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Comment by huhtenberg | Hacker News Reader

For what it's worth, I first learned of Gagarin's death in mid-80s from my grandmother who told me, plain and simple, that his plane was caught in a jet wash of another plane. Perhaps it's good to have the cause formally declassified, but it was already a common knowledge back in Soviet times.

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Some version of the jet-wash explanation seems to have been made public in 1988. Here's a contemporary New York Times summary of some February 1988 Pravda articles: http://www.nytimes.com/1988/02/07/us/soviet-lifting-veil-on-...

That report, which Leonov was a co-author of, identified the other plane as a MiG-21, not a Su-15, but otherwise seems pretty similar to this account.

I'm not sure why RT here is reporting Leonov's updated version of events as if it were just now made public, either. He published this version (involving the low-flying Su-15 passing within 10-20 meters) at least as early as 2004, since it appears in English in his co-written book Two Sides of the Moon (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0312308663/ref=as_li_ss_tl?... ; Chapter 8).

It's RT's M.O. to gin up controversy, isn't it?

Leonov held a press conference and his claim is that he's had access to additional documents that back his theory. Unfortunately the documents themselves haven't been released so this mostly amounts to Leonov re-iterating his position.

The story itself is covered widely by Russian media so while you're right about RT in general, in this particular case, the RT thing is incidental.

I don't find it all that different from the BBC or US network news in that respect. TV news substitutes drama for actual journalism most of the time.

I wish RT would broadcast more stuff about Russia - it's an interesting and under-reported country.

Every time I turn it on, though, they seem to either be slating the United States or peddling conspiracy theories off the internet. It's strange. I'd watch it if they talked about their own country.

Yup, an account of this incident was also published in "Starman" by Jamie Doran and Piers Bizony, published in 1998 -- a biography of Yuri Gagarin. Only they pointed the finger at a low-flying Su-11, based on reports that surfaced in public in 1995 ...

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Starman-Truth-Behind-Legend-Gagarin/...

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