Free Republic

Former Cosmonaut Offers First-Hand Account Of The Death Of Yury Gagarin Russian pilot and cosmonaut Vladimir Aksyonov has offered the most plausible account to date of the crash of the fighter jet that killed Yury Gagarin, the first man in space, and Vladimir Seryogin, a regimental commander at the cosmonaut training center where Gagarin was enrolled. Aksyonov, a two-time Hero of the Soviet Union, was with Gagarin at a pre-flight medical exam on March 27, 1968, the day of the crash. He flew in a different plane on that fateful day. Aksyonov presents his unofficial version of events in his...