The forgotten cosmonaut (192)

<p>This week it&apos;s the 60th anniversary of the flight of Gherman Titov on Vostok 2. The forgotten 2nd cosmonaut overshadowed by the exploits of his friend Yuri Gagarin.</p><p>Titov’s 25.3 hours and 17 orbits flight was much more ambitious than Gagarin’s and more dangerous. It was also a very political flight, intending to distract the world from the building of the Berlin Wall a number of days later. </p><p>However, there’s more to Titov than his flight, he was different character to most of the Soviet cosmonauts with a love of pre-Soviet literary classics and enjoying his own company.</p><p>He was also one of the most colourful characters of the Soviet space program leading a wild life back on Earth with various car crashes and scrapes. </p><p>I’m sure regular listeners will be pleased to hear  we have Stephen Walker back, the author of <a href='https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0008372500/ref=as_li_qf_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=cwcp-21'>Beyond: The Astonishing Story of the First Human to Leave Our Planet and Journey into Space.</a><br/><br/>Do check out our  previous episode on Yuri Gagarin, the first human in space here <a href='https://coldwarconversations.com/episode172/'>https://coldwarconversations.com/episode172/</a></p><p><b><em>I’m asking listeners to support my work and enable me to continue recording these incredible stories. If you become a monthly supporter via Patreon, you will get the sought after CWC coaster as a thank you and bask in the warm glow of knowing you are helping to preserve Cold War history.</em></b></p><p><b><em>Just go to </em></b><a href='https://coldwarconversations.com/donate/'><b><em>https://coldwarconversations.com/donate/</em></b></a></p><p>If you can’t wait for next week’s episode do visit our Facebook discussion group where guests and listeners continue the Cold War Conversation. Just search Cold War Conversations in Facebook.</p><p>I am delighted to welcome Stephen Walker back to our Cold War conversation…</p><p>There’s further information on this episode in our show