Yuri Gagarin's Death Finally Solved: Former Cosmonaut Reveals Details of Crash

Yuri Gagarin was the first man in space, claiming the historic title after being launched into orbit by the Soviet Union. Yet only seven years later on March 27 1968, Gagarin made another flight--and this one was fatal. Gagarin and his flight instructor, Vladimir Seryogin, entered a tailspin in their MiG-15 and crashed near the town of Novoselovo near Moscow.

This event, while tragic, wouldn't have been all that remarkable were it not for the wealth of conspiracy theories surrounding the incident. The official report was that flight controllers probably told the pilots that a certain patch of weather was higher than it really was. This left the two men little time to recover from a spin, according to Space.com. While that was the official report, though, rumors were widely circulated. Some believed that the pilots were being irresponsible by trying to shoot deer from the cockpit. Others thought the aircraft was sabotaged and still others believed that they had been intoxicated or that someone had left a hatch open and they had passed out from lack of oxygen.

So what's the real story? Alexei Leonov, who became the first man to take a spacewalk in 1965, has the answer. He's finally speaking out about the incident after receiving permission from the government.  During the day of Gagarin's death, Leonov reported hearing two booming sounds. The cause of the first one was a mystery, but the second one was obviously the crash. It turns out that, in fact, the origin of the first boom was another aircraft.

In an interview with Russia Today, Leonov said that a Sukhoi fighter jet, which was being tested that day, flew too low and too close to Gagarin's MiG. This caused the two pilots to be unable to recover in time before their fatal tailspin and crash.

"We knew that a Su-15 was scheduled to be tested that day, but it was supposed to be flying at the altitude of 10,000 meters or higher, not 450 to 500 meters," said Leonov to the television channel. "It was a violation of the flight procedure."

What really grates at Leonov, though, is the fact that the government covered up what had happened. In the interview with Russia Today, he said that he believes that the cover up was to hide the fact that the lapse occurred so close to Moscow. Previously, the former cosmonaut had only hinted at the other jet theory in his book, which was released in 2004.

Now, though, he's finally been able to go public with his information. The only detail that Leonov can't release, though, is the name of the pilot of the jet during that fateful day. The former pilot is now 80 and in poor health.

"I was asked to not disclose the pilot's name," Leonov said to Space.com. "He is a good test pilot...It will fix nothing."