Starman_ The Truth Behind the Legend of Yuri Gagarin - Jamie Doran [101]
We have to expend a lot of nervous energy to resolve very straightforward matters. For example, we need three aircraft. It’s quite obvious what they’re for – but no, in order to get decisions we have to go round in circles to the Finance Ministry, the Aviation Ministry, to one appointment after another. And time goes by . . . We have to become hustlers . . . Is this how it should be? The most complex space flight is simpler than all this terrestrial red tape.1
All aircraft pilots need to fly a minimum number of hours per year in order to maintain their qualifications. Cosmonauts at Star City who wanted to top up their conventional flying hours had to share a couple of MiG-15UTI tandem-seat trainers, which were among the most antiquated aircraft in the Soviet armoury. The first single-seat MiG fighters (with engines based on designs acquired from the Rolls-Royce company) had entered service as far back as 1947. Throughout the 1950s they were refined into one of the world’s most potent combat weapons, but by the end of the next decade these old machines were no longer at their best. Communist allies abroad still purchased them in large numbers, but the domestic Air Force was switching to far more advanced fighters. Denied further flights into space after Komarov’s death, Gagarin wanted to qualify in one of these newer jets, but first he had a great deal of catching up to do.
Although he was the most famous pilot in the world, he was not a particularly experienced one. Telltale clues can be discovered even to this day in the museum at Star City, where a number of Gagarin’s personal effects are preserved. His pilot’s log book is a much-venerated object, yet it makes disturbing reading. When he was recruited into the first cosmonaut squad at the end of 1959, his total flight time amounted to 252 hours and twenty-one minutes. Of this, only seventy-five hours had been spent as a solo MiG-15 pilot, first at Orenburg, then on station at Nikel in the Murmansk region.
For a young Air Force lieutenant starting out on his career, this was not an especially poor total, although most of the other cosmonauts in his group had logged 1,500 hours or so. If he had stayed on active duty with the Air Force, Gagarin could have built up his flying time to become a superbly skilled fighter pilot. After he was recruited for training at Star City, however, he lost this opportunity altogether. Throughout the entire period of his cosmonaut career, from 1960 to 1968, he accumulated only seventy-eight hours additional time in the air – none of them solo. This amounted to less than ten hours per year.
On February 18, 1968, Gagarin at last received his diploma papers from the Zhukovsky Academy, greatly improving his future career prospects (on the ground at least) with a significant and hard-earned qualification. Meanwhile the position of his immediate superior at Star City, Nikolai Kamanin, was under threat because of the Soyuz accident that had killed Komarov. Although not directly responsible for the many hardware problems that contributed to the crash, Kamanin was one of the officers in authority who had sanctioned the flight in the first place, and there was a chance that his head might roll for it. There was a real possibility that Gagarin might be promoted to the rank of General, and appointed Head of Cosmonaut Training in Kamanin’s place. The main worry on his mind was how to maintain the respect of the cosmonauts, a good many of whom had far more piloting experience than he did – as Beregovoi had so charmlessly pointed out.
According to an Izvestia journalist, Boris Konovalov:
It all worked out rather oddly. Everybody assumed that cosmonauts were pilots