by ftldave » Wed Jun 19, 2013 9:18 am
When I first read Alexei Leonov's account of the day Gagarin died a few years ago, I was skeptical. Leonov's a crafty old bird, had to be to get anywhere in the USSR. He never spoke about the death of Cosmonaut Valentin Bondarenko until confronted with an undoctored photo that showed Bondarenko on the original team. Bondarenko died in a training accident, fatally burned in a low-pressure altitude chamber. If you ask any person from the USSR who was alive during Gagarin's death, they'll probably tell you that Gagarin was blotto or had a bad hangover at the time of his crash, had fallen into heavy drinking since he was so frustrated with his life, no longer being allowed to fly in space (too important to the USSR to risk), as well as the stress from his ongoing marital problems. Considering that alcohol has always been the Russian solution to depression, boredom, and stress, that rumor is probably sad enough to be true.
