Air Marshal Nikolai Mikhailovich Skomorokhov
The future ace pilot was born into a peasant family. In 1930, the family moved to Astrakhan, where in 1935 Nikolai graduated from the 7th grade. For the next two…

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Air Marshal Nikolai Mikhailovich Skomorokhov
The future ace pilot was born into a peasant family. In 1930, the family moved to Astrakhan, where in 1935 Nikolai graduated from the 7th grade. For the next two…

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Borovykh Andrey Egorovich
Andrei Borovykh was born in Kursk on October 30, 1921 under the sign of Scorpio, who guarded his fate, as well as the fate of the relative majority of aces…

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Better than Kozhedub, cooler than Hartman
Better than Kozhedub, cooler than Hartman The names of the Soviet aces of the Great Patriotic War Ivan Kozhedub and Alexander Pokryshkin are known to everyone who is at least…

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Nestor Argunia

Callsign “Maestro”

Vitaly Ivanovich Popkov, the future Maestro and future Twice Hero of the Soviet Union, went to the front in early May 1942 after several reports.

From the very beginning, the young pilot’s service did not work out. He was almost immediately appointed “eternal orderly”. Vitaly Ivanovich appreciated humor and jokes, and he himself was not a blunder, to laugh. Pilots in one liberated village picked up a puppy, and the future twice hero taught him to carry out combat commands. Continue reading

Meeting with Zhukov. “We shoot few scoundrels!”

Meeting with Zhukov. “We shoot few scoundrels!”
It was with Stalingrad and Marshal Zhukov that one of the most unpleasant and humiliating memories of the pilot Popkov about the war is connected – this episode, even sixty years later, evoked rage and bitterness in him.

“When signatures were being collected to rehabilitate Zhukov, I refused,” Vitaly Ivanovich sincerely and very childishly puckered up in his chair. – Not because I don’t consider him a great commander, but because of a personal … Continue reading

Golovachev, Pavel Yakovlevich
Born in the village of Koshelyovo, Buda-Koshelev Volost, Mogilev Province, now Buda-Koshelev District, Gomel Region, into a peasant family. Belarusian. Member of the CPSU since 1943. After graduating in 1935…

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One of the best Soviet fighter aces.
Soviet military figure. Chief Air Marshal of the USSR. Twice Hero of the Soviet Union. During the Great Patriotic War, he was one of the best Soviet fighter aces. Alexander…

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