“Until I’ve found Komarov and visited the spacecraft, I have nothing to report,” Kamanin snapped. He pointed at Tsedrik, at one of his generals, one of his colonels, then at Dubnin and me. “Come along.” And we marched toward the Mi-8, whose rotor was already beginning to turn.
Within five minutes we were in the air, and not long after that the navigator of the helicopter handed a message to Kamanin, who glanced at it, and smiled bitterly. “It’s from Vershinin himself,” he said to his aide, naming the commander in chief of the Soviet Air Force. “He wants me to go back to Orsk and call Ustinov.”
“What do I tell the pilot?” the navigator asked.
“Keep flying,” Kamanin ordered.
Which we did, for half an hour. Finally Dubnin could stand it no longer. “We should be there by now,” he said, then he hauled himself up to the cockpit.
“He’s right,” Kamanin said, following him.
It was difficult to hear over the flapping of the rotors, but Kamanin and Dubnin got into an argument with the pilot.
Moments later they were back with the rest of us, faces flushed. “Can you believe that?” Dubnin was practically screaming. “They were taking us in the wrong fucking direction!”
Kamanin overlooked Dubnin’s intemperate outburst, probably because he shared the sentiment. “Remind me to call Kutasin the moment I am back in Orsk,” he said to Tsedrik. “I look forward to hearing how a trained rescue crew can get lost in clear weather.”
Kutasin was the guy in charge of the recovery aircraft and pilots. From Kamanin’s voice, I assumed he wouldn’t be in charge much longer.
It was 11:30, three hours after Komarov’s landing, that his official welcoming team finally reached the landing site, a grassy prairie unbroken by tree or hill. The wind blew from the west, carrying a heavy, burning-chemical smell.
Our misdirection meant that a second helicopter from Orsk, carrying the rest of Kamanin’s staff, beat us. The original rescue helicopter was also still parked here. A small crowd had also gathered — workers from some nearby collective farm, a couple of soldiers in the uniform of the Rocket Force, and for some reason, a group of science students. I guess they had happened to be in the area.
Soyuz 1 itself could not be seen — not as a spacecraft, anyway. It was a smoldering lump of earth at one end of a tangled parachute. “Go to that hospital, now,” Kamanin ordered Tsedrik. “See if Komarov is there.”
Tsedrik saluted and turned back to our helicopter. Did he realize how pointless his mission was? No one could have survived this crash.
As we walked toward the wreckage, we were briefed by the pilot of the original search-and-rescue helicopter. “The farmers say the vehicle came down like a rock, twisting at the end of the ’chute, which didn’t open.” Not only one parachute, I saw, but both the primary and reserves; they had somehow deployed together. Komarov never had a chance.
“The vehicle hit, then exploded and began to burn.”
“The soft-landing rockets,” I said, though no one asked me.
“The farmers threw dirt on it, to kill the flames, but…” He shrugged. There was truly nothing more that he could say.
Dubnin grabbed a shovel from one of the onlookers and began jabbing it into the wreckage. “Careful!” I said. “The fumes are toxic.”
“I’ll hold my breath.”
In the mound of dirt and shattered metal, only one piece of the spacecraft was identifiable: the round silvery ring of the forward hatch that connected the command module and orbital module.
I got a shovel myself, and for the next hour Dubnin and I struggled to remove the earth that had been piled on the wreckage. “What did they use, a bulldozer?” Dubnin said at one point. In any other circumstances, I’d have laughed.
Eventually we were able to push the hatch ring to one side. Below it were the remains of the control panel, which had merely shattered into a mass of wires and metal fragments rather than simply burning. This conglomeration was imbedded in a completely scorched set of structures that I recognized as the crew couches. In the middle of this was a twisted, broken microphone attached to a blackened fragment of a white communications headset — and, I soon saw, a blackened lump that was all that remained of Colonel Komarov.
My father’s generation saw much of death, women and children blown to pieces by Nazi bombs, soldiers cut in half by machine-gun bullets and vaporized by artillery shells, friends who disappeared into the cellar of the Lubiyanka, and thence to some lime pit.
I had only my mother’s slow, painful deterioration to guide me. The sight of poor Komarov in his destroyed Soyuz made me weep. All I could do was point with the shovel. Dubnin signaled to Kamanin and the others—“We need a coffin!”—and I was gently moved aside as the medical team took over.
One of the farmer’s wives brought me some tea and I sat on the grass. Kamanin examined the wreckage, then, patting me on the shoulder, hurried back to his helicopter to make his horrifying report to Ustinov and the Central Committee.
After a while Dubnin sat down with me, offering a shot of the worst vodka I have ever tasted. “We have nothing left to do. They want the wreckage to stay as it is.”
“Forever?” I said, stupidly.
“Until they’ve analyzed the site.” Only then did I see that a photographer was making a record of the pathetic scene. “Some specialists from Moscow are on their way. They deal with airplane crashes.”
Our small recovery team was ignored for the next several hours, as various aircraft and vehicles arrived. Some carried members of the State Commission from Baikonur — General Kerimov, General Tyulin, General Rudenko. A lot of generals. Kamanin returned from Orsk.
Artemov came from Yevpatoriya with a group of bureau types to stand there shaking their heads.
Gagarin arrived with Artemov. He looked like a man who had lost his brother and wanted to take it out on someone. “This was your fault,” he said to Artemov.
“We don’t know whose fault this was,” Artemov replied, lamely.
“Bullshit. You broke your own rules to launch this thing because you wanted to look like a big hero for May Day. How do you like it now? Think you’re going to be made a Hero of Socialist Labor for this fuckup?”
Gagarin was a tiny man compared to Artemov but the Ukrainian shrank from him in fear. Kamanin, who wasn’t much taller than Gagarin, intervened at this point and steered the first man in space away to cool down. Artemov was left shaking with rage, pointing at Gagarin’s back. I don’t know exactly what he said, but the words “that little shit” carried to me.
It was getting dark out on the prairie, and the helicopter carrying Komarov’s coffin was ready to lift off. Kamanin ordered the official photographer, Dubnin, and me to fly with him back to Orsk. By this time I believe he had been awake for thirty hours straight; he fell asleep the moment we were in the air.
A battalion of cadets from a local military school were lined up on the runway as an honor guard as Kamanin and his aides and Dubnin and I carried the coffin to the same 11–18 that had brought us here from Baikonur about a month ago — or so it seemed that night.
Before we took off, there was another call from Moscow, from Marshal Vershinin, its contents relayed to Kamanin by one of the aides. “The marshal wants to be reassured that Komarov’s body isn’t too disfigured for an open-casket ceremony.”
For the first time all day, Kamanin’s temper exploded. He told me to open the coffin and summoned the photographer. I did as told, trying not to look at the slab of coal, perhaps the size of a human thigh, resting on white satin. “Take a picture for the marshal.” Then he turned to the aide: “Tell the marshal that the body will be cremated as soon as we reach Moscow. If he wants to view something, let him view an urn.”