Did Gagarin say: “I’m burning! Farewell, comrades!”?

For many years, the story has been circulating about how, at the end of his flight, the first cosmonaut decided that his death was inevitable. We checked whether Gagarin said these words.

As stated in numerous articles and collections of facts about Yuri Gagarin, the first cosmonaut in the history of mankind had no idea what would happen to his ship on the way back, when entering the dense layers of the atmosphere. Seeing the burning body of the Vostok-1 capsule through the window, Gagarin allegedly shouted: “I’m burning! Farewell, comrades! - and these words were heard at the Mission Control Center. Nowadays, cosmonauts know that the flame arose as a result of friction of the heat-resistant skin of the spacecraft with the atmosphere and that Gagarin was not in any danger. It is alleged that the farewell phrase was not mentioned in open sources for many years.

They wrote about the astronaut’s words “RIA Novosti", RBC, "Moskovsky Komsomolets", "Komsomolskaya Pravda", "New newspaper", "Fontanka", radio "Satellite" and television and radio company "World" This story is also reported on Russian websites. higher And average educational institutions.

The first flight of a ship with a man on board into outer space is an event that caused a colossal interest all over the world. Many films have been made about Gagarin’s short journey (106 minutes), but colossal in distance, dozens of books have been published, in fact, every minute of his flight, to the extent possible, is described in detail. During the flight, Gagarin communicated with the Earth via onboard communications and recorded his observations on the onboard tape recorder. At the final stage, the descent vehicle with the astronaut on board separated from the instrument and engine compartment, entered the dense layers of the atmosphere, and already 7 km from the surface of the planet, Gagarin, in accordance with the instructions, ejected and landed using a parachute.

What happened on board Vostok 1 on April 12, 1961 can be learned from several main sources. Firstly, this transcript radio conversations between Gagarin (call sign Kedr) and those responsible for the flight on Earth. The last message in it is from Earth: “Major Gagarin. Your flight is going well” (there was no answer). This was at 10:18, that is, seven minutes before the braking propulsion system (TDU) was activated. After this, the capsule with the astronaut separated and entered the dense layers of the atmosphere. All this time, according to the recording, Gagarin did not say anything to his colleagues - it seems that he simply was not in touch until the landing.

Another source of information about Gagarin's flight is audio recording from the on-board tape recorder. According to her, at 10:18 and 10:23 the astronaut informed the Earth that he was feeling well and all systems were working normally. As we can see, in this source, the cosmonaut’s last words occurred before the start of deceleration, so after that he either did not say anything loudly or did not write it down.

The third and quite important source is detailed report Gagarin himself, made the next day, April 13, at a meeting of the state commission. For a long time, the text of this report was classified, until in 1991, during the era of glasnost, it was published in the magazine "News of the Central Committee of the CPSU" along with other entries. From Gagarin’s story it follows that after the TDU was activated at 10:25, the expected separation of the compartments did not take place. Instead, the ship began to rotate at high speed around its axes, which caused concern to the astronaut. Nevertheless, he did not signal any problems, much less say goodbye to his comrades - he simply reported via communication a few minutes later that the separation had not occurred. At 10:35, the capsule with Gagarin nevertheless separated and continued its journey to Earth. Further in his report, the astronaut says:

Suddenly, a bright purple light appeared at the edges of the curtain. The same crimson light was observed through the small hole in the right porthole. I felt the vibrations of the ship and the burning of the coating. I don’t know where the crackling came from: either the structure was cracking, or whether the thermal shell was expanding when heated, but I could hear the crackling. There was one crackling sound every minute or so. In general, it felt like the temperature was high.

In other words, at some point Gagarin suggested that the casing was on fire, but in this fragment of the report there are no signs of panic, cries of “I’m burning!” and trying to say goodbye to colleagues. One can come to a similar conclusion by reading Gagarin’s autobiographical book “Road to space": judging by what was written, the cosmonaut was prepared for the strong heating of the outer shell of the ship; he worked out such a scenario during training on Earth. In his speech in Saratov several years later, Gagarin will say: he knew that the designers had correctly calculated the thickness of the skin and it wouldn’t even be hot in the cabin, although what he saw overboard didn’t make him smile.

How testify popular science sourcesIn any case, the Earth would have lost contact with Gagarin’s capsule after it entered the dense layers of the atmosphere - the plasma formed around the device due to the release of a huge amount of heat blocks radio signals, and this problem has not been completely solved by the designers to this day.

There is no information about Gagarin’s panicked cry in other authoritative sources: both his biographies from the series “Life of Remarkable People”, in Soviet-era publications from the Google Books project database, in the work of the author of many popular science works on space exploration, Vladimir Gubarev “Secrets of Gagarin: myths and truth about the first flight"

When and where did the legend about the cry “I’m burning!” come from? Farewell, comrades!”? An Internet search shows that it almost never appears on the Internet until 2013, when this episode was included in the collection “Ten Little-Known Facts about Yuri Gagarin’s Flight” from the publication “Arguments and facts" After this, the quote began to be mentioned regularly. In 2006, the remark was made by a relatively popular blogger on LiveJournal gigienishvili. The earliest direct mention of Gagarin's farewell, which was discovered by "Verified", is given in the book by writer Vladimir Glushko "Cloud"(2002), in which there is the following episode:

During the last session before boarding, the following conversation took place:

- “Kedr”, how are the conditions? - asked Korolev.
- What a situation! I'm burning, I'm burning! Goodbye...” The tone was panicked.

In a slightly earlier (2001) publication by journalist Alexander Milkus in “Komsomolskaya Pravda"there is a sentence ""I'm burning!" “Yuri Alekseevich has already begun to mentally say goodbye to life.” It is not directly stated here that Gagarin transmitted this word via radio or even said it out loud.

Now it is difficult to establish for certain who and when started the legend of Gagarin’s farewell words, but, apparently, this happened in the 1990s or at the very beginning of the 2000s. Perhaps two others are related to its appearance: the words “It’s hot! I'm burning! attributed to to cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov, who died during a flight in 1967, and “Farewell!” - test pilot Oleg Gudkov, who passed away, like Gagarin, during a training flight on a MiG aircraft. The story about Gagarin’s panic is not confirmed by any authoritative sources and, most likely, does not correspond to reality.

Cover photo: Wikimedia Commons

Most likely not true

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