It has long been believed that Yuri Gagarin was not the first man to go into space and return to Earfh, but many believe it was Vladimir Sergeyevich Ilyushin the son of the head of the Ilyushin design bureau.
Also Aleksei Ledovsky is aledged to have been the first man in Space but perished during the flight.
Vladimir Ilyushin, son of Soviet airplane designer Sergey Ilyushin, was a Soviet pilot and is purported to have been a cosmonaut, alleged by some to have actually been the first man in space on April 7, 1961—an honor generally attributed to Yuri Gagarin on April 12, 1961.
The theories surrounding this alleged orbital flight are that a failure aboard the spacecraft caused controllers to bring the descending capsule down several orbits earlier than intended, resulting in its landing in the People's Republic of China. The pilot was then held by Chinese authorities for a year before being returned to the Soviet Union. The international embarrassment that would have resulted from such an incident is cited as the Soviets' reason for not publicizing this flight—they reportedly focused their publicizing efforts on the subsequent successful flight of Yuri Gagarin instead. This event was the subject of a recent TV Documentary.
Vladimir Ilyushin died in 2010.
For further information see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Cosmonauts
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