Was Juri Gagarin the first man in Space?

1960 Gagarin was selected as a potential astronaut. On 3 March he arrived at the command of Commander in Chief of the Air Force Konstantin Andreevich Vershinin in the group of cosmonauts from 11 countries and received March 1960 to January 1961 and relevant training. He was chosen mainly for its quiet temperament of the 20 possible candidates, the first person to leave the earth. On 12 April 1961, he graduated with the spaceship Vostok 1 spacecraft and its spectacular thereby to circumvent according to official figures in 108 minutes once the earth, but this figure was only the 50th Anniversary, revised after the release of secret documents, to 106 minutes. He landed in the Volga region, near the cities of Saratov and Engels. On the landing site today is a monument, and the anniversary of his space flight, there is still committed annually with a small ceremony.Gagarin was until 1963 the commander of Soviet cosmonaut and afterwards studied at the Military Academy of Engineers of the Air Force, "Prof. N. J. Zhukovsky. " It was intended as a replacement pilot for the 1967 flight of Soyuz 1 cosmonaut Vladimir Mikhailovich Komarov killed in an accident.Accidental DeathOn 27 Gagarin was killed in March 1968 during a training flight in a MiG-15 UTI fatal. Gagarin was appointed in February 1968 for the trainers of the cosmonauts, but before that he had wanted to bring even his training as a fighter pilot at the end. This had been aborted because of his cosmonaut program. The type of aircraft MiG-15 UTI was due to its low crash rate as the safest fighter aircraft of the USSR. Gagarin's flight instructor and co-pilot was the regimental commander (Hero of the Soviet Union) and the then most experienced MiG-15 pilot Colonel Vladimir Serjogin with 4,000 hours of flight practice and experience of war.The exact circumstances of the crash are still not well known. The government announced at that time merely "an unfortunate concatenation of circumstances fatal" as the cause, the investigation report was only the 50th Anniversary of the first manned space flight (published almost 43 years later), the former explanation, however, never officially corrected. This inevitably provided material for a variety of speculations, legends and conspiracy to cause crashes.In the wake of Gorbachev's perestroika policy of 1985 was Gagarin Cosmonaut Alexei Leonov colleague (who was a member of the Government Commission) to enforce an inspection of the investigation report of the circumstances of Gagarin's successful crash. It turned out that a number of safety standards were violated, which eventually led to his fall. In addition to Gagarin's MiG-15 were on the unlucky four Sukhoi fighter-type in the air, one of them (which he identified as the Sukhoi Su-15) came close to Gagarin's plane to within a few meters. In his opinion, the MiG was thrown into the turmoil caused by the twice as fast and large Sukhoi, into a tailspin and into free fall. Leonov, on the day of the crash made a parachute training with cosmonauts heard "two bangs loud in the distance" a distance of only one or two seconds, but he had to his surprise, discovered in the final report, that his statement on 15 to 20 second intervals had been changed.After the near collision was the altimeter on the MiG-15 only delayed the real height, and also the height of radar control room was out that day, so went Gagarin and his experienced co-pilot of more leeway from when they were in reality. Leonov believes the first blast of the jet breaking the sound barrier was, and the second of Gagarin's plane crash. Calculations show that he would have needed only two extra seconds to stabilization of the fall flight. Other experts such as Stepan Mikoyan (also a member of the Government Commission), however, expressed doubt that the aircraft and Serjogin Gagarin had fallen for another plane to "spin". The most likely cause, which has led to the disaster, Mikoyan mentions in his memoirs, dodging and / or collision with a weather balloon.Even in March 2008 claimed a member of the Commission of Inquiry, General Eduard shear shear that gross negligence was the cause of the pilots, but this should not be added in order not to jeopardize their hero status.In April 2011, the 50th Anniversary of the "First manned space flight" gives Russia the full Commission report of 4 September 1968 on the death of the cosmonaut-free: show the documents that the Commission originally came to the conclusion maneuvers that either Gagarin and Serjogin sharp had, probably to avoid a weather balloon, which in the jet a "He was a very inexperienced pilot." "brought super-critical flight condition and under difficult weather conditions led to the stalling." The report also suggests that the jet could have maneuvered sharply to avoid "an entry into the lowest cloud layer".In the Soviet Union national mourning was declared. This was the first time in Soviet history that a day of mourning was declared dead at one, in which this was not just the death of a head of state.