For just 108 minutes on Wednesday 12 April 1961, Soviet pilot Yuri Gagarin travelled 25,000 miles aboard the Vostok 1 space capsule as it orbited the planet making Gagarin the first human to leave the Earth and enter orbit. Aged 26 Gagarin became an instant national hero in the Soviet Union and his historic flight intensified the space race with US President Kennedy’s call to arms to put an American on the moon before the decade was out and to safely bring him home. Gagarin himself was lucky to return to Earth safely for as his capsule begin its re-entry it failed to separate from the orbiter. In a frantic attempt to free the capsule from the orbiter, the attaching cables eventually burned off and Gagarin’s capsule safely re-entered the Earth’s atmosphere and Gagarin ejected at over 20,000 feet before landing safely by parachute over 200 miles from the target landing site.
Yuri Gagarin was born in Klushino, near Gzhatsk (renamed Gagarin in 1968), on 9 March 1934. His parents worked on a collective farm. His father was a carpenter and bricklayer and his mother was a milkmaid. Gagarin was forced to live with his parents in a 10ft x 10ft mud hut next to their home during the Nazi occupation during World War II. The Germans had occupied their home and his two older siblings had been deported to slave camps in Poland. Both survived the war and returned home after the war. At 16 Gagarin became an apprentice foundryman and enrolled in a “young workers” school, graduating in 1951 with honours in moldmaking and foundry work. He then studied tractors at Saratov Industrial Technical School. During this time he volunteered for weekend training as a Soviet air cadet, where he learned to fly. He was also a part-time dock labourer on the Volga River.
In 1955 he was drafted into the Soviet Army and was sent to the First Chkalov Air Force Pilot’s School in Orenburg, and soloed in a MiG-15 in 1957. This would be the type of aircraft in which he would die in a test flight just eleven years later. After graduation he was assigned to the Lubstari airbase in Murmansk Oblast, close to Norway. He became a lieutenant in the Soviet Air Forces on 5 November 1957 and two years later he was promoted to Senior Lieutenant.
In 1960 the young Gagarin became one of 20 pilots selected for the cosmonaut space program. At this time the Soviet Union were racing ahead of the Americans in space and weapon technology. They had developed the first intercontinental ballistic missile, capable of not only striking America but putting a rocket into orbit. They had put the world’s first satellite into orbit, Sputnik, and were now working towards the goal of putting the first man in orbit. Gagarin was further selected as one of the so-called Sochi Six, from which the Vostok cosmonaut would be chosen. The six men had to undergo extensive training, physical and psychological tests. Gagarin made it to the last two with Gherman Titov. Both men had excelled in their training but were also short men, more suitable for the Vostok capsule. At this time a Soviet space programme doctor described Yuri Gagarin:
“Modest; embarrasses when his humor gets a little too racy; high degree of intellectual development evident in Yuri; fantastic memory; distinguishes himself from his colleagues by his sharp and far-ranging sense of attention to his surroundings; a well-developed imagination; quick reactions; persevering, prepares himself painstakingly for his activities and training exercises, handles celestial mechanics and mathematical formulae with ease as well as excels in higher mathematics; does not feel constrained when he has to defend his point of view if he considers himself right; appears that he understands life better than a lot of his friends.”
He was also popular with his fellow potential cosmonauts. When asked who they would like to see fly Vostok, all but three suggested Gagarin. Cosmonaut Valery Bykovsky wrote of Gagarin:
“Service in the Air Force made us strong, both physically and morally. All of us cosmonauts took up sports and PT seriously when we served in the Air Force. I know that Yuri Gagarin was fond of ice hockey. He liked to play goal keeper… I don’t think I am wrong when I say that sports became a fixture in the life of the cosmonauts.”
On this day in 1961, Wednesday 12 April, Gagarin was on board Vostok 1 (Vostok 3KA-3) (below) when it was launched from Baikonur Cosmodrome. Using the call sign Kedr (meaning Siberian pine or cedar). At the moment of launch, the conversation between Gagarin and the space programme’s boss Korolev went as follows:
Korolev: “Preliminary stage….. intermediate….. main….. lift off! We wish you a good flight. Everything is all right.” Gagarin: “Поехали!” (Poyekhali!—Let’s go!)”
The term Poyekhali became a term in the Eastern Bloc to refer to the beginnings of the space age in human history. In his sole orbit of the Earth he made the comment: “The feeling of weightlessness was somewhat unfamiliar compared with Earth conditions. Here, you feel as if you were hanging in a horizontal position in straps. You feel as if you are suspended.” The persistent rumour that in orbit Gagarin said “I see no God up here” is just that, a rumour. His colleagues say he never said it and the phrase does not appear in the verbatim transcript of the flight. The quote originates from a speech by Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev who as part of the Soviet’s anti-religion stance once said: “Gagarin flew into space, but didn’t see any God there.” Gagarin himself was a Orthodox Christian and had baptised his daughter Yelena shortly before his historic flight. His family are also said to have celebrated Christmas and Easter and kept religious icons in the home.
Gagarin became an instant hero in the Soviet Union and a worldwide celebrity with newspapers around the world reporting on the flight and publishing his biography. Parades and celebrations around the Soviet Union were only matched by Second World War Victory Parades, including one where Gagarin was escorted in a long motorcade to the Kremlin in Moscow for a lavish ceremony where he was awarded the title Hero of the Soviet Union by Khrushchev. Gagarin would tour the world to promote the Soviet Union’s achievements in space exploration. Among places he visited were Germany, Italy, Egypt, Brazil and Japan. In the UK, just three months after the flight, he visited London and Manchester. The constant touring placed pressure on Gagarin, including dramatically increasing how much he drank as it was expected everywhere he went that he would drink.
In 1962 he began serving as a Deputy to the Soviet of the Union, and was elected to the Central Committee of the Young Communist League. He later returned to Star City to spent several years working on spacecraft designs, including reusable ones. He was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel in June that year and was colonel by November 1963. Authorities tried to restrict Gagarin’s flying, fearing losing a national hero. However, he was backup pilot for Vladimir Kormarov for the Soyuz 1 flight. The flight was launched despite Gagarin’s protests and ended in a fatal crash. This led to Gagarin being banned from training and participating in further spaceflights.
By the end of 1963 he was Deputy Training Director of the Star City cosmonaut training base. In 1964 he began to re-qualify as a fighter pilot. On 17 February 1968 he successfully defended his aerospace engineering thesis on the subject of spaceplane aerodynamic configuration, passing with flying colours. Just a few weeks later Gagarin and his flight instructor Vladimir Serygon died when their MiG-15UTI crashed near the town of Kirzach. His ashes were buried in the walls of the Kremlin on Red Square. Gagarin was survived by his wife Valentina and daughters Yelena and Galina.
Photo: Gagarin with Valentina Gagarina and Sinna Eivazova in Bulgaria in 1966.
The 12 April continues to be marked as a special date in present-day Russia, as it was in the Soviet Union before its collapse. It is known as Cosmonautics Day. In 2011 it was also declared the International Day of Human Space Flight by the United Nations. Since 2001, the 12 April has also been celebrated as Yuri’s Night as an international celebration to commemorate milestones in space exploration. The Baikonur Cosmodrome is now known as Gagarin’s Start and the Gagarin Raion in Sevastopol (Ukraine) was named after him. The Air Force Academy was renamed Gagarin Air Force Academy in 1968. Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, the first men to walk on the Moon, left a memorial satchel containing medals commemorating Gagarin on the moon in July 1969 (Apollo 11) and Apollo 15 astronauts David Scott and James Irwin left the Fallen Astronaut at their landing site as a memorial to Gagarin and all American astronauts and Soviet cosmonauts who died in the space race – 15 at the time. A crater on the far side of the Moon was also named after him.
Gagarin has also been honoured in pieces of music and ships and aeroplanes have been named after him. In the Soviet Union several commemoration coins and stamps have been named after him. In sport, the Kontinental Hockey League named their championship trophy the Gagarin Cup. And, of course, many books, articles and TV programmes have been written and made about him. There are also several statues in honour of Yuri Gagarin, including the one Royal Observatory in Greenwhich, formerly at the Admiralty Arch in London. Others include a monument in Gagarin Square in Moscow, which is over 42m tall. There is one at NASA’s original spaceflight headquarters in Houston, Texas. A bust of Gagarin was placed in Belgrade, Serbia, but was quickly removed over complaints about the size of his head.
STEPHEN NULTY 