitude, then the pieces wouldn't have been located in a pile inside the cater. Thus, the lighting cover did not break in the air.

Forty years later

The information was made confidential because there was absolutely nothing to say. The State Panel looked at everything – studs, screws, fuselage debris and clothing scraps. They measured the speed and angle at which the aircraft fell to the ground and the likelihood of it pulling out of a nosedive. But the facts did not form one comprehensive picture. There was no one conclusion to be drawn. Thus, new theories evolved, such as an aircraft encroaching their fly space and low clouds preventing the pilots from pulling out of a nosedive.

"The puzzle simply couldn't be solved with yesterday's technology," said Kuznezov.

What's next then? Admit that the State Panel, which was entrusted with emergency authority, couldn't get down to the truth? Admit that the best engineers, medics and pilots couldn't find out why the world's first astronaut died?

And so the Panel was closed down quietly. And the material was hidden away as "Top Secret."

But now, 40 years have passed. It's time to open the archives and find an answer to one of the world's most mysterious aviation catastrophes of the 20th Century. Kuznezov is convinced that with today's technological capabilities and understanding of how individuals act in extreme situations, we'll be able to say for sure what happened to Gagarin. He has pieced the entire flight back together – second by second.

Stay tuned for the next article.

Another opinion

"The Political Bureau did not want to learn the truth," said academic Valentin Glushko, a founder of Soviet cosmonautics.

"I remember my father telling me in 1987 why the investigators did not learn what happened to Gagarin and Seregin," Glushko said. "He said the problem wasn't the complexity of the crash on March 27, but rather how they attempted to analyze it."

In his opinion, the top authorities (right up to Political Bureau members) did not have the least desire to find out what had happened. Thus, cooperation among sub-commissions was poorly organized and members of the analytical division were poorly selected.

"As a result," he said. "Any professional investigator with a technical education would have brought more good to the investigation than the people who made the final conclusions about the death of the world's first astronaut."

Glushko believed there were reasons why the officials didn't want objective conclusions to be drawn. But why?

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