27 March 1968

Yuri Gagarin photographed shortly before his death in 1968. (RSC Energia)

27 March 1968: Colonel Yuri Alekseevich Gagarin, Pilot-Cosmonaut of the Soviet Union,  was killed in the crash of a Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-15UTI two-place trainer near the village of Novoselova, Vladamir Oblast, Russia.

Colonel Vladimir Sergeyevich Seregin, Hero of the Soviet Union.

Colonel Gagarin was on a routine training flight with an instructor, Colonel-Engineer Vladimir Sergeyevich Seregin. (Seregin was the commanding officer of the cosmonauts’ training regiment at the Cosmonaut Training Center.) The weather was poor, with rain, snow, wind and low clouds. His last reported altitude was 4,200 meters (13,780 feet).

A Sukhoi Su-15 on test flight inadvertently passed very close to the MiG at supersonic speed. The Sukhoi’s test had been planned for 10,000 meters (32,808 feet), but the pilot actually was flying much lower, passing through clouds, and the interceptor came within an estimated 15–20 meters (49–66 feet) of the trainer. Its wake vortices put Gagarin’s airplane into a spin from which he and Seregin were unable to recover. 55 seconds after Gagarin’s last radio transmission, the MiG-15 crashed. Both men were killed.

Colonel Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin, Soviet Air Forces. (9 March 1934 – 27 March 1968)

Yuriy Alekseyevich Gagarin (Юрий Алексеевич Гагарин) was born at Klushino, a village in Smolensk Oblast, Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, 9 March 1934. He was the third of four children of Alexey Ivanovich Gagarin and Anna Timofeyevna Gagarina. The family, workers on a collective farm, were displaced by the German invasion of 1941.

Gagarin was drafted by the Soviet Army in 1955 and was sent to flight school. Gagarin received a commission as a lieutenant in the Soviet Air Force in 1957 and was promoted to senior lieutenant two years later.

Lieutenant Gagarin was one of nineteen pilots selected for the space program in 1960. This was further reduced to six cosmonaut candidates. Gagarin and Gherman Titov were the final Two candidates for the first manned space launch, with Gagarin being chosen.

Yuri Gagarin before launch. (RIA Novosti)

Yuri Gagarin was the first human to fly into space when he orbited Earth aboard Vostok I, 12 April 1961. The spacecraft was a spherical Vostok 3KA-3 capsule carried aloft by a Vostok-K rocket. Gagarin made one orbit of the Earth and began reentry over Africa. As the spacecraft was descending through 7,000 meters (20,966 feet), he ejected from the capsule and parachuted to the ground, landing near Engels, Saratov Oblast, at 0805 UTC.

Gagarin statue, London.
Gagarin statue, London.

© 2019, Bryan R. Swopes

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4 thoughts on “27 March 1968

  1. Is there any information available as to *why* the Sukhoi pilot was flying so much lower than planned?

    1. There was an extensive investigation, not only by the Soviet Air Force, but by the KGB. Not everything was declassified, however. The name of the pilot of the Sukhoi remains secret.

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