Every river has its sea...
I love to say this phrase to mean that we do not escape our destiny: if there is a strong passion in us, sooner or later the way to realize it, despite all the obstacles that life might put in front of us, we will find it. For the young Gagarin, the sacred fire was that for flight.
Said Leonardo da Vinci, "Once you have known flight you will walk the earth looking at the sky, for there you have been and there you will desire to return."
So it was for Jurij, who became passionate about flying; although he was small in stature and could not see the runway well when landing, he did not lose heart. Through a ruse he managed to get his seat back up on the aircraft and took his private license in 1955. He then entered the Orenburg aviation academy; in 1957, he graduated with the rank of second lieutenant. During the military academy, he met the woman who accompanied him throughout his life: Valentina Goryaceva. As a military pilot he had great testing skills and was therefore assigned to the experimental departments of the VVS, the strategic military aviation. And it was in these departments that he was discovered by the man who, touring the length and breadth of the Soviet Union, was recruiting the most talented pilots in the air force and navy: General Nikolai Petrovich Kamanin.
In the first group of twenty cosmonaut candidates, he soon rose to prominence along with his friend Gherman Titov and Grigory Neljubov. They were the ones most likely to fly, first, into space aboard the cosmonave Vostok. And fate played another of its cards for Gagarin. The time came to choose the cosmonaut to consign to history; the most serious candidate, both in terms of physical and theoretical preparation, was Gherman Titov. 24 years old, the son of a teacher, he was a highly educated young man who loved Puskin's poems so much that he recited them from memory. Gagarin, slightly older, embodied, on the other hand, the ideal of the proletarian who, thanks to the Socialist model of life, manages to redeem himself and reach for the stars. Against Titov played, ouch him, the more bourgeois family background, so to speak. Moreover, Gagarin was from European Russia, while Titov was born in Altai, Siberian Russia. Detail of little consequence to us, but of great impact to Soviet propaganda.
On that April 12, 1962, before boarding Vostok-1, Gagarin and Titov were prepared for the flight as if they were to leave together. This, perhaps, was to keep the name of the first cosmonaut from being leaked in the West until the flight was successful. Together with Neljubov, who was its second reserve, they set out from the living quarters to the launch pad. The anecdote related to the iconic "SSSR" (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, in Cyrillic CCCP) inscription is singular. The helmet was originally white. Shortly before the launch, an orderly raised a question, "But if our cosmonaut falls on foreign soil, how do you identify him as one of ours?" Another orderly promptly took a paintbrush and red paint and traced the initials of the Soviet Union over the visor of the helmet.
At some point along the way, Gagarin had a need that was far more earthly than heavenly: he had to pee. He got off the bus and, with the SK-1 suit on, carried out his need on the wheel
right rear wheel of the bus. Since then, this bizarre custom has become an obligatory ritual by all those, including women, who are about to depart from the Baikonur Cosmodrome.
Arriving on the ramp, both greeted the personnel on the ground with a speech; they went up the elevator together but only Gagarin eventually entered the Vostok. Titov stayed in the elevator.
That April ignited, to the sky I gave myself, Gagarin, son of Humanity....
The Russians, you know, do not count down, but a simple checklist. Since this was the first time a launch was carried out with a person on board, Korolev wanted to communicate every single step of the list to the cosmonaut who confirmed the commands given from the ground. There is a video, on my YouTube channel "Kosmonautika" that has the original audio with Italian subtitles. At the moment of the launch, instead of confirming the detachment signal, Gagarin Man, son of Humanity, as Claudio Baglioni sings, released the horses of his emotion and shouted "Поехали!" (read "Pajekale"), "Let's go!" He took us by the hand and accompanied us into the future.
And that April really caught fire.
It was 9:07 a.m. Moscow time.
Vostok-1 took off from the launch pad of the Baikonur cosmodrome, which today bears his name. After a few minutes, undergoing an acceleration of about 6G, it reached orbit. He also lost his senses, for a few seconds, due to positive G (the increase in the force of gravity relative to his own weight). Its orbit had an apogee of 302 km and a perigee of 175.
And the blue ripped open, the stars found God's freckles....
Such was Gagarin's astonishment as soon as he saw the earth that he exclaimed, "I see the earth! It is so beautiful! From up here it is wonderful, without borders or boundaries!" The man Jurij, who dreamed of flying as a child, redeemed the cards of his destiny.
Valentina Gagarina wrote a biography of her husband, "108 minutes, a life," never translated into Italian, where in the flight time that was yes 108 minutes but total of launch and re-entry, the earthly parable of her husband and their life together is told. An existence whose river, despite the thousand bends of fate, was destined to flow into its sea. And that sea was as blue as the sky and as black as space.
After 88 minutes in orbit, then, remote-controlled from the ground since the Vostoks had no course controls but only minor attitude controls, the deorbit maneuver was engaged.
Entry into the atmosphere took place not without problems: the service module did not detach at the appointed time, and the friction generated by the capsule's entry into the upper layers of the atmosphere had to be waited for to burn its joints. The Vostok's spherical shape, fortunately, allowed it to naturally assume the optimum attitude for reentry. The main parachute activated smoothly and, the altitude established, about 7000 Meters the cosmonaut's ejection seat was ejected as the capsule descended to the ground.
Gagarin, with his parachute, set down on the ground at 10:55 Moscow time in the Saratov region. He descended into a field where two peasant women, mother and daughter were working. To the two women who looked at him astonished, he said, "Don't be afraid! I am one of you, I am a Soviet!"; then he asked for a telephone to call Moscow. Still wearing his orange jumpsuit and white helmet, he called the number of the control center and told them where he had landed. After landing he was awarded the rank of major, skipping that of captain. His father himself was astonished to hear on the radio that Major Gagarin had gone into space: to those who asked if he was his son, he replied that his was just a lieutenant.
On his return he was greeted by Khrushchev, with the highest honors. Famous was the image of him getting off, from the plane that had brought him back to Moscow, marching to the stage of authorities with an untied shoe.
Between Gagarin and Korolev, there was almost a bond as between father and son. He was called, by his boss, "Young Eagle." Such was Korolev's gratitude to Gagarin that, when the chief designer's identity was still unknown, he nevertheless wanted to appear in the official videos celebrating the feat. He, in fact, is the anonymous gentleman parading under Lenin's mausoleum who turns to Gagarin smiling and shaking hands.
Gagarin was attributed with the phrase, "I see no God up here."
In reality, the phrase was Titov's. Gagarin, a father of two daughters, was a believer and wanted to baptize them before the flight.
I wrote that fate served his hand by having his Valentina meet him in his academy days. He was so attached to his wife that for her sake he resisted the strenuous courtship of Italian actress Gina Lollobrigida, who was hopelessly in love with the Soviet cosmonaut. The national Ginona had to fall back on her friend Titov; the latter, unlike Gagarin, did not beg...
Jurij and his family lived at the "Star Citadel," the cosmonaut training center located on the outskirts of Moscow, still' today a destination for all crews, Russian and international, flying to the international space station.
There is a tender story attached to Jurij and Valentina. It was Gagarin's custom to return, after a day's work, with a small bouquet of daisies picked from the lawns of the cosmonaut citadel to take them to his Valentina. After the cosmonaut's death, a statue was erected, placed in front of their home, in which Jurij is depicted with, behind his back, a bouquet of daisies for his wife. Valentina Gagarina Goryaceva lived there until her death in 2020. Looking out of her window, she could thus see Jurij returning to her with her daisies.
Jurij Gagarin
Jurij Gagarin shortly after his historic flight. Muscles tense with adrenaline, he begins to be aware of the feat he has just accomplished. There is not yet the smile that would distinguish him to the world. He is not yet the Hero. Now he is just Jurij.
You don't take the wings off a young eagle....
After his flight, Gagarin never returned to space. A man who had become as great as a nation could not be sacrificed. He was an ambassador of peace around the world, but he longed to fly. He was assigned, as a backup crew, to Sojuz-1, commanded by his friend Komarov.
He opposed with all his might that flight, which he judged, he was right, to be premature. In fact, the Sojuz was still not quite ready to take a man into space.
Komarov's flight was a tragedy: Gagarin, distraught over the death of his friend, went to Brezhnev whom he believed was the person who had forced the hand for the launch by having to confirm, after American successes with Gemini, Soviet supremacy.
Once in the presence of the general secretary of the Communist Party, Gagarin threw a glass of cognac in his face and said, "This is for Komarov."
Jurij Alexeievich Gagarin died on March 27, 1968, in an accident still under circumstances that are not entirely clear, probably from going into a spin after encountering wake turbulence caused by an unauthorized aircraft. His Mig 15 UTI, of which he was co-pilot with Colonel Seriegin, crashed near Kirzac.
It was not the pilots' fault. But of the air traffic controllers who authorized other aircraft to fly over the area. Chkalovskji's regiment, to which Gagarin and Seriegin belonged, was an experimental, semi-official unit. Probably disorganized. To avoid revealing human error, the excuse of a sounding balloon was given but, surely, it was, as cosmonaut Anton Skaplerov's recent simulations have shown, wake turbulence. That killed two heroes. One, as big as a nation, who wanted to fly back into space where he had already been, first of all. The other, Hero, for not wanting to order the abandonment of the aircraft.
Yes, because Seriegin and Gagarin, in the last seconds of their lives, decided not to eject. They would have had time and probably saved themselves. But in doing so, their MiG-15 No. 625 would have crashed into the Novoselovo settlement, causing serious damage and possibly many casualties. In their final moments they attempted to refit their aircraft by moving it just far enough away from the built-up area and meeting their fate.
A popular legend has it that Jurij Alexeievich Gagarin, tired of honors and glory, faked his death and retired, under a false name to an abandoned village in the Orenburg region. Living on hunting and fishing, he would be a happy old man today. No one wants Heroes to die, and this folk legend gives a fitting end to a figure who has entered the myth of each of us, regardless of age or flag. But his having given up saving himself to protect the inhabitants of Novoselovo surely makes him, along with Colonel Seriegin, the greatest of all.
"Under a black stamp now I smile to you, but my smile is gone..."
When Gagarin died, among the wreckage of the mig 15 UTI, his wallet was found. Along with the photo of his daughter and wife, there was a photo of Korolev....
His state funeral was attended by the whole nation and he was buried in the mausoleum of the Kremlin walls.
Gagarin was a person of upright living and was, like Armstrong, a flagless symbol of all Humanity. His, in fact, was not only a Soviet victory, but a victory for all of us.
"First I flew, and even now, I, fly..."
Gagarin's river found its sea. The young eagle flew giving the earth, which first of all he had seen in the magnificence of the cosmos beautiful and fragile, his final embrace. The words of the message he wanted to record before his historic flight best represent the universality of Hero Gagarin:
"I say to you, dear friends, goodbye, as people always say when embarking on a long journey. How I would like to embrace you all, people known and unknown, far and near. Goodbye!"
And we, children of Humanity, every April 12, take the hand he extended to us and let him guide us into the future.
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