Yuri's Duds

Copyright 1961 Time Inc.

For the curious, and for mmcirvin: I checked with the denizens of the Flyingclothing mailing list. They inform me that Time's artist, Boris Chaliapin, accurately portrayed a Soviet Gsh-4M/MS high-altitude helmet and VKK-4 partial-pressure suit. (Not that Gagarin wore this suit on his spaceflight, but chances are Chaliapin referred to a photo of Gagarin dressed for flying jets.) As several people remarked, these items do indeed resemble what U.S. pilots were wearing in the Western stratosphere at the time.

The golden Mercury capsule, doubling as the Communist hammerhead, is just wrong. But nobody knew what a Vostok looked like, Mercury was the only single-seat space capsule of which pictures were available, and Chaliapin was facing a deadline. So I think it's a forgivable lapse.

(Here's what Ray Pioch came up with over at Life in the same week. Not bad, but it doesn't resemble a Vostok more than a Mercury does.)

Tip o' the hat to Gary "Gato" Fritts and Doc Boink for the identification!