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.
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
- 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.