When did Gagarin die?

The first man to fly in space died at the controls of a plane, not a spacecraft. On 27 March 1968, a training jet crashed northeast of Moscow with Yuri Gagarin and his instructor on board. The Soviet Union suddenly lost its most popular symbol, seven years after the Vostok 1 flight.

That morning, Gagarin took off from Chkalovsky airfield in a MiG-15UTI, a two-seat training aircraft, with instructor Vladimir Seryogin. The weather was poor, with a low cloud ceiling. After a few minutes of exercises, the crew announced their return to base; radio contact was lost shortly afterward. The aircraft crashed into a forest near the village of Novosyolovo. Both men were killed instantly.

The Soviet investigation concluded that an abrupt maneuver had caused a loss of control, without clearly identifying the triggering event. Archives, opened in fragments over the decades, and testimonies from former cosmonauts have fed several hypotheses: turbulence left by another aircraft, an obstacle avoided at the last moment, erroneous weather data transmitted to the crew. None has won unanimous support, which has fueled years of rumors and theories.

After 1961, the authorities had excluded Gagarin from spaceflights, considering him too valuable to be exposed to risk. He held official and representational duties while requesting to resume pilot training, which he had just obtained. He was buried in the Kremlin Wall Necropolis, and his hometown of Gzhatsk was renamed in his honor.