Each of us was carrying a small notebook and pencil — both attached to our harnesses by string, so they wouldn’t get lost — with which we were to record our impressions.
And we had each been ordered to memorize a piece of poetry over the weekend, some few stanzas we would recite on our climb to altitude. Hence my Pushkin, competing with more Pushkin and Mandelstam and, strangely, a bit of Pasternak, chosen by my colleagues.
Just as we reached the An-2, which was to carry us to glory, we were told to wait. The An-2’s single propeller, which had roared to life as we approached, strangely sputtered and died.
Shiborin, always fearless in circumstances like this, poked his head in the cockpit and yelled at the pilot, “What the fuck is the problem now?”
I couldn’t hear the pilot’s response, though it took a few moments. Then Shiborin trudged back over to where I was standing. “Come on,” he said. “We’ve got to see this.”
Shiborin was a country boy who had grown up on a collective farm, and in spite of that experience became the most fervent Communist I knew. Compared to him, Leonid Brezhnev was a blood-sucking Wall Street banker and enemy of the people.
Perhaps it was part of his fervent belief that all people were equal that he also delighted in ignoring rank, for seeing the mighty brought low.
It’s the only way I can explain why we left our colleagues and instructors and crossed the taxiway to where a MiG-15 trainer was getting ready to take off. “The weather has fallen below minimums for jets,” Shiborin shouted to me, raising, then dashing, my hopes for a postponement of our jump in the space of a single sentence. “Gagarin wants to take off and they won’t let him.” He nodded at the trainer. “He’s in that plane.”
During the past year, General Kamanin had succeeded in getting the Air Force to create a flight-support unit, the 70th Special Training Squadron, for the cosmonaut training center, a group of pilots and aircraft that were ours to use exclusively. The An-2 was part of the squadron, for example, and so was the Tu-104 transport.
But the heart of the 70th was a collection of MiG-15 two-seat trainers, to be flown by pilot cosmonauts with instructors, or by pilot cosmonauts carrying nonpilots like me. (MiG-15 flights were to become part of our curriculum in the next two months.)
The MiGs became a terrific source of conflict between the cosmonauts of the First and Second Enrollments. Recall that those in the First had been relatively junior pilots when selected, and that between academic studies, training for space missions, and (for the famous ones) endless public appearances for propaganda purposes, they had done almost no flying since becoming cosmonauts.
The pilots selected in 1963, however, were highly experienced Air Force inspectors and squadron commanders. It was they who lobbied Kamanin for creation of the 70th, and once its planes arrived, they happily added to their hours, remaining qualified in all-weather and night flying, zooming around in the sky one or more times a week, while poor souls like Gagarin, Nikolayev, and my friend Saditsky had to fight for one or two cockpit hours every couple of months.
What we saw was Colonel Yuri Gagarin, Hero of the Soviet Union, first man in space, and deputy commander of Military Unit 26266, climbing out of a cockpit and down a ladder, to be replaced by another pilot.
“Who’s getting in the plane?” I asked Shiborin.
“Shatalov, I think.” Shatalov was one of the more senior, aggressive, and capable members of the Second Enrollment. Gagarin never glanced at him, but instead threw his helmet at another man in a flight suit, who dodged the projectile successfully, but could not get out of the way when Gagarin tackled him. It was almost comical, since Gagarin was the smallest of the cosmonauts, and this tall pilot hit the ground like a tree felled by an ax.
Shiborin clapped his hands together, like a child at the circus. “Boy, he’s mad!”
“He should be.”
The scuffle lasted only a moment, ending as the MiG taxied off with Shatalov in Gagarin’s place, as Gagarin helped the other pilot to his feet. With the roar of the MiG’s Tumansky engine diminishing, we could clearly hear Gagarin’s protests: “They promised me I could fly today!”
“I know, Colonel, but the weather’s bad in the zone—”
“Shatalov is flying into it!”
“Shatalov is qualified—”
“How the hell am I going to get qualified if I never get off the ground!”
Red-faced with anger, Gagarin walked right past Shiborin and me as we tried to be invisible.
We succeeded, but only for a moment. “Hey, you two!” It was our parachuting instructor. “Let’s go!”
Seated on hard metal benches, feeling the cold through three layers of clothing, we took off a few moments later. Over the clatter of the old engine, I asked Shiborin, my expert in matters aeronautical, why it was acceptable for us to fly, but not Gagarin. “The MiGs operate in a different zone, where the weather is below minimums,” he said, as if this were not the stupidest question in the world. “We’re not dropping in the same place.”
Thus soothed, I returned to my labored written record of my emotions — scribbled with frozen fingers — as we climbed higher and higher. (I looked at those notes some time later and saw that the only observation was how our exhaled breath created a mini-cloud layer in the center of the cabin.)
A horn began honking and a red light at the rear of the cabin lit up. We were almost there.
Our jump master got up and opened the door, swinging it inside the cabin and locking it open. A freezing hurricane added to the roar of the An-2’s motor. My fellow jumpers began making eager thumbs-up. All I could offer in return was a pathetic smile.
The light changed to yellow. “Left side, stand up, hook up!” the jump master commanded. Shiborin and I were in the middle of that left side. Like robots, we raised our arms, clicking our static lines into place, tugging slightly to take up the slack, as if we had been doing this for years.
“Go!” Just like that, the first jumper went out the door. We all moved up. “Go!” Next jumper. By then I had convinced myself that this was just another step on the road to the Moon—
“Go!” Shiborin vanished through the door. I began to recite my Pushkin poem, hoping I was loud enough for the instructors to hear—
“Go!”
Suddenly, without any deliberate step, I was out, falling into the wind on my back as the static line played out behind me, seeing the An-2 rising away with surprising speed—
Wham! I felt myself yanked forward, as if some giant had grabbed me by the crotch and shoulders and straightened me out.
I was no longer falling, but sinking quickly. (There was a difference in the sensation, believe me.) It took me a few moments to realize that the snowy landing zone was below me, partly hidden by wisps of cloud. That the An-2 was gone from sight and sound. Time to make the routine, or was it perfunctory, check on my canopy. I grabbed the lines extending from my shoulder harness and raised my chin.
Above me there was a nest of strings leading to a white circle. I remembered that I was supposed to disarm my emergency ’chute, and reached for the red lanyard.
Wait. I could see sky through the ’chute! One of the panels was torn.
I took a breath. Looked around me. The ground seemed to be rising slowly, perhaps it was fine—
No! With a missing panel, I would be badly injured. My instructors had been very insistent on this.
Besides, I hadn’t disarmed the backup ’chute. Was I too late? Would both ’chutes tangle like Komarov’s?