Here is the story of a truly great hero of the Soviet Union's race to space:
U.S. INTERCEPTED FINAL WORDS OF DOOMED RUSSIAN COSMONAUT KOMAROV AS HE ‘SCREAMED IN RAGE AT PEOPLE WHO PUT HIM IN A DEFECTIVE CRAFT’
Mail Online
March 20. 2011
The final words of doomed Russian cosmonaut, Vladimir Komarov, were picked up by U.S. intelligence, according to a new book.
As Komarov hurtled towards earth and certain death in the stricken Soyuz 1 craft, he could be heard screaming and cursing the 'people who had put him inside a botched spaceship.'
U.S. National Security Analyst, identified in the book as Perry Fellwock, described intercepting Komarov's conversation with ground control officers in which he told them he knew he was about to die during the space mission in 1967.
Fellwock was also privy to a conversation between Komarov and former premier Alexei Kosygin from the U.S. listening post in Turkey.
Kosygin can be heard crying and telling Komarov he is a hero, Fellwock reported.
The extraordinary revelations appear in new book Starman, The Truth Behind the Legend of Yuri Gagarin, by Jamie Doran and Piers Bizony, to be published next month.
Starman charts the friendship between Komarov and his colleague Gagarin, a Soviet hero who was the first human to reach outer space.
The men were both assigned the doomed Earth-orbiting mission and both knew the space capsule was not safe, according to Starman.
Komarov, who was married with two children, knew he would die but refused to back out of the mission. Gagarin would be his replacement and Komarov didn't want his friend to die.
The Russians planned to launch the Soyuz 1 with Komarov inside. A second vehicle with two additional cosmonauts would blast off the next day.
The two vehicles would meet and dock before Komarov would crawl from one to the other and come home in the second ship.
It was supposed to be a Soviet triumph to mark the 50th anniversary of the Communist revolution but as the book suggests, it was doomed to fail.
On inspection the Soyuz 1 had 203 structural problems - problems that would make it dangerous to navigate in space.
No one dared tell then Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev about the faults however for fear of being demoted, fired or sent to diplomatic Siberia. The mission went ahead as planned.
With less than a month to go Komarov met with demoted KGB agent, Venyamin Russayev, and told him: 'I'm not going to make it back from this flight,'
When Russayev asked why he couldn't just refuse to go Komarov said: 'If I don't make this flight, they'll send the backup pilot instead.
'That's Yura,' he said referring to Gagarin. '...and he'll die instead of me. We've got to take care of him.' Komarov then burst into tears.
Launch day arrived on April 23, 1967. Th Soyuz 1 blasted off without issue but the failures began almost immediately afterwards.
Antennas didn't open properly, power was compromised and navigation proved difficult.
The following day's launch was cancelled and so too were Komarov's hopes for getting back to Earth safely.
When the capsule did began its descent the parachutes failed to open - a small canopy came out but failed to pull the larger one from its storage bay. A backup parachute then became entangled with it.
The book then describes how U.S. intelligence 'picked up (Komarov's) cries of rage as he plunged to his death.'
Komarov smashed into plains near Orenburg, Russia with all the force of a meteorite. The craft was flattened and the buffer rockets in its base blew up on impact.
A heel bone was found among the ashes, according to Russayev, but there was little else left of Komarov.
He was honoured with a state funeral where his charred remains were in an open casket.
Gagarin never really got over his friend's death. He later died in a plane accident in 1968, a year before the U.S. reached the moon.
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