Soyuz 2A - Crew

Crew

As with the Voshkod flights the crew organization became under the control of several different departments, with on one side the director of cosmonaut training Nikolai Kamanin and on the other Vasily Mishin, director of the design engineering department OKB-1.

Since 1965 Kamanin had eight cosmonauts in training for Soyuz missions. Four had already been in space: Yuri Gagarin, Andrian Nikolayev, Valery Bykovsky, and Vladimir Komarov. Viktor Gorbatko and Yevgeny Khrunov had been with the program since 1960 but had not flown into space, while Anatoli Voronov and Pyotr Kolodin also had no space experience and had been with the program since 1963.

Mishin decided to train suitable engineers in his own department as cosmonauts and then nominate them for Soyuz crews. In May 1966 Sergei Anokhin, Aleksei Yeliseyev and Valeri Kubasov, along with five additional engineers, where added to the group of cosmonauts.

A further candidate for mission commander was Georgi Beregovoi, who became a cosmonaut in 1964 due to the promotion of Marshal Rudenko into the group of cosmonauts. Furthermore Beregovoi was an excellent text pilot, however, he was larger and heavier than the other cosmonauts and he also exceeded the maximum age.

The crew assignments were constantly changed. Poor organization also played a role, for in the case of Anokhin there was no spacesuit available for him.

In August 1966 it was decided that Soyuz 1 and Soyuz 2 would be commanded by Komarov and Bykovsky respectively, with Gagarin and Nikolayev as their backups. Two additional crew members would be selected from Anokhin, Yeliseyev, Khrunov and Gorbatko.

This decision was not final, however. The decision regarding the crew escalated to the Central Committee, and in November they issued a dispatch stating that Soyuz 1 should be flown by Komorov, with Gagarin as backup. Soyuz 2 should be commanded by Bykovsky with Nikolayev as backup. Therefore Beregovoi would not have a space flight until Soyuz 3. As for the two cosmonauts who would transfer after docking from Soyuz 2 to Soyuz 1, Khrunov and Yeliseyev where selected with Gorbatko and Kubasov as their backups. That meant three of the four spots were taken by experienced cosmonauts, while the fourth was taken by an engineer, and Khrunov had already served as a backup for Alexei Leonov during the Voskhod 2 mission.