THE MYSTERIOUS DEATH OF YURI

 

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

It seems not even his widow Valentina, and 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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NOT A PERFECT UNION

 

I was surprised to find how many of America's 18 million citizens were individually and collectively on a journey on Thursday, 10 September, 1846.  In the dry Nevada scrub lands,  members of the Donner Party, the last California emigrant wagon train of the season, awoke to see the error of their ways in the snow capped Ruby Mountains (above), the last range before the towering Sierra Nevada.. 

On that same day, out on the Great Plains, exhausted Mormons escaping religious persecution awoke to a violent downpour, and the commandment to rise from their sickbeds and retrace their steps. Sixty miles south of the Rio Grande River, an American invasion force was preparing to fall on the ill prepared Mexican city of Monterrey. While, at the center of this web of worry and hope, susceptible to each distant tug and pull, a 38 year old alcoholic was being chased by the shadows thrown up by a flickering whale oil lamp in a Washington, D.C. hotel room.

On Pennsylvania Avenue, at the foot of Capital Hill,   and a few steps from the fetid Washington Canal, stood the three story wood frame St. Charles Hotel (above) - soon to be renamed the Capital Hotel. The establishment catered to southerners, boasting a basement room where slaves could be restrained so securely the management offered to reimburse masters should their property escape. One of the most popular resident guests was the congressman from Alabama's 7^th district, Felix G. McConnell. He was known for his biting humor, his spendthrift ways and his voluminous drinking. And this night he had reached the end of a hundred dollar drunk.

Tales of 38 year old McConnell's impromptu inebriated parties were legendary. During his first term, after inviting the occupants of the bar at the upscale Brown's Hotel to “Come up and licker'”, he was confronted by the scrupulously proper John W. Dade, superintendent of the District's jails. Dade himself had also obviously been drinking for hours, and pompously inquired, “With whom have I the honor of drinking?” McConnell gave his stump speech reply. “"My name is Felix Grundy McConnell, Egad! I am a member of Congress from Alabama. My mother is a justice of the peace, my aunt keeps a livery stable, and my grandmother commanded a company in the Revolution and fit the British, gol darn their souls!” “Old Jack” Dade formally replied “Sir, I am a man of high aspirations and peregrinations and can have nothing to do with such low-down scopangers as yourself. Good morning, sir!” That having been said Dade stayed to drink with McConnell, and the two became fast friends.

But perhaps McConnell's most famous moment of public excess had come at a performance of “The Nordic Paganini”, Old Bull - Ole Bornemann Bull, the Norwegian solo violinists (above) who was on his first American tour. The New York Herald reported, “At the close of some of his wonderful cadences, the very musicians in the orchestra flung down their instruments and stamped and applauded like madmen.” The same critic went on to suggest the “Prince of Violinists” drew up to 4,000 people to his concerts because his “...pyrotechnic style and dramatic manner...captivated the musically uninitiated...”

Ole's bigger than life personality went over well in America.  And he “could talk politics with even more earnestness and force than he could talk music.” All in all he seemed another natural friend for Congressman McConnell, except Ole was a tea totaler.

Ole played four concerts over the holidays in 1843, and in the midst of the Christmas Eve performance in Washington, D.C., a drunken Congressman McConnell suddenly rose and shouted, “None of your high-falutin, but give us ‘Hail Columbia’ and bear hard on the treble’! “ As a music critic noted, people shouted, “"Throw him out!” So they did. But the policemen had their hands full, for McConnell was a husky chap, and full of spirituous encouragement...”, and the officers had to resort to their night sticks. But given that most of the audience was not there for the music but for the show, it was not a significant interruption. Briefly McConnell was charged with “rioting and disturbance”, before his high office and high powered friends saw the charges dismissed.

In his two terms in Congress, McConnell sponsored just two pieces of legislation. In his first term he introduce a bill to annex Ireland. The bill was just a jibe at northern Democrats who insensitively opposed the annexation of Texas, but who were sensitive to the fastest growing immigrant population in America - the Irish.  Having made his joke, Felix McConnell allowed the Ireland annexation bill to quietly die. But at the beginning of his second term, he touched on something much closer to his heart.

On 9 March, 1846, just five days into the 29^th Congress, McConnell introduced “A Bill to grant to the Head of a Family, Man, Maid or Widow, a Homestead not exceeding 160 acres of Land”. It was the first “Homestead Bill” introduced in the United States Capital (above). It's purpose was to democratize the frontier.

Since before the revolution money men had been bought up every tract of public land offered for sale, looking to profit by reselling it to other investors, as if it were stock in a company.  Land speculation fever was so powerful, most investors eagerly went into debt to obtain as much land as possible, intending to sell it again before their note became due. Like Russian roulette, this game could end in only one way.

The speculator would  do a hasty survey,  subdivide the land and then sell the sub-divisions to poorer speculators, who would subdivide the subdivision, and so on and so on until the most desperate and most financially strapped investors,  would borrow enough to by 40 acres and then plant crops.

By the time an actual farmer obtained a small tract,  the price was so inflated as to leave him deeply in debt. And the first bad year, the first crop failure, the farmers would be unable to meet their interest payments on the loans. The farmers would then "pull up stakes”, abandon the farm and the loan and move further west to repeat the process. Thus the land would revert to the last owner, who would then resell to the next sucker. It was a very profitable business model, and reminds me of the current student loan system. But like the current for-profit college scams, it did not broaden the tax base, nor fund community improvements, like schools, roads or canals. It only made the wealthy, richer still.

McConnell was far from alone even among southern Democrats seeking to break up this monopoly on land and money. Sam Huston from Texas wanted a homestead act. Andrew Johnson from Tennessee introduced his own version the same day as McConnell. But these southern progressives were being replaced by well funded, increasingly rabid pro-slavery politicians, who saw individual homesteaders as a block to the next generation of big slave plantations, and big money land speculators.  Wrote one historian, “In spite of the undoubted earnestness of (McConnell), the bill seems to have been regarded as a jest...(and did not) elicit a respectful hearing from his fellow congressmen.” Andrew Johnson's almost duplicate bill was given a respectful hearing - before it was killed in committee.

It was the disrespect that seems to have broken Congressman McConnell's heart. Despite his reputation as a “dare-devil and a spendthrift”, McConnell was devoted to his job, missing just 8% of his floor votes in 1846, well below the average. Perhaps if he had not left his wife Elizabeth and their three children back in Alabama, he would not have turned to drink in Washington. Perhaps if he had chosen to stay in a less expensive boarding house, where he could share meals and companionship with his colleges, as opposed to a $65 a month room at the St. Charles - perhaps things would have turned out differently for him. Except his father Perry had died at 52, also addicted to “ardent spirits”. And now it seemed, every one had judged the young lawyer from Talladega as a joke and a drunk.

On the evening of 13 May 1846, the House of Representatives voted to go to war with Mexico – 174 to 14. The war had been sparked by the annexation of Texas by the United States, and was intended to help build a southern slave empire from Virginia, the Carolinas and Georgia through Texas to California. Congressman McConnell voted with the majority for the war, but he knew, as did many other practical southerners, that the Mexican War led the south further under the control of firebrands and hot heads, determined to extend slavery at all costs.

On Tuesday, 8 September, 1846,  McConnell went to visit the man who had given him his first job, as a Tennessee postmaster. President James K. Polk was surprised to see him, thinking McConnell had gone home to Alabama during the recess. In his meticulous diary Polk noted, “he looked ...as though he had just recovered from a fit of intoxication. He was sober, but was pale, his countenance haggard and his system nervous. He applied to me to borrow one hundred dollars (to clear up his debts) and said he would return it to me in ten days....I had known him in his youth and had not the moral courage to refuse. I gave him the one hundred dollars in gold and took his note. His hand was so tremulous that he could scarcely write his name to the note legibly. I think it probable that he will never pay me.”

Leaving the White House, McConnell settled his bill with the hackman (taxi driver), and disappeared. Where he was Tuesday night and all of Wednesday, no one could say. But early in the afternoon of Thursday, 10 September, 1846, McConnell appeared in the bar of the St. Charles, inviting the few patrons to “Come up and licker”. He kept clicking gold coins between his fingers, and telling everyone he had been given them by President Polk. He even loaned the barkeep $35, although the man may have simply been trying to take the money out of McConnell's pocket before he drank himself to death. As evening approached the Congressman asked for a pen and paper, and struggled to compose a note. But after some time he gave up, rose and said he was going to his room.

Once behind his the locked door, McConnell lay upon the bed, and taking a “hawkbill knife” (above), stabbed himself several times in the abdomen. And when that proved ineffective, he slashed his own throat, twice. A short time later, someone was concerned enough to check in on the Congressman. Receiving  no reply to a knock, a pass key opened the room, and Felix Grundy McConnell was discovered atop a blood soaked mattress.

A Washington newspaper said, “No doubt can be entertained that Mr. McConnell committed the act in a state of mental hallucination – most probably under the influence of delirium tremens, brought on by the intemperate course of his life.” According to the Baltimore Sun, “His friends say that for about a week past he had relinquished drinking, owing to indisposition, and that the absence of his usual stimulus caused great despondency...he had his watch and valuable jewelry on his person, besides a sum of money.” President Polk added to his diary, “A jury of inquest was held and found a verdict that he had destroyed himself. It was a melancholy instance of the effects of intemperance...he was a true Democrat and a trusted friend".

Having been thus safely categorized and dismissed as an alcoholic and a jokester, Felix Grundy McConnell was buried in the Congressional Cemetery. Other than an occasional mention of his bill to annex Ireland, he was almost immediately forgotten. It was easier that way, to forget that he and other southerners, had once attempted to change the economics of the nation in a way that might have made the civil war unnecessary, that might have saved both of his sons, one born after his death, from having to fight in a war which cost the state of Alabama almost 40% of its population, men, women and children, black and white, wise, foolish, saint, sinner, alcoholic and tea-totaler.

God bless Felix Grundy McConnell, for his journey. He did his best to guide the people of Alabama and the nation to a “more perfect union”.  He tried to lead them down a path to avoid war.  And if others did not notice his effort, that was their loss. And if he stumbled on the path, that was to be expected. In this journey we all take, failure is inevitable. That is what makes success so sweet. That is why the journey must be made every day, to a “more perfect union”. Not perfect, just more perfect. And that was Felix Grundy McConnell – not perfect. Like the rest of us.

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