by Jamie Doran
Two weeks later, on March 27, Gagarin took off from Chkalovsky (the airbase directly alongside Star City) aboard a two-seater MiG-15UTI jet, with Serugin in the back seat acting as his instructor. The purpose of the flight was to prepare Gagarin for qualifying in a more modern MiG-17, so that he could leave the older plane behind once and for all.
Valentina was in hospital undergoing an appendectomy, and Gagarin planned to visit her later on, at the end of his day’s work.
At 7.30 in the evening, Taissia Serugina started to worry because her husband Vladimir was not yet home. As she remembers, ‘I was waiting for the whole night. I called his air regiment, and every time they said, “He’s not available, but everything’s in order. He’s busy with his work.” No one told me anything. I didn’t sleep, and I left the house next morning for work. Then they notified me that there had been a problem at the airfield, but I didn’t quite believe it. I thought if anything serious had happened to my husband, they would have told me yesterday . . . Suddenly my daughter ran up to me. “Mother!” she shouted, and there were tears in her eyes. “Father’s dead!” I don’t remember much after that.’
Alexei Leonov was one of only a few cosmonauts to have embraced helicopter flying as a worthwhile discipline. He was involved in the testing of possible lunar landing manoeuvres using adapted helicopters as crude vertical-descent simulators. On the morning of March 27, he was leading a group of cosmonauts through a parachute training run from the Kerzatch airfield, thirteen kilometres from Serugin’s and Gagarin’s base at Chkalovsky. He piloted a large helicopter through the deteriorating weather, trying to find a break in the clouds so that he could release his jumpers.
The cloud base was down to 450 metres and visibility was appalling. Rain and wet snowflakes thudded against the cockpit canopy. Leonov managed to release his first parachute team into the air, but the visibility was closing in fast. The local air-traffic controllers told him that the weather was not going to improve, so he took the helicopter back to Kerzatch with half his parachute team still aboard. ‘Moments after we had landed, we heard two explosions – an explosion and a bang that accompanies a supersonic shockwave. We wondered: what was it? An explosion or a bang? I said it was probably both – that the events were somehow linked. And these two sounds were just over one second apart.’
Chkalovsky was thirteen kilometres away and the sounds were muffled by the damp weather, but even at that distance they were distinguishable. Leonov became increasingly concerned. He knew perfectly well that Gagarin was flying today. On his own authority, he flew the helicopter to Chkalovsky, despite the poor weather. All the way there he monitored the controllers calling Gagarin’s code number, 625, on the radio link. As soon as Leonov touched down at Chkalovsky, a regimental commander came up to him and said, ‘The fuel in Yuri’s plane should have run out forty-five minutes ago, but he’s not returned to the airfield.’
Leonov decided he had better report his unpleasant theory. ‘I went to the Flight Control Office and Nikolai Kamanin was there. I told him, “You might think it’s strange to say this, but I heard an explosion and a supersonic bang.” I gave an estimation of the [compass bearing] I thought the sounds had come from.’
A search helicopter was despatched to overfly the area where Gagarin’s plane had last been spotted on radar, ninety-six kilometres north-east of Moscow. The pilot flew low over the ground and discovered an area of woodland with a bare black patch of scattered earth venting some steam, but visibility was still poor and he could not be sure that this was actually a wreck site. According to Leonov, ‘The search pilot thought the steam might be a natural phenomenon of some kind. He was ordered to land his helicopter and inspect the site on foot. Because of all the trees there was no obvious opportunity to put the helicopter down, so the pilot flew to the nearest open land, near a church, and settled there.’ Apparently he waded for an hour through thick snow, a metre deep in places, to get into the woodlands where he had seen the smoke. When he had found what there was to find, he struggled back to the helicopter and made his report by radio. There was a large crater, he said, and the earth from within it had been thrown outwards across a wide area. Some of the trees at the perimeter were broken, and many small pieces of twisted metal lay all over the site. Clearly this was an aircraft accident, but there was no obvious sign of a central piece of wreckage in the crater: a fuselage, for instance, or a main engine section.
Gagarin and Serugin had lost contact with Chkalovsky traffic control at 10.31 in the morning. By the time the helicopter pilot had waded in and out of the wreck sight, made his report and called for a properly equipped rescue team, it was about 4.30 in the afternoon. The grey winter light, already poor, was fading fast. The search team arrived with powerful torches, but they were of little use in the winter darkness. By evenfall the searchers had identified what appeared to be tatters of Vladimir Serugin’s clothing, and Gagarin’s map case, but they had found no obvious trace of either man’s body, nor of the main sections of the aircraft. ‘Throughout the night two battalions of soldiers searched the forest, but they didn’t find anything,’ Leonov explains. ‘And on the next day, while we were digging deeper into the crater, we found pieces of Gagarin’s flying jacket. It became clear that both of them were still in here somewhere. They didn’t eject.’
The front end of the plane had been rammed with great force several metres into the hard ground, by the sheer momentum of the heavy engine block. The recovery team had to try and dig the cockpit out of the hard-frozen earth. They found that it was utterly smashed, and the two men’s bodies inside were severely mangled. To their great distress, the rescuers spent many hours retrieving fingers, toes, pieces of ribcage and skull from the crater, the surrounding woodlands and even the trees – some of these had to be cut down once they knew what to look for. It became clear that the plane’s impact with the trees had caused terrible damage to the cockpit, even before the final impact on the ground had crushed it once and for all.
Meanwhile Gagarin’s personal driver Fyodor Dyemchuk, who had driven him to Chkalovsky that morning, was quietly waiting for the MiG to return so that he could get his passenger back to central Moscow, to see Valya in the Kuntsevo hospital in the evening. ‘At approximately eleven o’clock [that morning] all of us learned that his radio link was lost. Everyone assumed his transmitter was out of order or something like that.’ But the mood darkened once the search party was ordered later that day. ‘We were told that a crash site had been found and we were under orders to be ready at eight o’clock in the evening. We formed a team, picked up some equipment and went to that place. There was a lot of snow, and the ground was difficult, so it took us most of the night to drive through and reach the crash site. Of course everyone was upset. Everyone felt it. The most horrible thing was the uncertainty.’
At first light next morning, the extent of the crash became clear. Dyemchuk was closely involved in the search to recover every scrap of wreckage, no matter how small or seemingly insignificant. ‘The only large pieces left were the engine, some landing gear, and one wing. The rest was scattered over the entire forest by the force of impact and the explosion. We were walking through the snow. You walk and see a hole in the snow, and you dip your hand in and pull out a piece of flesh or a piece of bone. Sometimes a finger. Those were very dark days.’
Dyemchuk’s worst moment actually came two days after the crash, when he was driving a distraught Valentina Gagarina away from the hospital after her operation. Thoughtlessly he let slip some comment or other about recovering Gagarin’s body. ‘She was hysterical. She didn’t know. She thought he was found intact, or at least that the majority of body parts were found. Of course men understand very well what happens in an explosion, but how could women know about these things? She didn’t realize they were blown to pieces. Because of my naïvety, I told her. Perhaps a bitter truth is better than a sweet lie.’
Under conditions of the greatest security, Leonov, Kamanin and other colleagues were asked to atte
mpt an identification of the two dead pilots’ body fragments. Leonov says, ‘When they showed me part of a neck, I said, “That is Gagarin.” Why? Because of a birthmark. On Saturday we were at the barber’s shop at the Yusnost Hotel. There was a barber, Igor Khoklov, who liked Yura very much, and he always cut his hair. I saw the birthmark, about three millimetres across, and I said, “Igor, be careful. Don’t cut it off.” So I knew when I saw it that we could stop searching. We wouldn’t find Gagarin out there somewhere. He was here.’
Meanwhile, one of the most intensive air-accident investigations in Soviet history was initiated. Despite the very wide scattering of wreckage, 95 per cent of the MiG-15 was recovered for analysis over the next fortnight. Even while this painstaking recovery was being carried out, fragments of heart and muscle tissue from the pilots’ shattered bodies were sent off for chemical analysis.
A standard sequence of biochemical tests was performed on the remains of all Soviet military pilots killed in accidents. Lactic-acid levels in muscle tissues yielded clues to a pilot’s physical condition at the time of a crash. High levels of acid suggested tightly flexed muscles and a thoroughly alert pilot. Low levels indicated a relaxed state, perhaps a result of unconsciousness brought on by extreme g-forces. In such a case the accident investigation was fairly straightforward. The pilot could be deemed responsible for the crash, but his honour was protected. Another possibility, suggested by intermediate lactic-acid levels, was that tiredness might have caused the pilot’s attention to wander; in which case the investigation was widened to include his overall workload and career. The worst possibility was alcohol. If a pilot was found to have been drunk in charge of his aircraft, his reputation could not possibly be redeemed. The chemical tests searched for traces of alcohol as well as lactic acid.
Immediately after Gagarin’s and Serugin’s crash a rumour spread that they had indeed been drunk. This story is still put about today.4 They went to a fiftieth birthday party for a colleague the night before their flight, and partied hard and long. Taissia Serugina utterly rejects this idea. ‘The night before the flight my husband went to bed at ten. I asked him, “Why are you going to bed so early?” He said, “Tomorrow I have to test Yura, so I want to be in good shape.” In the morning he left for work in a good mood. He said, “It’ll be a good day today.” But a tragedy occurred.’
Taissia admits that a party did take place prior to the crash, but two nights before. ‘On Monday there was a celebration in Star City for a colleague’s fiftieth birthday. On Tuesday my husband was working as normal. On Wednesday Yura was due to fly. That’s why, on Tuesday evening, my husband told me he’d go to bed earlier.’ Taissia blames the rumours of drunkenness on Serugin’s immediate superior at the Chkalovsky airbase, General Kuznetsov, who treated Serugin with considerable discourtesy throughout their working relationship. ‘He would summon my husband to his office, then keep him waiting outside. Finally my husband would become exasperated. He would arrive, only to find that the man wouldn’t see him, so he’d turn around and drive back to the airfield.’
The problem between the two men appears to have been rivalry for rank within the Chkalovsky airbase. Gagarin and Serugin were very good friends, and Taissia Serugina is convinced that General Kuznetsov resented her husband’s closeness with the First Cosmonaut. ‘Yura said to my husband, “Don’t pay any attention to Kuznetsov, because very soon I’ll be Chief of Training and everything will work out.” Afterwards, Kuznetsov said that my husband was ill during that last flight, and he had a sick stomach or an ulcer. Never in his life did he complain about any illness. To say such foul things is absolute dishonesty.’
If Kuznetsov was using the phrases ‘ulcer’ or ‘sick stomach’ to suggest a hangover, then the hard evidence supports Taissia Serugina’s side of the argument. Samples from Gagarin’s and Serugin’s remains were sent to several institutes, and all of them reported similar results. Lactic-acid levels in the muscle tissues of both men were high, indicating that they were fully conscious and alert at the time of the crash. In fact, the levels suggested an intense physical battle with the MiG’s control yokes (what we would call ‘joysticks’). Meanwhile the alcohol levels were not found to be significant.
The aircraft wreckage revealed other clues. The yokes in the front and rear cockpit compartments were positioned as they should have been by pilots attempting to control a wayward aircraft. In theory, the crash could have dislodged the yokes entirely by chance, but the foot pedals also appeared to be in the right positions. Likewise for the throttle levers and flap controls. Despite the extreme damage to most of the cockpit’s mechanical components, there was strong evidence to suggest that both pilots fought hard to save the plane from a catastrophic spin. What’s more, they seemed to have been trying all the right manoeuvres, aiming for a subtle 20-degree tilt of the aircraft, rather than simply hauling at the yokes in thoughtless panic.5
Alexei Leonov was a member of the crash investigation team. As he points out, ‘The plane was not in a dive when it hit the ground, but coming out of it. The plane didn’t crash nose-first, but almost flat on its belly.’ Its downward momentum was still sufficient to drive the engine block several metres into the ice-hardened earth; but the ‘pancake’ impact suggested that the two pilots may have been heart-breakingly close to levelling out when they ran out of sky.
The central question was: why had the plane lost control in the first place? Obviously it had not collided with another plane, otherwise it would have disintegrated in mid-air, scattering wreckage across a much larger area of ground. And there would have been signs of wreckage of the plane which it had collided with.
The crash seemed a puzzle. The investigators turned for answers to the service record of Gagarin’s and Serugin’s MiG. Perhaps the ageing jet had somehow failed, or lost power? The commission noted several concerns:
Shortcomings of the equipment and procedures used in the flight:
1 The MiG-15UTI aircraft was old, produced in 1956 and subject to two major overhauls. The residual service life of the structure was down to 30 per cent.
2 The engine, DA-450, was also produced in 1956 and subject to four overhauls. Residual service life was 30 per cent.
3 Installed on the aircraft were two 260-litre external tanks which were aerodynamically poor, reducing allowable g-loads by a factor of three.
4 The crew ejection system required the instructor to be the first to eject.
5 The height-to-ground altimeter was faulty.6
Gagarin and Serugin flew with expendable drop-away fuel pods under the wings. Leonov says, ‘There was always a drawback with this configuration. The dynamic design of the fuel tanks reduced the safety parameters of a flight, such as the angle of attack, the angles of sliding, and g-forces.’ Drop-tanks were not required to sustain a brief training sortie directly over home base. The tanks’ usual purpose was to supply a combat MiG with enough fuel to reach foreign enemy territory. When it reached its intended war zone and began to fight, the MiG was supposed to drop the depleted tanks in order to regain maximum nimbleness and speed. On March 27 a pair of tanks was installed on Gagarin’s training plane so as to familiarize him with the extra care he would have to take while they were in place. They should not have presented any special problems. All MiG pilots understood the strict regulations forbidding them to attempt simulated combat manoeuvres with the tanks attached.
In general, the MiG-15UTI was a rugged machine that allowed its cadet students plenty of margin for error – tanks or no tanks. Everyone called the UTI configuration ‘mother’, because so many thousands of pilots had learned to fly aboard these two-seater machines. Despite doubts about the age of Gagarin’s jet, and its damning record of overhauls, the wreckage did not suggest that any structural failures had occurred prior to the crash itself. So why did an intact and fully functioning MiG suddenly fall to earth? Seeking an explanation, the commission looked into the weather reports for the day of the crash:
Difficult weather conditions beca
me gradually worse, as evidenced by ring-shaped pressure contours on the meteorological charts, and eye-witness accounts. Inaccurate weather information was given [to the pilots] during pre-flight preparation because the sortie of the weather reconnaissance planes was delayed.7
Apparently Serugin was misinformed that the cloud base was at 1,000 metres, when in fact it was down to 450 metres. A slight fault in the MiG’s instrumentation prevented its altimeter from responding accurately if the plane was in a dive. Serugin may have descended through the cloud layer thinking that he had twice the height margin over the ground than was actually the case. The difference in flight time would not have been more than a few seconds at most, but it could have been crucial.
Were those few seconds of visibility beneath the cloud layer sufficient for Serugin to see that he was running out of altitude? If so, then why didn’t he order an emergency ejection before the plane actually hit the ground? According to Leonov, the minimum safe height for ejection from a MiG was as low as 200 metres, but the belly-first pattern of the crash suggested that Serugin may have thought he was on the verge of pulling up safely, which could be why he did not order an ejection; and, as everyone knew full well, if he had considered bailing out, the escape procedure itself might have caused some difficulty. Two decades after the crash investigation, Igor Kacharovsky, an expert aircraft engineer, wrote to Sergei Belotserkovsky with his observations:
As a rule the MiG-15UTI is flown by a cadet and a flying instructor. The instructor sits in the rear seat. The front seat is in the same position as for a single-seat combat MiG-15. The order of ejection is as follows: the first to eject is the instructor from the rear seat. The second is the pilot from the forward seat.
