Mirosław Hermaszewski (Polish: [miˈrɔswaf xɛrmaˈʂɛfski] ; 15 September 1941 – 12 December 2022) was a Polish cosmonaut, fighter plane pilot, and Polish Air Force officer. He became the first and, at the time of his death in December 2022, only Polish national to ever go to space when he flew aboard the Soviet Soyuz 30 spacecraft in 1978. He was the 89th human to reach outer space.
Early life and education Mirosław Hermaszewski was born on 15 September 1941 into a Polish family in Lipniki, formerly in the Wołyń Voivodeship of Poland, but at the time part of Reichskommissariat Ukraine, and since the end of the Second World War located in Ukraine. The youngest of Roman Hermaszewski and Kamila Bielawska's seven children, Mirosław was a survivor of the Volhynian slaughter during which the Ukrainian Insurgent Army murdered 19 members of his family, including his father when they attacked Lipniki on the night of 26–27 March 1943. At the time of the massacre, Hermaszewski was only 18 months old; the youngest victim from his family was 1½ years old, while the oldest—Hermaszewski's grandfather—was 90. Although he has since highlighted the need to depart from nationalist sentiments and to accept responsibility for the genocide, Hermaszewski also condemned discrimination of the Ukrainian nation as a whole based on the actions of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army and the Ukrainian villagers who aided them in the murders. In an April 2015 interview with NaTemat.pl about the massacres, he was quoted as saying:
As a child, I suffered a lot due to what the Banderites did to us. But I have no grudge against the Ukrainians as a nation. I have many friends among them who publicly condemned these crimes long ago. But someone out there, in western Ukraine, keeps setting alight the petard of nationalism. Hermaszewski pointed out that after his mother barely escaped with her life from Lipniki, it was Ukrainian women from a neighbouring village who were acquainted with her that had given her shelter and looked after her during the ethnic cleansing of Poles and Jews from the region. He also recalled how his mother told him of many Ukrainians that took Poles in and cared for them during this period. After the incorporation of former Polish territory into the Ukrainian SSR at the end of the war, those of Hermaszewski's family who survived were forcibly deported to Wołów near Wrocław, where he completed elementary and high school. From a young age he was interested in aviation, being a skillful self-taught modeller. In 1960, he completed a gliding pilotage course in the Wrocław Aeroklub. He flew at the airports in Oleśnica, Jeżów Sudecki, on the Żar mountain, and in Lisie Kąty.
Military career
Hermaszewski finished his airplane pilotage course in Grudziądz in 1961, and in autumn of the same year started studying to be a fighter plane pilot at the "School of Eaglets" in Dęblin. There he mastered the TS-8 Bies trainer aircraft and then earned permission to fly the MiG-15 jet fighter. After graduating from the academy in March 1964 at the top of his class, he was assigned to the air defence regiment in Poznań with the rank of podporucznik and continued to study at the General Staff Academy in Warsaw; he learned to fly the MiG-21. In the years that followed, he continued to train while serving the Polish Air Force as the commander of squadrons and regiments in Słupsk, Gdynia and Wrocław. In 1971, he graduated from the Świerczewski Military Academy. Over the course of his military career, Hermaszewski piloted gliders and training aircraft such as the aforementioned TS-8 Bies, the CSS-13, the TS-11 Iskra, and the PZL-130 Orlik, various piston engine airplanes like the Yak-18, as well as a plethora of jets – such as the MiG-15, MiG-17, Polish derivatives of the latter, several versions of the MiG-21, the F-16, F-18, Mirage 2000-5, the Su-27, MiG-29 and others.
Interkosmos programme
In 1976, he was chosen from a pool of 500 Polish military pilots to take part in the Interkosmos space programme. The group of candidates, who initially were not informed about what they were being selected and psychologically tested for, was narrowed down to 120, then just five, and eventually from an elite selection of only several pilots Hermaszewski was finally picked with Zenon Jankowski as his backup to participate in the Soyuz 30 mission. For a period of almost two years, they underwent extensive training for theoretical expertise, physical endurance, and resistance to mental stress (among various other factors) at the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Star City, near Moscow. Besides training in weightless conditions, psychological trials took place as well with candidates at one point having to complete 998 tests in one day. In late June 1978, together with Soviet cosmonaut Pyotr Klimuk from Belarus, Hermaszewski flew from the Baikonur Cosmodrome to spend eight days aboard the Salyut 6 space station (from 17:27 on 27 June to 16:31 on 5 July 1978). The latter fulfilled the role of deck engineer, while the former (having performed two space missions up to this point) served as commander. Minutes before the launch of their spacecraft, Hermaszewski said:
… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.
