MOSCOW. March 28 (Interfax-AVN) - The investigation of the disaster with the Mikoyan MiG-15 plan that crashed in March 1968 killing Yury Gagarin, the first cosmonaut of the planet, and test-pilot Vladimir Seregin did not give answers to all questions and therefore should be resumed, thinks Igor Kuznetsov, former expert with the Air Force research and development institute of aircraft operation and maintenance.
"The governmental commission that investigated the case from March till August 1968 did it properly and thoroughly, but the work came in stalemate because of the lack of information of the last flight path of the aircraft from the last radio exchange till the time the plane crashed. The last 68 seconds of the flight are still unclear," Kuznetsov, who had been a member of the commission, said in an interview with the Moskovsky Komsomolets newspaper published Monday.
The MiG-15 took off from the Chkalovsky airfield with Seregin and Gagarin on board and crashed near Kirzhach on March 27, 1966.
According to the expert, Seregin and Gagarin must have been unconscious during the last several minutes of the deadly flight.
"I can only reassure you that they were unconscious and therefore did not stop the dive. The reason of this is the cockpit that was not airtight from the very beginning of the flight," he said.
According to him, the fact that the cockpit was not airtight was detected by the commission back in 1968.
"Unfortunately, the commission considered some of the parameters during the last several minutes of the flight only from one side. Experts believed that the pilots took the decision to stop the dive too late and simply did not have time enough to do it. Now I can tell you for sure that they did not even try to do it," he said.