Against the background of numerous publications of domestic researchers about the Eastern troops in 1941-1945. a number of plots related to the history of the combat use of Russian volunteers in the German Air Force (Luftwaffe, hereinafter in the text of the article - LW) remain little known. One of the first eastern volunteer units in LW was a technical company (about 200 people) in the airfield maintenance battalion in Smolensk, formed in the spring of 1942. The company consisted of technical specialists who were used for auxiliary work. In 1942, other similar units arose - the Caucasian field battalion under the 4th Air Force, the propagandist company under the 6th Air Force, etc.

Probably, the first attempt to form a Russian flying unit can be associated with the initiative taken in early August 1942 by a group of former commanders of the Red Army from the cadres of the Abwehrgroup - 203 - This division of the Abwehr, for the formation of which volunteers from the camps were involved prisoners of war, was in the village of Osintorf near Orsha and is better known as the Russian National People's Army (RNNA). One of the initiators of the creation of the flight unit at the RNNA was the captain of the Red Army Air Force F. I. Ripushinsky, the squadron commander of the 13th aviation regiment of high-speed bombers, who was shot down in an air battle in 1941 and entered the RNNA from a prisoner of war camp . In the 4th battalion of Colonel A. N. Vysotsky (Kobzev) there was a group of former pilots whom the commandant of the central headquarters, Colonel K. G. Kromiadi (Sanin) could not use in combat positions due to their peculiar service specialization. Major Filatov, one of Ripushinsky's associates, submitted to the chief of staff of the RNNA, Major V.F. Ril and Colonel K.G. Initially, it was planned to conduct theoretical classes with specialists, and in the future - to ask the headquarters of the Army Group Center in Smolensk to transfer the trophy materiel to the detachment. Despite Riel's skepticism, Kromiadi supported the pilots and gave permission for the formation of a group under personal responsibility. The group included 9 pilots, 3 navigators, 4 gunner-radio operators, 6 engineers and technicians. As teaching aids, they were delivered to Osintorf educational materials Mogilev flying club.

On September 1, 1942, the former commander of the 41st Rifle Division, Colonel V.G. He tried to stop the unsanctioned rally, fearing that Ripushinsky and Filatov's arbitrariness might damage the brigade as a whole. However, a number of other senior officers of the RNNA (A. N. Vysotsky, majors of the Red Army A. L. Bezrodny, A. M. Bocharov (Bugrov), N. P. Nikolaev) convinced Boyarsky not to touch the air group. In early September 1942, classes began on the theory of aviation and flight, navigation, meteorology, the study of materiel, etc. The group continued to exist informally until February 1943, when the Osintorf brigade was finally liquidated from its subsequent reorganization into the 700th Eastern Volunteer Regiment.

The issue of creating an active front-line flight unit, due to the specific conditions for its recruitment and existence, could only be resolved with the active participation of the German side. Moreover, in the history of the Red Army Air Force there were airmen - a phenomenon unprecedented for the traditions of Russian aviation. Flights from the USSR abroad for political reasons

happened in the 1920s and 1930s. On February 1, 1927, the commander of the 17th air squadron Klim, a former ensign of the Russian army, and the senior mechanic Timashchuk flew to Poland in the same plane. True, the latter appeared on February 22 at the Soviet embassy and returned to his homeland, where on May 8 he was sentenced to death, but, given the "sincere repentance", the court commuted the sentence to 6 years in the camps. The further fate of the minder is unknown. Klim received a residence permit in Poland in the name of Rubletsky and then served as a referent for the Polish press. In 1934, G. N. Kravets flew to the territory of the Republic of Latvia from the LenVO, in 1938, on a U-2 plane, to the territory of the Republic of Lithuania, the head of the Luga flying club, senior lieutenant V. O. Unishevsky. By 1943, according to I. Hoffmann, 66 aircraft of the Red Army Air Force flew to the side of the enemy on the Soviet-German front, and in the first quarter of 1944 another 20 were added. Among the "air defectors" 1941-1943. we will name Captain V.K. Rublevik, who flew to the Germans on the LAGG-3, Lieutenant O. Sokolov, who flew on the MiG-3, Senior Lieutenant V.V. Shiyan and others. Shiyan in 1941 - 1943 participated on the Eastern Front in combat operations as part of a special group of four aircraft. According to the newspaper "Voice of Crimea" (Simferopol), on May 10, 1943, a Yak-7 fighter landed in the Pskov region, in which there were two pilots (senior lieutenant Boris A., born in 1915 and Peter F. ), allegedly flying over under the influence of Vlasov leaflets. This episode still needs to be clarified.

The initiative to create an aviation unit from captured Soviet pilots and airmen belonged to the head of the Vostok (Auswertestelle Ost) intelligence processing center of the OKL (Oberkommando der Luftwaffe) headquarters, Lieutenant Colonel G. Holters. Holters took part in the interrogations of downed Soviet pilots and high-ranking prisoners of war from the summer of 1941. On July 18, 1941, he interrogated Senior Lieutenant Ya. I. Dzhugashvili. Probably, he was prompted by the analysis of the materials of interrogations and conversations, in which various manifestations of dissatisfaction with the Soviet socio-political system were recorded, to the idea of ​​​​the combat use of part of the prisoner-of-war pilots. The range of tasks solved by AWSt. / Ost included interviews of captured pilots, prompt processing of the information received, as well as an analysis of the political and moral state of the respondents. Among the active employees of AWSt. / Ost, it is worth mentioning Lieutenants LW O. Geller and A A Jodl, Professor Bader, as well as regular commanders of the Red Army, the hero of the Chelyuskin epic, the commander of the 503rd assault aviation regiment, Lieutenant Colonel B. A. Pivenshtein, captains K Arzamastsev, A. Nikulin and Tananaki. Functioned AWSt. / Ost in East Prussia in the village of Moritzfelde near Insterburg. In September 1943, Holters proposed the creation of a Russian aviation group (Russisches Fleigergruppe, hereinafter - RAG), later known as the "Holters group". Having received permission, at the end of September-September 1943, Holters began to implement his plan. Colonel V. I. Maltsev of the Red Army Air Force became his first indispensable assistant and Russian leader of the action.

Viktor Ivanovich Maltsev was born on April 13/25, 1895 in Gus-Khrustalny, Vladimir province, into a peasant family. Maltsev joined the Red Army voluntarily and in 1919 graduated from the Yegoryevsk flight school, becoming one of the first military pilots of the RKKVF. During the Civil War he was wounded. At the Yegorievsk school in 1922-1923. he was the instructor of V.P. Chkalov. In 1925-1927. Maltsev served as head of the Moscow Central Airfield, and from February 1927 he served in the Air Force Directorate of the Siberian Military District (SibVO). In 1931, Maltsev became the head of the Air Force of the Siberian Military District, and was later transferred to the reserve. By order of the People's Commissar of Defense No. 1916 of November 26, 1936, he was awarded military rank aviation colonel. In 1937, Maltsev headed the Turkmen Directorate of the Civil Air Fleet of the USSR. In the winter of 1938, Maltsev was presented for the award of the Order of Lenin for the leadership and development of civil aviation in the Turkmen SSR, but the colonel did not manage to receive the order. On March 11, 1938, he was arrested by the NKVD on charges of participating in a "military fascist conspiracy" and on March 27 he was dismissed from the ranks of the Red Army Air Force. Under investigation, Maltsev was kept in the Ashgabat UNKVD, where he was subjected to constant beatings, interrogations in the form of a "conveyor" and other tortures, but he did not sign any "confessions" fabricated by the investigators and courageously endured the features of the Stalinist "criminal trial". ". This circumstance saved his life on the eve of Beriev's short-term "liberalization" of 1939. On September 5, 1939, Maltsev was released, then reinstated in rank, and in July 1940 - in the ranks of the CPSU (b). The party membership of the pilot was subjected to various tests during his service in the army. Maltsev joined the Communist Party during the Civil War in 1919, but in 1921 he was expelled from the party on suspicion of being related to Maltsev, a large millionaire factory owner in the Vladimir province. In 1925, Maltsev was reinstated in the RCP(b) and expelled a second time after the arrest of the NKVD 13 years later.

The release and rehabilitation did not bring satisfaction to Maltsev, he was suspended from flying and in fact deprived of the right to return to service in military aviation.

On December 1, 1939, Maltsev took a quiet and inconspicuous position as head of the Aeroflot sanatorium in the resort of Yalta. Here he met his future wife Antonina Mikhailovna. In fact, Maltsev was given the opportunity to improve his health and recuperate after the torture in the Ashgabat UNKVD, but by that time, a fierce rejection of the socio-economic system that had developed in the country, bordering on hatred, was firmly rooted in the mind of the pilot. As he himself later wrote: “The best ideals turned out to be spat upon. But the most bitter thing was the realization that all my life I had been a blind instrument of Stalin's political adventures. During an interrogation on February 1, 1946, an investigator from the SMERSH Main Directorate of Counterintelligence, Maltsev, sharply stated that his arrival with the Germans was due to "his anti-Soviet convictions, in order to fight against the Soviet regime together with them."

After the German attack on the Soviet Union, Mal-tsev did not hesitate for long. On October 28, 1941, three divisions of the LIV Army Corps of the 11th Army of the Wehrmacht broke into the Crimea. Having taken refuge from the hasty evacuation of Yalta, on the very first day of the occupation on November 8, 1941, V. I. Maltsev, in the form of a colonel of the Red Army Air Force, appeared at the German commandant's office, explained the reasons for his action and immediately proposed the creation of an anti-Stalinist volunteer battalion. It is curious that until May 1943, the heads of the Main Directorate of the Civil Air Fleet of the USSR were sure that Maltsev "according to verified information" was in one of the partisan detachments of the Crimea, occupying a "leading position" in it. However, on June 14, 1943, the secretary of the Crimean Regional Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, Leshchiner, reported that the head of the Yalta sanatorium of Aeroflot was not on the lists of Crimean partisans, but died during the evacuation from Yalta in November 1941. on the ship "Armenia", which sank after the bombing. Why the Crimean communists misled Moscow, knowing for sure about Maltsev's open anti-Soviet activities, remains unclear.

The first meeting with potential "allies" turned out to be completely unexpected for Maltsev - from the commandant's office he went ... to a prisoner of war camp, where he spent several days. In mid-November 1941, Maltsev met with SS Hauptsturmführer Heinz, who offered him to work on identifying Soviet party activists in Yalta, but the dubious proposal was resolutely refused - Maltsev referred to "ignorance of the residents." He did not receive a clear answer to his repeated proposals for the creation of a volunteer battalion. He was released from captivity. From December 1941 to June 1942, at the suggestion of the propaganda department of the headquarters of the 11th Army of the Wehrmacht, Maltsev wrote memoirs in Yalta about his experiences in 1938-1939. in the dungeons of the Ashgabat NKVD. In June 1942, the manuscript was handed over in Simferopol to Dr. Maurakh, the head of the propaganda department, and a month later it was published in an edition of 50,000 copies under the catchy title "Conveyor of the GPU." In Russian, Belarusian and Ukrainian, the book was distributed in the occupied territories and had some success. March 9, 1942

V. I. Maltsev took over the affairs of the Yalta city administration and for two months served as the mayor of the city, organizing the daily life of Yalta and the work of public services. Colonel Kump, the military commandant of Yalta, removed Maltsev from the post of burgomaster, motivating his decision by the party past of the burgomaster - even former communists, according to Kump, could not occupy such a responsible post. Since October 1942, Maltsev was the Yalta magistrate, often spoke with propagandist anti-Stalinist speeches at meetings of the local intelligentsia in Evpatoria, Simferopol, Yalta.

The decisive turning point in the fate of Maltsev came in the spring of 1943 in connection with the distribution in the occupied territories of an open letter from the former deputy commander of the Volkhov Front and commander of the 2nd Shock Army, Lieutenant General A. A. Vlasov “Why did I stand on way to fight Bolshevism. On March 18, 1943, this letter was published by the newspaper of the Simferopol city self-government “Voice of Crimea”, and it aroused certain hopes among that part of the Crimean intelligentsia that collaborated to one degree or another with the occupation authorities. The publication of the letter was perceived as a long-awaited step in the creation of a Russian military-political center. On May 28, 1943, Maltsev wrote a response to Vlasov's letter of appeal, published by Golos Krym on June 4. In his letter, Maltsev wrote in particular: “Prison forged me too. Sitting in it, I observed a lot, changed my mind and experienced all the delights of the “Stalinist” care of the people [..] It became clear to everyone that along with the tormented bodies their souls were trampled ... The result of all this revaluation, a firm decision was born to fight against this system of deceit and lies.

Throughout the spring of 1943, Maltsev persistently tried to achieve a transfer to the "Vlasov army", but even the headquarters of the eastern volunteer units of the 11th Wehrmacht Army in Simferopol could not tell her whereabouts. At the end of June 1943, at the suggestion of the headquarters, Maltsev began in Evpatoria to form the 55th volunteer battalion to fight partisans, numbering about 500 ranks. In August 1943, the formation of the battalion was completed, for the efforts made, Maltsev was awarded bronze and silver medals for the Eastern peoples. The battalion’s belonging to the Eastern troops of the Wehrmacht or national formations needs to be clarified, but at least the “Voice of Crimea” wrote that the battalion formed in Evpatoria, in which a large anti-Soviet rally took place on August 15, belonged to the ROA (that is, to the Eastern troops of the Wehrmacht).

Continuing to seek transfer to the disposal of Vlasov, Maltsev arrived on August 20 at a special interrogation camp of the Eastern troops in Letzen. Soon, the General of the Volunteer Forces, Lieutenant-General X. Gelmikh, met with him here, who later recommended Maltsev and Holters to each other. In mid-September 1943, Maltsev personally met Lieutenant Colonel G. Holters and his adjutant A. A. Iodl. In the end, Holters fully provided Maltsev with the selection of technical and flight personnel for the I eastern LW squadron, and Maltsev agreed to participate in the creation of the squadron, hoping that in due time it would serve as the basis for the deployment of the ROA Air Force. Lieutenant of the ROA Mikhail Vasilievich Garnovsky, the son of a colonel in the Russian army, who participated in the White movement in the South of Russia, became his closest assistant. In October 1943, Mal-tsev, accompanied by Jodl, visited a number of prisoner-of-war camps run by the OKL: in Lodz, Wolfen, Hammelburg and Haseltal. For volunteers recruited into the RAG, Holters created a special "quarantine" camp in Suwalki, where pilots, flight engineers and technicians were sent. Here they underwent a medical examination, many hours of interviews and psychological tests, Maltsev spoke with each individually. Those who passed the selection were transferred to Moritzfeld, where the RAG was directly located.

Formally, the group arose at the end of September 1943 and was staffed by fifteen volunteer pilots who were registered in the ROA Among the pilots was Senior Lieutenant Bronislav Romanovich Antilevsky, holder of the Order of Lenin and Hero Soviet Union. Antilevsky was born in 1916 in the village of Markovtsy, Ozersk district, and came from peasants in the Kovno province. After graduating from the College of Economic Accounting on October 3, 1937, he entered the service in the Red Army. He graduated from the Monino School of Special Purpose Aviation in 1938, and participated in the Soviet-Finnish war of 1939-1940. and April 7, 1940 was awarded the order Lenin with the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. In 1941, Antilevsky graduated from the Kachinsky Red Banner Military Aviation School. A. Myasnikov and from April 1942 he participated in the hostilities on the Western Front. In 1943, with the rank of senior lieutenant, he served as deputy commander of the squadron squadron of the 20th Fighter Regiment of the 303rd Fighter Aviation Division of the 1st Air Army. On August 28, 1943, Antilevsky was shot down in an air battle and taken prisoner, soon becoming acquainted with Maltsev, who made a strong impression with his inner conviction and energy. At the end of 1943, under the direct influence of Maltsev, Antilevsky became not only a RAG pilot, but also one of the specialists in anti-Stalinist propaganda in prisoner of war camps. The ranks of the RAG participated in the transfer of Luftwaffe aircraft from military factories to the airfields of the Eastern Front, studied the material part of German aviation. In particular, Antilevsky in March 1944 underwent retraining near Berlin on German fighters.

In total, until May 1944, three groups for aircraft ferrying functioned as part of the RAG, two of which included 10 pilots each, and one 8. By the end of November 1943, M.V. captain of the ROA, completed the recruitment of personnel, and on December 3, 1943, the I Eastern Aviation Squadron LW completed its formation. All the volunteers selected by Tarnovsky were members of the RAG. Under the command of Tarnovsky, the squadron flew out of Moritzfelde and relocated to the Dvinsk region, where from January 1944 it was part of the Ostland night battle group (11th Estonian wing: 3 squadrons, 12th Latvian wing: 2 squadrons) at the 1st Air Fleet LW, and in March 1944 it became subordinate to the headquarters of the 6th Air Fleet in the Lida area. Es-quadrilla was initially equipped with 9 captured U-2, Gota-145 and Ar-66 aircraft, and later, after losses and replenishments, there were 12 aircraft in it. At the beginning of the summer of 1944, the Russian flight and technical staff consisted of 79 ranks, including 14 pilots and navigators, 6 gunners.

Until July 1944, the pilots of the squadron took part in aerial photography of the area, reconnaissance flights, detection and air attacks on partisan camps, destruction of partisan bases and individual objects from the air in the Dvinsk region, in Nalibokskaya Pushcha, south of Molodechno, on the river. Neman between Lida and Minsk. Combat missions were assigned by anti-partisan officers at the headquarters of the 1st and 6th LW fleets, as well as by the Dvinsk field commandant's office. The combat use of the squadron th - to a large extent justified itself. In total, before disbanding in the summer of 1944, the ranks of the squadron made at least 500 sorties, each of them had an average of 35 to 50 sorties. According to Tarnovsky, as a result of intensive operations of the 1st LW eastern squadron, “the partisans had to make considerable room for » . The irretrievable losses of the squadron during the period of stay at the front from December 1943 to July 1944 amounted to 3 aircraft, 9 pilots, navigators and gunners, and 12 ranks of the squadron were injured.

Several reasons led to the disbandment of the squadron in late July - early August 1944. From the spring of 1944, Captain Tarnovsky more and more sharply conflicted with the LW liaison officer at the squadron, Ober-Lieutenant V. Duus, regarding the open sabotage by the military-political circles of Germany of the full-fledged deployment of the Vlasov army and the Russian political center, as well as disastrous consequences of the eastern occupation policy. Tarnovsky's membership in the NTS also played a negative role. Despite the fact that Tarnovsky did not conduct any allied propaganda among his subordinates, membership in the Union sufficiently compromised him before the Germans. By the summer of 1944, the NTS had finally lost political support and cover from the members of the anti-Hitler opposition, and the Gestapo and the SD were preparing repressive actions against members of the NTS. As a result, in June 1944, Captain M. V. Tarnovsky was removed from his post and sent on vacation to Pilsen (Czech Republic). The command was temporarily taken over by Lieutenant V.V. Shiyan. Tarnovsky's vacation expired on July 20, 1944, but instead of returning to the squadron, he was sent to Moritzfeld, where he began to develop the staff of a new Russian aviation reserve training group. On July 28, 1944, an associate of Tarnovsky, the squadron chief of staff, captain V.O. Unishevsky, died in a plane crash. Among some ranks of the squadron, suspicions arose of involvement in the catastrophe of the Germans, and after the death of Unishevsky, three of the 12 crews flew over to the side of the partisans. This incident led to the disbandment of the I Air Squadron LW, whose ranks were interned in Ciechanów, north of Warsaw.

Materials for the staffing of the 1st LW Eastern Squadron in the VI Air Fleet (as of May 1944)

Squadron commander: Captain Mikhail Vasilyevich Tarnovsky.

Chief of Staff: Captain Vladimir Osipovich (Joseph-vich-?) Unishevsky.

Communications Officer LW: Lieutenant Vikand Duus.

Deputy squadron commander: lieutenant Vasily Vasilyevich Shiyan.

Deputy Chief of Staff: Lieutenant Petr Ivanovich Pesigolovets.

Pilots: Captain Vladimir Kirillovich Rublevik;

lieutenants - Vladimir Moskalets, Panteleimon Vladimirovich Chkauseli;

second lieutenants - Aram Sergeevich Karapetyan, Alexander Nikolaevich Skobchenko, Alexander Mikhailovich Solovyov, Viktor Ivanovich Cherepanov.

Navigators: second lieutenants - Yuri Gorsky, Konstantin Konstantinovich Mishin, Nikolai Kirillovich Nazarenko, Vladimir Strokun.

Side shooters: non-commissioned officers Mikhail Ivanovich Grishaev, Vasily Zubarev, Konstantin Sorokin;

Art. sergeant major Ivan Ivanovich Nikonorov;

sergeant majors - Dmitry Kuznetsov, Alexey Chuyanov.

Squadron Engineer: Lieutenant Pyotr Nikolaevich Shendrik.

Squadron Technician: Lieutenant Vasily Ivanovich Trunov.

Unit technicians: sergeant majors Mikhail Mikhailovich Baranov, Alexander Razumov, Pyotr Rodionov.

Mechanics units: non-commissioned officers - Alexander Donetsk, Nikolai Masalsky, Vladimir Sereda;

sergeant majors - Viktor Krakhin, Vladimir Laptev.

Squadron gunsmith: non-commissioned officer Nikolai Mukhin.

Parachute stacker: Art. sergeant major Dmitry Shevchuk.

Colonel V. I. Maltsev in the first half of 1944 spent most of his time in Moritzfeld in the RAG camp. He formed 3 groups to ferry aircraft from factories to front-line airfields, he prepared a number of propaganda speeches and statements, recruited pilots of prisoners of war in the camps of Südauen-Süd (Poland) and Gross Mariengof (Germany). A specialist in the history of military aviation during the Second World War, Dr. Karl Geust (Helsinki), informed the author that German documents confirm the service of 20-25 former Soviet pilots in the unit (squadron-league?) 3. Staffel / Gruppe Ziid des Flugzeuguberfuhrungs- geschwaders 1 as of May 1944. The duties of the military included ferrying Bf 109 (Me 109) fighters from factories to LW front-line airfields. There are known cases of disasters in which former Soviet pilots died while performing official tasks. It is possible that we can also talk about the death of a pilot as a result of air battles, this is especially likely in the last two cases.

List of former Soviet pilots who died on duty in the Luftwaffe

1. Lieutenant Alexei Chasovnikov from Novosibirsk - September 3, 1944 near Arber;
2. Petty officer (in 1944 - lieutenant of the ROA?) Ilya Filippovich Savkin, who was born in 1918 in Smolensk, served in the 1st squadron of the 691st fighter regiment, flew on the I-16 fighter on January 24, 1942 (or 1940?) on the side of the Finns in the Olonets direction and

1. Lieutenant Kirill Karelin from Moscow - September 11, 1944, in Hungary;

In total, Maltsev recruited 33 pilots in the RAG in the first half of 1944. One of his undoubted achievements was the recruitment of the second Hero of the Soviet Union - Captain S. T. Bychkov. Semyon Trofimovich Bychkov was born in 1918 in the village of Petrovka, Khokholsky district, came from peasants in the Voronezh province. In the summer of 1934, the future pilot worked as a horse-racer at the Bokcheev mine in the Voronezh region, and in 1934-1935. - a spillway operator at the Strelica mine. In 1936 he graduated from the seven-year plan and the Voronezh flying club, until June 1938 he worked in the flying club as an instructor and glider pilot. In 1936-1941. was a member of the Komsomol, and since 1943 - a candidate member of the CPSU (b). In September 1938 he graduated from the Tambov School of the Civil Air Fleet and then worked as a flight pilot at the Voronezh airport. Bychkov joined the Red Army on January 16, 1939, and in the same year he graduated from the Borisoglebsk Aviation School. V.P. Chkalov, and in June 1941 - courses for fighter pilots of the Konotop military school. With the outbreak of war, Bychkov served as a pilot in the 42nd and 287th Fighter Aviation Regiments. In 1942, Lieutenant Bychkov was sentenced to 5 years in labor camps for an airplane accident, but then the conviction was expunged. Before being captured, Bychkov made 130 successful sorties, participated in 60 air battles. Participating in the battles near Bryansk, Moscow and Stalingrad, he shot down 13 enemy aircraft, including 5 bombers, 7 fighters and a transport. In 1943, with the rank of captain, Bychkov took the post of deputy commander of the 482nd Fighter Regiment of the 322nd Fighter Aviation Division. The merits of Bychkov were marked by two Orders of the Red Banner.

His friend and immediate superior, Major A. I. Koltsov, soon filed an idea for a brave fighter, in which, in particular, he indicated: “Participating in fierce air battles with superior enemy aircraft from July 12 to August 10, 1943. proved to be an excellent fighter pilot, whose courage is combined with great skill. He enters the battle boldly and decisively, conducts it at a great pace, imposes his will on the enemy, using his weak sides. The pilots of the regiment, brought up by his daily painstaking study, personal example and display, made 667 successful sorties, shot down 69 enemy aircraft, and there were never cases of forced landings and loss of orientation. [...] In the last operation, from July 12 to August 10, 1943, he shot down 3 enemy aircraft. July 14, 1943 in a group of 6La-5 in a battle against 10 Yu-87, Yu-88, 6 FV-190 personally shot down Yu-87, which fell in the Rechitsa area. [...] For the courage and heroism shown in the battles with the German invaders, and shot down personally 15 and in group 1 enemy aircraft, I present to the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.

The authorities supported the idea, especially since a similar idea was filed against Koltsov. "For the exemplary performance of the combat missions of the command and the courage and heroism shown at the same time," by decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of September 2, 1943, Bychkov and Koltsov were awarded the title of Heroes of the Soviet Union with the award of the Order of Lenin and the Gold Star medal. On December 10 (according to other sources, 11) December 1943, Bychkov's La-5 was shot down in the Orsha area by anti-aircraft artillery fire, and the wounded pilot, having made an emergency landing on a swamp, was captured. Soon he was transferred to Moritzfeld. Bychkov joined the RAG in February 1944 under the influence of Maltsev and, to an even greater extent, under the influence of BR Antilevsky. Later, during an interrogation at the SMERSH Main Directorate of Counterintelligence on March 8, 1946, in an effort to alleviate his own unenviable fate, Bychkov told the investigators that Anti-Levy with his assistant Varaksin, whose name never appeared anywhere else, beat him in Moritzfelde, forcing him to join the Maltsev group. True, even during interrogation by SMERSH investigators, Bychkov confirmed that Maltsev “sharply expressed his hostile attitude towards the Soviet authorities, towards the leaders of the party and the Soviet government,” and then tried to “discredit the anti-Soviet slander in in my eyes the policy of the Soviet government.

In our opinion, in fact, Bychkov was not beaten by anyone - such methods in the winter of 1944 could not seriously affect a person who had constantly looked death in the face for more than two years. Most likely, Colonel Maltsev "slandered" too convincingly. Or maybe Bychkov's confidence in the "leaders of the party" has been vacillating for a long time, especially since the appearance of the "leaders" when seriously thinking about him made a terrible impression. The author's collection contains testimonies of people who knew both Antilevsky and Bychkov well. In particular, Lieutenant B. P. Plyushchov, Maltsev’s adjutant, in a conversation with the author, in response to a relevant question, laughed and categorically denied the version of the beatings, arguing that both “Vlasov” Heroes of the Soviet Union were distinguished ... by sincere friendship and sympathy for each other. It is worth considering that, having made dozens of sorties in 1944-1945, Bychkov repeatedly had the opportunity to fly to the Soviet side. Was it to force prisoners of war to join the air group with the help of beatings? No, it was only about persuasion and voluntary choice,” Plushov emphasized. Indeed, in April 1945, Lieutenant I. Stezhar, a former Soviet fighter pilot who served in the KONR Air Force, who joined the Vlasov army in the winter of 1945, flew during a training flight, according to one version - to the Soviet side, according to the other is on the side of the Americans. From February 1944, Bychkov became one of Maltsev's closest associates, together with Antilevsky spoke with feeling on the radio, in front of Ostarbeiters and prisoners of war. He shared the fate of almost all pilots of the KONR Air Force, forcibly repatriated by the Allies in 1945 to the USSR

A trusting relationship was established with Maltsev and with Colonel Alexander Fedorovich Vanyushin, a graduate of the Military Academy. M. V. Frunze and former shim and. commander of the Air Force of the 20th Army of the Western Front (1941), who later became his deputy and chief of staff of the Air Force KONR. Maltsev made a strong impression on the communications chief of the 205th Fighter Aviation Division of the 2nd Air Army, Major S. 3. Sitnik. The plane of Serafima Zakharovna Sitnik was shot down on October 29, 1943 by anti-aircraft artillery fire over the village of 5th Nikolaevka in the Kozelshchina region. She landed unsuccessfully with a parachute and was wounded and captured. After some stay in the field hospital, the female major was brought to Moritzfeld, where her five-year-old son and mother, who were presumed dead, were later taken from the occupied territory. This extraordinary circumstance led a female pilot, holder of the Orders of the Red Banner and the Patriotic War and senior, major of the Red Army Air Force to the future Vlasovites. However, due to the consequences of the injury, she was soon expelled from the RAG to one of the Eastern propaganda units. Further fate P. 3. Sitnik developed tragically - she became an accidental victim of a SD provocation and died at the end of 1944, which Maltsev learned about after the fact.

On February 20, 1944, in Berlin, Colonel V. I. Maltsev finally met Lieutenant General A. A. Vlasov. The impression from each other remained more than favorable. From March 7 to March 14, General Vlasov visited Moritzfeld, accompanied by Captains V. K. Shtrik-Shtrikfeld and S. B. Froelich. According to Fröhlich, “Vlasov’s personal appearance caused a sensation,” Maltsev’s subordinates and Colonel Holters, who had been promoted by that time, were strongly impressed by the weekly communication with the former lieutenant general of the Red Army. Both Holters and Maltsev assured Vlasov of the prospect of deploying an aviation regiment of the ROA on the basis of the RAG.

At the same time, the failure of the anti-Hitler speech on July 20, 1944, the repressions of the Gestapo that followed it, and finally, the state of emergency in the 1st Eastern Squadron, already known to us, only increased the desire of certain people in the OKL headquarters to get rid of the Russian volunteer unit. A group of senior officers LW: the head of the 8th department of the OKL General Staff, Major General G. von Roden, the head of the OKL General Staff, Aviation General K. Koller, and others had every reason to fear that not authorized by the Reichsmarshal G. Goering, the action to create the RAG can create significant complications for them. The formal transfer of the RAG to the Eastern troops of the cavalry general E. A. Kestring would save the OKL from possible troubles. In order to maintain influence on the Holters-Maltsev group and to avoid excessive interference by Koestring in its specific problems, the post of inspector of foreign personnel LW was established at the headquarters of Koestring. The inspector was supposed to be in charge of foreign volunteers in LW and at the same time maintain contact with OKI. The further history of the RAG of Colonels G. Holters and V.I. personnel of LW "Vostok", as well as with the history of the creation and development of the Armed Forces of the Committee for the Liberation of the Peoples of Russia in the last 6 months of the war.

Aleksandrov K.

From the book “Russian soldiers of the Wehrmacht. Heroes or traitors: Collection of articles and materials. — M.: 2005.

In 1945 - Major of the Air Force KONR, deputy commander of the 1st Aviation Regiment. See - Alexandrov K. M. Officer Corps of the Army of Lieutenant General A. A. Vlasov, 1944-1945. SPb., 2001. S. 336.

It was "Black Week" for the Luftwaffe, but few then thought that this was the beginning ... of the end!
Fights local importance
This story happened a very long time ago, more than 70 years ago, in March 1942. It is known what horrors our people had to endure during the war. But, if, in the same 41st, on the land fronts, the Red Army sometimes gave the aggressor in the face, as in November 41st near Rostov-on-Don, when the Germans were driven back almost 150 km to the Mius lines, then even in in the historic counter-offensive near Moscow, the damned Luftwaffe continued to dominate the air and demonstrate their strength, if only the weather was fine.


By the spring of 1942, the fronts froze. The Red Army practically stopped. The Germans also did not have the strength to attack. On the radio, in the reports of the Sovinformburo, it was reported "... battles of local significance." But with the beginning of spring, the front line came to life, active combat probing of the defense began, the search for weaknesses, etc. The sun was shining more and more often and the pilots began combat work.


Seven against twenty-five!
On March 9, 1942, seven of our fighter pilots on the Yak-1 flew south of Kharkov to the front line on combat patrols.


Further story from the words of the Soviet ace, commander of the 31st Guards IAP Boris Nikolayevich Eremin:


We went at an altitude of 1700 meters "whatnot", with full ammunition and 6 RS under the wings. At the same height, near the front line, I saw a group of German aircraft - 18 Messers and 7 Yu-87 and Yu-88. Total 25! Of these, 6 Me-109F were in cover. We still didn’t have walkie-talkies, we communicated with gestures and shaking our wings ... I led the group to the left, to the southwest, with a climb to attack from there. from where they are not waiting for us ... We make a military turn to the right and attack! The Germans were preparing to storm our troops on the ground and began to rebuild ... Each of us chose our own target. Immediately they shot down 2 messers and 2 bombers, a wing with a cross flew by ... Such a whirlwind went, but I see that two more messers were shot down. Then they rushed away from us, who went where, and I shot down another one while catching up! The whole battle lasted 10-12 minutes, I signaled “Everyone is behind me”, it's time to leave the battle, because the fuel is running out. I look, mine are attached, all seven! They passed over their airfield with a "clamp" and fanned out for landing. Everyone runs to meet, shout hurray, Victory! VNOS posts have already confirmed, for sure, seven shot down! This have not happened before!


Soon all the front-line and central newspapers came out with a description of this battle: “7: 0 in favor of the Stalin Falcons!”
Much later, the great ace Ivan Nikitovich Kozhedub said that, according to the description in the newspapers, he and his comrades studied this battle "to the holes." Indeed, this was the first (!) group battle that our pilots fought in accordance with all the rules of martial art. In this battle, the advantages of the Yak-1 fighter, which was designed for maneuverable combat, were shown. Eremin fought at that time on a plane, which was presented to him by Ferapont Golovaty, a collective farmer (!) of the Stakhanovets collective farm. The fighter was built with money - Golovaty's savings!


Later, in May 1944, a simple collective farmer Golovatov donated 100 thousand rubles for the construction of the Yak-3 aircraft. A man of labor personally wrote a short note to Comrade Stalin "... with a request to buy a fighter of the latest design for the Red Army with the workdays earned by the whole family." Ferapont Petrovich really wanted the brand new aircraft to be handed over to ace pilot Boris Eremin.


Stalin highly appreciated the devotion to the Motherland of a simple collective farmer and, of course, complied with his request.

Boris Eremin proudly flew this plane until the very Victory Day and participated in battles on different fronts: Lviv, Polish, Romanian, Hungarian, Austrian and German. And in the sky over Czechoslovakia, he shot down the last enemy plane. Yak-3 with the inscription on board "From Ferapont Petrovich Golovaty: to the final defeat of the enemy!" entered the history not only of the Great Patriotic War, but of the entire Soviet people as an absolute symbol of patriotism. And the pilot Eremin was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.

After the war, this aircraft was in the Yakovlev Design Bureau Museum, but in 1994 it was sold for 4 thousand USD to the Santa Monica Aviation Museum, USA, where it remains to this day.


And one warrior in the sky!
Meanwhile, the year 1942 was coming on. At that time, on the Leningrad front, the famous squadron JG-54 "Grunherz" fought and bandit, ace on the ace and harnesses the ace.


On March 12, Senior Lieutenant Vasily Golubev, who was considered a fighter fighter (before that, he had already shot down 8 German Me and 2 Finnish) forever reassured two aces from this squadron at once. Returning to his airfield on the already outdated I-16 (!), he once again portrayed a seriously wounded pilot, waving the plane in different side. It worked! He was chased by two Me-109s, aces Bartling (69 victories) and Leishte (29 victories). When they approached Golubev by about 1000 meters, he sharply turned his fighter towards them and shot down Bartling in the forehead! Leishte wanted to run away, but Golubev shot him down with a volley of RS. Victory, and even what, and at his own airfield.


Soon the regiment became the 4th Guards, and Major Vasily Golubev became a Hero of the Soviet Union and its commander. On his account - 39 enemy aircraft. And his comrade V Kostylev shot down 41 German planes.


"Grunherz" only in 1942 lost 93 pilots and painted over their green tambourine aces (colloquially among pilots, "green asses"!) With gray paint. There was nothing to be proud of! And in total on the Eastern Front, this squadron lost 416 pilots and 2135 aircraft, Me -109 and FV-190.
The collapse of the "air bridge"!
1942 was a hard and terrible year for everyone! The Germans rushed to the Caucasus and to Stalingrad. In the air, the Luftwaffe was still the master of the situation. But, that spring of resistance, which was gradually compressed, hit the Germans in the forehead not only on the ground, but also in the air.
Trying to save the Stalingrad group, to establish its supply, Hitler ordered the establishment of an "air bridge". According to the calculations of the General Staff, it was necessary to transport at least 300 tons of cargo daily. F Paulus demanded up to 450 tons. For this purpose, the Germans created two supply bases: in Morozovskaya for Xe-111 and Yu-88 bombers, in Tatsinskaya for transport Yu-52s. On December 1, they managed to collect up to 400 cars. Up to 200 aircraft had to be sent to Stalingrad per day.


Naturally, the main task of our anti-aircraft gunners and fighters was to counter this "bridge", as well as the destruction of aviation and supply bases on the ground. On average, it was possible to transfer no more than 100 tons of cargo to Stalingrad per day. Often, in the words of one of the captured officers, the devil knows what: either Christmas trees, or peppers, or sweets ... Apparently, in Germany, the suppliers were not clean at hand. Paulus angrily declared that in fact the Luftwaffe had left us in trouble. From November 23, 1942 (the beginning of Operation Bridge) to February 2, 1943 (the last day), the Germans lost (according to K. Bartz) 127 fighters. 536 bombers and transports, but, most importantly, 2196 pilots died, not counting those who were taken prisoner. As Goering stated: “near Stalingrad, we lost the color of bomber aircraft!”


And ahead was 1943, as a result of which the sky completely became ours!

I remember that in the late 1960s, a feature film was released on the screens of the country, by genre - a military comedy, with the name "Die Hard". The film was well received by the public, it has quite a lot of interesting and funny situations. Among them, the episode of the capture of the German crew from a German bomber shot down in the Moscow region, the pilot of which turns out to be a woman, a blond German woman with a Knight's Cross around her neck, is remembered. Of course, we can say that this is a very original and successful move by the screenwriter and director, but it should also be noted that the image of a blond Nazi diva bombing Soviet cities did not arise from scratch. Our memoirs and other literature describe quite a lot of evidence of the participation of German women pilots in battles on the Soviet-German front in 1941-1945. However, were they facts of harsh reality or, nevertheless, mysterious legends? The question is not as simple as it seems...

So, apparently, for the first time, German pilots on the Eastern Front were mentioned already on the very first day of the war on June 22, 1941. On the morning of this day, the squadron commander of the 87th Fighter Aviation Regiment, Senior Lieutenant P. A. Mikhailyuk, on an I-16 fighter, attacked a German aircraft near his Buchach airfield, identified by him as Do-215. He managed to knock out an enemy plane, which made an emergency landing on the fuselage in the Terebovlya area. The crew was captured and taken to the Tarnopol airfield. As the former commander of the Air Force of the 6th Army, General N. S. Skripko, writes in his book “For Near and Far Targets”, “the crew commander turned out to be a young German woman.”
Taking the opportunity, it should immediately be clarified that the downed German aircraft was not a Do-215, but a Me-110 very similar to it, from the 3rd detachment of the 11th long-range reconnaissance group of the Luftwaffe. And most importantly: both crew members - the pilot, Lieutenant Helmut Gog and the observer, Sergeant Major Ernst Schildbach - were ordinary young guys, unlike modern transvestites. Therefore, it is completely incomprehensible on what basis our general decided that it was a woman. Nevertheless, the beginning of the legends was laid ...

As the war gained momentum, rumors about German pilots, as well as rumors about numerous airborne assaults and saboteurs, began to spread among the soldiers and commanders of the Red Army.

So in the memoirs of one of our commanders, a German bomber pilot is mentioned, who on one Sunday in July 1941 was shot down by anti-aircraft fire in the Mogilev region, landed by parachute and was captured.

Probably, our other military leader, Air Chief Marshal A.E. Golovanov, mentioned the same pilot in his book “Long-Range Bomber ...”: “Somehow, a blond blue-eyed girl in the form of a military pilot was found in a downed German bomber. When asked how she, a woman, could decide to bomb peaceful cities, destroy defenseless women and children, she replied: "Germany needs space, but it does not need people on these lands."

Approximately the same is stated in his memoirs about the defense of Mogilev in July 1941, the former secretary of the Party Bureau of the 747th Infantry Regiment, S.P. Monakhov: “... The pilot of one of the downed Nazi bombers descended with a parachute. It was a woman. When asked why she bombed the city, the civilian population, she replied: “What's the difference between you and them? You are all Soviet, and the Fuhrer ordered us to destroy the Soviets.”
There is the same political background of the previous episode, only the words are different. It is obvious that someone is not exactly quoting someone. However, it is quite clear that both - the marshal and the party organizer - only "heard the ringing, but did not know where it came from" ...

In the same July 1941, as Colonel from the 5th Air Army P.F. Plyachenko writes in his book “An order was given ...”, “a pair of Soviet I-16 fighters shot down a German reconnaissance officer Yu-88, who was forced to land on a corn field three kilometers” from the village of Zhovtneve, northwest of Odessa. What follows are details so astonishing that they must be quoted almost in their entirety:
“A group of fighters from the security company of the army headquarters rushed to the plane on a truck ... They were faced with the task of taking the crew of the downed plane alive, capturing documents, aerial cameras, and putting the car under guard ... The group drove up to the plane and saw an unusual picture. On the ground under the wing, as if nothing had happened, sat the crew - three men and one woman. Examined the plane and the prisoners. Weapons, aerial cameras, documents and personal belongings were put into the car. The crew was ordered to climb into the body. And then it turned out: the crew commander - a fascist lieutenant colonel - himself could not get into the car. He does not have legs to the knees, he is on prostheses. The lieutenant colonel's subordinates, tall guys, picked him up and deftly put him in the back...
... The prisoners willingly answered questions. It turned out that the thirty-three-year-old German woman (let's call her Berta) is a pilot. She piloted the plane. Her legless husband, a lieutenant colonel, is an aircraft navigator. In the recent past, he was a fighter pilot, awarded three Iron Crosses. Both corporals are gunners-radio operators.
Having given evidence, the pilot herself began to ask questions. They all boiled down to one thing: what would happen to them, whether they would feed them, whether they would forbid her to look after her legless husband. She spoke hurriedly, as if afraid of being interrupted. Here the German was silent, but not for long. She asked more calmly:
- Herr lieutenant! Tell me, can we hope to save life?
We don't shoot unarmed prisoners. But those guilty of crimes are judged to the full extent of the laws.
“We are not murderers and are not to blame for anything,” Berta answered for everyone. - We did not drop a single bomb on your land, did not fire a single shot at Russian aircraft. But your anti-aircraft guns riddled our aircraft. We barely pulled on one engine, then two of your fighters put him out of action too. We sat down with difficulty, surrendered to you voluntarily, did not harm you ... We only conducted reconnaissance ...
... Berta willingly told about herself and her husband. According to her, the lieutenant colonel fought bravely in France in the summer of 1940. There, both of his legs were amputated after a fighter jet was forced to land on a cleared forest. There, in one of the hospitals, Goering handed him the Iron Cross ...
“Well, it seems that we have told everything you wanted to hear,” the German woman said, and a satisfied smile slid across her face ...
- Tell me, will I be rewarded for the information that I told you?
That, it turns out, is why the German woman was so talkative. Realizing that her life was not in danger, she negotiated a reward for herself. What was more here: impudence, businesslike enterprise or narrow-mindedness, it is difficult to say.
The German had to be disappointed ... ".
Well, as they say, "a lot had to be seen and heard, but this! ..". After all, there is absolutely no data on the existence of such an amazing crew in the Luftwaffe, and, moreover, for the simple reason that this whole story is just the fruit of the wild imagination of the “writer” Plyachenko.

Another writer of front-line tales - L. Z. Lobanov - in his book “To spite all deaths” (Khabarovsk: Book of publishing house, 1985), sparing no colors paints his exploits as a fighter pilot in 1941. True, for some reason he does not indicate the number of his regiment, but that's not the point. For us, something else is curious in his book - an episode in which he describes how in August 1941, on his “donkey”, he met in the air with a Me-109E fighter, at the controls of which he saw a young German woman in a bright pink silk overalls and with blond hair flowing over her shoulders. Allegedly, having opened the cockpit lantern, she waved her hand and even smiled at the Russian cavalier, showing an even row of teeth, after which she treacherously fired a machine-gun burst in his direction. Of course, the "Stalin's falcon" offended in the best feelings immediately punished the "white-haired bitch", knocking it down right above its airfield. The author claims that the German woman was the daughter of Willy Messerschmitt, the closest assistant to the aircraft designer, and an inspector for the piloting technique of a fighter regiment. As our memoirist, the commander of a German regiment, in the SS rank of Sturmführer (?!), tells further, wanting to avenge his inspector, he even dropped a pennant with a note on the Soviet airfield and challenged the Soviet ace who shot down the beauty to a duel ... In general, - almost Shakespearean drama. However, William Shakespeare nervously smokes on the sidelines, unable to surpass the masterpiece of L. Z. Lobanov ...

There is even a mention of another family composition of the Luftwaffe crew even in the documents of the Central Archive of the Ministry of Defense Russian Federation(Fond 208, Inventory 2511, Case 6, Sheets 2-10), which literally contain the following: “At the end of September 1941, at the Dvoevka field airfield (7 km southeast of Vyazma), a German reconnaissance aircraft Yu- 88. During the interrogation of the crew members, it turned out that he was conducting reconnaissance in the direction of Vyazma, Mozhaisk, Moscow. The radio compass failed on the plane, and, having used up fuel, the crew landed at the nearest airfield, where they were taken prisoner. The crew turned out to be family: the commander - a colonel, a navigator and a pilot - his two sons in the rank of lieutenants, his daughter - a radio operator, corporal. During the interrogation, they behaved defiantly, boasted of their merits, shouting "Heil Hitler!" Fortunately, the Germans did not have time to destroy flight maps, reconnaissance equipment and film. On the developed film, the Kasnyansky lake (pond) and the building were clearly visible, to which paths cleared of bushes led. Numerous overhead communication lines on poles stretched into the nearby forest from several directions. When asked what the circle on the map, which circled a separate large building, meant, the navigator said: "This is the headquarters of Marshal Timoshenko, he will soon be gone."
Surprisingly, however, there is no data in the German archives about this "family contract" in the ranks of the German air force.

During an air raid on Leningrad on September 22, 1941, a heavy bomb, falling inside the largest department store Gostiny Dvor, completely destroyed five buildings that housed various institutions, including the Soviet Writer publishing house, the Northern Research Institute of Land Reclamation. At the same time, 98 people were killed and 148 people were injured. War correspondent during the war years and writer P. N. Luknitsky on this tragic occasion made the following entry in his diary book “Through the entire blockade”:
“...Later I found out: one of the bombs hit Gostiny Dvor. The publishing house "Soviet Writer" was destroyed, my old acquaintances were killed ... only eight employees of the publishing house. Two were seriously wounded ... In general, those killed by this bomb - weighing seven hundred and fifty kilograms - were no less than a hundred. These are mostly women, since in the house that was destroyed, there was a women's knitting artel. The bomb was dropped by a German pilot, our anti-aircraft guns shot her down over Kuznechny Lane ... ".
Another well-known Soviet poetess and prose writer O. F. Berggolts also noted this incident in her diary: “... And they say that a 16-year-old pilot dropped a bomb. Oh God! (The plane seemed to have been shot down later and found her there - maybe, of course, folklore.) Oh, horror!
The writers are echoed on one of the sites on the Internet by someone under the pseudonym “Leningrader”: “Opposite our house, three two-hundred bombs fell. The first smashed a beer stall to the ground. The second flew into the six-story building opposite. The third is through the house. They said that a German pilot allegedly dropped them, she was shot down and taken prisoner.
Who then started the rumor about a 16-year-old fascist pilot shot down over Leningrad is, of course, impossible to establish. On the other hand, one can say quite definitely about the losses of German aviation: on that day, in the St. Petersburg area, two Junkers-88s from the 77th bomber squadron were only lightly damaged by anti-aircraft fire. And I don’t even want to discuss the age of the “downed” German pilot.

Be that as it may, our writing brethren liked the idea that it was the German pilots who were to blame for the mass casualties during the bombing of cities. Without any reason, they were even accused of brutal executions of children from the air. In this respect, the real well-known female pilots of Germany also got “nuts”. For example, in the book “The Fourth Height”, popular at the time, it is described with horrific details how in the summer of 1941 “a twenty-four-year-old fascist pilot shot little guys on the seashore in Anapa”:
“...White, soft, golden sand of the sea beach. Warm waves easily run into the coastal sand and quietly roll back. Little tanned pebbles, busily bending down, are sculpting something out of wet sand. Their white Panama hats are visible all over the beach. The bravest of the guys run up to the sea and run back with a screech when a wave gray with foam chases after them with noise.
Children are brought here every morning from all the children's sanatoriums that there are in Anapa.
And suddenly a plane appears in the bright blue sky. He descends lower and lower and suddenly opens fire at a low level. Fire on these defenseless naked babies!
The sand is filled with children's blood. And the plane, having done its job, calmly soars like a hawk and hides behind the clouds.
Of course, it was not without typical clichés when describing the appearance of the German pilot: "fair-haired, with blue eyes, beautiful." Moreover, in the book “even her name is printed: Helene Reich” is a more than transparent allusion to the innocent Hanna Reitsch, who never even flew over the border of the Soviet Union.
Nevertheless, the legend of the downed and captured pilot Helena Reich, who shot children on the Black Sea beach with Messerschmitt machine guns, as they say, "went to the people."
And the book “The Fourth Height” was written by a well-known children's writer under the pseudonym Elena Ilyina, who in reality was called Liya Yakovlevna Marshak, married to Preis ...
By the way, the book "Ilyina" was intended primarily for children and adolescents. Well, how many generations of Soviet youth, having read a horror story about the shooting of children on the beach, remained for the rest of their lives in unshakable confidence that all this was real!

Probably one of these young readers there was also a certain G. M. Gusev, who, in turn, composed a very similar horror film about a German pilot with clearly sadistic inclinations. In his story called “The Hertha Bomber”, which claims to be true, it is about the 23-year-old blond beauty Hertha Kranz, supposedly the only pilot in the Luftwaffe who flew all types of aircraft: bombers, reconnaissance aircraft and even fighters. Allegedly, in October 1941, this “universal” pilot, piloting a Messerschmitt, bombed a school in Bezhetsk northeast of Tver, killing 28 schoolchildren in the process. After such an atrocity, classical law retribution, the cruel killer was shot down and captured, and then, of course, shot. The impressionable reader will certainly be touched by the terrible details of the atrocities committed by the German woman. Such as, “Having bombed half the school, she once again turned around and fired a long burst at the swirling Slavic heads from her heavy machine gun”, or her cynical revelations that she deliberately bombed the children “on her own initiative” and her regret that she “killed little little Russian piglets. The unpleasant epithets with which the author generously awarded the mythical pilot are also very characteristic, such as “fanatic one hundred percent Aryan”, “arrogant”, “bastard”, “hunter for living targets”, “daughter of a bitch” ...
In principle, if this had been written during the war years, when hatred for all Germans and German women went off scale, then there would be nothing surprising in this. But the fact of the matter is that this opus was published quite recently, in 2005, in the Russian magazine Our Contemporary...

On one of the forums on the Internet, information appeared that in 1941, when German troops approached Moscow, one Luftwaffe plane, breaking through the air defense barrier, dropped bombs on the Kremlin, and a “young German girl of 18 years old” was at the controls of the bomber . One of the articles on the Internet specifies that this episode took place on October 24, 1941, when a direct hit of a large land mine was achieved in the administrative building No.
However, for some reason, none of the Internet users came up with the simple idea that at such a young age, young people are just beginning to be drafted into the army. Therefore, such a brat, of course, could not have time to undergo a long training in aviation schools and an internship.

A member of another forum on the Internet also shared his information that his grandfather, a veteran, when he was still alive, said that at the beginning of the war he personally saw how a German plane was shot down, the pilot of which turned out to be “a young girl with white hair” and which shot in front of his eyes.
It is doubtful that the "young girl with white hair" was a pilot, it is much easier to believe that she was shot. Moreover, such stories are not uncommon. Here is what another forum member told on the same site: “And my grandfather told me that with friends in Berlin he came off for his murdered family. Fucked bitches, and then shot with their families. Before shooting, he told me why. What a bitch brought the school teacher to!
Well, we won’t find out who brought whom and where. But about the "school teacher" it can be said quite definitely that he had the typical signs of a maniac-killer ...

Of course, it is very strange that, having absolutely no precedents proving the cruelty of German women, our people easily believed in it. The Russian journalist and writer Yu. M. Pospelovsky writes about another sadistic pilot from the Luftwaffe in his memoirs:
“... On Saturday, June 13, 1942, a pioneer rally was held in Voronezh, timed to coincide with the end school year. About three hundred invited children - excellent students and activists - gathered in the Garden. The program was rich, even rare meals were prepared for children. war time sweets. At the end of the holiday, the performance of the orchestra from the House of the Red Army was expected ...
... Already a few minutes after the powerful explosion of the bomb, I ran to the exit to the garden. The metal lattice gates are closed. Through them, small corpses lying on the alleys are visible. Mothers, grandmothers are rushing through the gates, screaming hysterically. They are not allowed by the police chain. Ambulances leave one after another towards the regional hospital, taking away seriously wounded boys and girls. They are in bloody bandages - many of them have their arms and legs torn off ...
Fascist fiends spare no one, not even children! Later it turned out that that "Heinkel" did not go far - it was soon shot down by our "hawk". And the German pilot Elsa led the plane and dropped the bombs. This lady-in-waiting is worse than a rabid she-wolf: she bombed not a military facility, but a garden of Pioneers, killed and brutally maimed hundreds of children. And she did it, as it turned out, not by chance, but deliberately - the evidence found in the downed plane testified to that. detailed map Voronezh with the Pioneer Garden marked on it.
Obviously, such a tragedy really happened then in Voronezh. True, the “pilot Elsa” has nothing to do with this, since she did not exist in nature. Who spread the rumors about the "mad wolf", and whether there were such rumors at all, excluding the statements of the 13-year-old boy, who Pospelovsky was then, is hardly possible to determine.

A certain German pilot who allegedly flew the Me-109 fighter on the southern sector of the Soviet-German front made a lot of noise in Soviet memoir literature. They say that our pilots nicknamed her "White Rose". And the first to mention it in his writings was the former pilot - attack aircraft I. A. Chernets, who wrote under the pseudonym Ivan Arsentiev, the Hero of the Soviet Union. Allegedly, he drew attention to her, because she flew without a helmet - she had headphones, a throat microphone around her neck and a mop of blond hair tied in a ponytail. According to Chernets, a white rose was painted on board the Messer under the cockpit. He also claimed that the German woman was an ace and shot down several of his fellow soldiers.
But this blonde German woman is clearly associated with another dyed blonde - the famous Soviet pilot Lydia "Liley" Litvyak, known as the "White Lily of Stalingrad"! So, maybe it was the Soviet "White Lily" that inspired the writer to create the image of the fascist "White Rose"? It remains to add one characteristic touch to the personality of this visionary: at one time he was a great lover of women, and even served 5 years for rape ...

Around the same time (late 1942 - early 1943) dates back to the memoirs of one of our war veterans, who told how, near Stalingrad, he, along with other soldiers, examined a downed Yu-52 transport aircraft in a ravine. According to him, the entire dead German crew consisted of women.
We will talk about whether this was possible a little later, but for now we will continue to “announce the entire list” of the mythical combat Valkyries of the Luftwaffe.

In one of the memoirs, literally in one line, information flashed that in 1943 a bomber was shot down by Soviet anti-aircraft gunners in the Krasnodar region, and the woman on board was taken prisoner.
Probably, this case is confirmed by the well-known publicist Alexander Rifeev: “In the Belorechensky district of the Krasnodar Territory, near the village. Lesnoy is the grave of a German pilot .... she flew on a light reconnaissance aircraft ... the plane was shot down ... the pilot was captured ... she behaved defiantly during interrogation ... therefore she was raped and killed ... this was told to me by a man , who took her prisoner ... he even showed me the direction in which her grave was located ... it could be reached on foot (the southern outskirts of the village of Lesnoy from the direction of Apsheronsk) ... but I did not see the specific burial place ... ".
Very, very valuable information! In the sense that another of our former servicemen, "who took her prisoner", frankly admitted that "she was raped and killed." Moreover, the prisoner herself is cynically accused of this: they say, she “behaved defiantly during interrogation.” One can only imagine the horror of this “interrogation”…

According to some eyewitnesses, the German pilot of the Khsh-129 attack aircraft, sergeant major Joachim Matsievsky from the 14th anti-tank detachment of the 9th assault squadron, who was shot down on October 23, 1943 in the Krivoy Rog region, allegedly stated during interrogation that he flew to the attack together with his father and sister.
Perhaps the translator misunderstood the words of the German, nevertheless, after interrogation, they shot him: do not deceive, vile liar!

As it is written in one of the memoirs, approximately in April-May 1944, in the Raukhovka region near Odessa, two La-5 fighters shot down a Yu-88 reconnaissance aircraft, in the wreckage of which, in addition to corpses, women's household items were also found. On this basis, the author of the memoirs made a significant conclusion that the crew included a woman.
It is a pity that it is not known what kind of woman's thing was found in the downed plane. Maybe an ordinary manicure set, which was a curiosity for our people, who were not spoiled by personal hygiene items ...

Hero of the Soviet Union A. N. Sitkovsky from the 15th Fighter Aviation Regiment in his book “Falcons in the Sky” wrote that on July 1, 1944, his fellow soldier commander Lieutenant F. P. Savitsky on the Yak-9 fighter northwest Borisov was shot down by a German FV-190 fighter. According to Sitkovsky, “the downed plane fell on our territory east of the Berezina River. A representative of our headquarters visited the crash site of the Fokker and found that a woman was piloting it.
On the basis of what the representative of the headquarters decided that the pilot of the FV-190 was a woman - one can only guess ...

In one of the Kazakh newspapers in the 1990s, an interview was published with a war veteran, a former commander of an anti-aircraft crew. He said that once his crew was knocked out by a German bomber, which made an emergency landing nearby. A group of fighters was sent to the landing site of the aircraft to capture the crew. The Germans began to get out of the plane, and it turned out that one crew member was missing - the gunner. When, finally, the shooter appeared, everyone saw that it was a woman. As the veteran claimed, “the German woman explained the reason for the delay by the fact that she painted her lips!”.
Oh, well done, former anti-aircraft gunner! Come up with something like that, right? He should write books...

The well-known aviation historian Vyacheslav Kondratyev mentioned another such, so to speak, “writer” on the Internet: “One of the veterans even told how once they found “... a naked woman, pink, with red hair and big tits, beautiful - just horror!
It would be extremely interesting to ask this sexually preoccupied "Stalinist ace": did this "naked woman" even have a parachute?

One of the Muscovites shared a curious legend with users on the Internet: “In the book of memoirs of one of the Soviet fighter pilots, I somehow subtracted the following episode: during air battles, a German fighter with a pilot in a bright scarf often circled near the battlefield. When our pilots finally shot down this "scarf", the body of the deceased female pilot was found in the cockpit. Of course, blonde. A few days later, the Germans dropped a pennant on our airfield: let the one who shot down this girl go to a fair duel one on one. Like, it was their female instructor, the daughter of a general, who inspired the German pilots to courage with her scarf. And now the Germans want to avenge her. Our pilot accepted the challenge, but in this duel an insidious ambush awaited him and he was shot down (he died). I can’t remember the name of the book and the author, the approximate year of publication is the 40-50s. The book is in the reading room of the INION library (Profsoyuznaya metro station). My opinion: this whole story with a girl, a scarf and a duel is, of course, a myth. Although the book of memoirs was not at all from the category of fiction.
Well, here everything is clear and without explanation. By the way, didn’t this book inspired the aforementioned L. Z. Lobanov to write the story about the “Pink” pilot? ...

A very vague story was told on the Internet by one of the Russian search engines: “Our collective farmers found a similar “pilot with a scythe” in a downed plane. When I first heard about it, I didn't believe it. But during the excavations they found the insole of a shoe, from the strength of 37 size, where did it come from in the deep forest? There are medallions, how they are deciphered - I have no idea. Xe-111 aircraft, shot down in late 1942 - early 1943, the border of the Penovsky and Ostashkovsky districts of the Tver region.
Well, it remains to wish this searcher good luck and finally establish how the insole of a size 37 women's shoe ended up in a dense forest ...

Search engines from Ukraine also contributed to the topic of the Luftwaffe pilots. The dialogue of some of these gravediggers, whose slang and spelling speaks for itself, is quite entertaining:
“- From time to time there are stories that somewhere the search engines found the remains of a German aircraft, and in it the skeleton of a pilot with white hair “to the f # py”.
- Near Kiev there is a museum "Lyutezhsky bridgehead", and in the museum the remains of the Fw 190. The plane was dug up somewhere in the Kiev region and there were the remains of the pilot in it. There was a lot of white long hair in the headset and a token by which the museum staff managed to identify the pilot was preserved. It turned out to be a woman, originally from the Baltics. As far as I know, the remains were handed over to relatives in Germany.
- Not white, but red, not dug up, but pulled out. And Baben was not from the Baltic states. And what's with the Peters?
- And the museum "Lutezhsky foothold" near Kiev - isn't it Petrivtsi?
- I myself saw the remains of Foker in the basement of the museum in Petrivtsi, it was 2 years ago. The person who showed me this also said that there were the remains of a female pilot in the cockpit. Foker was 100 pounds, as for the pilot, I don’t know, maybe I invented who I won’t fuck.
“No matter how this is not the woman (toko red) who, along with the plane, was raised by Gunpowder, Vova Saper and company.”
Well, and so on. It seems that there is no point in commenting on such pearls of these "archaeologists".

However, myths about German pilots are popular not only among us. For example, in one of the Polish books, in all seriousness, a very piquant story is described about how on April 23, 1943, in an air battle over Tunisia, a Polish pilot, Lieutenant Danilovich, knocked out a Me-109, which made an emergency landing near the airfield of the Polish squadron. The pilot of the Messerschmitt turned out to be the pretty Fraulein Greta Gruber with the rank of Lieutenant. She was taken prisoner, fed and drunk, after which ... she passionately kissed the Pole who knocked her down!
Such is the story of the Polish "Romeo" and the German "Juliet" ...

In general, if you search, especially in our memoir literature, you can find many more similar stories. But in the many German military-historical literature published in the post-war years, as well as in the documents of the German Military Archives, there is absolutely no mention of the participation of German pilots in the battles. Of course, some of the modern "experts-researchers" can answer this thoughtfully that the Germans deliberately hide such facts. But what's the point?

Of course, in Germany there were female pilots. The most famous of them is, of course, Hanna Reitsch, the only pilot who was awarded the Iron Crosses 2nd class (03/28/1941) and 1st class (11/05/1942). Another test pilot, Countess Melitta Schenck von Stauffenberg, nee Schiller and, by the way, half-Jewish by her father, is also widely known, awarded the Iron Cross 2nd Class (01/22/1943) and the Pilot's Gold Badge with Diamonds. Beata Rotermund-Uze, nee Köstlin, also worked as a test pilot, however, she became most famous after the war as an entrepreneur, creating the most popular network of sex shops. Other female pilots included Liesel Bach, Ellie Maria Frida Rosemeyer née Beinhorn, Vera von Bissing, Theresia "Thea" Knorr née Reiner, Elisabeth "Liesl" Maria Schwab, Baroness Traute Frank von Hausen-Aubier née Hoffmann, Eleanor Witte and other. Some of them, as already mentioned, were testers, some flew light communications or transport aircraft, others during the war years were engaged in ferrying new and repaired aircraft to air bases and front-line formations. However, not one of all these pilots was part of the combat units, did not participate in hostilities, and, moreover, did not drop bombs on defenseless cities, and did not shoot children. Only two pilots (the aforementioned Reitsch and von Stauffenberg) received combat awards, and even then - solely for their merits in testing new aviation technology. None of the pilots even had a military rank, only in some cases they were given the civil rank of aircraft commander (Flugkapitan). By the way, only aviators over 30 years old who had served in aviation for at least 8 years, of which 5 years directly in air transportation, plus fly at least 500,000 kilometers as a pilot, could be candidates for such a position.

What are the reasons for the appearance of myths about the participation of Luftwaffe pilots in battles on the Soviet-German front? It seems that the main reason was the equal status of women in Soviet society, which was familiar to us, in which girls enthusiastically joined flying clubs en masse in the pre-war years and fought in women's air regiments during the war years. Our soldiers, and the civilian population as well, were absolutely sure that the Germans must have had something similar.

However, women in Germany have traditionally been assigned only three main functions, the so-called "three KKK" (Die Kirche, die Kueche, die Kinder), i.e. "church, kitchen, children", and military service was categorically contraindicated for them and, there could be no question of the formation of women's aviation units. By the way, in the current society, the Germans added the fourth “K” (Die Kleider), i.e. “dress” ...

But, as they say, “there is no smoke without fire” and the information about the women who served in the German armed forces was not an exaggeration. The fact is that very soon after the start of the Second World War and the ever-increasing losses, the Germans began to experience an acute shortage of men. The need to recruit women to replace the men became apparent, and for this purpose, women's auxiliary services were created in the Wehrmacht, the Navy, the Luftwaffe and the SS. According to some reports, in all these auxiliary services there were about half a million women who acted as nurses, cooks, telephone and radio telegraph operators in communication centers, typists at headquarters, aircraft refuelers at airfields, instrumentation operators in anti-aircraft artillery, truck drivers, horse-drawn transport, guards in concentration camps etc. For a long time, all women were considered only as "civil servants attached to the army" and only on August 28, 1944, women who served in the army received the official status of military personnel. Despite this, women of all services did not have military ranks, but had their own ranks with a variation on the keyword "assistant". At first, the rank system for each military women's service had its own, very confusing, and was determined by ring-shaped stripes on sleeves, collars and headgear or by shoulder straps. And later, by order of November 29, 1944, all female auxiliary units of various services were merged into a single female auxiliary service (Wehrmachthelferinnen) with a single rank system.

Many young girls and married women in the auxiliaries paid with their lives for forced emancipation. For example, on January 30, 1945, more than 300 Navy assistants drowned when the Soviet submarine S-13 torpedoed the Wilhelm Gustloff liner. On the onset Soviet troops in 1945 over a thousand female employees went missing in East Prussia and Poland. Not without tragedies in the air: on October 11, 1944, north of Narvik (Norway), a huge four-engine FV-200 crashed and fell into the sea, on board of which 32 women from the Luftwaffe auxiliary service died immediately.

It is logical to assume that there were also similar cases on the Eastern Front, when women from any auxiliary service found on board a crashed or downed aircraft were mistakenly mistaken for pilots. Therefore, some of the above cases seem quite plausible. And in cases of rape and murder of "pilots" on the Russian front, there is no doubt: the absence of women in the lists of German prisoners of war speaks eloquently for itself ...

Today in the "Chronicle of the War" I want to raise a topic that struck me at the very beginning of the 90s, when I read in one of the newspapers a message that the German pilot Erich Hartmann shot down 352 aircraft during the war, and only four of them were American. A little later, the number of American losses increased to 7, but still 352 enemy downed - it seemed too much. List of victories of the best Soviet ace Ivan Kozhedub - only 64 aircraft).

I couldn't wrap my head around how this could be. Even more impressive was the decoding of Hartmann's battle account. I will take only a few days of the summer of 1944. Offhand. So, on June 1, 6 downed aircraft (5 Lags and 1 Airacobra). June 2 - 2 Air Cobras, June 3 - 4 aircraft (two Lags and Air Cobras each). June 4 - 7 aircraft (all except one - "Aircobra"). June 5 - 7 aircraft (of which 3 "Lag"). And, finally, on June 6 - 5 aircraft (of which 2 "Lag"). In total, 32 Soviet aircraft were shot down in 6 days of fighting. And on August 24 of the same year, 11 aircraft at once.

Wishful thinking?

But what is strange: Eric Hartmann shot down 32 aircraft in the first six days of June, and all the Luftwaffe by day: 1st - 21, 2nd - 27, 3rd - 33, 4th - 45, 5th - 43 , 6th - 12. Total - 181 aircraft. Or an average of more than 30 aircraft per day. And how many were the losses of the Luftwaffe? The official figures for June 1944 are 312 aircraft, or just over 10 per day. It turns out that our losses are 3 times more? And if we take into account that the losses of the Germans also include aircraft shot down by our anti-aircraft artillery, then the ratio of losses is even greater!

As a person who was directly related to military aviation, such arithmetic seemed very strange to me. I don’t remember that they wrote somewhere that in June 1944 the Germans had a threefold superiority in the number of downed aircraft. Especially not in the first months of the war, when the Nazis had complete air superiority, but less than a year before the great Victory.

So where is the dog buried? Are these Hartmann figures from the evil one? Let's first assume that everything is true. And let's compare two pilots - the same Hartmann and three times Hero of the Soviet Union Ivan Kozhedub. Hartmann made 1404 sorties and shot down 352 aircraft, on average, about 4 sorties took one aircraft; Kozhedub's figures are as follows: 330 sorties and 62 enemy aircraft, an average of 5.3 sorties. In terms of numbers, everything seems to match ...
But there is one small peculiarity: how were downed planes counted? I cannot but quote an excerpt from the book by American researchers R. Toliver and T. Constable about Hartmann:

“The rest of the squadron pilots dragged the happy Blond Knight to the mess hall. The party was in full swing when Hartmann's technician burst in. The expression on his face instantly extinguished the jubilation of those assembled.
- What happened, Bimmel? Erich asked.
- Gunsmith, Herr Lieutenant.
- Something is wrong?
- No, everything is okay. It's just that you fired only 120 shots for 3 downed aircraft. I think you need to know this.
A whisper of admiration ran among the pilots, and the schnapps flowed like water again.

Worthy grandchildren of Baron Munchausen

You don't have to be a great aviation expert to suspect something is wrong. On average, for each downed Il-2, namely, Hartmann announced the victory over such aircraft at that time, it took him about 40 shells. Is it possible? Somewhere in the conditions of a training air battle, when the enemy himself is substituted, it is very doubtful. And here everything happened in combat conditions, at exorbitant speeds, and even taking into account the fact that the same fascists called our "Ilyushin" - "flying tank". And there were reasons for this - the mass of the armored hull in the course of fine-tuning and changes reached 990 kg. Elements of the armored hull were tested by shooting. That is, the armor was not placed from the floundering bay, but strictly in vulnerable places ...

And what does a proud statement look like after that, that in one battle three Ilyushins were shot down at once, and even 120 bullets?

Something similar happened to another German ace, Erich Rudoferr. Here is an excerpt from another book - “The Encyclopedia of Military Art. Military pilots. Aces of the Second World War”, published in Minsk.

“On November 6, 1943, during a 17-minute battle over Lake Ladoga, Rudorffer announced that he had shot down 13 Soviet vehicles. It was, of course, one of the greatest successes in fighter aviation and at the same time one of the most controversial battles ... "

Why exactly 13 planes in 17 minutes? You need to ask Erich about this. His words were not subject to any doubts. True, there was an unbeliever Thomas, who asked, and who can confirm this fact? To which Rudoffer, without batting an eyelid, said: “How do I know? All thirteen Russian planes fell to the bottom of Ladoga.

Do you think this fact confused the compilers of the Guinness Book of Records? No matter how! Rudoffer's name is included in this book as an example of the highest combat effectiveness.

Meanwhile, some researchers emphasize that the number of actually shot down aircraft and those assigned was a ratio of approximately 1:3, 1:4. As an example, the same Aleksey Isaev in his book “Ten Myths of the Second World War” cites the following episode:

“Let's take as an example two days, May 13 and 14, 1942, the height of the battle for Kharkov. On May 13, the Luftwaffe claims 65 Soviet aircraft shot down, 42 of which are credited to the III Group of the 52nd Fighter Squadron. The documented losses of the Soviet Air Force for May 13 are 20 aircraft. The next day, the pilots of Group III of the 52nd Fighter Squadron report 47 Soviet aircraft shot down during the day. The commander of the 9th squadron of the group, Herman Graf, announced six victories, his wingman Alfred Grislavsky chalked up two MiG-3s, Lieutenant Adolf Dikfeld announced nine (!) victories that day. The real losses of the Red Army Air Force on May 14 were three times less, 14 aircraft (5 Yak-1, 4 LaGG-3, 3 Il-2, 1 Su-2 and 1 R-5). MiG-3s are simply not on this list.”

Why were such additions necessary? First of all, in order to justify a large number of losses on their part. It's easy to ask a regimental commander who lost 20-27 aircraft in one day. But if in response he tells about 36-40 downed enemy planes, then the attitude towards him will be completely different. No wonder the guys gave their lives!

By the way, the best English ace - Colonel D. Johnson - made 515 sorties during the war, but shot down only 38 German aircraft. The best French ace - lieutenant (lieutenant colonel in the British Air Force) P. Klosterman - made 432 sorties during the war and shot down only 33 German aircraft.

Were they so less skilled than the same Hartmann and Rudoffer? Hardly. Only the scoring system was more real...

There are rarely happy days at the front. September 6, 1943 was one of those for the personnel of the 937th Fighter Aviation Regiment and, perhaps, for the entire 322nd Fighter Aviation Division. Fighting friends escorted to Moscow the commander of the regiment, Major Alexei Koltsov, and the navigator of the regiment, Captain Semyon Bychkov. By decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of September 2, 1943, "for the exemplary performance of combat missions of the command and the courage and heroism shown at the same time," they were awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. And now they flew to the capital for a well-deserved reward in air battles with enemies.

Front-line aviators gathered in the Kremlin on September 10. The awards were presented by I. Ya. Veres, Deputy Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. Attaching to the ceremonial tunic, on which two Orders of the Red Banner were already gleaming, Veres wished Bychkov new successes in air battles with a hated enemy.

Not all Soviet soldiers had a chance to live until May 9, 1945. On November 7, 1943, the Lavochkin group under the command of Koltsov attacked an enemy airfield. Like a fiery whirlwind, the pilots of the 937th air regiment flew into the enemy. On both sides, they set fire to 9 bombers, and disabled 14. During the assault, a fragment of an anti-aircraft shell damaged the car of the regiment commander. Koltsov was wounded. And a large group of Messers took off from a nearby airfield. An air battle ensued, in which Captain Bychkov won another victory by shooting down an enemy fighter.

One "Messerschmitt" chalked it up in this unequal battle and Major Koltsov, but wounded, on a damaged aircraft, he could not resist the enemy. His fighter plane crashed near the village of Liozno, Vitebsk region. A. I. Koltsov was buried in the village of Chernitsy, Liozno region. A monument was erected on his grave, and on the buildings of the school - the boarding school in Liozno and the mechanical plant in Voronezh, where he worked as a minder in the early 1930s - memorial plaques. Information about the Hero of the Soviet Union, Major Alexei Ivanovich Koltsov, is contained in the two-volume short biographical dictionary "Heroes of the Soviet Union" published in 1987-1988.

But why in the same dictionary does not say a word about his brother-soldier - Captain Semyon Trofimovich Bychkov? This edition, quite complete and verified by military historians, contains biographical information about only one Bychkov - Sergeant Nikolai Vasilievich Bychkov deserved this high state award for crossing the Dnieper. What is this - a mistake of the compilers of the biographical dictionary, an inaccuracy? Documents from the military archives make it possible to give a sufficiently objective and reliable answer to this difficult question...

... Semyon Trofimovich Bychkov was born in 1919 in the village of Petrovka, Khokholsky district, Voronezh region, in the family of an employee. In 1935 he graduated from the 7th grade. His path to military aviation was common for young men of pre-war generations: first, the flying club (1938), then studying at the Borisoglebsk military aviation school for pilots. He improved his flying skills at the courses of deputy squadron commanders (1941).

The presentation on the navigator of the 937th Fighter Aviation Regiment, Captain Semyon Trofimovich Bychkov, written by the regiment commander, Major A. I. Koltsov, in the summer of 1943, reflected the long combat path of the fighter pilot.

“He participated in air battles with German pirates from the very beginning of World War II. In total, he made 230 successful sorties, participated in 60 air battles. On the Moscow, Bryansk and Stalingrad fronts for the period 1941-1942. has personally shot down (confirmed) 13 enemy aircraft, including 5 bombers, 7 fighters and 1 transport aircraft. For success in fierce air battles and the heroic defense of Stalingrad, he was awarded the first Order of the Red Banner in 1942.

Participating in fierce air battles with superior enemy aviation forces on the Oryol sector of the front from July 12 to August 10, 1943, he proved to be an excellent fighter pilot, whose courage is combined with great skill. He enters the battle boldly and decisively, conducts it at a high pace, imposes his will on the enemy, using his weaknesses. He proved to be an excellent commander - the organizer of group air battles. The pilots of the regiment, brought up by his daily painstaking work, personal example and display, made 667 successful sorties, shot down 69 enemy aircraft, and there were never cases of forced landings and loss of orientation.

In August 1942 he was awarded the second Order of the Red Banner. In the last operation from July 12 to August 10, 1943, he shot down 3 enemy aircraft. On July 14, 1943, in a group of 6 La-5s in a battle against 10 Yu-87, 5 Yu-88, 6 FV-190, he personally shot down 1 Yu-87, which fell in the Rechitsa area.

On July 15, 1943, as part of 3 La-5, he intercepted and shot down an enemy plane - a Yu-88 reconnaissance aircraft, which fell in the Yagodnaya area ...

On July 31, 1943, in an air battle, he personally shot down 1 Yu-88, which fell in the Masalskoye area.

Conclusion: for the courage and heroism shown in battles with the German invaders and personally shot down 15 and in group 1 enemy aircraft are presented to the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.

On December 11, 1943, while performing another combat mission in the Orsha area, La-5, led by Captain S. T. Bychkov, came under crossfire from German anti-aircraft artillery. Having received a lot of holes, the plane made an emergency landing in a swampy place, a seriously wounded pilot in an unconscious state, with a severe head wound, was removed from under the wreckage of the car by enemy machine gunners. Semyon Bychkov woke up in a German military hospital ...

In the fall of 1943, Lieutenant Colonel of the German General Staff Holtero, head of the Vostok intelligence processing center at the Luftwaffe command headquarters, who processed the results of interrogations of Soviet pilots, proposed to form a flight unit from prisoners ready to fight on the side of Germany. At the same time, he enlisted the full support of his idea from the former Soviet aviation colonel Viktor Maltsev.

Since October 1943, from various camps, prisoners of war began to be taken to a camp located near Suwalki, Soviet captured aviators. Here, in various ways, they were forced to agree to join the armed forces of free Russia, then they underwent a medical examination, they were checked in a professional way.

Those deemed fit were trained in two-month courses, after which they were awarded a military rank, they took an oath, and then seconded to the "aviation group" of Lieutenant Colonel Holters in Morizfeld near Eastenburg (East Prussia), where they were used according to their flight specialties: technical personnel repaired those who got to Soviet aircraft were given to the Germans, while pilots were retrained on various types of German military aircraft. Those of the former Soviet aviators who were especially trusted by the enemies, as part of the German squadron, flew aircraft from factory sites to military airfields on the Eastern Front.

At the same time, an additional night battle group "Ostland" was formed under the 1st German Air Force stationed in the Baltic States, which, in addition to the Estonian group (three squadrons) and the Latvian group (two squadrons), also included the first "eastern" squadron - the first "Russian" aviation unit in the German Luftwaffe. Prior to its disbandment in June 1944, the 1st Squadron flew up to 500 sorties to the rear of the Soviet troops.

The German fighter, bomber and reconnaissance squadrons later included aircraft with "Russian" crews who distinguished themselves in air battles, during bombing, and in reconnaissance flights. In general, the experience with Soviet captured aviators seemed to the Luftwaffe command quite successful, and both German and Vlasov military observers unanimously noted the high combat qualities of the personnel of the Holters-Maltsev air group.

On March 29, 1944, the Volunteer newspaper of the Vlasov army published an appeal to Soviet captured pilots, signed by the Heroes of the Soviet Union Captain Semyon Bychkov and Senior Lieutenant Bronislav Antalevsky, in which they claimed that "... shot down in a fair battle, we were captured by Germans. Not only did no one torment or torture us, on the contrary, we met on the part of the German officers and soldiers the most warm and comradely attitude and movement towards our shoulder straps, orders and military merit.

And some time later, their new statement was published: “We, Captain Semyon Trofimovich Bychkov and Senior Lieutenant Bronislav Romanovich Antilevsky, former pilots of the Red Army, twice order bearers and Heroes of the Soviet Union, learned that hundreds of thousands of Russian volunteers, yesterday’s Red Army soldiers, are fighting today shoulder to shoulder with the German soldiers against Stalin's rule, and we also stood in these ranks.

Twice the recording of Bychkov's speech with a call to go over to the side of the German army was broadcast by the Germans in various sectors of the Eastern Front. It seems that the aviators of the 322nd Air Division could also know about the betrayal of a fellow soldier.

Was the transition of a combat Soviet aviator to the side of the enemy forced or voluntary? We cannot exclude either the first or the second version. When in July 1946 the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR began to consider the case on charges of A. A. Vlasov, V. F. Malyshkin, G. N. Zhilenkov, V. I. Maltsev and others of treason and other "particularly dangerous for USSR state war crimes”, S. T. Bychkov was called as a witness.

The minutes of the court session recorded: “Witness Bychkov told how at the end of January 1945 in the Moritzfeld camp, the commander of the aviation of the Russian Liberation Army (ROA), Maltsev, recruited Soviet pilots held in this camp. When Bychkov refused Maltsev's offer to serve in the "ROA aviation", he was so beaten that he was sent to the infirmary, where he lay for two weeks. Maltsev did not leave him alone there either. He intimidated that in the USSR he would still be “shot as a traitor”, and if he nevertheless refused to serve in the ROA, then he, Maltsev, would make sure that Bychkov was sent to a concentration camp, where he would undoubtedly die. In the end, Bychkov could not stand it and agreed to serve in the ROA.

It is possible that the Nazis really used the methods of “physical influence” on Semyon Bychkov (at present we know what these “methods” meant in the Nazi and Stalinist dungeons), and his consent to serve in the aviation of the “Committee for the Liberation Movement of the Peoples of Russia” (KONR) was forced.

But it is also an undeniable fact that the witness Bychkov did not tell the notorious chairman of the Military Collegium, Colonel-General of Justice VV Ulrikh, the whole truth at this court session. And it consisted in the fact that in Moritzfeld there was not a camp for prisoners of war at all, but for former pilots of the Red Army, who, for various reasons, were forced to agree to join the ROA, and besides, in January 1945, it was already cleared of enemies by the advancing Soviet troops.

Captain Bychkov and senior lieutenant Antilevsky already at the beginning of 1944 spoke in the camps for prisoners of war and eastern workers, openly calling for "armed struggle against the Stalinist regime" and, as part of an air group, participated in sorties against the Red Army.

Bychkov enjoyed great confidence among the Nazis. He was trusted to ferry combat vehicles from aircraft factories to front-line airfields, he taught flying skills to pilots of the ROA. No one could prevent him from flying on an enemy combat aircraft across the front line. But he didn't. And the Germans appreciated his devotion to the "liberation mission" of the ROA, assigning him the rank of major in the German army.

On February 4, 1945, during the first review of aviation units that were in the formation stage, General Vlasov presented combat awards to ROA aviators. Among others, the orders were awarded to Major Bychkov and the newly baked captain of the ROA Antilevsky.

On December 19, 1944, an order was issued by the “Great Flight Marshal German Reich and Commander-in-Chief of the Luftwaffe" Hermann Goering on the creation of the ROA air force, which emphasized that "the leadership of the formation is in the hands of the ROA", and they are directly subordinate to Vlasov.

On February 2, 1945, Vlasov and Maltsev, at the invitation of Reichsmarschall Goering, participated in a meeting at Karinhall. Maltsev, on the proposal of Vlasov, promoted to major general, received the authority of the commander of the Air Force of the ROA or "head of the air force of the peoples of Russia."

On February 13, the staff of the ROA Air Force Headquarters was approved. Most of the posts in the headquarters were taken by officers of the tsarist and white armies, who served in the Yugoslav military aviation between the two wars. Among them were St. George Knights Colonels L. Baidok and Antonov, Major V. Shebalin.

On February 10, 1945, the formation of aviation units began in Marienbad. The first air regiment (commander Colonel Baydak, chief of staff Major Shebalin) was formed in Eger. The fastest was to form the 5th fighter squadron named after Colonel Alexander Kazakov, the famous Russian aviator, hero of the First World War, who then fought in the ranks of the White Guard armies against the Soviet regime.

Major S. T. Bychkov was appointed squadron commander. The squadron was stationed in Eger and consisted of 16 Me-109G-10 fighters. According to the calculations of the headquarters of the Air Force of the ROA, in March it should have been involved "for fighting in the east."

The 2nd squadron (commander Captain Antilevsky) was armed with German bombers and was intended to carry out night sorties. In mid-February, Maltsev reported to General Vlasov that "independent combat groups of the ROA Air Force are ready for application at the front."

The Soviet troops advanced west rapidly and the fulfillment of the combat missions of the German command faded into the background: the headquarters of the ROA Air Force sought to save its aviation units. Nevertheless, on April 13, 1945, a squadron of night bombers from the air supported the advance of the 1st division of the ROA on the Soviet Erlenhof bridgehead, south of Furstenberg.

On April 13, Vlasov informed Maltsev of his decision to pull all the armed forces of the KONR east of Salzburg or into Bohemia. Parts of the ROA set off, on April 23, parts of the Air Force communications joined in Neuerk. On April 24, at the military council, it was finally recognized that by that time it was obvious to the most rabid Nazis: the final defeat of the Wehrmacht was a matter of several days.

Therefore, Maltsev, together with the German Luftwaffe General Ashekbusner, went to negotiate with the Americans in order to obtain from them the status of political refugees for the military personnel of the air units of the Russian Liberation Army.

At the negotiations at the headquarters of the 12th Corps of the US Army, the Americans behaved extremely correctly, but it soon became clear that they were completely unaware that troops of some Russian liberation army were fighting against them on the side of the Germans. Brigadier General Kenin said that the command of the corps, and indeed the entire 3rd american army, which he joins, are not authorized to enter into negotiations on granting political asylum to someone, that this issue is the exclusive competence of the President and the US Congress. The American general firmly stated: we can only talk about the unconditional surrender of weapons.

The surrender of weapons took place on April 27 in Langdorf, between Zwieselen and Resen. A group of officers, consisting of 200 people, including Semyon Bychkov, after temporary internment in the French city of Cherbourg in September 1945, was transferred to the Soviet troops.

On August 24, 1946, S. T. Bychkov was sentenced to death by a military tribunal of the Moscow Military District under Article 58.1-B of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR. The next day, Bychkov filed a petition for pardon with the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR. He wrote that “he made an emergency landing and, with a severe head wound, ended up under the wreckage of the plane in an unconscious state ... During interrogations, he did not give out military secrets to the enemy, joined the ROA under duress, deeply repents of his deed.” His request was denied...

Anatoly Kopeikin,

Correspondent of the magazine "Aviation and Cosmonautics"

THE FATE OF THE OTHER FALCONS VLASOV

Major General Maltsev was taken by soldiers of the 3rd American Army to a prisoner of war camp near Frankfurt am Main, and then also transported to Cherbourg. It is known that the Soviet side repeatedly and persistently demanded his extradition. Finally, the Vlasov general was nevertheless handed over to the NKVD, who, under escort, took him to their camp, located not far from Paris.

Maltsev tried to commit suicide twice - at the end of 1945 and in May 1946. While in a Soviet hospital in Paris, he cut open his arms and inflicted cuts on his neck. But he did not manage to avoid retribution for betrayal. On a specially flown "Douglas" he was taken to Moscow, where on August 1, 1946 he was sentenced to death and soon hanged along with Vlasov and other leaders of the ROA. Maltsev was the only one of them who did not ask for mercy and pardon. He only reminded the judges of the military board in the last word about his unfounded conviction in 1938, which undermined his faith in Soviet power.

S. Bychkov, as we have already said, was "reserved" for this trial as a witness. They promised that if they gave the necessary evidence, they would save his life. But on August 24 of the same year, the military tribunal of the Moscow Military District condemned him to death. The sentence was carried out on November 4, 1946. And the Decree to deprive him of the title of Hero took place 5 months later - on March 23, 1947.

As for B. Antilevsky, almost all researchers of this topic claim that he managed to avoid extradition by hiding in Spain under the protection of Generalissimo Franco, and that he was sentenced to death in absentia. “Traces of the regiment commander Baidak and two officers of his headquarters, majors Klimov and Albov, were never found. Antilevsky managed to fly away and get to Spain, where, according to information from those who continued to look for his "organs", he was noticed already in the 1970s. Although he was sentenced to death in absentia by the decision of the MVO court immediately after the war, he retained the title of Hero of the Soviet Union for another 5 years, and only in the summer of 1950, the authorities, who realized it, deprived him of this award in absentia "...

But the materials of the criminal case against B. R. Antilevsky do not give grounds for such assertions. It is difficult to say where the "Spanish trace" of B. Antilevsky originates from. Perhaps for the reason that his Fi-156 Storch aircraft was prepared for a flight to Spain, and he was not among the officers captured by the Americans. According to the materials of the case, after the surrender of Germany, he was in Czechoslovakia, where he joined the “pseudo-partisan” Red Spark detachment and received documents from a member of the anti-fascist movement in the name of Berezovsky. With this certificate in hand, he was arrested by the NKVD while trying to get into the territory of the USSR.

On June 12, 1945, Antilevsky-Berezovsky was repeatedly interrogated, fully convicted of treason, and on July 25, 1946 he was convicted by the military tribunal of the Moscow Military District under Art. 58-1 "b" of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR to capital punishment - execution, with confiscation of property personally belonging to him. There are no data on the execution of the sentence in the case. The decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR on the deprivation of B. Antilevsky of all awards and the title of Hero of the Soviet Union really took place much later - on July 12, 1950.