Yuri Gagarin
Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin was a Soviet pilot and cosmonaut who, aboard the first successful crewed spaceflight, became the first person to journey into outer space. Travelling on Vostok 1, Gagarin completed one orbit of Earth on 12 April 1961, with his flight taking 108 minutes. By achieving this major milestone for the Soviet Union amidst the Space Race, he became an international celebrity and was awarded many medals and titles, including his country's highest distinction: Hero of the Soviet Union.
Hailing from the village of Klushino in the Russian SFSR, Gagarin was a foundryman at a steel plant in Lyubertsy in his youth. He later joined the Soviet Air Forces as a pilot and was stationed at the Luostari Air Base, near the Norway–Soviet Union border, before his selection for the Soviet space programme alongside five other cosmonauts. Following his spaceflight, Gagarin became the deputy training director of the Cosmonaut Training Centre, which was later named after him. He was also elected as a deputy of the Soviet of the Union in 1962 and then to the Soviet of Nationalities, the lower and upper chambers of the Supreme Soviet respectively.
Vostok 1 was Gagarin's only spaceflight, but he served as the backup crew to Soyuz 1, which ended in a fatal crash, killing his friend and fellow cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov. Fearful that a high-level national hero might be killed, Soviet officials banned Gagarin from participating in further spaceflights. After completing training at the Zhukovsky Air Force Engineering Academy in February 1968, he was again allowed to fly regular aircraft. However, Gagarin died five weeks later, when the MiG-15 that he was piloting with flight instructor Vladimir Seryogin crashed near the town of Kirzhach.
Early life
Gagarin was born 9 March 1934 in the village of Klushino, in the Smolensk Oblast of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, near Gzhatsk. His parents worked on a sovkhoz—Aleksey Ivanovich Gagarin as a carpenter and Anna Timofeyevna Gagarina as a dairy farmer. Yuri was the third of four children. His older brother Valentin was born in 1924, and by the time Yuri was born he was already helping with the cattle on the farm. His sister Zoya, born in 1927, helped take care of "Yura" and their youngest brother Boris, born in 1936.Like millions of Soviet citizens, his family suffered during the German occupation during World War II. During the German advance on Moscow, retreating Red Army soldiers seized the collective farm's livestock. The Nazis captured Klushino on 18 October 1941. On their first day in the village, they burned down the school, ending Yuri's first year of education. The Germans also burned down 27 houses in the village and forced the residents, including the Gagarins, to work the farms to feed the occupying soldiers. Those who refused were beaten or sent to the concentration camp set up at Gzhatsk.
A Nazi officer took over the Gagarin residence. On the land behind their house, the family was allowed to build a mud hut measuring approximately, where they spent 21 months until the end of the occupation. During this period, Yuri became a saboteur, especially after one of the German soldiers, called "the Devil" by the children, tried to hang his younger brother Boris on an apple tree using the boy's scarf. In retaliation, Yuri sabotaged the soldier's work; he poured soil into the tank batteries gathered to be recharged and randomly mixed the different chemical supplies intended for the task. In early 1943, his two older siblings were deported by the Germans to Poland for slave labour. They escaped and were found by Soviet soldiers who conscripted them into helping with the war effort. They did not return home until after the war, in 1945.
The rest of the Gagarin family believed the two older children were dead. Yuri's father was overcome with "grief and hunger" and often sickly; he was beaten for refusing to work for the German occupiers. He spent the remainder of the war at a hospital as a patient and later as an orderly. Yuri's mother was hospitalized during the same period, after a soldier gashed her leg with a scythe. Aleksey helped the Red Army find mines buried in the roads by the fleeing Germans following their rout out of Klushino on 9 March 1944.
Education and early career
In 1946, the family moved to Gzhatsk, where Gagarin continued his education. Yuri and Boris were enrolled at a crude school built in the town and run by a young woman who volunteered to be the teacher. They learned to read using a discarded Soviet military manual. A former Soviet airman later joined the school to teach math and science, Yuri's favourite subjects. Yuri was also part of a group of children that built model aeroplanes. He was fascinated with aircraft from a young age and his interest in aeroplanes was energized after a Yakovlev fighter plane crash landed in Klushino during the war.In 1950, aged 16, Gagarin began an apprenticeship as a foundryman at a steel plant in Lyubertsy, near Moscow, and enrolled at a local "young workers" school for seventh-grade evening classes. After graduating in 1951 from both the seventh grade and the vocational school with honours in mouldmaking and foundry work, he was selected for further training at the Industrial Technical School in Saratov, where he studied tractors. While in Saratov, Gagarin volunteered at a local flying club for weekend training as a Soviet air cadet, where he trained to fly a biplane, and later a Yakovlev Yak-18. He earned extra money as a part-time dock labourer on the Volga River.
Soviet Air Force service
In 1955, Gagarin was accepted to the First Chkalov Higher Air Force Pilots School in Orenburg. He initially began training on the Yak-18 already familiar to him and later graduated to training on the MiG-15 in February 1956. Gagarin twice struggled to land the two-seater trainer aircraft, and risked dismissal from pilot training. However, the commander of the regiment decided to give him another chance at landing. Gagarin's flight instructor gave him a cushion to sit on, which improved his view from the cockpit, and he landed successfully. Having completed his evaluation in a trainer aircraft, Gagarin began flying solo in 1957.On 5 November 1957, Gagarin was commissioned a lieutenant in the Soviet Air Forces, having accumulated 166 hours and 47 minutes of flight time. He graduated from flight school the next day and was posted to the Luostari Air Base, close to the Norwegian border in Murmansk Oblast, for a two-year assignment with the Northern Fleet. He was assigned to the 769th Fighter Aviation Regiment of the 122nd Fighter Aviation Division flying Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-15bis aircraft. By October 1959, he had flown a total of 265 hours.
On 7 July 1959, he was rated Military Pilot 3rd Class. After expressing interest in space exploration following the launch of Luna 3 on 6 October 1959, his recommendation to the Soviet space programme was endorsed and forwarded by Lieutenant Colonel Babushkin. By this point, he had accumulated 265 hours of flight time. Gagarin was promoted to the rank of senior lieutenant on 6 November 1959, three weeks after he was interviewed by a medical commission for qualification to the space programme.
Soviet space programme
Selection and training
Gagarin's selection for the Vostok programme was overseen by the Central Flight Medical Commission led by Major General Konstantin Fyodorovich Borodin of the Soviet Army Medical Service. He underwent physical and psychological testing conducted at Central Aviation Scientific-Research Hospital, in Moscow, commanded by Colonel A.S. Usanov, a member of the commission. The commission also included Colonel Yevgeniy Anatoliyevich Karpov, who later commanded the training centre, Colonel Vladimir Ivanovich Yazdovskiy, the head physician for Gagarin's flight, and Major-General Aleksandr Nikolayevich Babiychuk, a physician flag officer on the Soviet Air Force General Staff to the Commander in Chief of the Air Force. The commission limited their selection to pilots between 25 and 30 years old. The chief engineer of the programme Sergei Korolev also specified that candidates, to fit in the limited space in the Vostok capsule, should weigh less than and be no taller than ; Gagarin was tall.From a pool of 154 qualified pilots short-listed by their Air Force units, the military physicians chose 29 cosmonaut candidates, of whom 20 were approved by the Credential Committee of the Soviet government. The first twelve, including Gagarin, were approved on 7 March 1960 and eight more were added in a series of subsequent orders issued until June.
Gagarin began training at the Khodynka Airfield in central Moscow on 15 March 1960. The training regimen involved vigorous and repetitive physical exercises which Alexei Leonov, a member of the initial group of twelve, described as akin to training for the Olympic Games. In April 1960, they began parachute training in Saratov Oblast and each man completed about 40 to 50 jumps from both low and high altitude, over both land and water.
Gagarin was a candidate favoured by his peers; when they were asked to vote anonymously for a candidate besides themselves they would like to be the first to fly, all but three chose Gagarin. One of these candidates, Yevgeny Khrunov, believed that Gagarin was very focused and was demanding of himself and others when necessary. On 30 May 1960, Gagarin was further selected for an accelerated training group, known as the Vanguard Six or Sochi Six, from which the first cosmonauts of the Vostok programme would be chosen. The other members of the group were Anatoly Kartashov, Andriyan Nikolayev, Pavel Popovich, Gherman Titov, and Valentin Varlamov. However, Kartashov and Varlamov were injured and replaced by Khrunov and Grigory Nelyubov.
As several of the candidates selected for the programme including Gagarin did not have higher education degrees, they were enrolled in a correspondence course programme at the Zhukovsky Air Force Engineering Academy. Gagarin enrolled in September 1960 and did not earn his specialist diploma until early 1968. Gagarin was also subjected to experiments that were designed to test physical and psychological endurance, including oxygen starvation tests in which the cosmonauts were locked in an isolation chamber and the air slowly pumped out. He also trained for the upcoming flight by experiencing g-forces in a centrifuge. Psychological tests included placing the candidates in an anechoic chamber in complete isolation; Gagarin was in the chamber from 26 July to 5 August. In August 1960, a Soviet Air Force doctor evaluated his personality as follows:
The Vanguard Six were given the title of pilot-cosmonaut in January 1961 and underwent a two-day examination conducted by a special interdepartmental commission led by Lieutenant-General Nikolai Kamanin, the overseer of the Vostok programme. The commission was tasked with ranking the candidates based on their mission readiness for the first human Vostok mission. On 17 January, they were tested in a simulator at the M. M. Gromov Flight-Research Institute on a full-size mockup of the Vostok capsule. Gagarin, Nikolayev, Popovich, and Titov all received excellent marks on the first day of testing, in which they were required to describe the various phases of the mission followed by questions from the commission. On the second day, they were given a written examination, following which the special commission ranked Gagarin as the best candidate. He and the next two highest-ranked cosmonauts, Titov and Nelyubov, were sent to Tyuratam for final preparations. Gagarin and Titov were selected to train in the flight-ready spacecraft on 7 April. Historian Asif Azam Siddiqi writes of the final selection: