Inside the mysterious death of ‘first man in space’ Yuri Gagarin 50 years ago today – as wild conspiracies blame everything from Soviet assassination plots to alien abductions
Soviet Gagarin made history when he orbited the earth in just 108 minutes in 1961
EVENTS surrounding the crash that killed astronaut Yuri Gagarin are still shrouded in mystery – half a century after his death.
Soviet Gagarin made history when he became the first man to journey into space in 1961.
His single Earth orbit on April 12 took the 27-year-old 108 minutes and was one of the Soviet Union’s biggest Cold War victories.
Seven years later, the cosmonaut was killed on a training flight.
Today marks the 50th anniversary of the Russian’s death – yet still speculation is rife as to what actually happened on that fateful day.
Wild rumours surrounding the space hero’s death began to circulate almost immediately after the tragic event.
Was it Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev, jealous of Gagarin’s superstar status, who staged the accident?
Other theories suggest the former astronaut was drunk and that he and his co-pilot were taking pot-shots at wild deer from the cockpit when they lost control of their aircraft.
Some even believe that he is still alive and is in hiding or that he was kidnapped by aliens.
Yet another theory suggests that a partially open air vent in the cockpit forced Gagarin to make a sharp dive.
The pilots would not have known that such a quick descent would cause them to black out, and the plane to plunge into the forest below.
It’s also likely that another aircraft flew dangerously close to Gagarin’s plane.
Alexei Leonov, who in 1965 became the first man to walk in space, thinks he holds the key to Gagarin’s death.
Leonov, who was near the Moscow airfield on the day, was part of the official team investigating Gagarin’s death.
The classified report recorded that Gagarin and his co-pilot tried to avoid colliding with a bird or another object, and as a result, entered into an uncontrollable tailspin.
But speaking to Russia Today in 2013, Leonov revealed that an unauthorised SU-15 fighter jet had flown too close to Gagarin’s aircraft.
He said: “In this case, the pilot didn’t follow the book, descending to an altitude of 450 metres.
“He passed close to Gagarin, turning his plane and thus sending it into a tailspin – a deep spiral, to be precise – at a speed of 750 kilometres per hour.
New data from documents declassified in 2003 allowed for a computer simulation, which revealed a possible reason for the crash.
Leonov told RT: “A jet can sink into a deep spiral if a larger, heavier aircraft passes by too close and flips [the jet] over with its backwash. And that is exactly what happened to Gagarin. That trajectory was the only one that corresponded with all our input parameters.
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“I know this because I was there; I heard the sound and talked to witnesses.”
On March 27, 1968, a little after 10am, Gagarin was preparing for a routine training flight in his MiG-15 plane at the Chkalovsky airfield near Moscow. But soon after take-off, he and his co-pilot Vladimir Seryogin stopped responding to radio calls.
Helicopters searching for the plane found parts of the wreckage 40 miles from the airfield and Gagarin’s body was discovered the day after.
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