True, they still argue - who exactly turned out to be the author of the ram, Captain Gastello or Captain Maslov - both aircraft did not return to the airfield. But that's not the point. Widely known under the name of "Gastello's feat", the ram is not an air ram, it is a ram of a ground target, it was also called a fire ram.
And now we will talk specifically about air rams - a purposeful collision of an aircraft with a target in the air.
For the first time in the world, an aerial target was rammed on August 26, 1914 by the famous pilot Pyotr Nesterov (he was also the author of the "dead loop", which is also called "Nesterov's loop"). Nesterov on a light plane "Moran" rammed a heavy Austrian "albatross". As a result of the ram, the enemy plane was shot down, but Nesterov was also killed. The ramming strike was inscribed in the history of the art of piloting aircraft, but was considered an extreme measure, lethal for a pilot who decided to do so.
And now - the first day of the Great Patriotic War. "Today, June 22, at 4:00 am, without a declaration of war, German troops attacked our country ..." there were battles. Well, yes, those who suddenly found themselves on the front line did not need additional messages. They have already seen the enemy.
Many airfields were lost in the first minutes of hostilities - in accordance with the well-tried tactics of the blitzkrieg, German aircraft bombed sleeping airfields. But not all. Some of the equipment was saved by lifting the planes into the air. It was they who entered the battle - in the first minutes since the beginning of the war.
The Soviet pilots had only a theoretical idea of the ram strike. It is understandable, it has not yet occurred to anyone to practice this technique in practice. Moreover, the history of aviation clearly defined the ramming strike as fatal for the pilot. And so - in the very first minutes of the war, rams began! And, most interestingly, not all of them were fatal.
It is almost impossible to determine who exactly carried out the first air ramming in the Great Patriotic War. On June 22, at about 5 am Senior Lieutenant Ivan Ivanov, who served in the 46th Fighter Aviation Regiment, rammed the Heinkel-111 in the Mlynov region (Ukraine). The pilot died in a ram, he was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union posthumously.
The first ram? Perhaps. But then - on June 22 at about 5 o'clock in the morning, junior lieutenant Dmitry Kokorev, who served in the 124th Fighter Aviation Regiment, rammed the Messerschmitt in the Zambrov area. Kokorev survived the ramming, was awarded the Order of the Red Banner for his feat, and died on October 12, 1941 near Leningrad.
On June 22, at 5:15 am, junior lieutenant Leonid Buterin, who served in the 12th Fighter Aviation Regiment, rammed the Junkers-88 near Stanislav (Western Ukraine). He died in the ram. On June 22, at about 6 am, an unknown pilot on a U-2 aircraft (they were also affectionately called “ears”) rammed the Messerschmitt in the Vygoda area (not far from Bialystok). He died in the ram.
On June 22, at about 10 o'clock in the morning, Lieutenant Pyotr Ryabtsev, who served in the 123rd Fighter Aviation Regiment, rammed the Messerschmitt-109 over Brest. The pilot survived after the ramming strike - he jumped out with a parachute. Pyotr Ryabtsev died on July 31, 1941 in the battles near Leningrad.
Young guys decided to ram attacks, defending their land from the enemy. They did not think that the ram was fatal. Moreover, they expected to destroy the enemy and survive. And, as it turned out, this is quite real. They wrote not only heroic pages in the history of the Great Patriotic War, but also a new page in the history of aviation - a ramming strike is no longer a technique that unambiguously leads to the death of a pilot! Moreover, later it turned out that even an aircraft could be saved in a ramming attack - after some ramming, the pilots even managed to land a completely combat-ready vehicle (except that the chassis was broken off as a result of the ramming).
But that was only later. And in the first minutes and hours of the war, the pilots going to the ram knew only one example - Peter Nesterov, the hero of the First World War. And they took mortal risks. Not for the sake of glory, for the sake of victory. The pilots who threw their cars on the ram believed in what Levitan was saying to the whole country: “Our cause is just! The enemy will be defeated, victory will be ours! "
“And we need only one victory, one for all, we will not stand the price,” they did not stand behind the price, paying the maximum, giving their own lives for the sake of this one Victory for all. They did not think which one of them would be the first with their ram, it is for us, the descendants, to find the very Hero. And they didn't even feel like heroes. Pyotr Ryabtsev wrote to his brother about his ram: “I have already clinked glasses in the sky with one Hitler youth. He drove him, a scoundrel, into the ground ”- this is not a description of a heroic deed, he was not proud of the ram, but the fact that he destroyed one enemy!
“A deadly fire awaits us, and yet it is powerless ...” - the fire was indeed deadly, but it turned out to be powerless against them, such amazing people.
Eternal glory to them. And eternal memory. All together and each separately.
The air force of the Third Reich (Luftwaffe) from the very beginning of the war with the Soviet Union had to experience the fury of the Soviet "falcons". Heinrich Goering, Reich Minister of the Reich Ministry of Aviation in 1935-1945, was forced to forget his boastful words that "No one will ever be able to gain air superiority over the German aces!"
On the very first day of the Great Patriotic War, German pilots encountered such a reception as an air ram. This technique was first proposed by the Russian aviator N.A. scout.
During the Great Patriotic War, an air ram was not provided for by the military regulations, any instructions or instructions, and Soviet pilots resorted to this technique not by order of the command. Soviet people were driven by love for the Motherland, hatred of the invaders and the fury of battle, a sense of duty and personal responsibility for the fate of the Fatherland. As the Chief Marshal of Aviation (since 1944), twice Hero of the Soviet Union Alexander Alexandrovich Novikov, who was commander of the Soviet Air Force from May 1943 to 1946, wrote: “An air ram is not only a lightning-fast calculation, exceptional courage and self-control. A ram in the sky is, first of all, a readiness for self-sacrifice, the last test of loyalty to one's people, to one's ideals. This is one of the highest forms of manifestation of the very moral factor inherent in Soviet people, which the enemy did not and could not take into account. "
During the Great War, Soviet pilots made more than 600 air rams (their exact number is unknown, since research continues at the present time, new exploits of Stalin's falcons are gradually becoming known). More than two-thirds of the rams fell on 1941-1942 - this is the most difficult period of the war. In the fall of 1941, a circular was even sent out to the Luftwaffe, which forbade Soviet aircraft to approach closer than 100 meters in order to avoid air ramming.
It should be noted that the pilots of the Soviet Air Force used ramming on all types of aircraft: fighters, bombers, attack aircraft and reconnaissance aircraft. Air rams were carried out in single and group battles, day and night, at high and low altitudes, over their own territory and over the territory of the enemy, in any weather conditions. There were cases when pilots rammed a land or water target. So, the number of ground rams is almost equal to air attacks - more than 500. Perhaps the most famous ground ram is a feat that was performed on June 26, 1941 on a DB-3f (Il-4, twin-engine long-range bomber) by the crew of Captain Nikolai Gastello. The bomber was hit by enemy anti-aircraft artillery fire and committed the so-called. "Fiery ram", striking the enemy mechanized column.
In addition, it cannot be said that an air ram would necessarily lead to the death of the pilot. Statistics show that approximately 37% of the pilots were killed in an air ramming attack. The rest of the pilots not only remained alive, but even kept the aircraft in a more or less combat-ready state, so many aircraft could continue air combat and made a successful landing. There are examples when pilots made two successful rams in one air battle. Several dozen Soviet pilots performed the so-called. "Double" battering rams, this is when it was not possible to shoot down the enemy's plane from the first time and then it was necessary to finish it off with the second blow. There is even a case when the fighter pilot O. Kilgovatov, in order to destroy the enemy, had to make four ram attacks. 35 Soviet pilots made two rams each, N.V. Terekhin and A.S. Khlobystov - three each.
Boris Ivanovich Kovzan(1922 - 1985) - this is the only pilot in the world who made four air rams, and three times he returned to his home airfield on his plane. On August 13, 1942, Captain B.I.Kovzan made the fourth ram on the La-5 single-engine fighter. The pilot found a group of enemy bombers and fighters and entered into battle with them. In a fierce battle, his plane was shot down. An enemy machine-gun burst fell on the cockpit of the fighter, the instrument panel was smashed, and the pilot's head was cut by shrapnel. The car was on fire. Boris Kovzan felt a sharp pain in his head and one eye, so he hardly noticed how one of the German planes launched a frontal attack on him. The cars were closing fast. “If the German can't stand it now and turns upwards, then it will be necessary to ram,” thought Kovzan. A pilot wounded in the head on a burning plane went to a ram.
When the planes collided in the air, Kovzan was thrown out of the cockpit from a sharp impact, since the belts simply burst. He flew 3500 meters without opening the parachute in a semi-conscious state, and only already above the ground, at an altitude of only 200 meters, he woke up and pulled the exhaust ring. The parachute was able to open, but the impact on the ground was still very strong. The Soviet ace came to his senses in a Moscow hospital on the seventh day. He had several wounds from shrapnel, his collarbone and jaw, both arms and legs were broken. The doctors could not save the pilot's right eye. Kovzan's treatment continued for two months. Everyone well understood that in this air battle only a miracle saved him. The verdict of the commission for Boris Kovzan was very difficult: "You can't fly anymore." But it was a real Soviet falcon, who could not imagine life without flights and the sky. Kovzan has been pursuing his dream all his life! At one time they did not want to take him to the Odessa Military Aviation School, then Kovzan attributed a year to himself and begged the doctors of the medical commission, although he did not get 13 kilograms of weight to the norm. And he achieved his goal. He was driven by a strong confidence, if you constantly strive for a goal, it will be achieved.
He was wounded, but now he is healthy, his head is in place, his arms and legs have been restored. As a result, the pilot got to the Commander-in-Chief of the Air Force A. Novikov. He promised to help. Received a new conclusion of the medical board: "Suitable for flights on all types of fighters." Boris Kovzan writes a report with a request to send him to the belligerent units, receives several refusals. But this time he achieved his goal, the pilot was enrolled in the 144th Air Defense Division near Saratov. In total, during the years of World War II, the Soviet pilot flew 360 sorties, took part in 127 air battles, shot down 28 German aircraft, 6 of them after being seriously wounded and being one-eyed. In August 1943 he received the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.
Boris Kovzan
During the Great Patriotic War, Soviet pilots used various aerial ramming techniques:
A blow with an airplane propeller on the tail unit of the enemy. The attacking aircraft enters the enemy from behind and strikes with a propeller on its tail. This blow led to the destruction of the enemy aircraft or loss of control. It was the most common aerial ramming technique during the Great War. When executed correctly, the pilot of the attacking aircraft had a fairly good chance of surviving. In a collision with an enemy aircraft, only the propeller usually suffers, and even if it failed, there were chances to land the car or jump with a parachute.
Wing kick. It was carried out both with a head-on approach of aircraft, and when approaching the enemy from behind. The blow was inflicted by the wing on the tail or fuselage of an enemy aircraft, including the cockpit of the target aircraft. Sometimes this technique was used to complete a frontal attack.
Fuselage impact. It was considered the most dangerous type of air ram for a pilot. This technique also includes a collision of aircraft during a frontal attack. Interestingly, even with this outcome, some of the pilots survived.
Airplane tail blow (I. Sh. Bikmukhametov's ram). The ram that Ibragim Shagiakhmedovich Bikmukhametov committed on August 4, 1942. He went out into the forehead of the enemy aircraft with a slide and a turn, struck with the tail of his fighter on the enemy's wing. As a result, the enemy fighter lost control, fell into a tailspin and died, and Ibragim Bikmukhametov was even able to bring his LaGG-Z to the airfield and land safely.
Bikmukhametov graduated from the 2nd Borisoglebsk Red Banner Military Aviation Pilot School. VP Chkalov, in the winter of 1939 - 1940 he took part in the war with Finland. The junior lieutenant participated in the Great Patriotic War from the very beginning, until November 1941 he served in the 238th Fighter Aviation Regiment (IAP), then in the 5th Guards IAP. The regiment commander noted that the pilot was "brave and decisive."
On August 4, 1942, six single and single-engine LaGG-Z fighters of the 5th Guards IAP, led by Major Grigory Onufrienko, flew to cover the ground forces in the Rzhev area. The flight commander Ibragim Bikmukhametov was also part of this group. Behind the front line, Soviet fighters met 8 enemy Me-109 fighters. The Germans were on a parallel course. A fleeting air battle began. It ended with the victory of our pilots: 3 Luftwaffe aircraft were destroyed. One of them was shot down by squadron commander G. Onufrienko, two other "Messerschmitts" I. Bikmukhametov. The first Me-109 pilot attacked on a combat turn, hitting him with a cannon and two machine guns, the enemy plane went to the ground. In the heat of battle, I. Bikmukhametov later noticed another enemy aircraft, which entered the tail of his car from above. But the flight commander was not taken aback, he energetically made a hill and with a sharp turn went to the German. The enemy could not stand the attack head-on and tried to turn his plane away. The enemy pilot was able to avoid meeting with the propeller blades of the machine of I. Bikmukhametov. But our pilot contrived and, sharply turning the car, struck a strong blow with the tail of his "iron" (as the Soviet pilots called this fighter) on the wing of the "Messer". The enemy fighter fell into a tailspin and soon fell into the thicket of a dense forest.
Bikmukhametov was able to bring the heavily damaged car to the airfield. It was the 11th enemy aircraft shot down by Ibragim Bikmukhametov. During the war, the pilot was awarded 2 Orders of the Red Banner and the Order of the Red Star. The brave pilot died on December 16, 1942 in the Voronezh region. During a battle with superior enemy forces, his plane was shot down and during a forced landing, trying to save the fighter, the wounded pilot crashed.
LaGG-3
The first rams of the Great Patriotic War
Researchers are still arguing about who committed the first ram on June 22, 1941. Some believe that it was a senior lieutenant. Ivan Ivanovich Ivanov, others call the author of the first ram of the Great Patriotic War, junior lieutenant Dmitry Vasilyevich Kokorev.
I.I. Ivanov (1909 - June 22, 1941) served in the ranks of the Red Army in the fall of 1931, then was sent on a Komsomol ticket to the Perm Aviation School. In the spring of 1933 Ivanov was sent to the 8th Odessa Military Aviation School. Initially he served in the 11th Light Bomber Regiment in the Kiev Military District, in 1939 he took part in the Polish campaign to liberate Western Ukraine and Western Belarus, then in the “Winter War” with Finland. At the end of 1940 he graduated from the courses for fighter pilots. He was appointed to the 14th mixed aviation division, deputy squadron commander of the 46th IAP.
Ivan Ivanovich Ivanov
At dawn on June 22, 1941, Senior Lieutenant Ivan Ivanov took to the skies on a combat alert at the head of the I-16 flight (according to another version, the pilots were on the I-153) to intercept a group of enemy aircraft that were approaching the Mlynov airfield. In the air, Soviet pilots found 6 twin-engine He-111 bombers from the 7th squadron of the KG 55 "Grif" squadron. Senior Lieutenant Ivanov led a flight of fighters to attack the enemy. A link of Soviet fighters dived into the lead bomber. Bomber shooters opened fire on Soviet aircraft. Coming out of the dive, the I-16s repeated the attack. One of the Heinkels was hit. The rest of the enemy bombers dropped their bombs before reaching the target and began to go west. After a successful attack, both of Ivanov's slaves went to their airfield, since, avoiding enemy fire, maneuvering, they used up almost all the fuel. Ivanov, letting them in to land, continued pursuit, but then, he also decided to land, because the fuel ran out, and the ammunition ran out. At this time, an enemy bomber appeared over the Soviet airfield. Noticing him, Ivanov went to meet him, but the German, firing machine-gun fire, did not turn off the course. The only way to stop the enemy was the ram. From the blow, the bomber (the Soviet plane cut off the tail of the German car with a propeller), which was led by non-commissioned officer H. Volfeil, lost control and crashed into the ground. The entire German crew was killed. But I. Ivanov's plane was also badly damaged. Due to the low altitude, the pilot could not use the parachute and died. This ram took place at 4 hours 25 minutes in the morning near the village of Zagoroshcha, Rivne district, Rivne region. On August 2, 1941, Senior Lieutenant Ivan Ivanovich Ivanov posthumously became a Hero of the Soviet Union.
I-16
Around the same time, a junior lieutenant rammed Dmitry Vasilievich Kokorev(1918 - 10/12/1941). A native of Ryazan, he served in the 9th mixed aviation division, in the 124th IAP (Western Special Military District). The regiment was stationed at the Vysoko Mazovetsk border airfield, near the town of Zambrov (Western Ukraine). After the war began, the regiment commander, Major Polunin, instructed the young pilot to reconnoiter the situation in the area of the USSR state border, which has now become the line of contact between Soviet and German troops.
At 4:05 in the morning, when Dmitry Kokorev was returning from reconnaissance, the Luftwaffe made the first powerful blow at the airfield, since the regiment interfered with the flight inland. The fight was fierce. The airfield was badly damaged.
And then Kokarev saw the Dornier-215 reconnaissance bomber (according to other information, the Me-110 multipurpose aircraft), leaving the Soviet airfield. Apparently, it was a Nazi reconnaissance officer who monitored the result of the first strike on the fighter aviation regiment. Anger blinded the Soviet pilot, abruptly jerking the MiG high-altitude fighter into a combat turn, Kokorev went on the attack, in a fever he opened fire ahead of time. He missed, but the German shooter hit right - a line of breaks pierced the right plane of his car.
The enemy plane was leaving at maximum speed to the state border. Dmitry Kokorev went on the second attack. He reduced the distance, not paying attention to the frantic shooting of the German shooter, coming up to the range of the shot, Kokorev pressed the trigger, but the ammunition ran out. For a long time, the Soviet pilot did not think, it was impossible to let go of the enemy, he sharply increased speed and threw the fighter at the enemy vehicle. "MiG" slashed with a propeller near the tail of the "Dornier".
This air ramming occurred at 4:15 am (according to other sources - at 4.35 am) in front of the infantrymen and border guards who defended the city of Zambrov. The fuselage of the German plane snapped in half, and the Dornier crashed to the ground. Our fighter went into a tailspin, its engine stalled. Kokorev came to his senses and was able to pull the car out of the terrible rotation. I chose a clearing for landing and landed successfully. It should be noted that Junior Lieutenant Kokorev was an ordinary Soviet private pilot, of whom there were hundreds in the Air Force of the Red Army. Behind the shoulders of the junior lieutenant was only a flight school.
Unfortunately, the hero did not live to see Victory. He made 100 sorties, shot down 5 enemy aircraft. When his regiment fought near Leningrad, on October 12, intelligence reported that a large number of enemy Junkers had been found at the airfield in Siverskaya. The weather was bad, the Germans did not take to the air in such conditions and did not wait for our planes. It was decided to strike at the airfield. A group of 6 of our Pe-2 dive bombers (they were called "Pawns"), accompanied by 13 MiG-3 fighters, appeared over the "Siverskaya" and came as a complete surprise to the Nazis.
Incendiary bombs from low altitude hit right on target, machine-gun fire and fighter rockets completed the rout. The Germans were able to lift only one fighter into the air. The Pe-2s had already been bombed and were leaving, only one bomber lagged behind. Kokorev rushed to his defense. He shot down the enemy, but at this time the air defense of the Germans woke up. Dmitry's plane was shot down and crashed.
The first ...
Ekaterina Ivanovna Zelenko(1916 - September 12, 1941) became the first woman on the planet to carry out an aerial ram. Zelenko graduated from the Voronezh flying club (in 1933), the 3rd Orenburg military aviation school named after V.I. K. E. Voroshilov (in 1934). She served in the 19th Light Bomber Aviation Brigade in Kharkov, was a test pilot. Within 4 years, she mastered seven types of aircraft. This is the only female pilot who participated in the "Winter War" (as part of the 11th Light Bomber Aviation Regiment). She was awarded the Order of the Red Banner - she flew 8 combat missions.
She participated in the Great Patriotic War from the first day, fighting as part of the 16th mixed aviation division, was the deputy commander of the 5th squadron of the 135th bomber aviation regiment. She managed to make 40 sorties, including night ones. On September 12, 1941, she made 2 successful reconnaissance sorties in a Su-2 bomber. But, despite the fact that during the second flight her Su-2 was damaged, Ekaterina Zelenko flew out for the third time on the same day. Already returning, in the area of the city of Romny, two Soviet planes were attacked by 7 enemy fighters. Ekaterina Zelenko was able to shoot down one Me-109, and when she ran out of ammunition, she rammed a second German fighter. The pilot destroyed the enemy, but at the same time she died.
Monument to Ekaterina Zelenko in Kursk.
Viktor Vasilievich Talalikhin(1918 - October 27, 1941) carried out a night ram, which became the most famous in this war, shooting down an Xe-111 bomber on the night of August 7, 1941 on an I-16 near Podolsk (Moscow region). For a long time it was believed that this was the first night ramming in aviation. Only later did it become known that on the night of July 29, 1941, the fighter pilot of the 28th IAP Peter Vasilievich Eremeev on a MiG-3 plane, he shot down an enemy Junkers-88 bomber with a ramming blow. He died on October 2, 1941 in an air battle (September 21, 1995 Eremeev for courage and military valor, posthumously awarded the title of Hero of Russia).
On October 27, 1941, 6 fighters under the command of V. Talalikhin flew to cover our forces in the area of the village of Kamenka, on the banks of the Nara (85 km west of the capital). They collided with 9 enemy fighters, in the battle Talalikhin shot down one Messer, but another was able to knock him out, the pilot died a heroic death ...
Viktor Vasilievich Talalikhin.
The crew of Viktor Petrovich Nosov from the 51st mine-torpedo regiment of the Baltic Fleet Air Force carried out the first ram of a ship in the history of the war with the help of a heavy bomber. The lieutenant commanded the A-20 torpedo bomber (American Douglas A-20 Havoc). On February 13, 1945, in the southern part of the Baltic Sea, during an attack by an enemy transport of 6 thousand tons, a Soviet plane was shot down. The commander directed the burning car directly into the enemy transport. The plane hit the target, an explosion occurred, the enemy ship sank. The crew of the aircraft: Lieutenant Viktor Nosov (commander), junior lieutenant Alexander Igoshin (navigator) and sergeant Fyodor Dorofeev (radio operator), died a heroic death.
"I want everyone ..."
This post is the result of my long-term joint work with the Samara historian Alexei Stepanov, who was the author of the idea of this topic. We worked on the topic at the turn of the 80s and 90s, but then youth, youthful maximalism and lack of information did not allow us to complete the study with serious scientific work. Now, for more than 20 years, a lot of new information has been revealed, but the intensity of passions has faded away. Therefore, this article lost the then indignant and accusatory pathos, addressed to the Soviet historical "pseudo-science", but it was significantly replenished with specific information. In addition, today I have absolutely no desire to engage in scientific activity and create serious, but boring scientific work, riddled with references to sources that make it difficult to read. Therefore, I present to everyone interested in a simple publicistic article about the heroes of air rams who were unlucky to be born in the USSR, and therefore they lost the right to respect for their bravery among the Russian people, who generally always appreciated courage and heroism. I warn you right away, since a lot has been written about Soviet battering rams, I will only talk about foreign “battering rams”, mentioning ours only in case of their primacy - “not for humiliation, but for justice” ...
For a long time, official Soviet historical scholarship used the example of air rams to emphasize the special patriotic heroism of Soviet pilots, unattainable for representatives of other nations. In Soviet literature, only domestic and Japanese air rams were always mentioned; Moreover, if the rams of Soviet pilots were represented by our propaganda as heroic, conscious self-sacrifice, then the same actions of the Japanese for some reason were called "fanaticism" and "doom". Thus, all Soviet pilots who committed a suicidal attack were surrounded by a halo of heroes, and Japanese kamikaze pilots were surrounded by a halo of "antiheroes." Representatives of other countries in the heroism of air ramming by Soviet researchers were generally denied. This prejudice persisted until the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the legacy of many years of suppressing the heroism of foreign pilots is still felt. “It is deeply symbolic that in the vaunted Hitlerite Luftwaffe there was not a single pilot who, at a critical moment, deliberately launched an air ram ... on rams, Major General of Aviation A.D. Zaitsev. “During the war, such a truly Russian, Soviet form of air combat as air ramming became widespread,” says the major work on the history of Russian aviation “Air Power of the Motherland”, published in 1988. “Air ram is a standard of feat of arms. The diametrically opposite attitude to the ram was the first moral defeat of the vaunted Nazi aces, the harbinger of our victory "- this is the opinion of the best Soviet ace of the Great Patriotic War Ivan Kozhedub, expressed by him in 1990 (by the way, Kozhedub himself did not commit a single ram during the war). There are many examples of such a nationalist approach to this problem. Soviet specialists in the history of aviation either did not know, or deliberately lied and hushed up data about ramming committed by foreign pilots, although it was enough to turn to the memoirs of Soviet pilots or to foreign works on the history of aviation to make sure that air ramming is a broader phenomenon. than our historians imagined. Against the background of this attitude to history, it no longer seemed surprising confusion in the domestic literature on such issues as: who committed the second and third aerial rams in the world, who rammed the enemy for the first time at night, who committed the first land ram (the so-called "feat of Gastello"), etc. etc. Today, information about the heroes of other countries has become available, and all people interested in the history of aviation have the opportunity to refer to the corresponding books to learn about their exploits. I am publishing this post for those who are not familiar with aviation history, but would like to know something about respectable people.
Russian pilot Peter Nesterov; battering ram of Nesterov (postcard from the 1st World War); Russian pilot Alexander Kozakov
It is well known that the world's first air ram was carried out by our compatriot Pyotr Nesterov, who destroyed the Austrian Albatross reconnaissance aircraft on September 8, 1914 at the cost of his life. But for a long time the honor of the second ram in the world was attributed either to N. Zherdev, who fought in Spain in 1938, or to A. Gubenko, who fought in China in the same year. And only after the collapse of the Soviet Union in our literature there was information about the real hero of the second air ram - Russian pilot of the 1st World War Alexander Kozakov, who on March 18, 1915, over the front line, shot down the Austrian plane "Albatross" with a ramming strike. Moreover, Kozakov became the first pilot to survive a suicidal strike on an enemy plane: on the damaged Moran, he managed to make a successful landing at the location of the Russian troops. The prolonged suppression of the feat of Kozakov is due to the fact that later this most productive Russian ace of the 1st World War (32 victories) became a White Guard and fought against Soviet power. Such a hero, naturally, did not suit Soviet historians, and his name was deleted from the history of Russian aviation for many decades, it turned out to be simply forgotten ...
However, even taking into account the hostility of Soviet historians to the White Guard Kozakov, they did not have the right to assign the title of "ramman number 2" to either Zherdev or Gubenko, since during the 1st World War several foreign pilots also carried out air rams. Thus, in September 1916, the captain of the British Air Force, Eiselwood, who was flying a D.H.2 fighter, shot down the German Albatross by hitting the landing gear of his fighter, and then landed on his belly at his airfield. In June 1917, the Canadian William Bishop, having fired all the cartridges in battle, deliberately cut off the wing struts of the German Albatross with the wing of his Nieuport. The enemy's wings folded from the blow, and the German fell to the ground; Bishop made it safely to the airfield. Subsequently, he became one of the best aces of the British Empire: he ended the war with 72 aerial victories ...
But, perhaps, the most amazing aerial ram in the 1st World War was carried out by the Belgian Willie Coppens, who rammed the German Draken balloon on May 8, 1918. Having fired all the cartridges in several attacks on the balloon to no avail, Coppens hit the Draken's skin with the wheels of his Anrio fighter; the propeller blades also slashed across the tightly inflated canvas, and the Draken burst. At the same time, the HD-1 engine choked due to gas gushing into the hole of the ruptured cylinder, and Coppens literally miraculously did not die. He was rescued by the oncoming air flow, with force unscrewing the propeller and starting the engine of the Anrio, when it rolled off the falling Draken. It was the first and only ram in the history of Belgian aviation.
Canadian ace William Bishop; HD-1 "Anrio" Coppens breaks down from the "Draken" he rammed; Belgian ace Willie Coppens
After the end of the 1st World War in the history of air rams, of course, there was a break. Again the ram, as a means of destroying an enemy aircraft, the pilots remembered during the Spanish Civil War. At the very beginning of this war - in the summer of 1936 - a republican pilot, Lieutenant Urtubi, found himself in a stalemate, having fired all the cartridges at the Franco planes that surrounded him, rammed the Italian Fiat fighter from a frontal view on the slow-moving Nieuport. Both planes crumbled on impact; Urtubi managed to open his parachute, but on the ground he died from his wounds received in battle. And about a year later (in July 1937), on the other side of the world - in China - for the first time in the world, a sea ram was carried out, and a massive ram: at the very beginning of Japan's aggression against China, 15 Chinese pilots sacrificed themselves, falling from the air on enemy landing ships and sinking 7 of them!
On October 25, 1937, the world's first night aerial ram took place. It was carried out in Spain by a Soviet volunteer pilot Yevgeny Stepanov, who in the most difficult conditions destroyed the Italian Savoy-Marcheti biplane by hitting the landing gear of his Chato biplane (I-15). Moreover, Stepanov rammed the enemy, having almost full ammunition - an experienced pilot, he understood that it was impossible to shoot down a huge three-engine aircraft with his small-caliber machine guns in one go, and after a long line at the bomber he went to ram so as not to lose the enemy in the dark. After the attack, Evgeny returned safely to the airfield, and in the morning in the area indicated by him, the Republicans found the wreckage of the "Marcheti" ...
On June 22, 1939, pilot Shogo Saito made the first ram in Japanese aviation over Khalkhin Gol. Gripped "in the pincers" by Soviet planes, who shot all the ammunition, Saito went for a breakthrough, cutting off part of the tail unit of the closest fighter with his wing, and escaped from the encirclement. And when, a month later, on July 21, saving his commander, Saito tried to ram the Soviet fighter again (the ram did not work - the Soviet pilot dodged the attack), his comrades gave him the nickname "King of Ramming". The "ram king" Shogo Saito, who had 25 victories on his account, died in July 1944 in New Guinea, fighting in the ranks of the infantry (after losing the plane) against the Americans ...
Soviet pilot Evgeny Stepanov; Japanese pilot Shogo Saito; Polish pilot Leopold Pamula
The first air ram in World War II was carried out not by a Soviet, as is commonly believed in our country, but by a Polish pilot. This ram was carried out on September 1, 1939 by the deputy commander of the Interceptor Brigade covering Warsaw, Lieutenant Colonel Leopold Pamula. Having knocked out 2 bombers in a battle with superior enemy forces, he went on his damaged plane to ram one of the 3 Messerschmitt-109 fighters that attacked him. Having destroyed the enemy, Pamula escaped by parachute and made a safe landing at the location of his troops. Six months after the feat of Pamula, another foreign pilot made a ramming attack: on February 28, 1940, in a fierce air battle over Karelia, the Finnish pilot Lieutenant Hutanantti rammed a Soviet fighter plane and died.
Pamula and Hutanantti were not the only foreign pilots to ram at the start of World War II. During the German offensive against France and Holland, the pilot of the British bomber "Battle" N.M. Thomas accomplished a feat that we today call “the feat of Gastello”. Trying to stop the rapid German offensive, the allied command on May 12, 1940 gave the order to destroy at any cost the crossings across the Meuse north of Maastricht, along which enemy tank divisions were crossing. However, German fighters and anti-aircraft guns repelled all British attacks, inflicting terrible losses on them. And then, in a desperate desire to stop the German tanks, Flight Officer Thomas sent his "Battle" destroyed by an anti-aircraft gun into one of the bridges, having managed to inform his comrades about the decision ...
Six months later, another pilot repeated Thomas's feat. In Africa on November 4, 1940, another Battle bomber pilot, Lieutenant Hutchinson, was hit by anti-aircraft fire while bombing Italian positions in Njalli, Kenya. And then Hutchinson sent his "Battle" into the midst of the Italian infantry, at the cost of his own death, destroying about 20 enemy soldiers. Eyewitnesses claimed that at the time of the ram, Hutchinson was alive - the British bomber was controlled by the pilot until the collision with the ground ...
During the Battle of England, British fighter pilot Ray Holmes distinguished himself. During the German raid on London on September 15, 1940, a German Dornier 17 bomber broke through the British fighter barrier to Buckingham Palace - the residence of the King of Great Britain. The German was already preparing to drop bombs on an important target when Ray appeared on his way in his Hurricane. Having dived from above to the enemy, Holmes, on a collision course, cut down the tail of Dornier with his wing, but he himself received such heavy damage that he was forced to flee by parachute.
Ray Holmes in his Hurricane's cockpit; battering ram of Ray Holmes
The next fighter pilots to take mortal risks to win were the Greeks Marino Mitralexes and Grigoris Valkanas. During the Italian-Greek war on November 2, 1940, over Thessaloniki, Marino Mitralexes rammed the Italian bomber Kant Zet-1007 with the propeller of his PZL P-24 fighter. After the ram, Mitralexes not only landed safely, but also managed, with the help of local residents, to capture the crew of the bomber he shot down! Volkanas accomplished his feat on November 18, 1940. During a fierce group battle in the Morova region (Albania), he shot all the cartridges and rammed an Italian fighter (both pilots were killed).
With the escalation of hostilities in 1941 (the attack on the USSR, the entry into the war of Japan and the United States), rams became quite common in air warfare. Moreover, these actions were characteristic not only of Soviet pilots - pilots of almost all countries participating in the battles performed rams.
So, on December 22, 1941, the Australian Sergeant Reed, who fought in the British Air Force, having used up all the cartridges, rammed the Japanese Ki-43 army fighter with his Brewster-239, and died in a collision with it. At the end of February 1942, the Dutchman J. Adam also rammed a Japanese fighter on the same Brewster, but survived.
The rams were also carried out by the US pilots. The Americans are very proud of their captain Colin Kelly, who in 1941 was presented by propagandists as the first "ramman" of the United States to ram the Japanese battleship Haruna on December 10 with his B-17 bomber. True, after the war, researchers found that Kelly did not commit any ramming. Nevertheless, the American did indeed accomplish a feat that, due to the pseudo-patriotic inventions of journalists, was undeservedly forgotten. On that day, Kelly bombed the cruiser "Nagara" and diverted all the cover fighters of the Japanese squadron to himself, allowing other aircraft to calmly bomb the enemy. When Kelly was shot down, he tried to the end to maintain control of the aircraft, allowing the crew to leave the dying car. At the cost of his life, Kelly saved ten comrades, but he did not have time to save himself ...
Based on this information, the first American pilot to actually ram was Captain Fleming, commander of the Vindicator bomber squadron of the US Marine Corps. During the Battle of Midway on June 5, 1942, he led his squadron's attack on Japanese cruisers. On the way to the target, his plane was hit by an anti-aircraft projectile and caught fire, but the captain continued the attack and bombed. Seeing that the bombs of his subordinates missed the target (the squadron consisted of reservists and had poor training), Fleming turned around and swooped down on the enemy again, crashing a burning bomber into the cruiser Mikuma. The damaged ship lost its combat capability, and was soon finished off by other American bombers.
Another American who rammed was Major Ralph Cheli, who, on August 18, 1943, led his bomber group to attack the Japanese airfield in Dagua (New Guinea). Almost immediately, his B-25 Mitchell was hit; then Cheli sent his flaming plane down and crashed into a formation of enemy planes on the ground, smashing five aircraft with the Mitchell's corps. For this feat, Ralph Chely was posthumously awarded the highest US award - the Congressional Medal of Honor.
In the second half of the war, air rams were also used by many Englishmen, although, perhaps, in a somewhat peculiar way (but with no less risk to their own lives). German Lieutenant General Erich Schneider, when describing the use of V-1 projectiles against England, testifies: "the brave British pilots shot down the projectiles either in an attack with cannon and machine gun fire, or by ramming them from the side." This method of struggle was not chosen by the British pilots by chance: very often when firing, a German projectile exploded, destroying the pilot who was attacking it - after all, when the "Fau" exploded, the radius of absolute destruction was about 100 meters, and to hit a small target moving at great speed from a greater distance it is very difficult, almost impossible. Therefore, the British (also, of course, risking death) flew up to the "Fau" close and pushed it to the ground by blowing wing on wing. One wrong move, the slightest mistake in the calculation - and only a memory remained from the brave pilot ... This is exactly how the best English hunter for "V" Joseph Berry acted, who destroyed 59 German aircraft-shells in 4 months. On October 2, 1944, he launched an attack on the 60th "Fau", and this ram was his last ...
Fau Killer Joseph Berry
so Berry and many other British pilots rammed German V-1 shells
With the beginning of the American bombers' raids on Bulgaria, the Bulgarian aviators also had to carry out air rams. In the afternoon of December 20, 1943, while repelling a raid on Sofia of 150 Liberator bombers, which were accompanied by 100 Lightning fighters, Lieutenant Dimitar Spisarevsky fired all the ammunition of his Bf-109G-2 into one of the Liberators, and then, slipping over the dying car , crashed into the fuselage of the second Liberator, breaking it in half! Both planes crashed to the ground; Dimitar Spisarevsky died. Spisarevsky's feat made him a national hero. This ram made an indelible impression on the Americans - after the death of Spisarevsky, the Americans feared every approaching Bulgarian Messerschmitt ... The feat of Dimitar on April 17, 1944 was repeated by Nedelcho Bonchev. In a fierce battle over Sofia against 350 B-17 bombers, covered by 150 Mustang fighters, Lieutenant Nedelcho Bonchev shot down 2 of the three bombers destroyed by the Bulgarians in this battle. And the second plane Bonchev, having used up all the ammunition, rammed. At the time of the ramming strike, the Bulgarian pilot was thrown out of Messerschmitt along with the seat. Having barely freed himself from the seat belts, Bonchev escaped by parachute. After Bulgaria went over to the side of the anti-fascist coalition, Nedelcho took part in the battles against Germany, but in October 1944 he was shot down and taken prisoner. During the evacuation of the concentration camp in early May 1945, the hero was shot by a guard.
Bulgarian pilots Dimitar Spisarevski and Nedelcho Bonchev
As noted above, we have heard a lot about the Japanese suicide bombers "kamikaze", for whom the ram was actually the only weapon. However, it must be said that the rams were carried out by Japanese pilots before the appearance of the "kamikaze", but then these acts were not planned and were usually carried out either in the excitement of a battle, or with severe damage to the aircraft, which precluded its return to base. A striking example of such a ramming attempt is the dramatic description by the Japanese naval pilot Mitsuo Fuchida in his book "The Battle of Midway Atoll" of the last attack by Lieutenant Commander Yoichi Tomonaga. The commander of the torpedo squadron of the aircraft carrier "Hiryu" Yoichi Tomonaga, who may well be called the predecessor of the "kamikaze", on June 4, 1942, at a critical moment for the Japanese of the battle for Midway, flew into battle on a heavily damaged torpedo bomber, which had one of its tanks shot through in the previous battle. At the same time, Tomonaga was fully aware that he did not have enough fuel to return from the battle. During a torpedo attack on the enemy, Tomonaga tried to ram the American flagship aircraft carrier "Yorktown" with his "Kate", but, being shot by all the ship's artillery, fell to pieces literally a few meters from the side ...
The predecessor of the "kamikaze" Yoichi Tomonaga
Attack of the torpedo bomber Kate, filmed from the aircraft carrier Yorktown during the Battle of Midway Atoll.
This is approximately what Tomonaga's last attack looked like (it is quite possible that it was his plane that was filmed)
However, not all ramming attempts ended as tragic for the Japanese pilots. So, for example, on October 8, 1943, fighter pilot Satoshi Anabuki in a light Ki-43, armed with only two machine guns, managed to shoot down 2 American fighters and 3 heavy four-engine B-24 bombers in one battle! Moreover, the third bomber, which used up all the ammunition, Anabuki destroyed with a ram attack. After this ramming, the wounded Japanese man still managed to land his wrecked plane "on an emergency" on the coast of the Gulf of Burma. For his feat, Anabuki received an award that was exotic for Europeans, but quite familiar to the Japanese: the commander of the Burmese District, General Kawabe, dedicated a poem of his own composition to the heroic pilot ...
A particularly "cool" "rammer" among the Japanese was 18-year-old junior lieutenant Masajiro Kawato, who committed 4 air rams during his combat career. The first victim of the suicidal attacks of the Japanese was the B-25 bomber, which Kavato shot down over Rabaul with the blow of his Zero, which was left without ammunition (the date of this ram is unknown to me). Masajiro, who escaped by parachute on November 11, 1943, again rammed an American bomber, being wounded. Then, in a battle on December 17, 1943, Kawato rammed an Airacobra fighter in a frontal attack, and again escaped by parachute. The last time Masajiro Kawato rammed over Rabaul on February 6, 1944, the four-engine bomber B-24 "Liberator", and again used a parachute for rescue. In March 1945, the seriously wounded Kawato was captured by the Australians, and the war ended for him.
And less than a year before the surrender of Japan - in October 1944 - the "kamikaze" entered the battle. The first attack "kamikaze" was carried out on October 21, 1944 by Lieutenant Kuno, who damaged the ship "Australia". And on October 25, 1944, the first successful attack of a whole kamikaze unit under the command of Lieutenant Yuki Seki took place, during which an aircraft carrier and a cruiser were sunk, and one more aircraft carrier was damaged. But, although the main targets of the "kamikaze" were usually enemy ships, the Japanese had suicide units to intercept and destroy the heavy American B-29 Superfortress bombers with ram attacks. So, for example, in the 27th regiment of the 10th air division, a link of specially lightweight Ki-44-2 aircraft was created under the command of Captain Matsuzaki, which bore the poetic name "Shinten" ("Heavenly Shadow"). These "Heavenly Shadow Kamikaze" became a real nightmare for the Americans who flew to bomb Japan ...
From the end of World War II to the present day, historians and amateurs have argued whether the "kamikaze" movement made sense, whether it was successful enough. In official Soviet military history books, 3 negative reasons for the appearance of Japanese suicide bombers were usually highlighted: the lack of modern technology and experienced personnel, fanaticism and the "voluntary-compulsory" method of recruiting fatal flight performers. While fully agreeing with this, one must, however, acknowledge that, under certain conditions, this tactic also brought some advantages. In a situation where hundreds and thousands of untrained pilots perished without any sense from the crushing attacks of superbly trained American pilots, from the point of view of the Japanese command it was undoubtedly more profitable that they, in their inevitable death, would cause at least some damage to the enemy. It is impossible not to take into account here the special logic of the samurai spirit, which was implanted by the Japanese leadership as a model among the entire Japanese population. According to her, a warrior is born in order to die for his emperor and "a beautiful death" in battle was considered the pinnacle of his life. It was this logic incomprehensible to a European that prompted Japanese pilots, even at the beginning of the war, to fly into battle without parachutes, but with samurai swords in the cockpits!
The advantage of the suicide tactics was that the range of the "kamikaze" in comparison with conventional aircraft was doubled (there was no need to save gas to get back). The losses of the enemy in people from suicide attacks were much greater than the losses of the "kamikaze" themselves; in addition, these attacks undermined the morale of the Americans, who experienced such horror in front of suicide bombers that the American command during the war was forced to classify all information about the "kamikaze" in order to avoid complete demoralization of the personnel. After all, no one could feel protected from sudden suicide attacks - not even the crews of small ships. With the same grim obstinacy, the Japanese attacked anything that could swim. As a result, the results of the activities of the kamikaze were much more serious than the allied command then tried to imagine (but more on that in the conclusion).
Similar kamikaze attacks terrified American sailors
In Soviet times, in Russian literature, not only was there never even a mention of air ramming committed by German pilots, but it was repeatedly asserted that it was impossible for "cowardly fascists" to perform such feats. And this practice continued in the new Russia until the mid-90s, until, thanks to the appearance in our country of new Western studies translated into Russian, and the development of the Internet, it became impossible to deny the documented facts of the heroism of our main enemy. Today it is already a proven fact: German pilots during World War II repeatedly used a ram to destroy enemy aircraft. But the long-term delay in the recognition of this fact by domestic researchers causes only surprise and annoyance: after all, to be convinced of this, even in Soviet times, it was enough just to take a critical look at least at Russian memoir literature. In the memoirs of Soviet veteran pilots, from time to time there are references to head-on collisions over the battlefield, when the planes of the opposing sides collided with each other from opposite angles. What is this if not a mutual ram? And if in the initial period of the war the Germans almost did not use such a technique, then this does not indicate a lack of courage among the German pilots, but that they had at their disposal sufficiently effective weapons of traditional types that allowed them to destroy the enemy without exposing their lives to unnecessary additional risk.
I do not know all the facts of rams committed by German pilots on different fronts of World War II, especially since even the participants in those battles often find it difficult to say for sure whether it was a deliberate ram, or an accidental collision in the confusion of high-speed maneuvering combat (this also applies to Soviet pilots , which recorded battering rams). But even when listing the cases of ramming victories of the German aces known to me, it is clear that in a hopeless situation the Germans boldly went to a deadly and for them collision, often not sparing their lives for the sake of harming the enemy.
If we specifically talk about the facts known to me, then among the first German "rammers" can be called Kurt Sohatzi, who on August 3, 1941 near Kiev, repelling the attack of Soviet attack aircraft on German positions, destroyed the "unbreakable Cementbomber" Il-2 with a frontal ramming strike. In the collision, Messerschmitt Kurt lost half of his wing, and he had to hastily make an emergency landing right on the flight path. Sokhatzi landed on Soviet territory and was captured; nevertheless, for his accomplished feat, the command in absentia awarded him the highest award of Germany - the Knight's Cross.
If at the beginning of the war the ramming actions of German pilots who were winning on all fronts were a rare exception, then in the second half of the war, when the situation was not in Germany's favor, the Germans began to use ram attacks more and more often. For example, on March 29, 1944, in the skies of Germany, the famous Luftwaffe ace Hermann Graf rammed the American Mustang fighter, receiving serious injuries, which put him in a hospital bed for two months. The next day, March 30, 1944, on the Eastern Front, the German assault ace, Knight's Cross Knight Alvin Boerst repeated the "feat of Gastello". In the Yass region, he attacked a Soviet tank column in an anti-tank version of the Ju-87, was shot down by an anti-aircraft gun and, dying, rammed the tank in front of him. Boerst was posthumously awarded the Swords to the Knight's Cross. In the West, on May 25, 1944, a young pilot, Oberfenrich Hubert Heckmann, in a Bf 109G rammed Captain Joe Bennett's Mustang, decapitating an American fighter squadron, and then escaped by parachute. And on July 13, 1944, another famous ace - Walter Dahl - shot down a heavy American B-17 bomber with a ramming strike.
German pilots: fighter ace Hermann Graf and assault ace Alvin Boerst
The Germans had pilots who made several rams. For example, in the skies of Germany, while repelling American raids, Hauptmann Werner Geert rammed enemy planes three times. In addition, the pilot of the assault squadron of the "Udet" squadron, Willie Maksimovich, was widely known for destroying 7 (!) American four-engine bombers with ram attacks. Wheely was killed over Pillau in an air battle against Soviet fighters on April 20, 1945.
But the cases listed above are only a small part of the air rams committed by the Germans. In the conditions of the complete technical and quantitative superiority of the Allied aviation over the German, which was created at the end of the war, the Germans were forced to create units of their "kamikaze" (and even earlier than the Japanese!). Already at the beginning of 1944, the Luftwaffe began the formation of special fighter-assault squadrons to destroy the American bombers that bombed Germany. The entire personnel of these units, including volunteers and ... penalties, gave a written commitment to destroy at least one bomber in each sortie - if necessary, then by ramming strikes! It was in such a squadron that the aforementioned Vili Maksimovich was included, and these units were headed by Major Walter Dahl, already familiar to us. The Germans were forced to resort to the tactics of mass ramming precisely at a time when their former air superiority was nullified by hordes of heavy "Flying Fortresses" allies, a continuous stream of advancing from the west, and armadas of Soviet planes pressing from the east. It is clear that the Germans adopted such tactics not out of a good life; but this does not diminish the personal heroism of the German fighter pilots, who voluntarily decided to sacrifice themselves to save the German population, which perished under American and British bombs ...
Fighter Assault Squadron Commander Walter Dahl; Werner Gert, who rammed 3 Fortresses;
Vili Maksimovich, who destroyed 7 "Fortresses" with rams
The official adoption of ramming tactics required the Germans and the creation of appropriate equipment. So, all the fighter-assault squadrons were equipped with a new modification of the FW-190 fighter with enhanced armor, which protected the pilot from enemy bullets at the moment of approaching the target closely (in fact, the pilot was sitting in an armored box that completely covered him from head to toe). The best test pilots worked out with battering attack aircraft the methods of rescuing a pilot from an aircraft damaged by a ramming strike - the commander of German fighter aviation, General Adolf Galland, believed that attack aircraft should not be suicide bombers, and did everything possible to save the lives of these valuable pilots ...
The assault version of the FW-190 fighter, equipped with a fully armored cockpit and solid bulletproof glass, allowed German pilots
get close to the "Flying Fortresses" and make a deadly ram
When the Germans, as allies of Japan, learned about the "kamikaze" tactics and the high performance of the Japanese suicide squadrons, as well as the psychological effect produced by the "kamikaze" on the enemy, they decided to transfer the eastern experience to the western lands. At the suggestion of Hitler's favorite, the famous German test pilot Hanna Reitsch, and with the support of her husband, Oberst General of Aviation von Greim, a manned projectile with a cockpit for a suicide pilot was created on the basis of the V-1 winged bomb at the end of the war ( which, however, had a chance to use a parachute over the target). These man-bombs were intended for massive strikes on London - Hitler hoped to force Great Britain to withdraw from the war with total terror. The Germans even created the first group of German suicide bombers (200 volunteers) and began their training, but they did not have time to use their "kamikaze". The inspirer of the idea and the commander of the detachment, Hana Reitsch, fell under the next bombing of Berlin and ended up in the hospital for a long time, and General Galland immediately dismissed the detachment, considering the idea of suicide terror to be madness ...
The manned analogue of the V-1 rocket is the Fieseler Fi 103R Reichenberg, and the inspirer of the idea of "German kamikaze" Hana Reich
Conclusion:
So, based on the foregoing, we can come to the conclusion that ramming, as a form of battle, was characteristic not only of Soviet pilots - rams were made by pilots of almost all countries participating in the battles.
Another thing is that our pilots carried out much more rams than the "foreigners". In total, during the war, Soviet aviators, at the cost of the death of 227 pilots and the loss of over 400 aircraft, managed to destroy 635 enemy aircraft in the air with ram attacks. In addition, Soviet pilots carried out 503 land and sea rams, of which 286 were carried out by attack aircraft with a crew of 2 people, and 119 by bombers with a crew of 3-4 people. Thus, in terms of the number of pilots killed in suicidal attacks (at least 1000 people!), The USSR, together with Japan, undoubtedly dominates the gloomy list of countries whose pilots sacrificed their lives extensively to achieve victory over the enemy. However, we must admit that the Japanese still surpassed us in the field of "purely Soviet form of combat." If we evaluate only the effectiveness of the "kamikaze" (operating since October 1944), then at the cost of the lives of more than 5,000 Japanese pilots, about 50 were sunk and about 300 enemy warships were damaged, of which 3 were sunk and 40 were damaged by aircraft carriers with a huge number of aircraft on board. ...
So, in terms of the number of rams, the USSR and Japan are far ahead of the rest of the warring countries. Undoubtedly, this testifies to the courage and patriotism of Soviet and Japanese pilots, however, in my opinion, it does not detract from the same merits of the pilots of other countries participating in the war. When a desperate situation developed, not only the Russians and the Japanese, but also the British, Americans, Germans, Bulgarians, and so on. etc. went to the ram, risking their own lives for the sake of victory. But they walked only in a desperate situation; it is stupid and costly to use complex expensive equipment regularly as a banal “cleaver”. My opinion: the massive use of battering rams speaks not so much about the heroism and patriotism of a certain nation, but about the level of its military equipment and the preparedness of the flight personnel and command, which constantly put its pilots in a desperate situation. In the air units of countries in which the command skillfully lead units, creating an advantage in forces in the right place, whose aircraft had high combat characteristics, and the pilots were well trained, the need to ram the enemy simply did not arise. But in the air units of countries in which the command did not know how to concentrate forces on the main direction, in which the pilots did not really know how to fly, and the aircraft had mediocre or even low flight characteristics, ramming became almost the main form of combat. That is why at the beginning of the war, having the best aircraft, the best commanders and pilots, the Germans actually did not use rams. When the enemy created more advanced aircraft and surpassed the Germans quantitatively, and the Luftwaffe lost the most experienced pilots in numerous battles and did not have time to properly train newcomers, the ramming method entered the arsenal of German aviation and reached the absurdity of "man-bombs" ready to fall on their heads civilian population ...
In this regard, I would like to note that just at the time when the Japanese and Germans began the transition to the tactics of "kamikaze", in the Soviet Union, which also widely used air rams, the commander of the USSR Air Force signed a very interesting order. It said: “To explain to the entire personnel of the Red Army Air Force that our fighters are superior in flight and tactical data to all existing types of German fighters ... exceptional cases ". Leaving aside the quality of Soviet fighters, the advantages of which over the enemy, it turns out, had to be "explained" to the front-line pilots, let us pay attention to the fact that at a time when the Japanese and German commanders were trying to develop the line of suicide bombing, the Soviet tried to stop the already existing tendency Russian pilots to suicidal attacks. And there was something to think about: only in August 1944 - the month preceding the appearance of the order - the Soviet pilots carried out more air rams than in December 1941 - during the critical period of battles for the USSR near Moscow! Even in April 1945, when Soviet aviation had absolute air supremacy, Russian pilots used the same number of rams as in November 1942, when the offensive at Stalingrad began! And this despite the "clarified superiority" of Soviet technology, the undoubted advantage of the Russians in the number of fighters and, in general, the number of air rams decreasing from year to year (in 1941-42 - about 400 rams, in 1943-44 - about 200 rams , in 1945 - more than 20 rams). And everything can be explained simply: with an acute desire to beat the enemy, most of the young Soviet pilots simply did not know how to properly fly and fight. Remember, this was well said in the film "Only Old Men Go to Battle": "They still cannot fly, neither do they know how to shoot, but - EAGLES!" It is for this reason that Boris Kovzan, who did not even know how to turn on the onboard weapon, made 3 of his 4 rams. And it is for this reason that the former instructor of the aviation school, Ivan Kozhedub, who knew how to fly well, never rammed the enemy in 120 battles he fought, although he had situations that were not even favorable. But Ivan Nikitovich coped with them without the "ax method", because he had high flight and combat training, and his plane was one of the best in Russian aviation ...
Alexey Stepanov, Petr Vlasov
Samara
Hubert Heckmann 25.05. 1944 rams Captain Joe Bennett's Mustang, depriving the American fighter squadron of leadership
Battering ram (air)
World War I poster "The feat and death of pilot Nesterov"
There were frequent cases when a damaged aircraft was directed by a pilot to a ground or water target (Gastello, Nikolai Frantsevich, Gribovsky, Alexander Prokofievich). In the Japanese troops during the Second World War, there were special kamikaze units - pilots rammed enemy ships on planes filled with explosives.
July 18, 1981 - Soviet interceptor Su-15TM (pilot - Kulyapin, Valentin Aleksandrovich) rammed a CL-44 transport aircraft (number LV-JTN, airline "Transportes Aereo Rioplatense", Argentina), making a secret transport flight along the Tel Aviv route - Tehran and the unintentionally invading Soviet airspace over the territory of Armenia. All 4 crew members of the CL-44 were killed, including the British national. Kulyapin successfully ejected, although, according to his later recollections, the plane obeyed the rudders, the engine was running, so you could try to reach the airfield and land. For the ram he was awarded the Order of the Red Banner. This is the second case of jet ramming of border trespassers in the history of the Soviet Air Force.
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See what "Ram (air)" is in other dictionaries:
One of the techniques of air combat. It consists in striking an enemy aircraft with a propeller or wing of an aircraft (after using up the ammunition). It is the highest manifestation of courage and will of the pilot. First T. v. the plane was committed by the Russian ... ... Encyclopedia of technology
air ram Encyclopedia "Aviation"
air ram- air ramming - one of the techniques of air combat. It consists in striking an enemy aircraft with a propeller or wing of an aircraft (after using up the ammunition). It is the highest manifestation of courage and will of the pilot. The first TV century ... ... Encyclopedia "Aviation"
TARAN, in military affairs, a weapon, device or combat technique intended for the destruction of defensive structures, ships, aircraft, tanks and other equipment of the enemy. In ancient times, a ram was a siege weapon used to destroy ... ... encyclopedic Dictionary
Air combat ... Wikipedia
The main form of action for fighter aircraft. Air combat is conducted by single aircraft (single combat) or by groups of aircraft (group combat) with the aim of destroying the enemy or repelling his attacks. Variety ... ... Marine Dictionary
Postage stamp of the USSR in 1943 with a picture of Talalikhin's night battering ram. Battering ram is an aerial battle technique designed to disable an enemy aircraft or airship by colliding or cutting off the steering surfaces by the propeller blades (in the case of ... ... Wikipedia
For a long time, the authorship of the first air ram of the Great Patriotic War was attributed to different pilots, but now the documents of the Central Archives of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation have been studied, leaving no doubt that the first flight commander of the 46th IAP, Senior Lieutenant I. I. Ivanov, was the first at 04:55 am on June 22, 1941. , at the cost of his life destroyed a German bomber. Under what circumstances did this happen?
The details of the ram were considered by the writer S.S.Smirnov back in the 60s of the last century, and 50 years later, Georgy Rovensky, a local historian from the Moscow region of Fryazino, wrote a detailed book about the life and exploits of his fellow pilot. Nevertheless, in order to objectively illuminate the episode, both lacked information from German sources (although Rovensky tried to use data on the losses of the Luftwaffe and the book on the history of the KG 55 squadron), as well as an understanding of the general picture of the air battle of the first day of the war in the Rivne region, in the region Dubno - Mlynów. Taking as a basis the research of Smirnov and Rovensky, archival documents and memoirs of the participants in the events, we will try to reveal both the circumstances of the ram and the events that took place around.
46th Fighter Aviation Regiment and its enemy
The 46th IAP was a personnel unit formed in May 1938 in the first wave of the deployment of the Red Army Air Force regiments at the Skomorokhi airfield near Zhitomir. After the annexation of Western Ukraine, the 1st and 2nd squadrons of the regiment were relocated to the Dubno airfield, and the 3rd and 4th squadrons - to Mlyniv (modern Mlinov, Ukrainian Mliniv).
By the summer of 1941, the regiment approached in pretty good shape. Many commanders had combat experience and knew how to shoot down the enemy. Thus, the regiment commander, Major I. D. Podgorny, fought on Khalkhin-Gol, the squadron commander, Captain N. M. Zverev, in Spain. The most experienced pilot, apparently, was the deputy commander of the regiment, Captain I.I.
High-altitude reconnaissance aircraft Ju 86, which performed an emergency landing in the Rivne region on April 15, 1941, burned by the crew
Actually, one of the proofs of the fighting attitude of the pilots of the 46th IAP is the incident with the forced landing of a high-altitude German reconnaissance aircraft Ju 86, which occurred on April 15, 1941 northeast of Rovno - the flag navigator of the regiment, Senior Lieutenant P.M. Shalunov, distinguished himself. This was the only case when a Soviet pilot managed to land a German reconnaissance aircraft from the "Rovel group" that flew over the USSR in the spring of 1941.
By June 22, 1941, the regiment was based in all divisions at the Mlynów airfield - the construction of a concrete runway was started at the Dubno airfield.
The weak point was the condition of the material part of the 46th IAP. The 1st and 2nd squadrons of the regiment flew on I-16 type 5 and type 10, the resource of which was running out, and the combat characteristics could not be compared with the Messerschmitts. In the summer of 1940, the regiment, according to the plan for the rearmament of the Red Army Air Force, was among the first to receive modern I-200 (MiG-1) fighters, however, due to delays in fine-tuning and the deployment of mass production of new machines in the unit, they did not wait. Instead of the I-200, the personnel of the 3rd and 4th squadrons in the summer of 1940 received the I-153 instead of the I-15bis and were rather sluggishly engaged in the development of this "newest" fighter. By June 22, 1941, there were 29 I-16 (20 serviceable) and 18 I-153 (14 serviceable) available at the Mlynu airfield.
Commander of the 46th IAP Ivan Dmitrievich Podgorny, his deputy Iosif Ivanovich Geibo and commander of the 14th SAD Ivan Alekseevich Zykanov
By June 22, the regiment was not fully provided with personnel, since at the end of May - beginning of June 12 pilots were transferred to the newly formed units. Despite this, the combat capability of the unit practically did not decrease: of the remaining 64 pilots, 48 served in the regiment for more than a year.
It so happened that the 14th Air Force Division of the 5th Army KOVO, which included the 46th IAP, was right at the forefront of the German strike. The two main "Panzer Straße" allocated by the German command for the movement of the 3rd and 48th Motorized Corps of the 1st Panzer Group of Army Group "South" passed through the Lutsk - Rovno and Dubno - Brody directions, i.e. through the settlements where the control of the division and its 89th IAP, 46th IAP and 253rd ShAP were based.
On the first day of the war, the opponents of the 46th IAP were Bomber Group III./KG 55, which was part of the 5th Air Corps of the 4th Luftwaffe Air Fleet, whose formations were supposed to operate against the KOVO Air Force. For this, on June 18, 25 Heinkels He 111 groups flew to the Klemens airfield, 10 km west of the city of Zamoć. The group was commanded by Hauptmann Heinrich Wittmer. Two other groups and the headquarters of the squadron were located at the Labunie airfield 10 km southeast of Zamoć - literally 50 km from the border.
The commander of bomber air group III./KG 55, Hauptmann Heinrich Wittmer (1910-1992) at the helm of the Heinkel (right). On November 12, 1941, Wittmer was awarded the Knight's Cross, and ended the war with the rank of colonel.
The headquarters of the V Air Corps, fighter group III./JG 3 and reconnaissance squadron 4./(F)121 were located in Zamoć. Closer to the border, only JG 3 units were based (headquarters and group II were 20 km away at Khostun airfield, and Group I was 30 km away at Dub airfield).
It is difficult to say how the fate of the 46th IAP would have developed if all these German units had been thrown into the conquest of air supremacy over the axis of advance of the 48th Motorized Corps, which ran through the Dubno-Brody area. Most likely, the Soviet regiments would have been crushed like the units of the ZAPOVO Air Force, which fell under the crushing blows of the aircraft of the II and VIII air corps, but the command of the V air corps had broader goals.
Hard first day of the war
The units concentrated in the Zamosc area were supposed to attack airfields from Lutsk to Sambor, focusing on the Lvov area, where Messerschmitts from JG 3 were sent first of all on the morning of June 22, 1941. In addition, for some fantastic reasons I. / KG 55 was sent in the morning to bomb airfields in the Kiev area. As a result, the Germans were able to dispatch only III./KG 55 for attacks on airfields in Brody, Dubno and Mlynów. In total, 17 He 111 were prepared during the first sortie, each was equipped to attack airfields and carried 32 50-kilogram SD-50 fragmentation bombs ... From Combat Log III./KG 55:
“… It was planned to start 17 cars of the group. For technical reasons, two cars could not start, another one returned due to engine problems. Start: 02: 50–03: 15 (Berlin time - author's note), target - airfields Dubno, Mlynov, Brody, Rachin (north-eastern outskirts of Dubno - author's note). Attack time: 03: 50–04: 20. Flight altitude - low-level flight, method of attack: links and pairs ... "
As a result, only 14 aircraft out of 24 combat-ready took part in the first sortie: six aircraft from the 7th, seven from the 8th and one of the 9th squadrons, respectively. The commander and headquarters of the group made a serious mistake, deciding to operate in pairs and in teams for maximum coverage of targets, and the crews had to pay a high price for it.
Takeoff of a pair of He 111 from the KG 55 squadron on the morning of June 22, 1941
Due to the fact that the Germans operated in small groups, it is impossible to establish exactly which crews attacked which of the Soviet airfields. In order to restore the picture of events, we will use Soviet documents, as well as the memories of the participants in the events. Captain Geibo, who actually led the regiment on June 22 in the absence of Major Podgorny, indicates in his post-war memoirs that the first clash occurred on the approaches to the Mlynów airfield at about 04:20.
A combat alert was announced in all units of the KOVO Air Force at about 03: 00–04: 00 after the district headquarters received the text of directive No. 1, and the personnel of units and formations managed to prepare materiel for combat operations even before the first raids of German aviation. The aircraft were dispersed at the airfields on June 15th. Nevertheless, there is no need to talk about full combat readiness, primarily because of the contradictory text of directive No. 1, which, in particular, stated that Soviet pilots should not succumb to "provocations" and have the right to attack enemy aircraft only in response into the fire from the German side.
These instructions on the morning of the first day of the war were literally fatal for a number of air force units of the spacecraft, whose planes were destroyed on the ground, not having time to take off. Several dozen pilots were killed, shot down in the air while trying to evolve to oust Luftwaffe aircraft from Soviet territory. Only a few commanders of various ranks took responsibility and gave orders to repel German attacks. One of them was the commander of the 14th SAD, Colonel I.A.Zykanov.
Aerial view of the Mlynów airfield taken on June 22, 1941 from the He 111 bomber from the KG 55 squadron
In the post-war years, through the efforts of unscrupulous authors, this person was undeservedly denigrated and accused of non-existent mistakes and crimes. It should be noted that there were reasons for this: in August 1941, Colonel Zykanov was under investigation for some time, but was not convicted. True, he was no longer reinstated in his former position, and in January 1942 he headed the 435th IAP, then commanded the 760th IAP, was an inspector pilot of the 3rd Guards IAK, and finally became the commander of the 6th ZAP.
In the post-war memoirs of Major General of Aviation I. I. Geibo, it can be clearly traced that the divisional commander announced the alarm in time, and after the VNOS posts announced the crossing of the border by German planes, he ordered them to be shot down, which made even such an experienced fighter like Geibo into a state of prostration. It was this firm decision of the divisional commander that literally at the last moment saved the 46th IAP from a sudden strike:
“Interrupted sleep came back with difficulty. Finally, I began to take a little nap, but then the telephone came to life again. Cursing, he picked up the phone. Division commander again.
- Announce a military alert to the regiment. If German planes appear, shoot them down!
The phone rang and the conversation was interrupted.
- How to shoot down? - I was worried. - Repeat, Comrade Colonel! Not to expel, but to shoot down?
But the pipe was silent ... "
Considering that we have before us memories with all the shortcomings inherent in any memoir, let's make a small comment. First, Zykanov's order to raise the alarm and shoot down German planes actually consists of two, received at different times. The first, on the announcement of the alarm, was apparently given at about 03:00. The order to shoot down German planes was clearly received after the receipt of data from the VNOS posts, at about 04: 00–04: 15.
Fighters I-16 type 5 (above) and type 10 (below) from the 46th IAP (reconstruction from the photo, artist A. Kazakov)
In this regard, the further actions of Captain Geibo become clear - before that, the duty unit was lifted into the air in order to expel the violators of the border, but Geibo took off after already with the order to shoot down German planes. At the same time, the captain was clearly in great doubts: within an hour he was given two completely contradictory orders. Nevertheless, in the air, he figured out the situation and attacked the German bombers that met, repelling the first blow:
“At about 4 hours 15 minutes from the VNOS posts, which were constantly monitoring the airspace, there was a message that four twin-engine aircraft were heading east at low altitude. In the air, according to the established order, the duty unit of Senior Lieutenant Klimenko rose.
–You know, Commissioner,–I said to Trifonov,–I'll fly myself. And then you see, the haze descends, as if something is wrong again, like Shalunov. I'll figure out what kind of aircraft. And you here command.
Soon I was already catching up with Klimenko's flight in my I-16. Approaching, he gave a signal: "Join me and follow me." He glanced at the airfield. A long white arrow stood out sharply at the edge of the airfield. She indicated the direction to intercept unknown aircraft ... A little less than a minute passed, and in front, a little lower, in the right bearing, two pairs of large aircraft appeared ...
"Attack, cover!"–I gave a signal to my own. A quick maneuver - and in the center of the crosshair the leading Ju-88 (a typical error of identification even for experienced pilots of all countries - author's note). I press the trigger of the ShKAS machine guns. Tracer bullets rip open the fuselage of an enemy plane, it somehow reluctantly rolls, makes a turn and rushes to the ground. A bright flame rises from the place of its fall, a column of black smoke stretches towards the sky.
I glance at the onboard clock: 4 hours 20 minutes in the morning ... "
According to the regiment's combat operations log, Captain Geibo was credited with a victory over the He-111 as part of the flight. Returning to the airfield, he tried to contact the division headquarters, but due to communication problems, he could not do this. Despite this, the further actions of the regiment command were clear and consistent. Geibo and the political officer of the regiment no longer doubted that the war had begun, and clearly set tasks for their subordinates to cover the airfield and the settlements of Mlynów and Dubno.
Simple name - Ivan Ivanov
Judging by the surviving documents, by order of the regiment's headquarters, the pilots began to take off on alert at about 04:30. One of the links, which was supposed to cover the airfield, was led by senior lieutenant I. I. Ivanov. Extract from the ZhBD shelf:
“At 04:55, being at an altitude of 1500-2000 meters, covering the Dubno airfield, we noticed three Xe-111 going for the bombing. Going into a dive, attacking the He-111 from behind, the flight opened fire. After using up the ammunition, Senior Lieutenant Ivanov rammed the He-111, which fell 5 km from the Dubno airfield. Senior Lieutenant Ivanov died in a ramming death of the brave, defending the Motherland with his chest. The task of covering the airfield has been completed. He-111 went west. Spent 1500 pcs. ShKAS cartridges ".
The ram was seen by Ivanov's colleagues, who at that moment were on the road from Dubno to Mlynów. Here is how the former technician of the squadron of the 46th IAP A.G. Bolnov described this episode:
“… Machine-gun fire was heard in the air. Three bombers went to the Dubno airfield, and three fighters dived at them and fired. After a moment, the fire stopped on both sides. A pair of fighters rolled away and left for a landing, having shot all the ammunition ... Ivanov continued to pursue the bombers. They bombed the Dubna airfield on the move and went south, while Ivanov continued to pursue. Being an excellent shooter and pilot, he did not shoot - apparently, there was no more ammunition: he shot everything. A moment, and ... We stopped at the turn of the highway to Lutsk. On the horizon to the south of our observation, we saw an explosion - puffs of black smoke. I shouted: "Collided!"– the word "battering ram" has not yet entered our lexicon ... "
Another witness of the battering ram, link technician E.P. Solovyov:
“Our car was rushing from Lviv along the highway. Noticing the firefight between the bombers and our hawks, we realized that this was a war. The moment when our "donkey" hit the "Heinkel" on the tail and it fell down like a stone, everyone saw, and that ours went to land too. Arriving at the regiment, we learned that Bushuyev and Simonenko had left in the direction of the quieted battle, without waiting for a doctor.
Symonenko told reporters that when he and the commissar carried Ivan Ivanovich out of the cab, he was covered in blood, unconscious. They rushed to the hospital in Dubno, but there they found all the medical staff in a panic - they were ordered to urgently evacuate. Ivan Ivanovich was nevertheless taken in, the orderlies carried him away on a stretcher.
Bushuev and Symonenko were waiting, helping to load equipment and patients into vehicles. Then the doctor came out and said: "The pilot is dead." “We buried him in the cemetery,–recalled Symonenko,–put a post with a sign. It was thought that we would drive the Germans away quickly,–we will erect a monument ”.
I. I. Geibo also recalled the ram:
“Even in the afternoon, in between sorties, someone reported to me that the flight commander Senior Lieutenant Ivan Ivanovich Ivanov had not returned from the first sortie ... A group of mechanics was equipped to search for the fallen aircraft. They found the I-16 of our Ivan Ivanovich next to the wreckage of the Junkers. Inspection and stories of the pilots participating in the battle made it possible to establish that Senior Lieutenant Ivanov, having spent all the ammunition in the battle, went to ram ... "
With the passage of time, it is difficult to establish for what reason Ivanov rammed. Eyewitness accounts and documents indicate that the pilot shot all the cartridges. Most likely, he was piloting an I-16 Type 5, armed with only two 7.62 mm ShKAS, and it was not easy and more serious weapon to shoot down the He 111. In addition, Ivanov did not have that great shooting practice. In any case, this is not so important anymore - the main thing is that the Soviet pilot was ready to fight to the last and destroyed the enemy even at the cost of his own life, for which he was deservedly posthumously nominated for the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.
Senior Lieutenant Ivan Ivanovich Ivanov and the pilots of his flight in the morning flight on June 22: Lieutenant Timofey Ivanovich Kondranin (died 07/05/1941) and Lieutenant Ivan Vasilyevich Yuriev (died 09/07/1942)
Ivan Ivanovich Ivanov was an experienced pilot who graduated from the Odessa Aviation School in 1934 and served as a light bomber pilot for five years. By September 1939, already being a flight commander of the 2nd Light Bomber Aviation Regiment, he took part in a campaign to Western Ukraine, and at the beginning of 1940 he flew several sorties during the Soviet-Finnish war. After returning from the front, the best crews of the 2nd LBAP, including the crew of Ivanov, took part in the May 1940 parade in Moscow.
In the summer of 1940, the 2nd LBAP was reorganized into the 138th SBAP, and the regiment received SB bombers to replace the outdated R-Z biplanes. Apparently, this retraining was the reason for some of the pilots of the 2nd LBAP to "change their role" and retrain into fighters. As a result, II Ivanov, instead of SB, retrained on the I-16 and was assigned to the 46th IAP.
Other pilots of the 46th IAP acted no less bravely, and the German bombers did not manage to target the bombing. Despite several raids, the regiment's losses on the ground were minimal - according to the report of the 14th SAD, by the morning of June 23, 1941 “… One I-16 was destroyed at the airfield, one did not return from the mission. Shot down one I-153. 11 people were wounded, one was killed. The regiment at the Granovka airfield ”. III./KG 55 documents confirm the minimum losses of the 46th IAP at the Mlynów airfield: “Result: Dubno airfield is not occupied (by enemy aircraft - author's note). At the Mlynów airfield, bombs were dropped on standing by a group of about 30 biplanes and multi-engine aircraft. Hits between planes ... "
Downed "Heinkel" He 111 from the 7th squadron of the bomber squadron KG 55 "Greif" (artist I. Zlobin)
7./KG 55 suffered the greatest losses in the morning flight, which lost three Heinkels due to the actions of Soviet fighters. Two of them did not return from the mission together with the crews of Feldwebel Dietrich (Fw. Willi Dietrich) and non-commissioned officer Wolfayl (Uffz. Horst Wohlfeil), and the third, piloted by Ober-Feldwebel Gründer (Ofw. Alfred Gründer), burned down after landing at the airfield Labunie. Two more bombers in the squadron were seriously damaged, and several crew members were injured.
In total, the pilots of the 46th IAP announced three air victories in the morning. In addition to the Heinkels shot down by Senior Lieutenant II Ivanov and Captain II Geibo's flight, one more bomber was credited to Senior Lieutenant S. L. Maksimenko. The exact time of this application is not known. Taking into account the consonance of "Klimenko" - "Maksimenko" and that there was no pilot with the surname Klimenko in the 46th IAP, we can confidently assert that it was Maksimenko who headed the duty unit mentioned by Geibo in the morning, and as a result of the attacks it was his flight that was knocked out and burned down " Heinkel "Ober-Feldwebel Gründer, and two more aircraft were damaged.
Second attempt by Hauptmann Wittmer
Summing up the results of the first flight, the commander of III./KG 55, Hauptmann Wittmer, had to seriously worry about losses - out of 14 planes flying out, five were out of order. At the same time, the records in the ZhBD group about the allegedly 50 Soviet aircraft destroyed at the airfields seem to be a banal attempt to justify the heavy losses. We must pay tribute to the commander of the German group - he made the right conclusions and tried to take revenge on the next flight.
"Heinkel" from the 55th squadron in flight over the Mlynów airfield, June 22, 1941
At 15:30 Hauptmann Wittmer led all 18 serviceable Heinkels III./KG 55 into a decisive attack, the only target of which was the Mlynów airfield. From the ZhBD group:
“At 15:45, a group in close formation from a height of 1000 m attacked the airfield ... Details of the results were not observed due to strong attacks from fighters. After the bombs were dropped, the further start of the enemy aircraft did not take place. It was a good result.
Defense: a lot of fighters with retreating attacks. One of our cars was attacked by 7 enemy fighters. Boarding: 4:30 pm - 5:00 pm. One I-16 fighter was shot down. The crews watched him fall. Weather conditions: good, with small clouds in places. Ammo Used: 576SD 50.
Losses: Lance corporal Gantz's plane disappeared, fired upon by fighters after dropping bombs. Hid down. The further fate could not be observed due to the strong attacks of the fighters. Non-commissioned officer Parr is wounded.
Later, in a footnote to the description of the raid, a real triumph is mentioned: "According to the clarification on the spot, after the capture of Mlynuv, complete success was achieved: 40 aircraft were destroyed in the parking lot."
Despite another "success" both in the report and later in the note, it is obvious that a "warm welcome" awaited the Germans over the Mlynów airfield again. Soviet fighters attacked the bombers on their way. Due to continuous attacks, German crews were unable to record either the results of the bombing or the fate of the lost crew. Here is how the atmosphere of the battle is conveyed by I.I.Geibo, who led the interception group:
“At an altitude of about eight hundred meters, another group of German bombers appeared ... Three of our flights came out to intercept, and I went with them. As we approached, I saw two nines in the right bearing. The Junkers also noticed us and instantly closed in, pressed against each other, preparing for the defense - after all, the tighter the formation, the denser, and therefore more effective, the fire of the aerial gunners ...
I gave a signal: "We go on the attack all at once, each independently chooses a target." And then he rushed at the presenter. Here he is already in sight. I see flashes of return fire. I press the trigger. The fiery track of my lines goes to the goal. It would be time for the Junkers to land on the wing, but he, like a bewitched one, continues to follow the same course. The distance is rapidly decreasing. We gotta roll off! I make a steep and deep turn to the left, getting ready to go into the attack again. And suddenly - a sharp pain in the hip ... "
Results of the day
Summing up and comparing the results, we note that the pilots of the 46th IAP, and this time managed to cover their airfield, not allowing the enemy to stay on a combat course and aim at bombing. We must pay tribute to the courage of the German crews - they operated without cover, but the Soviet fighters failed to break their formation, and they could shoot down one and damage the other He 111 only at the cost of the same losses. One I-16 was hit by rifle fire, and Junior Lieutenant I.M.Tsibulko, who had just shot down a bomber, jumped out with a parachute, and Captain Geibo, who damaged the second He 111, was wounded and barely landed the damaged plane.
Fighters I-16 type 5 and 10, as well as training UTI-4, crashed as a result of flight accidents or abandoned due to malfunctions at the Mlynów airfield. Perhaps one of these machines was piloted by Captain Geibo in the evening battle on June 22, and then, due to combat damage, he made an emergency landing.
Together with the downed Heinkel from 9./KG 55, the crew of Corporal Ganz (Gefr. Franz Ganz) of five people died, and another plane of the same squadron was damaged. On this, the fighting on the first day of the war in the air in the area of Dubno and Mlynuva actually ended.
What have the opposing sides achieved? Group III./KG 55 and other units of the V air corps failed to destroy the materiel of the Soviet air units at the Mlynów airfield, despite the possibility of a first surprise strike. Destroying two I-16s on the ground and shooting down another one in the air (except for Ivanov's plane, which was destroyed in a ram), the Germans lost five He 111 destroyed, and three more damaged, which is a third of the number available on the morning of June 22. In fairness, it should be noted that the German crews operated in difficult conditions: their targets were located 100-120 km from the border, they operated without fighter cover, being about an hour above the territory controlled by Soviet troops, which, along with the tactically illiterate organization of the first flight, led to big losses.
The 46th IAP was one of the few air force regiments of the spacecraft, whose pilots were able on June 22, not only to reliably cover their airfield and incur minimal losses from assault strikes, but also to inflict serious damage on the enemy. This was the result of both competent management and the personal courage of the pilots, who were ready to repulse enemy attacks at the cost of their lives. Separately, it should be noted the outstanding leadership qualities of Captain I. I. Geibo, who fought superbly and was an example for young pilots of the 46th IAP.
The pilots of the 46th IAP who distinguished themselves on June 22, 1941, from left to right: Deputy squadron commander Senior Lieutenant Simon Lavrovich Maksimenko - an experienced pilot, a participant in hostilities in Spain. In his memoirs, Geibo is referred to as "Klimenko's komvenko." Later - squadron commander of the 10th IAP, died 07/05/1942 in an air battle; junior lieutenants Konstantin Konstantinovich Kobyzev and Ivan Methodievich Tsibulko. Ivan Tsibulko died in a plane crash on 03/09/1943, being the squadron commander of the 46th IAP with the rank of captain. Konstantin Kobyzev was wounded in September 1941, and after being cured he did not return to the front - he was an instructor at the Armavir Pilot School, as well as a pilot of the People's Commissariat of the Aviation Industry
The number of victories declared by Soviet pilots and actually destroyed German aircraft practically coincides, even without taking into account the damaged machines. In addition to the losses mentioned, in the afternoon in the Dubno area, He 111 from 3./KG 55 was shot down, with which five crew members of Uffz. Werner Bähringer were killed. Probably the author of this victory was Junior Lieutenant K. K. Kobyzev. For successes in the first battles (he was the only pilot of the regiment who declared two personal victories in the June battles) on August 2, 1941, he was awarded the highest award of the USSR - the Order of Lenin.
It is gratifying that all the other pilots of the 46th IAP, who distinguished themselves in the battles of the first day, were awarded government awards by the same decree: I.I. Ivanov posthumously became a Hero of the Soviet Union, I.I. Geibo, I.M. Tsibulko and S. L. Maksimenko received the Order of the Red Banner.