What Really Happened to Yuri Gagarin?

On March 27, 1968, Gagarin was killed in a training plane crash. The United States topped the Soviet Union in the space race less than 16 months later, landing an astronaut on the moon.

On March 27, 1968, Yuri Gagarin and pilot Vladimir Seryogin perished in a routine training flight in Novosyolovo, Soviet Union, after the MiG-15 jet fighter they were flying crashed.

Gagarin’s death prompted the Soviet leadership to proclaim a national mourning period in his honor.

This was the first time in Soviet history that a day of national mourning was declared after a person died while working for the government, and it was also the first time that it happened to someone who wasn’t the president.

Gagarin’s and Vladimir Seryogin’s bodies were burned at 21:15 the next day. The Kremlin Wall Necropolis was where their ashes were interred.

The cause of Gagarin’s death was shrouded in secrecy, and numerous explanations emerged.

The Air Force, official government commissions, and the KGB each conducted their own separate investigations into the disaster.

The KGB worked “not simply alongside the Air Force and the official commission members, but against them,” according to Jamie Doran and Piers Bizony’s account of Gagarin, Starman: The Truth Behind the Legend of Yuri Gagarin.

What was Yuri Gagarin Last Words?

Yuri Garagin’s last words were “I’m burning. Goodbye, comrades.”