Starman_ The Truth Behind the Legend of Yuri Gagarin - Jamie Doran [100]
There was Yuri, transformed before his death at thirty-four from a personable, cocky jet pilot into a demi-god to be worshipped, emulated and protected from all risk and adventure, until his own attempts to break out from the protective walls around him went just a little too far.
Gagarin diverted himself with more partying, prompting a disappointed Kamanin to note, ‘Since Komarov’s death, Gagarin has been dismissed from all space flights. He has undergone a new, more stormy process of personality disintegration.’
At the beginning of March 1968, the last month of Gagarin’s life, a comfortable accommodation centre for cosmonauts was at last completed in Star City. Alexei Leonov remembers some hard partying, perhaps triggered by the cosmonauts’ desire to block out the emotional horror of Komarov’s terrible death. ‘We probably met at Gagarin’s apartment more often than anybody else’s place. The traditions of hospitality were already established, from where we lived before, at Chkalovsky. There was this law – if you arrived late for a party you had to strip down to the waist and get into a bath of cold water and submerge your head. Even famous people had to go through this. The law was the law! Actually this was a tradition started by Yuri, and the point was that after a cold bath you were revived with a big jolt of vodka so as not to catch a cold. The trouble was, everybody started to turn up late to get their vodka.’
One distinguished guest was the architect Komarovsky, responsible for the tall tower at Moscow State University, where the first cosmonauts had been dropped down the lift-shaft back in 1960. He was welcomed with an ancient peasant gesture of hospitality, still observed by modern Russians, even those aboard the Mir space station: gifts of vital foodstuffs to protect the traveller against hunger. ‘We took Komarovsky up to the top floor, where there was some bread and salt and vodka,’ says Leonov. ‘Then from the eleventh floor down to the tenth, where there was more bread and salt and so on, all the way down through every floor. Komarovsky, and some other famous people, they said at the end of all this, “Well, we’ve seen many extraordinary things in our lives, but never so much bread and salt!” Anyway, that’s how we thanked the people who built our apartments.’
Certainly for Gagarin, these parties distracted him from his anxieties. Zoya recollects that when he was back home in Gzhatsk, his innermost fears occasionally surfaced:
‘Yes, it’s true, it was on December 5. He always came home at that time of year to see us, and to go hunting. Just as he was getting ready to leave, Mamma had some sort of anxiety, and I remember Yura saying, “Everybody in the world asks me for something. I’m always helping complete strangers, but you never ask anything of me. You never tell me what you need.” Valya and the girls [Lena and Galya] were already waiting in the car, but I had the feeling Yura didn’t want to leave us. I think he was worried about something.’
12
WRECKAGE
American astronauts in the 1960s took great pride in their flying skills, and their employers at NASA gave them every opportunity to hone their skills in the air. They were assigned discretionary access to Northrop T-38 training jets, which they used as personal transports between the major NASA facilities in Texas, Florida and Alabama. These fast, lightweight planes were the space-age equivalent of company cars.
By contrast, pilots recruited into the Soviet space programme from various Air Force squadrons found to their dismay that their flying time was greatly reduced, and they were forbidden to make any solo flights, no matter how great their previous experience in the air might have been. Although the airbase at Chkalovsky near Star City provided an obvious venue for flights,