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Were those few seconds of visibility beneath the cloud layer sufficient for Serugin to see that he was running out of altitude? If so, then why didn’t he order an emergency ejection before the plane actually hit the ground? According to Leonov, the minimum safe height for ejection from a MiG was as low as 200 metres, but the belly-first pattern of the crash suggested that Serugin may have thought he was on the verge of pulling up safely, which could be why he did not order an ejection; and, as everyone knew full well, if he had considered bailing out, the escape procedure itself might have caused some difficulty. Two decades after the crash investigation, Igor Kacharovsky, an expert aircraft engineer, wrote to Sergei Belotserkovsky with his observations:

As a rule the MiG-15UTI is flown by a cadet and a flying instructor. The instructor sits in the rear seat. The front seat is in the same position as for a single-seat combat MiG-15. The order of ejection is as follows: the first to eject is the instructor from the rear seat. The second is the pilot from the forward seat.

If the forward pilot ejects first, the gas jets from his ejection mechanism will interfere with the rear compartment, thus making ejection from it impossible. Instead of finding a better technical solution, the designers made a ‘methodological’ decision without thinking about the consequences. The instructor had to be first to eject, which is contrary to common ethical standards.8

Kacharovsky’s point was that no instructor worth his salt wanted to leave a less experienced pilot to fend for himself in a stricken plane. The instructor would be honour-bound to get his pupil out of the plane first, before tending to his own survival. The arrangement aboard the MiG-15UTI flouted this honourable tradition. Though he can offer no proof that an ejection was ever attempted, or even considered, Kacharovsky suggested the following terrible scenario:

It is easy to imagine the situation. Serugin, as crew leader, ordered Gagarin to eject, but Gagarin understands that saving his own life exposes the life of his teacher and friend to danger. Each man thinks of the other.

Kacharovsky imagined the two men arguing the position, wasting valuable seconds until it was too late and they hit the ground. In fact, this scenario is more emotional than strictly logical. The MiG-15UTI designers had little choice in the ejection sequence. All two-seater jets around the world employ the same sequence, for a very simple reason. If the pilot in front ejects first, then the plane moves fractionally forward beneath him as he flies upwards. In the brief fractions of a second while he is still close to the top of the plane, the rear cockpit position passes directly under his ejection seat, so the rear pilot’s escape route is blocked for valuable fractions of a second. What’s more, the rocket blast from the first seat burns through the rear canopy, putting the other pilot’s life in grave danger. However, if the rear pilot ejects first, the man in front can then fire his own seat safely, because his rocket exhausts will trail over an empty rear cockpit position.9

There is no moral shame attached to this. The safety margin between the separate ejections is less than half a second. The supervising officer in the back seat issues the order to eject and immediately exits the aircraft. The cadet in the front seat responds so quickly afterwards that the difference in timing is barely significant.

Much more significant was the fact that the cockpit canopy frame was found among the wreckage. In a modern jet fighter a pilot in danger pulls a simple lever on his seat, and the elaborate ejection mechanisms take care of everything else, including the removal of the canopy. If worst comes to worst and the canopy does not come away properly, then a web of explosive wires built into the plexiglass shatters it, so that the seat can simply punch its way out. On the old MiG, however, a separate mechanical lever on the pilot