[000:00:00;00] live . john berman here broadcasting live from washington d.c.

coming up today on the big picture.

is the. march twenty seventh one thousand nine hundred sixty. the drone of aircraft in the skies over moscow region. rescuers flew for a training jet it disappeared from radar screens. as soon as they spotted the crash site it was clear nobody could have survived. the aircraft was piloted by flight instructor fly diminished city hogan. got it defers

to ever man in space. seven years prior on evil twelve thousand nine hundred sixty one rescue helicopters flew over the plane around the city of sanaa one thousand kilometers from moscow they were looking for the spot where you to go got him and successfully landed after his first space mission. that trip took an average soviet pilot to international fame. the flight control place seven years later cut short the life of the world's first cosmonaut what happened in those few seconds after contact with got in was lost what caused this disaster for forty years later no geary's conclusive and important questions still remain. on the morning of april twelfth one thousand nine hundred sixty one get

a good got and woke up at half past five in the morning is breakfast space food from tubes even joke about it saying it was only thing for a man in orbit meanwhile the us still crockett was sitting on the launch pad ready to catapult him into outer space. crushing shift the night lost track of that nice as it gradually blended with don't. normally i would have woken up in the morning and headed for the launches on. the thirteenth that night i didn't sleep in your new she's needless to say. at any rate many myself included were far more agitated than a year ago got it siege good after final medical checkups good got in was helping to a space suit a bus transported him in his back up to the rocket this film footage shows chairman of the state commission. and me walking from the bus towards the spacecraft's chief designer sygate cut off and other members of the commission seated around

a table when you. got in and wishes him a good journey i take it got in by the hand and taken to a ladder leading to the lift that's now about fifteen steps separate him from the lift. on march twenty seventh one thousand nine hundred sixty eight the last morning of good got in his life mishaps plagued him from the very stark after boarding the bus taking him to the airfield he remembered he'd left his pass at home he decided to return to pick up the document although we knew full well everyone in the air force regiment recognised him like many pilots he was superstitious and the first cause may not certainly considered this a bad omen. there were also other troubles in store for good got and would have to fly tandem with flight instructor city ogun even though he was authorized to pilot aircraft on his own. we were flying to. cloud he did a very good job piloting the aircraft and showed

a good command of the radio equipment. also stayed well within the flights are very together we did a very good job and. he was given an excellent marks and allowed to pilot airplanes unassisted. got and was to fly three times he was slated for two solo flights after the outing with instructor city. he never got into seats in the cockpit of a mid training jet several minutes passed before they were allowed to take off. they reached will be called the point of turnaround in accordance with the flight scheme pilots must reach the line before going into the flight zone after that they go through an air corridor or an end to the zone and only then do they begin to assemble. the full twelve nine hundred sixty one just a few minutes past nine in the morning you get in is already in the cabin of device stop rocket final preparations and checks are being made all that remains is to

shut the hatch. good and remove it is a nerve racking operation full associations of hot it's an unpleasant moment because of the consequences if the hatches law as it should be the cabin is home a sickly seals and the flight is normal with going if not the cosmonauts life might be in danger but he had a man. with a hash lock down in engineers ready to leave the launch site the chief designer called from mission control he said sensors had indicated the cabin was not reliably sealed the hatch had to be checking mediately. how we felt isn't hard to imagine who would know but the technicians knew the job well. they unscrewed the knots and removed the hatch in no time and sneered. look. paid to the connection with signals whether or not the hatches properly sealed you

knew everything there was a. petition on march twenty seventh one thousand nine hundred eighty eight good got in straining jed takes off from the runway to color scheme military airfield and heads eastward towards the flight zone this ring exercises to last fifteen to twenty minutes the planning fluids barrel rolls hooked turns in vertical loops but only four minutes later she colored skis flight controllers here's good got an report heading for base. and joining the third turn i heard gerunds voice. was so in quiet. right after that i reported to the commanding officer that i had heard the voice of number six two five. the flight commander was not alarmed by the early message found nothing strange about hearing good god and not the instructor said yogen

chuckling over the airwaves. report would be his last words that reach the flight command. if twelfth one thousand nine hundred sixty one nine o seven am defers to industrial crocket kicks off from the launch pad he got in radios back a phrase that would in a few hours would be known around the world as his signature line. the first flight lasted one hundred eighty minutes the spacecraft begins to descend after orbiting the earth that was one of the most complicated phases of the mission because not was to object from the descent module for several kilometers above ground. one of the special features was the seat. of the mechanism was powerful enough to a genuine cosmonaut wearing a spacesuit. and i'm going to run it with you as

a certain altitude the entry which was jettisoned critters that made it possible for the cosmonauts to eject from the space crew didn't cure. or even that the time there was no forest here they would only see things in this field they have since grown into tone trees on the morning of april twelfth one thousand nine hundred eighty one reader chris conover was a six year old girl playing potatoes with her grandmother they noticed two spots in the sky they grew larger and larger and she saw an odd looking creature wearing bright orange overawes. my grandma they kept off consumer questions where he was from i remember she said she was from a ship posits that it was new what any way in a place but then she said i'm from a space ship. grandmother with the first humans to see good god and after his return from outer space half an hour later

a search party found the landing site in the south of regent only a handful of people knew got in when he woke up on the morning of april twelfth when he went to bed the same day he had acquired global fame. karen and i in the flying club this picture shows us nearly eighteen airplanes only a short distance separates the place where the first cosmonauts flight began and the place where he finally touched down both are in the set up to free agent. carolyn september not if you for when both of us were going through a course of training at the club. but if several others had graduated from a school training young people for jobs in industry. thank you renee i was just as great fans of aviation as myself. we kept together with the clothes. sharing classroom desks and sitting examinations together. it just so happens that we had

the same instructor. around noon on march twenty seventh one thousand nine hundred eighty eight the flight controller of the airfield was desperately trying to contact fighter jet trainer number sixty five got in the pilot and reported ten minutes before inquiry the aircraft should have appeared over the runway two minutes after the radio exchange time passed got an insidious didn't respond to calls to contact ground control it became clear half an hour later did the fighter had been involved in an accident. the air force regiments second in command were told me to reports to the general. you told me that something had happened to you karen. rescue teams were dispatched to locate the crash site around three pm one of the crews noticed a deep charring hole in the ground amidst the birch trees it was later established

that it was five meters deep disaster meant the two men had no chance for survival the question immediately coming to mind was why such skilled pilots had been unable to eject from their cockpit. because of that everybody wants to know why they didn't eject anybody my they don't understand a pilot psychology something goes wrong with the zero play thing the pilot tries to get things right rather than each other we strip and is a former test pilot he was a member of the commission looking into what caused the guidance death according to one of the initial theories bad weather could have been responsible for the crash yoko's idea to trouble was that they were flying between clothes when an aircraft is in thick clouds if you will from difficult to put out of a spin matters become even worse considering that the pilot might meet and has taken such conditions. no other air crash investigation in soviet history and receive such thorough attention even the tiniest plane fragments were collected

from the site but investigators can glean only a small amount of information from the wreckage besides in the one nine hundred sixty s. the aircraft were not equipped with flight recorders and the lack of data gave rise to a multitude of theories explaining what had caused the tragedy. wealthy british science. market why not. find out what's really happening to the global economy with much stronger run no holds barred look at the global financial headlines tune into

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coverage. morning's today violence is once again flared up. these are the images from parliament seen from the streets in canada after. chunk operation today. this is moscow all radio stations of the soviet union aren't here. on april twelfth one thousand nine hundred eighty one people across the soviet union were glued to their radios they heard a stunning message the first time ever a man had broken out of earth's gravitational pull and gone to outer space. the

first man to do so was the soviet union's very own but he got it. correct if khamenei and some of my friends were in college getting ready for an exam in higher mathematics. i regret it got dark or got all of a sudden a fellow student burst into the classroom. and says someone by the name of karen had been launched into space or nicole. yes we asked him what the patronymic of this pilot. saved it she said yes you know we knew that he was yuri gagarin. there was a red carpet rolled out on the airfield of a moscow airport on april fourteenth nine hundred sixty one in ceremony all steps major got in march toward soviet leader nikita khrushchev without noticing their issue he says they come undone still he made his official report. early.

comrade first secretary of the communist dossier of the soviet union it is my pleasure trip pope see you at the world's first space flight aboard the vostok space ship and it on the twelfth of april nine hundred sixty one. bishop systems and equipment has been working like clockwork without fail on an excellent healthy and ready to fulfill any new assignments county and government. major garrett. in one thousand nine hundred eighty eight who's a good god and death spread around the country almost as fast as news of his spaceflight seven years prior and that was despite the fact that the announcement had been a long delayed and was counted in very terse phrasing. the commission to investigate the cause of the tragedy was already in full swing. we were provided with reports in by panels of scientists who had established to fly its exact

trajectory we used to reports to pass judgment on whether the two men had done the right thing that flight at the. lack of information was the main problem facing the commission apart from good guidance reports from the flight zone there were only readings from onboard instruments the investigators were not sure that they were reliable. in the event of a serious accident the eighty creators of on board instruments we've been imprinted on the remaining portal didn't even explain it but as a rule it's possible to locate to position of the pointer at the time of the crash to. trigger got and smile was a vivid soviet symbol without precedent a symbol that had great appeal across the world newspapers around the globe featured front page pictures of got in for several days after his first flight the world's first kuzma not was no longer an ordinary man to become

a national icon. after his first spaceflight good got in began to travel widely around the soviet union and abroad each time is visited tracked and thousands of people this is how he was welcomed in japan. this is how it was visit to britain got underway. the russian photographer by the scope and remembers very well how his first famous photograph came to pass even assigned to cover the soviet visit of italian film star gina lollobrigida got in was among the guests. as soon as that emerged from onto the table i shared with horror and it's the thought that i would be unable to take any pictures at all for i saw the bear crow was occupied by a venerable recorder's where there was no place for a voice like me anyway so when i talk right beside him he showed nori action and only when the slightest suggestion for you just went on speaking go into

a few years when he finished speaking and i finished taking pictures of course he turned to me and said because so what have you been able to take any pictures and there's nothing special about this photograph except that if the gaar instance side by side with a little bridgette they still make reprints of it. a look some the polls that have seized the crash site from an altitude of four hundred meters for the first time. standing at the site where the world's first cosmonaut died is hardly visible. it's been established to the weather was bad during the flight there were two layers of clouds. like some of the father is a well known designer of aircraft engines he says it's the aircraft's motor they cause that is esther. this situation unfolded as

follows. when the pilots found themselves in the lower level of clouds in the through an altitude of one thousand five hundred meters the engine failed. they tried to keep it going by forcing it to work at maximum capacity. don't brought it to an abrupt halt and front. the theory that the engine was responsible for the crashes based on beings obtained from onboard instruments divil asa the gauge recorded a high speed on impact with the ground this means that the pilots made no attempt to pull the aircraft out of the spin otherwise they would have cut down on the thrust according to tim afic cause that if we've got an insidious and became aware of the slowdown they try to restart the engine. when they need to under normal conditions i mean this engine can be restarted in fine it's. regrettably. the situation during a good god wrings last flight good it was such that the pilot was short on else

achieved on time so they couldn't react because they had no time for that. in the mid one nine hundred sixty s. got any indicated his desire to get back in the cockpit piloting turbojets was too much of a risk because such airplanes had not been properly tested these were new models the country's leadership didn't like the idea of putting the life of the first cars are not in jeopardy for a long time you got in was denied a chance to pilot planes instead he was offered executive jobs he was appointed to the post of deputy head of cars not training center. still he attended classes at an air force academy and wrote a book. to be sure. i first met him at a publishing have this frankly i had not expected a lieutenant recently promoted to the rank of major to be a great fan of books. the. gun came to see valentino's support for the publishing house

a few days before his final flight he brought the latest version of his book to be published just a few months later. and this is the book. in his he tells about how he feels when he gets into this craft alone or together with others to put up. this tree commission investigating the cause of the gun its death did not come to a definitive conclusion its report said briefly that some unclear circumstances and put the aircraft into a tailspin the pilots couldn't pull it out of the spin because their craft altitude was too low and they'd run out of time. all the materials relating to the investigation were kept under lock and key even commission experts were unaware of the results of the commission's work but some of them suggested their own theories. would be up and close a lot of version is that they hate it weather balloon that is you know if some six

hundred kilometers an hour limit of just would not affect we do feel like to pass a cleveland must have been a list of three tons of data from under. them and left them out on sealed to common sense and the aircraft into a seven that really threw thought of the film. maker younes version is based on speculation that the fighters cockpit had already come open before it hit the ground in other words the pilots were not in control of their plane after losing consciousness when he hit a weather balloon. valet to us a call fiza flight instructor he was up in the air on the fateful morning of march twenty seventh he says faulty on board instruments may have caused the tragedy. that's known and i don't wish to draw parallels with a low disasters i need they for. well into a spin after finishing the exercise the tumble in a steel door and with

a tilt of sixty degrees. and there were no clouds when they started their report. it was soon as they entered the clouds if they lost their bearings or thought if i left it would be fifteen years after got his death professor billets or coast yet because i'm not alex e.o. enough put forward yet another theory for the disaster according to them the fighter energy turbulence left behind by a supersonic aircraft that had been in the area shortly before the crash and turbulence put got into jet into a spin the pilots were unable to pull their aircraft to help they needed two hundred three hundred more meters two or three more seconds. old pilots agreed it in a craft can fall into a spin when it answers turbulence off through a special tests have proven that there is no spin in such situations that you should interview and smitty times during tests when he answered turbulence your aircraft disc you decide what you need it for you regain control of that it's

a problem. all that remains of good got and sir craft is kept in some twenty sealed barrels this standing orders to keep just several tons of twisted steel that used to be a training fighter jet for ever though a state commission as not conclusively established the cause of good got instead. chances are these will someday be open so that people can once again search for answers behind the death of the first man to cross the space frontier. descend on to a flying club get a springboard for his rise to fame has been renamed after the first cousin of not young people who dream about flying high come here today as they used to in the mid one nine hundred fifty each. thanks like the first cousin on future pilot

shelton off we go as their training aircraft leave the runway. download the official location chobani phone called touch from the. video. on she's mine comes and r.s.s. feeds now with the palm of your. question on the call. me it

is me me. i tell marvin here broadcasting live from washington d.c.