In the first squad
Valentin Bondarenko’s life path before joining the cosmonaut corps mirrored the early years of Yuri Gagarin. Born into a working-class family in 1937, three years younger than Gagarin, he endured the German occupation in childhood and grew up with his family in Kharkov. After finishing school, he pursued aviation, yet his first attempts to enter a flight school did not go smoothly. He was rejected by one school, accepted by another, only to be dispersed again. In the circles tied to aviation, such misfortunes were sometimes interpreted as a bad omen: the message seemed to be clear—do not fly.
Yet Bondarenko had been active at a flying club since school days and was not willing to quit. He eventually enrolled in the Armavir Military School and became a fighter pilot in 1957, though his military service proved brief.
On May 22, 1959, a decision from the Central Committee of the CPSU and the Council of Ministers of the USSR announced the creation of the first cosmonaut corps as part of the program to prepare humans for spaceflight. At 23, Bondarenko became the youngest member of this pioneering group.
Like Gagarin, Bondarenko excelled as a pilot and was known for his diligence and energetic temperament. He was remembered by fellow cosmonauts for knocking on doors every morning to rally everyone to exercise. He welcomed friendly jokes, laughing along and never taking himself too seriously. A former cosmonaut, Alexei Leonov, recalled that Bondarenko possessed extraordinary courage and determination.
Colleagues recount a vivid incident from Bondarenko’s life: he once saw a boy clinging to a fourth-floor window ledge and was overcome with fear for the child. Bondarenko rapidly crawled through a sewer pipe and pulled the boy to safety. The careful construction of the building and Bondarenko’s own slight frame played a part in his successful rescue.
Tragic fire
Some retellings cast Bondarenko’s death in sensational terms, suggesting that he would have led the first spaceflight and died during preparations. This version is not accurate. The first fatality within the cosmonaut program occurred at the Institute of Aerospace Medicine in Moscow, then known as NII-7 Air Force, and it happened well before any launch decision. The decision to push ahead with the flight plan was influenced by news about a potential American mission, and the crew selection for Vostok 1 and its reserve was made four days prior to the historic launch on April 12, with the core six including Gagarin, Titov, Nelyubov, Nikolayev, Popovich, and Bykovsky, excluding Bondarenko.
The fatal accident occurred during a hyperbaric training session on March 22, 1961. The cosmonauts trained to endure challenging conditions by spending extended periods alone inside a pressure chamber, simulating ascent to higher altitudes. Bondarenko began a ten-day session, and the chamber was set to mimic flight without a pressurized cabin at roughly four kilometers altitude. Oxygen delivery was carefully regulated, but the exact balance of inhaled oxygen presented a critical variable for the body in altered atmospheric conditions. The goal was to acclimate the team to the stresses of space travel.
During the procedure, Bondarenko removed the sensors attached to him, cleaned the skin with alcohol, and discarded the equipment without a second glance. An intense flame erupted inside the chamber when oxygen-rich air mixed with high heat contact. The scenario was watched closely by a pair of on-site technicians and television cameras, yet the doors remained locked as the fire spread. Immediate attempts to equalize pressure and open the chamber failed. Bondarenko, receiving medical attention only after a frantic response, collapsed into the arms of the doctors and uttered his final words. He assigned no blame to others, accepting responsibility for the accident.
The burns covered a substantial portion of his body, and survival was deemed virtually impossible. When Bondarenko’s wife, Anna, visited him in hospital, he bid her farewell. Doctors considered a skin graft, but he passed away the next day, March 23, due to the injuries sustained in the blaze.
From friends of pilot cosmonauts
Bondarenko’s death prompted a comprehensive review of fire safety during testing. Since then, no astronaut has perished or suffered a serious injury during training in similar conditions. He was laid to rest in Kharkov as a military pilot, with no stated cause of death on the records at the time. It was only during Perestroika that a note from the “friends of cosmonaut pilots” appeared on his tombstone. A lunar crater near Gagarin and Tsiolkovsky carries Bondarenko’s name, and his memory is honored on the memorial list of space explorers at Cape Canaveral in the United States.
For decades, the circumstances surrounding Bondarenko’s death remained tightly confidential. Yuri Gagarin and others spoke of a different version of events at public venues, including a press conference in the United Nations in 1963, which contributed to later reexaminations in space history. The broader parallels with later space program incidents, such as the Apollo 1 fire in the United States during lunar mission preparations, underscored the constant vigilance required for crew safety and the handling of oxygen-rich environments in high-stress testing.