Cosmonaut Alexey Leonov reveals for the first time that the death of the first man in Space, Yuri Gagarin, was caused by an "unauthorised" plane that flew too close to Gagarin's fighter jet causing it to spin and finally crash.
Yuri Gagarin, the first man in Space died in an air crash that took place March 27, 1968. Gagarin and his flight instructor Vladimir Seryogin died when their MiG-15, according to government investigation, tried to avoid a "foreign object" and crashed near the town of Novoselovo, about 90 km from Moscow. The exact cause and details of the crash remained unknown until a few days back when fellow cosmonaut Alexey Leonov, the first man to conduct a spacewalk in 1965, revealed details about the crash.
Russia Today, the tabloid which interviewed Leonov , reported that he had been requesting the government for permission to reveal details about Gagarin's plane crash for the past 20 years, and only recently he got the final go ahead, almost 45 years after Gagarin's death
In the interview, Leonov revealed that an "unauthorized" Sukhoi fighter jet flew too close to Gagarin's jet disrupting its path, causing it to spin and finally crash.
"We knew that a Su-15 was scheduled to be tested that day, but it was supposed to be flying at the altitude of 10,000 meters or higher, not 450-500 meters. It was a violation of the flight procedure," he told Russia Today.
Leonov revealed that the plane spiraled at 750 km/hour before finally crashing. The cosmonaut, however, didn't divulge the name of the pilot of the Sukhoi fighter jet. Explaining the years of secrecy that surrounded Gagarin's death, Leonov speculated that it could be because the existence of "a lapse so close to Moscow" needed to remain hidden information.
Previously, Leonov hinted about a Sukhoi jet that may have been flying below its minimum allowed altitude in his 2004 book "Two Sides of the Moon." On the day of the crash Leonov had been flying a helicopter in the same area and had heard "two loud booms in the distance".
