WAR VIRGINS

 

I suggest  if you want a touch the reality of the American Civil War, you pick up a nine pound, 56 inch long, walnut stock .58 caliber model 1855 Springfield muzzle loading rifled musket, and consider what this weapon tells you about the world which built it. 

They made 47,000 such weapons in Massachusetts, and another 12,000 at Harper's Ferry, Virginia, before the war started.  Over the five years after Fort Sumter in 1861, they built about a million more in various versions. 

But to the volunteers who were handed one of those older, no longer state-of-the-art weapons (costing $20 each at the time, about $500 in today's money), they were revolutionary. This was likely the first mass produced piece of high tech these people came into intimate contact with. And once they did, they were no longer virgins.

Following the manual written by Brigadier General Silas Casey, (above) - West Point class of 1828), you began with your Springfield musket standing on its base. 

You removed a paper cartridge from the box on your hip. You bite or tear off the end of a paper cartridge (above), exposing 65 coarse grains of black powder, which you pour down the barrel. With your thumb you press the remains of the cartridge (with the bullet called a “minie ball” inside), into the top of the barrel. 

Using the rod stored beneath your musket's barrel, you ram the ball, cartridge and the powder down the barrel until it is firmly at the bottom. 

Replacing the ramrod, you lift the weapon to chest high. You half-cock the hammer, take a percussion cap from your cartridge box (on your other hip) and place it atop the nipple covering the opening in the breach. Then you lift the weapon to your shoulder, pull the hammer back to full cock, aim toward the enemy and upon command or choice, you pull the trigger, releasing the hammer.

The hammer falls, setting off the black powder in the percussion cap. The resulting explosion forces hot gases through the breach, which sets off the black powder in the barrel. This flash of heat causes the the soft lead on the bottom of the' minie' ball to expand, trapping the gases behind it. Those gases then drive the bullet out of the barrel at about a thousand feet per second. With luck you might hit a target 100 yards away. 

With training, a man could get off two, and maybe three, rounds every minute. But most of the soldiers, particularly in the early stage in the war, spent very little time learning to fire their weapons. Burning black powder produced enormous dense clouds of smoke, and after a few minutes you couldn't see what you are aiming at. Firing ranges were thus considered largely a waste of time for the average soldier. So the men spent most of their time learning to march.

Battlefield tactics were over half a century old by 1861, developed by Napoleon Bonaparte in the 1790's, when muskets were still smooth bore, and so inaccurate that to effectively injure an opponent they had to be used in mass, hundreds or thousands of muskets firing in the same direction at the same moment. 

Everything that occurred on the battlefield was done to create that moment, when the maximum number of men would discharge their weapons at the target, together.  The concept is still used today, and it is called "lead on target". 

General Silas Casey (above), in his 2 volumes of Infantry Tactics published in  1862,  listed 84 separate and distinct steps required to move a company of 84 men from a marching column four men wide, to their firing formation, in a rank with thirty-two inches between each man, three ranks deep. And that was on the flat and open parade ground. 

The men and the officers had to to learn to do this, across unfamiliar and broken terrain, without thinking, while people were trying to kill them. The endless drilling required to achieve proficiency at marching was boring, physically exhausting, and boring. And there was no way to prepare the men for the terror of replicating it while being shot at, under the noise and horrors of combat, because each human experiences combat differently and each combat experience is different than any other. 

What was it like? Well, in 1863, after two years of hard won experience with the demands, drudgery and the horrors of combat, the two sides met for three days at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. After that battle 35,000 abandoned but usable muskets were collected on the battlefield, of which 11,000 were unloaded and 24,000 were loaded, in one form or another. 

Of the loaded muskets, 6,000 had one charge, 12,000 had two charges, and the remaining 6,000 held anything from three to ten charges - One musket had twenty-two charges stuffed down its barrel;  powder, cartridge and bullet, one atop the other. 

The noise of all those muskets firing next to unprotected ears, producing all that smoke, meant that a soldier could no longer hear his own rifle going off. And if you missed the first loaded round not being fired, likely you never got a second chance. Firing a musket with anything more than one charge in the barrel often resulted in the weapon exploding. And that raises the question of how many battlefield casualties were unconsciously self inflicted friendly fire.

Officers had a few things to learn too, even the 5'2” tall Ulysses Grant (above) who had graduated West Point in 1843. Although he had been forced to resign in 1854, his training made him a much sought after commodity, and during the opening months of the war, in June of 1861,  the governor of Illinois made him a colonel and he was given command of the 21^st Illinois volunteer regiment. 

These 1,000 men were described by their new commander as “men...who could be led astray.” And they had been. Grant said he “found it very hard work for a few days to bring all the men into anything like subordination; but the great majority favored discipline, and by the application of a little regular army punishment all were reduced to as good discipline as one could ask.”

On 3 July, 1861, the 21^st Illinois was ordered to Quincy, Illinois, but en route the destination was changed.

The 19^th Illinois regiment had been building a bridge over the Salt River west of Palmyra, Missouri - about 25 miles north west of Hannibal, on the Mississippi River. Troops of the Missouri State Guard, sympathetic to the south, had cut off the union troops. Grant was now ordered to rescue the fellow prairie state unit.

However, by the time his men had reached the Mississippi river, the threatened unit had retreated back to Hannibal, with not a shot being fired by either force. Grant wrote later, “I am inclined to think both sides got frightened and ran away.” Still, Grant got his men across the big river, and marched to the scene. The 21^st Illinois spent two weeks finishing the bridge, and was then ordered to advance on a new Missouri State Guard regiment gathering to the south, at the forks of the Salt River.

The Missouri troops were commanded by a politician, Colonel (later Brigadier General) Thomas Alexander Hariss. His position was in a valley, and was overlooked by the small community of Florida, Missouri,  with about 100 residents. 

And as Grant approached the town he started to get nervous. “In the twenty-five miles we had to march we did not see a person, old or young, male or female, except two horsemen who were on a road that crossed ours. As soon as they saw us they decamped as fast as their horses could carry them.” Grant now had to assume the rebels were alerted of his approach, and would be waiting for his men. The young commander camped his men that night beside the road, so they would be fully rested for the battle he knew was coming in the morning.

In the morning, Grant lead his little force up the hill. “As we approached the brow of the hill...my heart kept getting higher and higher until it felt to me as though it was in my throat. I would have given anything then to have been back in Illinois, but I had not the moral courage to halt and consider what to do; I kept right on. When we reached a point from which the valley below was in full view I halted. The place where Harris had been encamped a few days before was still there...but the troops were gone. My heart resumed its place.”

In fact, Harris and his still unprepared recruits had retreated on hearing that Grant was gathering horses and wagons just to prepare for his march. With such a head start, his Missouri State Guards were now sixty miles away, heading to join larger rebel forces.  

Learning this, Grant noted it taught him something.  “It occurred to me at once that Harris had been as much afraid of me as I had been of him. This was a view of the question I had never taken before; but it was one I never forgot afterwards. From that event to the close of the war...I never forgot that he had as much reason to fear my forces as I had his”. On the march back to the bridge at Palmyra, Grant noted, “The citizens living on the line of our march....were at their front doors ready to greet us now.”

And that taught him even something more useful, something still true today - winners are always popular. Grant was no longer a virgin.  And because of that, neither were his soldiers.

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THE MYSTERIOUS DEATH OF YURI

 

I know when Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin (above), died, on 27 March, 1968, he was one of the most recognizable human beings in the world. He was the first human to rise above the atmosphere of his home planet and orbit the earth.   But his death remains shrouded in mystery.

It seems not even his widow Valentina,  nor his daughters Yelena and Galina (above) , will ever know what really happened to him. They know what they believe. But they can never be certain if what they know is the truth.  Yuri was a hero of the Soviet Union, a place and a time where truth and lies were so intermingled as to make reality tissue paper thin.

In 1961 the average yearly income in America was $5,315.00 and gallon of gas cost 27 cents. The city of Seattle completed the tallest structure west of the Mississippi river, the Space Needle (above). The 200th McDonald’s restaurant had opened in Southern California. The hydroelectric plants at Niagara Falls produced electricity for the first time. An X-15 rocket plane reached the edge of space at 31 miles high, and President John Kennedy asked Congress for $531 million to “…put a man on the moon in this decade.” And on 12 April, 1961, the Soviet Union launched the first man into space.

His call radio sign was “Cedar”.  The 5’ 2” cosmonaut was a typical fighter jockey, self confident and cocky, described as “virtually unflappable” by his instructors.  His Vostok 1 spacecraft was launched from the desert steppes of Tjuratam, Kazakhstan, just after 9AM (Moscow time).  His words on liftoff were "Off we go!" On his way to a single orbit he whistled a tune; “The Motherland hears, the Motherland knows, Where her son flies in the sky.” 

Unlike the American astronauts who landed at sea, Yuri had to eject from his Vostok 1 spacecraft (above) at 23,000 feet. And instead of being rescued by the crew of an aircraft carrier....

  ...on landing Yuri was greeted by an old woman, her granddaughter and her cow - hinting that he landed far short of his target. 

But once the Soviet leadership was certain he had survived, he became a prop in the propaganda wars. 

The Soviet leadership (above) showered him with medals and awards. Yuri (above, center) was made a deputy to the Supreme Soviet, the rubber stamp legislature. But all the glittering medals soon grew dull and he was allowed to return to Star City, the home of all Cosmonauts, in the Moscow suburbs.

He worked on spacecraft design, and was eventually promoted to the rank of a full Colonel. He became deputy training director for the cosmonaut corps. 

And like Alan Shepherd, America’s fist man in space, Yuri longed to fly again, this time to the moon. His political bosses dared not allow him to take the risk, but he kept pushing. And in 1968 he began the process to re-qualify as a fighter pilot, perhaps as his first step back to orbital flight status.

On 10 January, 1968 the U.S. lost its 10,000th military airplane over Vietnam. The average income in the U.S. was up to $7,850 a year, and gasoline was up to 34 cents a gallon. On 23 January, North Korean naval boats captured the Intelligence gathering ship, the USS Pueblo, and its 83 man crew. On 31 January, 70,000 North Vietnamese troops launched the Tet offensives by briefly capturing the U.S. embassy in Saigon, South Vietnam, and during just the second week of February the United States suffered 543 dead and 2,547 wounded in Vietnam; for that week alone. 

And on 27 March,  at 10:17 AM Moscow time, Yuri Gagarin climbed into the front cockpit of a MIG-15UTI trainer (above). 

His good friend, Colonel Vladimir Seryogin (above), was in the back seat, acting as his instructor. On takeoff Serogiin pushed the throttles to 9,000 rpm’s and headed toward the village of Kirzhach, 30 miles  northwest of Moscow.

The weather was horrible, and a heavily overcast quickly enveloped the Korean War era fighter/trainer. The Mig 15 was small by modern standards, just 33 feet long, with a 35 ft. swept back wing span.  It was capable of well over 600 mph and had a ceiling of over 50,000 feet.  

Nicknamed the “Babouskha” (grandmother) the MIG 15 also had a tenancy to stall and go into a tight spin at anything under 160 mph. In fact, according to one pilot who recently flew a similar two seat Mig 15UTI trainer, “The Mig didn’t seem to care for doing anything under 250 knots.”

Minutes after take off , Seryogin requested permission to alter course. This change was granted. 

Fellow Cosmonaut Alexei Leonov (above) was flying a helicopter in the area and he heard two loud booms. 

The second was probably Gagarin’s Mig (above) slamming into the ground.

Two hundred officers and technicians conducted an investigation.  They found the ground radar system which was supposed to provide altitude information to all pilots was out of order for the day. And Soviet fighter aircraft of that era had no cockpit radar.  

Still they filed a full report. But because of the Soviet obsession with secrecy the report was never released to the public. And so rumors filled the void. 

Rumor said one or both of the pilots must have been drunk. The plane must have been sabotaged by a jealous superior. The parachute cords were cut and the ejection seats were disconnected. The MIG -15 hit a weather balloon, or a bird, or someone had forgotten to close a vital air vent.

There are a hundred theories, and even an open investigation would never have refuted them all. So we will never be able to say with absolute certainty why Yuri Gagarin died. But there does seem to be a most likely sequence of events.

Information since uncovered indicates a Sukhoi 11 interceptor (above) was also flying in the overcast above Kirzhach. This Russian fighter (1962 to 1968) had been designed for high speed at high altitude, to intercept American bombers like the B-52 and the faster B-58, invading Soviet air space.  Like the American F-101 Starfighters, the Soviets had replaced their machine guns for missiles, and sacrificed maneuverability for supersonic speed. 

The SU-11 had been intended as an all weather interceptor, and was capable of almost twice the speed of sound. But the Soviet design bureau considered it a failure, and by 1968 it was no longer in production. Still, pilots had to maintain their skills by regular training flights in all weathers, like a heavy overcast. 

The most likely assumption is that the Sukhoi pilot was disoriented by the dense overcast and lacking  ground radar guidance thought he was flying at 10,000 meters when, in truth, he was at just 450 meters above the ground when he hit the big fighter's after burners and went supersonic. That accounted for the first boom which helicopter pilot Leonov heard. 

So the big SU-11 might have roared past within 2 to 300 feet of the Gagarin and Seryogin's little jet - perhaps even closer - and sucked the air out from under it's wings. That would have  dropped it into a flat spin. In the overcast, whoever was piloting the Mig would have unable to orient himself before impact in the trees.  The Mig-15 slammed into the ground at 750 miles an hour. The jet's clock stopped at 10:31am, Moscow time. Yuri Gagarin was only 34 years old.

So the death of Yuri Gagarin was most likely a combination of unlikely events; a bad day for a radar system to be down, a bad day to fly, a nasty combination of flight characteristics and some very bad luck. Combat pilots like Yuri would call such combinations of unlikely events the normal risks of flying so high and so fast. Which is what he loved to do.

Gagarin's widow, Valentina, died on 17 March, 2020 at the age of 84. His eldest daughter Elena Yurienva Gargina was 10 when her father died. She is currently (2021) director of the Kremlin State Museum in Moscow. And Galina Yurievna Gargarina, born in 1961, is a professor of economics and department chair at the Plekhanov Russian Institute of Economics in Moscow. He would have been as proud of them as they are of him. 

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