sorties
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 in the city of Gomel, the school of factory apprenticeship, he worked as a turner and miller at a timber processing plant. He was a forward of the factory football team. At the same time he studied at the Gomel flying club. In 1938, on a Komsomol ticket, he was sent to the 8th Odessa Military Aviation Pilot School named after P. D. Osipenko, from which he graduated at the end of 1940. Continue reading
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
Member of the Great Patriotic War
Born May 1, 1922 in Moscow in a working class family. My father worked in a special purpose garage at the Council of People’s Commissars. When he was transferred to work in government facilities in the Caucasus, from 1927 the family lived in Sochi and Matsesta, from 1934 in Gagra. In 1938 they returned to Moscow. He graduated from 10 classes at school number 94 in Moscow in 1939. At the same time he graduated from a glider school in Gagra (1937, although according to publications on the Internet, he received a certificate of a glider pilot at the age of 12[4]). In 1940 he graduated from the Krasnopresnensky (according to other sources Tushinsky) flying club. Continue reading
