From Chelyuskin ice to Gagarin's flight: the general who built the cosmonaut corps
"Odd as it may sound, the safest of them all was Gagarin's flight. The most dangerous to date was Voskhod 2." — diary, 1966
Head of Soviet cosmonaut training from 1960 to 1971. He became one of the first seven Heroes of the Soviet Union in 1934 after flying 34 survivors out of the Chelyuskin ice camp in a two-seat biplane. In World War II he commanded Il-2 ground-attack air corps through Stalingrad, Kursk, Lviv, Budapest, and Prague. In 1960 he was appointed military chief of the crewed orbital programme, recruited and trained Gagarin, Titov, Tereshkova, and Leonov, and chaired the commission that selected Gagarin for Vostok 1. After Korolev's death he clashed with successor Vasily Mishin over manual spacecraft control, and was present for the Soyuz 1 disaster and Gagarin's fatal crash. His posthumously published diaries, Hidden Space, are a key primary source on the Soviet space programme.
Activities and affiliations
Career Timeline
- 1929Graduated Borisoglebsk pilots school, assigned to Lenin Air Regiment, Far East
- 1934Chelyuskin rescue: led mixed air detachment, saved 34, Hero of the Soviet Union №2
- 1939Graduated Zhukovsky Air Force Academy, commander 19th Light Bomber Brigade
- 1942–1943Commander 292nd Assault Air Division, Kalinin Front (Velikiye Luki, Demyansk)
- 1943–1945Commander 8th Combined / 5th Assault Air Corps (Kursk, Kiev, Lviv, Budapest, Vienna)
- 1956Graduated General Staff Academy, commander 73rd Air Army, Central Asia
- 1960–1971Chief of cosmonaut training, Air Force lead for crewed flight, Asst. to AF C-in-C for Space
Related historical events
- 1941–1945The Great Patriotic WarPilot
- 1942–1943Battle of StalingradAir corps commander at StalingradDuring World War II, he commanded Il-2 ground-attack air corps through Stalingrad.
- 1957–1965The Soviet Space ProgramHead of cosmonaut trainingFrom 1960 to 1971 he recruited and trained the first generation of cosmonauts and chaired the commission that selected Gagarin for Vostok 1. As the Air Force lead for crewed flight, he clashed with Mishin over manual spacecraft control after Korolev's death.
Staffing and Discipline in the Cosmonaut Corps
Nikolai Kamanin held direct authority over the staffing and discipline of the cosmonaut corps. After Gagarin's and Titov's flights in 1961 he proposed recruiting women cosmonauts, an idea Korolev initially received coldly. His diary records that he persuaded Vershinin, Korolev and Keldysh to agree to recruiting a small group of women, though the matter advanced only with difficulty. A December 1961 Party Central Committee decision authorised a recruitment including five places for women; roughly 800 candidates applied and five remained after DOSAAF's selection. Tereshkova, Solovyova, Kuznetsova, Yerkina and Ponomaryova joined in March and April 1962. In his diary Kamanin compared the five on theoretical preparation, physical endurance and public activity, then recommended Tereshkova for the first flight with Solovyova as backup; he also judged that a woman's flight would carry great propaganda value. In June 1963 only Tereshkova flew, aboard Vostok 6. The other four were assigned from 1965 to 1966 to a planned first female spacewalk on the multi-seat Voskhod, which came to nothing when that programme was closed in May 1966.
His enforcement of discipline was severe. After a clash with a military patrol at a railway station on 27 March 1963, expulsion proceedings were opened against Grigory Nelyubov and two colleagues. Accounts conflict: one testimony states that an angered Kamanin ordered all three expelled, while Kamanin's own recollection was that he wanted to spare Nelyubov, citing his strong training record and relatively small share of blame. Nelyubov, a member of the 1960 first group and one of Gagarin's backup candidates, never returned to the corps and died on 18 February 1966 after being struck by a train.
When the women's cosmonaut group was disbanded on 1 October 1969, Kamanin recorded it in his diary as "yet another mistake". Women were not recruited again until 1980.