CCCP Space Program - Yuri Gagarin first space flight patch.
March 28, 2021
53 years ago, on March 27, 1968, at 10:18 am near the village of Novoselovo, Kirzhachsky District, Vladimir Region, the first cosmonaut of the planet Yuri Gagarin and military pilot Vladimir Seregin were killed during a training flight on the MiG-15 UTI. At that time, Gagarin was 34 years old, and Seryogin was 45 years old.
Yuri Gagarin, the first cosmonaut of the planet
Yuri Gagarin and Vladimir Seregin took off from the Chkalovsky airfield near Moscow in Shchelkovo. At the time of takeoff, visibility conditions were normal - the bottom edge of the clouds was 900 m above the ground. The mission in the aerobatic zone was supposed to take at least 20 minutes, but after four minutes (at 10:30) Gagarin announced the end of the mission, requesting permission to turn around and fly to the base. After that, communication with the aircraft was interrupted.
When it became clear that the plane was about to run out of fuel, a search began in the flight zone, which lasted more than 3 hours. At 14:50, one of the helicopters managed to find the wreckage of a MiG-15UTI aircraft about 65 km from the airfield, near the village of Novoselovo, 18 km from the town of Kirzhach, Vladimir region. The next morning, a piece of Gagarin's flight jacket with food coupons was found. Later, a wallet with a driver's license and a photograph of Korolev was found. On March 28, the cremation of the remains of Yuri Gagarin and Vladimir Seryogin took place, and urns with the ashes of the dead were buried in the necropolis near the Kremlin wall.
Video above: ЮРИЙ ГАГАРИН. ПОСЛЕДНИЙ МИГ. Документальный фильм. / YURI GAGARIN. LAST MIG. Documentary (in Russian).
March 27, 1968 became a tragedy not only for the relatives and friends of Yuri Gagarin, his friends, colleagues, people involved in astronautics, but also a personal grief for any family in the USSR. National mourning was declared in the country, for the first time in history in connection with the departure of a person who is not the head of state.
At the site of the deaths of Yuri Gagarin and Vladimir Seryogin, at the edge of a funnel filled with melt water, a large memorial stone was first erected, and then an all-Union competition for the project of the memorial was held. The project of a group of sculptors and architects headed by Professor Nikolai Nikolaevich Ullas was recognized as the best; the sculptor M.M. Bolkhovitinov and the former chief architect of the region A.P. Akimov also worked with him.
The opening of the monument in the village of Novoselovo took place on August 6, 1976. The memorial was created by architects from red granite; the basis of the composition of the memorial is an obelisk 16 meters high. The base of the obelisk is made of dark labradorite with tears. The entire obelisk resembles a flame that bursts out of the depths of a black funnel. The obelisk is surrounded by mountain ash, the clusters of which glow like sparks of this flame in autumn and winter.
People go to the memorial in winter and summer to honor the memory of the heroes with a minute of mournful silence, to think about courage and duty, about the boundless courage and treachery of chance in the silence of the forest in front of the majestic monument. Relatives and friends of Yuri Gagarin and Vladimir Seryogin often come here. It has become a tradition for cosmonauts to visit the memorial, members of international crews leaving for the International Space Station, before and after the completion of the space flight.
Yuri Gagarin ready for the first space flight
The legendary flight of Yuri Alekseevich Gagarin aboard the Vostok-1 on April 12, 1961, lasting 108 minutes, attracted public attention from all over the world. The first cosmonaut became a celebrity on a planetary scale. Many disputes and discussions on the topic of how the life of the first cosmonaut of the planet would have developed are still going on. The opinion about Yuri Gagarin is unanimous: a person with an incredible smile, which is still familiar to millions of people today, charismatic, inquisitive, courageous and self-confident. He strove for knowledge, was well physically prepared, but the most valuable thing was kind, sincere and radiant in every sense.
In honor of Vladimir Seryogin, a Special Research Training Aviation Regiment was named, of which he was the commander since its foundation in 1967. The main purpose of the regiment was flight training of cosmonauts.
Yuri Gagarin and Vladimir Seregin are people of heroic professions. Their life is an example to follow, a reason to think about courage and duty, about boundless courage in the name of the Motherland. Their trail will forever remain on Earth and in space.
ROSCOSMOS Press Release: https://www.roscosmos.ru/30504/
Images, Video, Text, Credits: ROSCOSMOS/CCCP Space Program/Orbiter.ch Aerospace/Roland Berga.
Best regards, Orbiter.ch
