Yuri Gagarin - dead drunk???

I woke up this morning to the 5 AM news on WGN radio in Chicago,
Illinois (USA): the Spike O'Dell radio show.

http://wgnradio.com/spike/index.htm

After the news, O'Dell asked his cast members what happened on this date
in history (April 12). It took a few guesses to determine that Yuri
Gagarin became the first man in space on this date in 1961 (incorrect
guesses were, unsurprisingly, Alan (Sam!!) Shephard, Gus Grissom, and
John Glenn).

O'Dell then went on to explain that the young Gagarin was showered with
gifts upon his return, couldn't deal with it, and fell in love with the
bottle (of vodka). O'Dell went on to imply that, after hitting the
bottle, Gagarin took of in a Mig fighter one day and soon crashed due to
his problems with alcohol.

Is there a scintilla of accuracy in this tale of Gagarin's alleged
alcoholism?

In article ,
"Paul S. Mueller" wrote:

I woke up this morning to the 5 AM news on WGN radio in Chicago,
Illinois (USA): the Spike O'Dell radio show.

http://wgnradio.com/spike/index.htm

After the news, O'Dell asked his cast members what happened on this date
in history (April 12). It took a few guesses to determine that Yuri
Gagarin became the first man in space on this date in 1961 (incorrect
guesses were, unsurprisingly, Alan (Sam!!) Shephard, Gus Grissom, and
John Glenn).

O'Dell then went on to explain that the young Gagarin was showered with
gifts upon his return, couldn't deal with it, and fell in love with the
bottle (of vodka). O'Dell went on to imply that, after hitting the
bottle, Gagarin took of in a Mig fighter one day and soon crashed due to
his problems with alcohol.

Is there a scintilla of accuracy in this tale of Gagarin's alleged
alcoholism?

The rumor that i had heard is that Gagarin was not the most doctrinaire
of Communists and that he incurred the ire of some CP bigwigs. This
rumor has it that Gagarin's crash was no accident.

Paul S. Mueller wrote:
I woke up this morning to the 5 AM news on WGN radio in Chicago,
Illinois (USA): the Spike O'Dell radio show.

http://wgnradio.com/spike/index.htm

After the news, O'Dell asked his cast members what happened on this date
in history (April 12). It took a few guesses to determine that Yuri
Gagarin became the first man in space on this date in 1961 (incorrect
guesses were, unsurprisingly, Alan (Sam!!) Shephard, Gus Grissom, and
John Glenn).

O'Dell then went on to explain that the young Gagarin was showered with
gifts upon his return, couldn't deal with it, and fell in love with the
bottle (of vodka). O'Dell went on to imply that, after hitting the
bottle, Gagarin took of in a Mig fighter one day and soon crashed due to
his problems with alcohol.

Is there a scintilla of accuracy in this tale of Gagarin's alleged
alcoholism?

Scintilla, hell; I'd be surprised if there was even a smidgen.


--

..

"Though I could not caution all, I yet may warn a few:
Don't lend your hand to raise no flag atop no ship of fools!"

--grateful dead.
__________________________________________________ _____________
Mike Flugennock, flugennock at sinkers dot org
"Mikey'zine": dubya dubya dubya dot sinkers dot org

mike flugennock wrote:
Paul S. Mueller wrote:
I woke up this morning to the 5 AM news on WGN radio in Chicago,
Illinois (USA): the Spike O'Dell radio show.

http://wgnradio.com/spike/index.htm

After the news, O'Dell asked his cast members what happened on this date
in history (April 12). It took a few guesses to determine that Yuri
Gagarin became the first man in space on this date in 1961 (incorrect
guesses were, unsurprisingly, Alan (Sam!!) Shephard, Gus Grissom, and
John Glenn).

O'Dell then went on to explain that the young Gagarin was showered with
gifts upon his return, couldn't deal with it, and fell in love with the
bottle (of vodka). O'Dell went on to imply that, after hitting the
bottle, Gagarin took of in a Mig fighter one day and soon crashed due to
his problems with alcohol.

Is there a scintilla of accuracy in this tale of Gagarin's alleged
alcoholism?

Scintilla, hell; I'd be surprised if there was even a smidgen.



No evidence. Just rumors. Here is a reprint of an article about
Gagarin's accident in the Independent - 28 July 2005 -

http://olm.blythe-systems.com/piperm...25/020759.html

http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/article302054.ece

http://www.highbeam.com/library/doc0...34564776&num=2

-----

The Independent - 28 July 2005 -

How did Yuri die? The mysterious death of a space-age hero

The first man in space gave his name to countless Russian streets and
schools. But his death in 1968 fuelled just as many conspiracy
theories--
and now a new petition demands that the case be reopened.

By Andrew Osborn in Moscow

Stock Soviet icons such as Lenin or the improbably productive
Stakhanovite workers that his successors dreamt up are old hat in
today's Russia.

Their statues lie scrapped or neglected. Their achievements rubbished.
And their life stories are forgotten or mocked.

Only one poster boy of the USSR remains: Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin. The
mere mention of his name sees Russian chests swell with pride. His
achievements are legendary and he is unique in transcending the
country's harrowing transition from Communism to capitalism.

Any Russian school child can tell you that the Soviet cosmonaut was the
first man in space. And his mission aboard the capsule Vostok 1 won the
space race for the Soviets when it orbited the Earth on 12 April 1961.

Gagarin was just 27 years old when he grabbed the headlines around the
world. The son of collective farm workers and a devoted family man with
a wholesome sense of humour and movie star looks, he quickly captured
the imagination of a generation.

His flight, which lasted just one hour and eight minutes, was a
milestone in the space race that developed between the competing
superpowers and one which demonstrated in no uncertain terms that the
then USSR was a force to be reckoned with.

Gagarin epitomised "Homo Sovieticus", was the apogee of Soviet
Socialism
and the product of a system that Moscow then believed would establish
global hegemony.

Who remembers Alan Shepard, the first American in space who reached
orbit on 5 May of the same year?

A deeply sarcastic poster that festoons modern-day Moscow displays a
famous Russian tourist knick-knack - a Matroshka doll - and warns
passers-by that if they're not careful Russia will have nothing else to
be proud of. That cynicism bounces off Gagarin. He lives on in the
Russian imagination as a reminder of one of their greatest triumphs and
someone about whom they can genuinely feel good.

Only one thing clouds the golden memory of Russia's feted cosmonaut and
that is how he died. Mystery continues to shroud the fate of the first
man in space: almost 40 years after his tragically premature death,
nobody really knows how and why Gagarin died.

It is a riddle that continues to fascinate Russians in the same way
that
Americans still puzzle over who shot John F Kennedy and fans of Diana,
Princess of Wales, continue to speculate about what caused the car
crash
that killed her.

Now a group of eminent military and space officials, test pilots,
accident investigators and medical specialists have drawn up a petition
asking for the Gagarin investigation to be reopened. The petition will
soon be received by Russian President Vladimir Putin and the Russian
parliament.

A new theory concerning Gagarin's demise has also been put forward by
one of the surviving members of the government commission that
originally investigated his death.

The bare facts of the tragedy, which occurred on 27 March 1968 just
outside Moscow, have long been in the public domain.

Gagarin and his flight instructor, Vladimir Serugin, were flying a
routine test mission in a MiG-15 in what were admittedly poor weather
conditions.

The duo had successfully completed the day's manoeuvres and were
heading
for the airstrip when radio contact with the plane was lost.

Rescuers would later find what was left of the MiG-15 at the bottom of
a
deep crater in a forest. Both men were dead and their bodies badly
mangled.

Gagarin was just 34 and, at the time of his untimely death, had been
the
favourite to lead the Soviet Moon-landing mission (the Americans beat
the Soviets to it in 1969).

His plane appeared to have gone into a "black nosedive" from which it
could not recover and the pilots seem to have lost all control. A
government commission was formed to find out what had happened to a man
who was a holder of the Order of Lenin and a hero of the Soviet Union.

People cried on the Moscow metro when they heard the news and thousands
of Russians queued for days to catch a glimpse of the urn containing
his
ashes. About 200 experts took part in the investigation that followed
but the then Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev suppressed its findings and
consigned the 30-volume report to the archives. Investigators were
forbidden from publishing a summary of their conclusions on the grounds
that it would "unsettle" the nation and the matter was quietly
forgotten
as Soviet tanks rolled into Czechoslovakia to crush the Prague Spring.

Even his immediate family was not told what had really happened,
prompting his mother, Anna, to ask years later whether her famous son
had been murdered by the Brezhnev regime, a theory which refuses to
die.
Gagarin, briefly the world's most famous person, was buried at the foot
of the Kremlin Wall alongside Soviet luminaries such as Joseph Stalin.

Over the years conspiracy theories flourished like mushrooms in the
rain
and various official theories began to leak out too.

The unkindest theory was that the two men were drunk on vodka and had
lost control. Gagarin had found fame hard to deal with in the years
following his triumphant return to Earth, it was argued, and had become
a heavy drinker.

However, official accident reports would show that no traces of alcohol
had been found in either man's blood.

Other theories bordered on the lunatic: that he had been abducted by
aliens, that he had survived the crash and died in a Soviet psychiatric
ward in 1990, that Serugin had killed both of them because he was
jealous of Gagarin, that Gagarin had staged his own death and had
plastic surgery or that he had been shot down by the CIA.

Investigators also speculated that the plane had collided with a
foreign
object, a weather balloon or a flock of birds, but found no signs on
the
fuselage to back up such a theory. Nor could they find anything wrong
with the plane's controls or engines. In short the accident remained
shrouded in mystery.

No one could understand, for example, why the two skilled and
experienced pilots had not ejected from the plane.

Russian media reports at the time had Gagarin heroically staying at the
controls to ensure that the plane did not smash into a nearby school,
but no real evidence was ever produced to support this. A 1986 inquest
suggested that the MiG-15 had been knocked off course by turbulence
from
a supersonic aircraft in the area.

That and the theory that the plane had swerved violently to avoid
hitting a weather balloon have become the received versions of events.
Most surviving officials say that air traffic control at the local
airfield was in a pitiful state on the day Gagarin died. However, Igor
Kuznetsov, a member of the original government commission and a retired
Soviet aircraft engineer, has put forward a new theory.

"I've finally managed to get to the bottom of this," he told the
Russian
media. "With the help of the latest computer programmes, I have managed
to work out the trajectory and precise movements of the plane in its
last moments.

"I have completely recreated the events of 37 years ago and believe
that
I have found the real cause of the catastrophe."

Mr Kuznetsov says someone had forgotten to close a ventilation panel in
the cockpit, that the cabin lost pressure as a result and that the two
men then passed out. He said: "So judging by everything, the reason for
the tragedy was the human factor, the incompetence of one of the
mechanics preparing the plane for flight."

Crucially Mr Kuznetsov did not rule out the possibility of foul play, a
suggestion that is likely to spark fresh speculation about whether
Gagarin was actually murdered by the Brezhnev regime. Although the
cosmonaut enjoyed excellent relations with Nikita Khrushchev, the
Soviet
leader at the time of his historic flight, he was on much cooler terms
with Brezhnev. The former Soviet leader was said to be irked by
Gagarin's continued fame, and felt overshadowed by him at public
events.
Brezhnev saw him as a creature of the man he had deposed.

There are also suggestions that Communist officials were deeply
embarrassed by Gagarin's purportedly increasingly alcohol-fuelled
behaviour and alleged philandering. On one occasion, for example, when
he was apparently in flagrante delicto with a nurse in the Crimea, he
is
said to have leapt off a balcony and badly smashed up his face when his
wife knocked at the door.

His faithful legion of fans say such tales have been invented by
domestic ill-wishers and foreign historians eager to discredit one of
Russia's greatest historical figures. That may be true, but conspiracy
theorists and the curious have other grounds to believe that he
incurred
Brezhnev's wrath.

It is believed that Gagarin tried in vain to prevent the launch of the
faulty Soyuz spacecraft in which cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov died in
1967, an event that was a severe embarrassment to the USSR at the time.

Almost 40 years after his tragic death Russia is eager to know the
truth. "The plane crash which killed our national hero, the planet's
first cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, and his instructor still remains unsolved
and the reasons for their death unknown," reads the petition demanding
a
fresh investigation.

"The official conclusions have still not been published and as a result
the investigation has legally not been completed."

Whether the truth about Gagarin, a man who was received by the Queen of
England, toured the world and ventured quite literally where no man had
ever been before, will ever be known remains uncertain.

With Russia looking harder than ever for heroes capable of carrying the
weight of hope and expectation, the ghost of the man whose hour-long
stellar voyage propelled him from farmer's son to Soviet icon will not
be allowed to rest quietly.

-----

Rusty

On 13 Apr 2006 08:02:13 -0700, "Rusty"
wrote:

Gagarin was just 34 and, at the time of his untimely death, had been
the favourite to lead the Soviet Moon-landing mission (the Americans beat
the Soviets to it in 1969).

....Actually, this goes against most historical evidence, which points
more towards Alexei Leonov as being the prime candidate.

OM
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On Thu, 13 Apr 2006 08:09:09 -0400, mike flugennock
wrote:

Is there a scintilla of accuracy in this tale of Gagarin's alleged
alcoholism?

Scintilla, hell; I'd be surprised if there was even a smidgen.

....Not in this regard. However, for about two-three years after his
one flight, he *did* have somewhat of a drinking problem. The
legendary "nurse escape" story is but a part of his carousing, but
then again he was a test pilot. That's sort of fun and games is part
of their job description. Just ask Tom Wolfe :-)


OM
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] Let's face it: Sometimes you *need* [
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OM wrote:



Gagarin was just 34 and, at the time of his untimely death, had been
the favourite to lead the Soviet Moon-landing mission (the Americans beat
the Soviets to it in 1969).



...Actually, this goes against most historical evidence, which points
more towards Alexei Leonov as being the prime candidate.



Leonov was the one doing the helicopter autorotation landings to
simulate the LK landing on the Moon; was Gagarin to be the other crewman
on the mission?

Pat

Pat

OM

On Fri, 14 Apr 2006 14:09:47 -0500, Pat Flannery
wrote:

Leonov was the one doing the helicopter autorotation landings to
simulate the LK landing on the Moon; was Gagarin to be the other crewman
on the mission?

....It was my understanding he was the backup candidate, but I've never
found any hints that he'd actually done any real training for the LK
as Leonov did before his plane augured. From what I have been able to
gather, the reason Leonov was chosen as prime candidate was that he
was in somewhat better shape physically than Gagarin. Not that
Gagarin's health was Pee-Wee Herman-level or anything like that, but
that Leonov worked out a lot more and earned his reputation as a
"bear" based on his strength. Both, it should be noted, were heroes of
the people of the Evil Soviet Empire, and as a nod to the CT nutters,
Leonov -was- in better favor with the Politburo and Brezhnev than
Gagarin reportedly was. Which arguably helped his being selected for
the Soyuz commander's spot on ASTP, as well as arguably being a
"consolation prize" for having not been able to fly an LK, much less
land it.

And yeah, IMHO, had Leonov gotten the chance, I fully believe he, more
than any other Cosmonaut than save Feoktistov(*), could have landed
the damn thing and gotten back safely...

(*) And the only edge he had over a test pilot is that, as an
engineer, he would have been a bit better able to fix that engine had
it failed for fire. Although Leonov's using the Al Bean method might
have worked just as well :-)

OM
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] Let's face it: Sometimes you *need* [
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