(8. 7. 1917 - 24. 11. 2002)
D Evyataev Michael Petrovich- legendary Soviet pilot. Born on July 8, 1917 in the village of Torbeevo (now a town in Mordovia) in a peasant family. Mordvin. Member of the CPSU since 1959. He was the thirteenth child in the family. When he was 2 years old, his father died of typhus. In 1933 he graduated from 7th grade high school and went to Kazan, intending to enter an aviation technical school. Due to a misunderstanding with documents, he had to study at a river technical school, from which he graduated in 1938. At the same time he studied at the Kazan flying club. In 1938, the Sverdlovsk RVC of Kazan was drafted into the Red Army. In 1940 he graduated from the Orenburg Military aviation school pilots named after K.E.Voroshilova. Sent to serve in Torzhok. Later transferred to Mogilev to the 237th Fighter Aviation Regiment (Western OVO).
Member of the Great Patriotic War from June 22, 1941. Already on the second day, he took part in an air battle in his I-16. He opened his combat account on June 24, shooting down a Ju-87 dive bomber near Minsk. Then he defended the sky of Moscow. In one of the air battles in the Tula region, together with Ya. Schneier, he shot down a Ju-88, but his Yak-1 was also damaged. Devyataev made an emergency landing and ended up in the hospital. Having not fully recovered, he fled to the front to join his regiment, which at that time was based west of Voronezh.
September 23, 1941 upon returning from a mission Devyataev was attacked by the Messerschmitts. He knocked down one of them, but he himself was wounded in the left leg. After the hospital medical commission assigned him to low-speed aviation. He served in the night bomber regiment, then in air ambulance. Only after a meeting in May 1944 with A.I. Pokryshkin did he again become a fighter.
Flight commander of the 104th Guards Fighter Aviation Regiment (9th Guards Fighter Aviation Division, 2nd Air Army, 1st Ukrainian Front) Guard Senior Lieutenant Devyataev M.P. In air battles he shot down 9 enemy aircraft. On the evening of July 13, 1944, he took off as part of a group of P-39 fighters under the command of Major V. Bobrov to repel an enemy air raid. In an unequal air battle in the Lvov area he was wounded in right leg, and his plane was set on fire. At the last moment, the falling fighter left with a parachute. Captured with severe burns.
Interrogation followed interrogation. Then he was sent by transport plane to the Abwehr intelligence department in Warsaw. Not having achieved from Devyataeva no valuable information, the Germans sent him to Lodz prisoner of war camp. Later transferred to the New Koenigsberg camp. Here in the camp with a group of comrades Devyataev began to prepare an escape. At night, using improvised means - spoons and bowls - they dug a tunnel, pulled out the earth on a sheet of iron and scattered it under the floor of the barracks (the barracks stood on stilts). But when there were already a few meters left to freedom, security discovered the tunnel. Based on a denunciation from a traitor, the organizers of the escape were captured. After interrogation and torture, they were sentenced to death.
Devyataev with a group of suicide bombers was sent to Germany to the Sachsenhausen death camp (near Berlin). But he was lucky: in the sanitary barracks, a hairdresser from among the prisoners replaced his death row tag with the tag of a penalty prisoner (No. 104533), who was killed by the guards of a teacher from Darnitsa, Grigory Stepanovich Nikitenko. In a group of?stompers? I wore in shoes made by German companies. Later, with the help of underground workers, he was transferred from a penal barracks to a regular one. At the end of October 1944, as part of a group of 1,500 prisoners, he was sent to a camp on the island of Usedom, where the secret Peenemünde training ground was located, where rocket weapons were tested. Since the site was secret, there was only one way out for the concentration camp prisoners - through the crematorium pipe. In January 1945, when the front approached the Vistula, Devyataev together with prisoners Ivan Krivonogov, Vladimir Sokolov, Vladimir Nemchenko, Fedor Adamov, Ivan Oleynik, Mikhail Yemets, Pyotr Kutergin, Nikolai Urbanovich and Dmitry Serdyukov began to prepare an escape. A plan was developed to hijack a plane from an airfield located next to the camp. During work at the airport Devyataev I secretly studied the cockpits of German planes. Instrument plates were removed from damaged aircraft lying around the airfield. In the camp they were translated and studied. To all escape participants Devyataev distributed responsibilities: who should remove the cover from the pitot tube, who should remove the chocks from the landing gear wheels, who should remove the clamps from the elevators and steering wheels, who should roll up the cart with batteries. The escape was scheduled for February 8, 1945. On the way to work at the airfield, the prisoners, choosing the moment, killed the guard. So that the Germans would not suspect anything, one of them put on his clothes and began to pose as a guard. Thus, they managed to enter the aircraft parking lot. When the German technicians went to lunch, the group Devyataeva captured a He-111H-22 bomber. Devyataev started the engines and began to taxi to the start. To prevent the Germans from seeing his striped prison clothes, he had to strip naked. But it was not possible to take off unnoticed - someone discovered the body of the murdered guard and raised the alarm. Towards the Heinkel? fled from all sides German soldiers. Devyataev began the takeoff run, but the plane could not take off for a long time (later it was discovered that the landing flaps had not been removed). With the help of comrades Devyataev I pulled the steering wheel with all my strength. Only at the end of the strip? Heinkel? took off from the ground and went over the sea at low altitude. Having come to their senses, the Germans sent a fighter in pursuit, but it failed to detect the fugitives. Devyataev flew, guided by the sun. In the area of the front line, the plane was fired upon by our anti-aircraft guns. I had to go forced. ?Heinkel? made a belly landing to the south settlement Gollin at the location of the artillery unit of the 61st Army.
Special officers did not believe that concentration camp prisoners could hijack the plane. The fugitives were subjected to a harsh test, long and humiliating. Then they were sent to penal battalions. In November 1945 Devyataev was transferred to the reserve. He was not hired. In 1946, with a captain's diploma in his pocket, he found a job as a loader in the Kazan river port with difficulty. They didn't trust him for 12 years. He wrote letters addressed to Stalin, Malenkov, Beria, but all to no avail. The situation changed only at the end of the 50s.
In 1957, he became one of the first captains of the passenger hydrofoil ship ?Rocket?. Later he drove Meteora along the Volga and was a captain-mentor. After retiring, he actively participated in the veterans movement and created the Foundation Devyataeva, provided assistance to those who especially needed it.
Awarded the Order of Lenin, 2 Orders of the Red Banner, Orders of the Patriotic War 1st and 2nd degrees, medals. Honorary citizen of the Republic of Mordovia, the cities of Kazan (Russia), Wolgast and Tsinovichi (Germany). A Hero Museum has been opened in Torbeevo.
Essays:
1.Flight to the sun. - M.: DOSAAF, 1972.
2.Escape from hell. - Kazan: Tatar book. ed., 1988.
№12, 23.11.1998
LOVE AND LIFE OF A LEGENDARY PILOT
The unknown about the famous pilot, a native of Mordovia, Mikhail Devyatayev.
He ran away from the Mordovian police and became a cadet at a river technical school in Kazan.
He celebrated New Year 1938 in the dungeons of the NKVD of Tatarstan.
His childhood friend, secretary of the Torbeevsky CPSU RK, refused to give him a job.
Another friend, a classmate, trying to get him a job, ended up in prison for 10 years. The war hero, who made an unprecedented escape from a secret missile center on a German plane, protected Mordovian speculators from Moscow swindlers in 1946.
His eldest son is recorded as Russian, his second son and daughter are Tatars.
Irek BIKKININ
Mikhail Petrovich Devyataev is a living legend of Mordovia.
All residents of our republic, regardless of nationality, are proud of their fellow Moksha citizen Mikhail Petrovich Devyatayev. Nature has endowed Mikhail Petrovich with an enormous reserve of health - despite the enormous physical and mental stress he endured in life, despite the fact that in April he had a micro-stroke, despite the fact that he is already eighty-two years old, he calmly leaves Kazan for Saransk to attend sports competitions. Just recently, in mid-November, he had to come to Torbeevo again - his 87-year-old died cousin Yakov. Then, at the request of the Head of the Republic of Mordovia, Nikolai Merkushkin, Mikhail Petrovich spoke to conscripts going to serve on the nuclear cruiser "Admiral Ushakov" and met with the commander of the cruiser.
At one time, I was surprised to learn that Mikhail Petrovich’s wife was Tatar. How much our Mordovian newspapers wrote about Devyatayev, but not a sound about the nationality of his wife, it was as if they were filled with water in their mouths. True, in the latest edition of his book “Escape from Hell” (1995) everything is written in detail about Mikhail Petrovich’s wife and children. And among the Mordovian newspapers, only “Evening Saransk” in its issue dated October 22, 1998 lifted the veil of secrecy - it spoke about many previously unadvertised facts from the life of Mikhail Petrovich and called the Devyatayev family Moksha-Tatar.
On October 7, my dream came true - I came to Kazan and met Mikhail Petrovich, his wife Fauzia Khairullovna, sons Alexei and Alexander, daughter Nellie, and granddaughters of Mikhail Petrovich. Mikhail Petrovich gave a long interview for the Tatarskaya Gazeta - on October 8, we spent about 5 hours at the table, appreciating the culinary talents of Fauzia Khairullovna. On October 9, at about 8 o’clock, we were driving in my car to Saransk. During all this time, Mikhail Petrovich told a lot of things that were not published either in books or in numerous interviews.
The Devyatayevs' eldest son, Alexey, was born on August 20, 1946. The second - Alexander - September 24, 51, and daughter Nelly (Naila) - July 23, 57. Devyatayev’s book “Escape from Hell” was repeatedly published in Saransk. Re-read this book. In a newspaper publication it is impossible to even briefly describe everything that befell Mikhail Petrovich. I will try to repeat episodes from the book as little as possible.
Mikhail Petrovich's entire life was accompanied by incredible coincidences. Many times he miraculously remained alive. But when I asked if he goes to church or mosque, Mikhail Petrovich said that he doesn’t believe in God, the devil, or Allah. Even in childhood, he learned the lesson of atheism, when the family of the priest who lived nearby did not stop eating meat and eggs even during Lent. Mikhail Petrovich says that he has seen so much meanness and cruelty in his life that it is unlikely that God would allow this if he existed.
Fate constantly brought Mikhail Petrovich together with the Tatars - Sasha Mukhamedzyanov, the first instructor with whom he took to the skies, division commander Colonel Yusupov, who showed an example of perseverance and loyalty to the Motherland in captivity, Kazan Fatykh, who was given “10 days of life” in the Sachsenhausen camp, and who died from beatings in his arms. And the most main woman in his life - also a Tatar. Even as a child, he ran to watch Sabantuy in Surgod, the village of the Tatar poet Khadi Taktash.
Mikhail Petrovich Devyataev says:
At the age of 13 I saw a real plane and a real pilot. I also wanted to fly. In general, for me the number 13 is significant - I was born as a thirteenth child on July 13, 1917 (although the birth certificate says that I was born on July 8), and was shot down and captured on July 13, too.
I came to Kazan by accident. In August 1934, my friends Pasha Parshin and Misha Burmistrov and I collected spikelets from a harvested field. And then they were jailed for it. Someone reported us - the police came, I was cooking porridge from fresh rye. While they were leading me to the police, I ate this porridge, the only thing left was the cast iron. They drew up a report, maybe they wouldn’t have put him in jail, but once they drew up a report, they had to run away.
We took certificates from our place of residence and went to Kazan. Our whole family are Devyataykins, and they wrote Devyatayev in the certificate. Why? Our older brother joined the army in Tashkent and, so as not to be teased as a Mordvin, he signed up as a Russian Devyatayev. The second brother also signed up as Devyatayev. When I came to the village council, they also wrote me a certificate with the name Devyataev, although I was never embarrassed to be a Mordvin. Father and mother are Devyataykins, all the other brothers are also Devyataykins.
We arrived in Kazan, and at the station, when we fell asleep, we were robbed - we were left without crackers.
We went to the aviation technical school, but we didn’t have all the documents, they didn’t accept us. Let's go look at the ships. We looked, but we want to eat, we don’t have a piece of bread. We see that fishermen catch fish and throw away the ruffs. And we are hungry, we attacked these ruffs. One man saw and said something in Tatar. He sees that we don’t understand and says in Russian: “Why are you eating raw fish, come here.” He fed us, gave me money, I ran and brought him a little vodka.
We see guys in uniform running. The fisherman said: “They train them at the river technical school for these swans,” and pointed to the steamboats. We come to the river technical school to see director Marathuzin. Sorry, I don’t remember my first and last name. If it weren't for him, my fate would have been completely different.
He said that we were late, and it was August 11, that the acceptance of documents had already been completed. He looked at us - we were barefoot, our clothes barely covered our bodies - and said: “How will you study?”
Marathuzin was a good man. He allowed us to try to pass the exams. We immediately went to take chemistry. The applicants were crowded at the door, eavesdropping, we piled on top, and then when the door was suddenly opened, the three of us rolled head over heels into the classroom.
Chemistry was hosted by Professor Anatoly Fedorovich Mostachenko. He says: “What kind of circus show is this?” He looks at us, we are barefoot, in poor clothes. My T-shirt was made from a flag. And I removed the flag from the roof of the district executive committee.
And there they were writing some kind of reaction at the blackboard and they made a mistake. The professor says to me: “Okay, tell me, what’s the matter here?” I say: “Here there is an arithmetic error, but here he doesn’t know the expansion.” He gave me an A and so did my friends.
We go straight to the physicist Bogdanovich in the same impudent way. He says: “Where? Wait your turn.” I say: “We have no bread, nothing, and we are hungry. If they don’t accept us, we will leave.”
He looked at the barefoot guys and asked something, but I knew physics well and also gave it an A. The Russian language was taught by Flera Vasilievna. I’m writing an essay, she’s looking over my shoulder, something’s not working out with my Russian language. I told her: “I finished seven classes, all subjects were in Mordovian. I would write in Mordovian, but I don’t know Russian.” I’m lying myself, I only studied four grades in Mordovian, and grades 5-7 in Russian. She looked at my tiptoe legs and asked: “What about barefoot?” "And I have nothing." “And you came to study? Well, okay, I’ll give you a B minus, you don’t even know a B.”
Satisfied, we come to the director, and Professor Mostachenko sits there and tells how we came barefoot, and even did somersaults, and besides, we know chemistry well. The three of us walked in and stood like soldiers. "Have you eaten?" "We didn't eat." The director calls the cook, Uncle Seryozha: “There are hungry guys here. You will feed them, and they will cut wood for you, chop it, and carry water.”
Then Marat Khuzin called the caretaker and ordered to put us in a hostel and give us mattresses. The caretaker says: “They don’t have documents, how can I give them a mattress?” “Give it to me at my expense, I’m responsible for them.”
They put us in the last room with three other guys from Chuvashia. One of them, Ivanov, later became the head of the Cheboksary pier.
We became friends with Professor Mostachenko. He gave me boots, a jacket, and then made me a demi-season coat. The professor and I were friends until his death. He died about 8 years ago. I lived at school, there was no apartment. During the war, he was accused of having an Italian wife, given Article 58 and deported to the Kemerovo region. When we met after the war, I began to go to him to support him morally. I was still healthy, I loaded firewood onto barges, earned a little money and came to him with a bottle.
Mostachenko was actually a professor at the Institute of Chemical Technology. And river transport - he loved the river, he came to the Volga and looked, his ancestors were all captains.
My friends couldn’t stand it and left the first year. Misha Burmistrov finished 10th grade and got married. Died at the front. Pasha Parshin graduated from the Orenburg Anti-Aircraft Artillery School. He died in 41 in a village near Mogilev. At that time I also visited this village, but we did not see each other.
In 1936, I met my future wife, Fauzia Khairullovna, then simply Faya. She studied at the river workers' faculty at the Petrushkin crossing, and on the second floor there was our common club. The guys studied at the river technical school, but mostly girls studied at the workers' faculty. Girls were allowed into the club, but no outside guys.
I was good at skiing, took first place in the 10-kilometer race, and the club gave me a watch. Then they had a dance, I invited one beautiful girl to dance, and that’s how I met Faya. I was 19, she was 16.
Then we went with her to the Zvezdochka cinema. I look at her, she put on glasses. Faya had poor vision and was nearsighted. Then I went to see her off again. She was Tatar, her parents lived in Kazan. I saw her off; they lived on Komleva. After that, we didn’t see each other for a long time; she wasn’t at the dance. I went to her, it turns out that when they were sent to dig potatoes, she caught a cold. She was bandaged.
Fauzia Khairullovna: When Misha came to us, his parents saw him and that’s it, they liked him. The Tatars and I had suitors of all sorts, but he came, they saw him, and that was it... Misha saw Papa only once, when he saw me off.
Mikhail Petrovich: Yes, I saw Khairulla Sadykovich only once, in the evening. I remember he came up and asked: “How are the young people doing?” I liked him.
I will now tell you something that I have never told anyone before. I graduated from the flying club and became a public instructor, but I never finished the river technical school. At that time I was in practice an assistant to Captain Nikolai Nikolaevich Temryukov. In 1937 there was a population census. I corresponded with the workers of the timber mill in Dalny Ustye.
Somehow Nikolai Nikolaevich led me to women. I then tell him: “Listen, you and I are young guys, we need young girls, but you brought me to the old woman.” And whoever I was with turned out to be a member of the NKVD. Nikolai Nikolaevich take it and tell her while drunk. She was offended by the “old woman” and wrote a report, saying that I handed over the census materials to foreign intelligence.
Fauzia Khairullovna: There was no need to climb.
Mikhail Petrovich: And they detained me right at the dance, I was dancing with Faya. They asked me to go out and talk to a black car. I was in Pletenevskaya prison. To those who interrogated, I say: “Listen, you say, I gave the census materials to the Germans. Why do foreigners need lists of sawmill workers?”
I sat there for six months. They were looking for my documents, but there are no documents anywhere. When I was released, I wrote a letter to the NKVD: “You are fascists, bandits, killing innocents.”
I went to the flying club. It turns out that our entire group of students went to Orenburg to study to become military pilots. I said goodbye to Faya and also went to Orenburg.
Fauzia Khairullovna: He comes down the mountain in river form, and I go towards him. "Hello". "Hello". Misha says: “Here, Faya, I’m leaving for the army.” I say: “Well, go.” We knew each other since 1936, but we were only friends at dances, nothing happened.
Mikhail Petrovich: In Orenburg I was lucky, I met Mikhail Komarov, a pilot instructor who took my exam in Kazan. He liked me then. He says: “Well, are you studying?” I say: “No.” I'm not saying that I was sitting.
He went and talked to the head of the school and I was accepted as a cadet and enrolled in a fighter group. I quickly caught up with everyone in my studies. It was already 1938, the month of May. We learned to fly and shoot I-5 fighters in Blagoslovenka, at the summer airfield. 30 of us Kazan graduates were sent to the Finnish front. We arrived, we were just frozen and that was all. And Mikhail Komarov died. We flew first on the I-15, then on the I-15bis.
On the Finnish front, the fighters had nothing to do, the Finns did not fly, there was no one to shoot down. I flew three times for reconnaissance and that was it. I just got frostbite on my face - it’s 40 degrees on the ground, 50 degrees in the sky, and the cabin is open and not heated. I had ripples on my face from smallpox. When my face was frostbitten, some of the pockmarks disappeared. Then, when the Germans shot me down in 1944, my face was badly burned and the ripples completely disappeared.
After the Finnish one in Torzhok, we switched to I-16. A very strict plane. But it was amazingly maneuverable. From Torzhok we moved to Riga. From Riga to Mogilev. From Mogilev I was sent to a flight commander course in Molodechno.
And then the war began. On June 22 at 9 am I already took part in an air battle over Minsk. My call sign was “Mordvin”. I almost cried - my plane was completely riddled with bullets. A day later the Germans shot me down. We attacked the bombers, and they returned fire. You shoot at a German, you shoot, and he flies. Their tanks were protected, two-layer, with liquid rubber. The bullet pierces the tank, but the gasoline does not leak out - the rubber closes the hole, the plane does not catch fire. But our tanks were simple, one bullet pierces the tank, gasoline begins to flow out, the second bullet sets the plane on fire and that’s it.
According to my calculations, during the entire war I shot down 18-19 aircraft, although officially I had 9 German aircraft behind me. In 1941 there were no cinematographic machine guns, who's going to count? I lost four planes then. In August 1941, my plane was shot down by our Soviet pilot.
That's how it was. Yasha Shneer, the pilot of our regiment, did not fly well and was frankly a coward in battle. Another commander would have court-martialed him, but our regiment commander Zakhar Plotnikov was a good man and told me: “Misha, take Schneer, train him. If anything happens, you have strong fists, give him the right treatment.” And then we stood near Tula.
We flew off to train. And then we were already flying the Yak-1. As a commander, I had two-way radio communication. I received a command from the command post to intercept a German Junkers-88 reconnaissance aircraft flying towards Moscow.
We intercepted the German and hit him with two fighters. So Yasha shot down his first plane. I was very happy. Then, during one training session, while practicing a maneuver, he made an unsuccessful turn and cut off one of my wings. I jumped out with a parachute, I was approaching the ground, I saw that I was flying straight onto the stakes, my hair stood on end. But I was lucky, I didn’t run into him. We then flew over the village of Myasnoye.
But Yasha’s parachute did not open. He hit the ground and all his bones broke. When they lifted it, it stretched like rubber. In his pocket they found a silver cigarette case with the engraving “To my teacher and friend Mikhail Devyatayev.” I lost this cigarette case.
I brought the fifth plane, which was shot down, to the unit. But he himself was seriously wounded in the leg, lost a lot of blood, flew to the airfield and, before the wheels even touched the ground, he passed out. Right on the wing of the plane, I was transfused with the blood of my commander, Volodya Bobrov.
I was sent to the rear. First to Rostov, then to Stalingrad. I received a letter from the unit that our regiment was sent for reorganization to Saratov. When our ambulance train stopped in Saratov for a day, as they said, I got to the airfield, but our people were no longer there. I fell behind the train. I had an operation at the Saratov hospital and was sent to Kazan, to a special hospital for pilots. On the way, I stopped in Torbeevo, to visit my mother Akulina Dmitrievna.
Then in Ruzaevka I took the train “500 merry” Ruzaevka-Kazan. A lot of people drove it - they climbed into the window and into the doors - if you climbed in, you couldn’t go to the toilet until Kazan, you couldn’t go anywhere, at least go for yourself. My mother gave me moonshine for the trip. I drank the bottle and poured it into an empty bottle. Like this.
They had already matched me on the train. I met a lieutenant of the medical service. It turned out that she and Faya studied together at medical school. Also Tatar. She was riding from the front in a position, but in her clothes she was invisible. So she wanted to marry me, or something, to herself. I brought it to my home. I told my mom, “My fiancé.” Her aunt was married to General Alexandrov, the head of the dance ensemble of the Red Army. And when I felt this economy, I ran away from her on two crutches.
The hospital was in the Vuzovets cinema. I went to Komleva to see Faya, they moved and don’t live here anymore. Then I went to the Electro cinema. And there was dancing. I took a ticket to the cinema, but where should I go dancing on crutches? Then I turned around and saw two girls talking, a familiar voice. Then her friend Dusya says: “The soldier is looking at us.” She turned around. "Faya!" "Misha!" We met, but we haven’t seen each other for almost three years.
“You,” he says, “why have you come?” "I came to see my wife." "To which?" I pull the crutch out from behind my back and say: “Here’s to the wife.” "Where?" I say: “Here in Vuzovets.”
I watched the movie, went out into the foyer, and saw dancing there. Despite the fact that there was a war, the dancing continued, life went on as usual. I came, sat there, and somehow they let me in without a ticket. I see Faya dancing with the senior lieutenant. She moved away from the senior lieutenant and sat down next to me. And now we've talked. The dancing is over, I'm going to the hospital, she's going home. It turns out that they were already living on Chekhov. We had to go in one direction, there were no trams, there was a lot of snow. We agreed to meet at the Officers' House.
We came to the House of Officers, and there was a pregnant doctor there who wanted to get me married. She and Faya are in conflict. I stayed with Faya.
After the House of Officers, I gave up my crutches and walked only with a cane. It was hard to walk, but I was brave. It was January '42.
Then Faya once said: “Will you come to visit?” "I'll come." And so they came, Faya’s mother, Maimuna Zaidullovna, my future mother-in-law, fried some potatoes and sausages. Oooh, delicious! She was a very good cook. Then he came again, a third time, and then things started to spiral. Then he stayed overnight. And then officially, when we go to the front, let’s go, I say, Faya, take your passport with you. We went, signed, then took pictures. I think I’ll die at the front anyway, even though my legitimate wife will remain.
On November 29, 1942, we left the registry office and took photographs. The photographer said: "A rare pair." I was captured with such a photograph. The second photo was of Faya and her sister Lyalya.
Due to health reasons, I was sent to the air ambulance and I flew to Kazan several more times for Po-2 planes. I've already visited my wife.
Although I was in the air ambulance, I also flew out on bombing missions. Then he saved one general from the Germans. He gave me a pistol.
In 1944, I finally became a fighter again. By chance I met my former commander Volodya Bobrov, already a colonel. Vladimir was now flying with the famous Pokryshkin and in no time arranged for me to be taken to Pokryshkin too.
They retrained me for the American Cobra fighter. June '44. The battles were terrible, there were two or three battles every day. They arrived wet, and the foam had dried like a crust on their lips.
At the beginning of July, we flew from Moldova to Lviv and Brody. On July 13, the offensive began. At about 9 pm, and then the days were long, we flew to accompany the Ila attack aircraft. When we were flying back, already at the front line, an order came from the command post to return to such and such a square and meet a train of German bombers. An air battle ensued, there were Messerschmitts and Focke-Wulfs.
He began to emerge from the cloud and felt pain. I look - the Focke-Wulf is sitting on its tail. Apparently, when I jumped through a break in the clouds, he picked me up. I see Volodya Bobrov ahead, climbing, and my plane is engulfed in flames. I shout: “Beaver, point me to the east.” He shouts: “Mordvin, jump, you’ll explode.”
I opened the door, and on the Cobra you pull the emergency handle and the door falls straight onto the wing. I either hit the wing or the stabilizer - the fact is that I lost consciousness. I don’t know how I landed.
I came to my senses and was lying on the bunk. The Germans took all my documents, photographs of my wife, pistol, orders - I had two Orders of the Red Banner and two from the Patriotic War - they took everything. My face and hands are burned and hurt.
In the camp near Brody, the defectors who voluntarily went to the Germans wanted to beat us up. Sergei Vandyshev, major, attack pilot from Ruzaevka, climbed onto a bale of incubator shavings and said: “I will burn everyone, myself and you.” They left, otherwise they would have crippled us.
Then about ten of us pilots were gathered to be taken to a special camp for Soviet pilots. We agreed that we would try to hijack the plane. Whatever there was to grab, we were taken to a Junkers-52, our hands were tied behind us and we were laid on our stomachs. So we were taken to Warsaw and placed in a psychiatric hospital. There was such a garden there, there was a good harvest of apples. It was already August.
They started processing us. The general came, scolded the captain from the guard, they began to feed us well, and handed out orders. They promised to give out weapons if they behaved well.
My leg was knocked out, I could not run, and Sergei Vandyshev, Volodya Aristov, the son of the secretary of the Central Committee, tried, but could not. The other two ran away during the night. They sent dogs after them and caught them.
The general arrived and swore that his trust had not been justified. The security regime has been strengthened. Then they let mentally ill women come to us, naked, doing things you wouldn’t even dream of. Why are we wounded, covered in blood, my face, my hands are burnt, I have no time for that.
Then we got to Lodz, a camp for pilots. The commandant of this camp was Himmler's brother. Then 250 wounded and crippled pilots were transferred to the Kleinkönigsberg camp. There I met my classmate from Torbeev Vasily Grachev, also a pilot and attack aircraft. We dug behind the barbed wire. We should have run away right away, but we decided to dig under the commandant’s office - take weapons and free everyone. The plans were Napoleonic, but we were caught.
Me, my friend Ivan Patsula and Arkady Tsoun, as the organizers of the mine, were sentenced to death and sent to the Sachsenhausen death camp.
This camp was built in 1936 near Berlin for German political prisoners. There were 30 thousand workers in the “krinkerkommando” (brick team) alone.
We took clay and made balls so that not a single drop of earth would fall into it. The brick turned out to be very durable.
Then I was transferred to shoe testing. We were called "stompers". The newest boots, the load on my shoulders is 15 kilograms. We walked all day. And then in the evening they measured and wrote down how worn the boots were, and cleaned them with wax. In the morning the same thing again. The norm is 250 grams of bread - 200 grams for camp bread and shoe companies added 50 grams. The shoes were good. Brown, black boots, with spikes, with horseshoes. You had to walk - earth, asphalt, sand, shapeless marble slabs, then again sand, earth, and all day long you walked and walked on these stones. You can walk on asphalt, but on stone and slabs it’s hard.
The Germans were very cruel. He may be a good German, but for helping us he ended up in a punishment cell, and punishment cells for the Germans were worse than for us, so...
I was lucky, some people replaced my number with another and said that from now on I am Ukrainian Stepan Grigorievich Nikitenko, born in 1921, a teacher from Darnitsa, a suburb of Kyiv. Apparently, this Stepan died recently and has not yet been registered. If it weren’t for these people, I would have fallen into the stove and come out of the chimney as smoke.
There in the crematorium they burned, God forbid. Look, he fell, and he’s still alive. And there was a black box with four handles. They put him there and drag him to the crematorium to burn him. So you fell, you can’t walk anymore. You are still breathing, you are still talking, and they are already dragging you to the crematorium. When we tested the galoshes, some walked and walked, fell, they put him in a box and they forced us to carry him to the crematorium. That's all - this man's song has been sung, but you won't carry you there too, with your butt.
I was lucky again when the German anti-fascists transferred me from the “stompers” to the household servants - feeding pigs, harvesting rutabaga and onions from the gardens, preparing greenhouses for winter, transporting firewood and food.
One day, everyone was lined up and forced to walk naked in front of the commission - they selected those who had beautiful tattoos on their bodies. They were killed and their skin was used to make lampshades, bags, wallets, etc.
About five hundred people, including me, were selected to work on the island of Usedom. In Sachsenhausen there were no shepherd dogs inside, but in the camp at the airfield where we were taken, the shepherd dogs were so angry, they ate people, grabbed them straight away and tore off pieces of meat. Oh, and the dogs are evil, I don’t know how they trained the dogs.
A secret missile test site has been located on this island since 1935. There were factory buildings, launch pads, an airfield, a catapult for guided missiles, various test stations for the Air Force, ground forces and much more. Our camp and the entire center was called Peenemünde, after the name of the fishing village.
At first I worked unloading sand, then moved to the “bombing team”. After the bombings, we pulled fuses out of unexploded bombs. Our team was fifth, the previous four had already been blown up. The risk was great, but in those houses from which we pulled out bombs, we could find food, eat to our fill, and grab warm underwear. We looked for weapons, but found nothing, however, sometimes we found gold things and gems, which were supposed to be handed over to the Germans.
Every minute you wait, now you will be torn to pieces. I think I’m going crazy here and voluntarily went to work in another group, the “planning team”. They filled up craters on runways after bombings and camouflaged planes.
Little by little a group of people wishing to escape formed. The plan was to fly home. The pilot is me. We looked at one Heinkel-111 - it was always warmed up in the morning, fully fueled. From the aircraft scrapyard they began to carry signs from instrument panels, especially Heinkels. I looked closely and memorized how the engines were started. That’s how we prepared, waiting for an opportunity.
But circumstances forced us to hurry. The fact is that for beating up an informer I was sentenced to “10 days to life.” This meant that over 10 days I had to be gradually beaten to death. Just recently, my friend Fatykh from Kazan, who was transferred with me from Sachsenhausen, was killed on the very first day of his “10 days of life”. He died in my arms and lay dead next to me until the morning.
When I had two “days to live” left, we were able to carry out our plan - during the lunch break we killed the guard, took his rifle, with great difficulty, but started the engines. I stripped to the waist so that no one could see my striped clothes, drove the guys into the fuselage and tried to take off. For some reason the plane did not rise, it was not possible to take off, at the end of the runway, when I turned the plane back, we almost fell into the sea. Anti-aircraft gunners ran towards us, soldiers, officers from everywhere. They probably thought that one of their pilots had gone crazy, especially since he was sitting naked.
The guys shout: “Take off, we’ll die!” Then they pointed a bayonet at right shoulder blade. I got angry, grabbed the rifle barrel, tore it out of their hands and went to scratch it with the butt, driving them all into the fuselage.
I think that if we didn’t fly downhill, we certainly won’t go up. I drove the plane back to where I started the acceleration for the first time and began the second takeoff. The plane again does not obey. And there we just landed from a combat mission, Dornier 214, 217, I think I’m about to crash into them, and then it dawned on me that the plane wasn’t taking off because the trim tabs were in the landing position. “Guys,” I say, “press here!” Three people finally piled on and overpowered us. And just like that, almost miraculously, they took off. As soon as we took off, they sang “The Internationale” in joy and let go of the helm, we almost crashed into the sea. Then I found the aileron and elevator trimmers, turned them, the forces on the yoke became normal.
We flew in the clouds so as not to be shot down. Flying in the clouds on someone else's plane when you can't read the instrument readings is very dangerous - several times I had breakdowns and we almost crashed into the sea, but everything turned out okay. Why the German fighters didn’t shoot us down immediately after takeoff, one can only speculate, because they flew very close. And then, when we entered the clouds, I headed northwest, towards Norway.
We flew to Sweden and turned towards Leningrad, there was a lot of fuel, I think we’ll make it. But I was so weak that I no longer felt control and turned towards Warsaw, just to reach the front line. German fighters met again; they were escorting some ship. I shook my wings in time for them to see the yellow belly and crosses.
Near coastline We were heavily shelled. It’s good that we were at a low altitude - due to the large angular movement we were not hit. Then a Focke-Wulf began to approach us over the forest, I quickly took off my clothes again, and the guys hid in the fuselage, but then the anti-aircraft guns began to fire again and he had no time for us.
I started tossing the car left and right and almost completely lost altitude. And there was a bridge across the river. Look, our soldiers. And right along the flight there was a clearing in the forest. I miraculously landed the plane, stuck it straight in, and the landing gear broke off.
They took the machine gun and wanted to go into the forest, suddenly the Germans were nearby. And we were completely exhausted, there was water and mud under the snow, and our feet immediately got wet. We returned back.
Soon our soldiers began to run up: “Fritz, surrender!” We jumped out of the plane, ours, when we saw the striped ones, only bones, no weapons, they immediately began to rock us, carried us in their arms. It was February 8th.
They saw that we were hungry and brought us to the dining room. They were boiling chickens there, so we pounced. The doctor took the chicken away from me, I would have eaten too much, I was hungry - and suddenly the chicken was fatty, I couldn’t do it right away, I could even die. I then weighed less than 39 kilograms. Just bones.
Five of us died - they were immediately sent to the troops, four remained alive. My vision deteriorated and I began to see poorly. From nerves, perhaps.
When the command found out that we had arrived from the missile center, some colonel took me, as a pilot, to Lieutenant General Belyakov in Oldenberg.
I drew everything I remembered, after all, I was a pilot, my professional memory did not fail me. He talked a lot about the launches of the V-1 and V-2 rockets. I even had a chance, in September, to talk with the future General Designer of Soviet spacecraft, Sergei Pavlovich Korolev. I, of course, didn't know who it was. He called himself Sergeev. Then he sent a whole train from Germany with missiles, papers from the institute of the German rocket scientist Wernher von Braun. I told him about the underground plant in Peenemünde and walked around the workshops with him. I also had a chance to drink vodka with him.
And when I spoke to future cosmonauts, Sergei Pavlovich was also there. Gagarin had not yet flown at that time.
Then I was told that it was Korolev who signed the proposal to award me the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. But I learned about this only after his death.
And then, in 1945, when they asked me everything, they sent me to a collection point. Then we were taken on foot from Germany through Poland and Belarus to the Pskov region, to the Nevel station.
They took us to the lake. There is a forest around the lake. A gate with “Welcome” written above it and barbed wire all around.
They say: “Dig your own dugouts.” We made dugouts, cut hay, and slept on the hay. It was already getting cold in October. They don’t let you go home, and you can’t correspond with each other. Valuables, gold, and precious stones were taken away.
After the flight, the guys brought me so many valuables. I remember the golden cross was like this, with rubies. They found a safe in Oldenberg, broke it, and brought everything. I had so many diamonds. A whole box. There were gold crosses. Everything was stolen from me. I’m not greedy for gold things now, and even more so then. Guys from the village, who dealt with gold? We didn't care about any of this.
There, in Nevel, former prisoners and Soviet women taken to Germany were kept. Georgians guarded us. They were free, Stalin gave them freedom.
Then, in December, I was released from the dugouts in Nevel. I was lucky, I wasn’t imprisoned. Still, not everyone is a fool, although we have many fools. In my papers, some clerk wrote “howitzer fighter artillery regiment.”
This is how he deciphered the abbreviation GIAP - “Guards Fighter Aviation Regiment.” I arrived in Kazan, came to the Sverdlovsk military registration and enlistment office, I said, I’m a pilot, I’ve never been an artilleryman. The military commissar shouted: “Get out of here!” and kicked me out. That's how I became an artilleryman. And Fauzia was already waiting. In 1944, she received a document stating that I was missing. She didn’t believe that I was dead, she went to a fortune teller. And I was able to write to her only in the summer of 1945.
Fauzia Khairullovna: Of course, I hoped that Misha was alive. I was telling fortunes on the ring, the ring showed his face. I went to a blind fortune teller, he said: “You will live long, you will have three children, you will live like all families.”
The paper stating that my Misha went missing is now in the museum. In June or July a letter came from him that he was in the city of Nevel. It turns out they were still written about in front-line newspapers when they arrived from captivity.
Mikhail Petrovich: I arrived alive and well, but I can’t get a job in Kazan - when they find out that I was in captivity, it’s right out of the gate. In February 1946 I went to Mordovia. In Saransk, two places were refused. I applied to a mechanical plant, where my friend, fellow countryman, fellow prisoner Vasily Grachev worked in the vehicle fleet as a mechanic or engineer. He and I finished 7th grade together in Torbeevo. He was such a smart guy. He asked for me, but I was refused, and he himself, a combat officer-pilot, was expelled from the factory and imprisoned for 10 years because he was in captivity, for treason against the Motherland. He was in prison in Irbit. He still lives there. He became a shop manager, then worked in trade unions.
I went to Torbeevo. There he immediately turned to his childhood friend Alexander Ivanovich Gordeev, the third secretary of the district party committee. He received me very well and invited me to visit him in the evening. I told how I was in captivity. He: “Misha, you will have work.” In the morning, as agreed, I come. “There is no work for you here. There is no Volga here, let’s go to your place on the Volga.”
I almost cried. I'm not offended by Gordeev. He reported to the first secretary, fellow countryman, let's get him a job, he was a pilot, he was in captivity. And he: “We don’t need people like that.” I say to my mother: “I have to go to the Presidium of the Supreme Council, to Comrade Shvernik, to explain what’s the matter, why. I need to go to Moscow.” But there is no money for a ticket.
I say to my mother: “Let’s slaughter the goat, sell it, I’ll be rich, I’ll return it.” She says: “What are you talking about, son. There are women carrying butter to Moscow. And the swindlers are taking both the butter and the money from them. And you’re healthy, come on, go with them.”
The executive committee gave me a pass to Moscow. Women in the villages bought oil, even went to Bednodemyansk, then added it for yellowness carrot juice, everything was mixed well and frozen. Then on the train to Moscow. And then take the tram to the Sukharevsky market. I'm in shape, women aren't afraid. While they are selling, I go back and forth, looking.
Then, at some sewing factory in the Moscow region, women took white threads and paint. The thread was dyed and sold in bunches in Torbeevo. It was very profitable; Moksha women were buying up colored thread for embroidery.
I remember we walked for a long time somewhere along ravines, through clearings, and spent the night somewhere. They bought a whole bag of thread from someone, it was probably stolen. Then they gave me some of the threads. Mother sold.
That’s how I earned money in two and a half months and came back to Kazan. They call the NKVD and ask: “What were you doing in Moscow?” I say: “My brother had it.” "Is there a telephone?" "Eat". Then they call again: “Why are you lying? You were spying. Your brother hasn’t seen you for 3-4 months.” I wrote letters to different authorities, but there were no answers. Then I stopped writing.
Fauzia Khairullovna: Every now and then they called me to the special unit and asked what he was saying. I say: “He doesn’t tell anything.” "Okay, when you're alone with him, what does he say?" It was such a time then, you had to think about what you were saying.
Mikhail Petrovich: Then they took me to the river port, as a station duty officer. There were all sorts of things, captivity they poked at me every now and then. And from 1949 I was already a captain on a boat. I completed training as a mechanic, passed with excellent marks, but did not receive a replacement position. There were thirteen of us, everyone received an extra hundred rubles for filling the position of a mechanic, and only I was not given it. The director of the backwater, Pavel Grigorievich Soldatov, says: “We sent you there by mistake. You,” he says, “were in captivity, say thank you that we are holding you.”
After the 20th Congress of the CPSU, when Khrushchev debunked Stalin, the issue with the former prisoners was posed as follows: traitors should be punished, and those who did not surrender themselves, who did not collaborate with the Germans, should be rehabilitated and their merits noted.
My Faya’s brother, Fatih Khairullovich Muratov, he has already died, says to me: “Misha, let’s write to Moscow about your fate.” He worked in the Supreme Court of Tatarstan. I say: “I won’t write anywhere. How much I wrote after the war was of no use. Whoever needs me will find me himself.”
Journalists were given the task of looking for remarkable people among the former prisoners. The head of the department of the newspaper "Soviet Tataria" Yan Borisovich Vinetsky also went to the military registration and enlistment offices. In our Sverdlovsk district military registration and enlistment office they told him that, they say, we have an artilleryman who flew away from captivity on a German plane and brought 9 people.
Yan Borisovich and his friend, Literaturnaya Gazeta's own correspondent Bulat Minnullovich Gizatullin, decided to come and question me. Bulat Gizatullin then served as the Minister of Culture of Tatarstan.
Fauzia Khairullovna: Ian Borisovich and I became friends and were friends at home. He was a good man. And we have known Bulat for a long time. He studied at school 15 with my brother Fatih. Bulat and Yan came and knocked: “Does Devyatayev live here?”
Misha immediately blushed. It feels like his nerves are on edge. Yan Borisovich says: “I went to the military registration and enlistment offices. In the Sverdlovsk regional military registration and enlistment office he said that he has one, he wrote such an autobiography, here, he says, it’s all nonsense - he says that he is a pilot, and he is an artilleryman. I, he says, am reading the autobiography , could this really be?"
And Yan Borisovich himself was a pilot, he fought in Spain. He and Bulat were friends and decided to come. It was 7 pm, October '56. They asked Misha to tell me. He sat down and talked from 7 pm to 6 am. My late mother set the samovar five times.
He told it like this, I myself, willy-nilly, sat in the same place where I was going, with such details that he had never told anywhere. He had such a condition.
Then at about 10 o'clock they invited the driver and he also sat and listened until the morning. Yan Borisovich asked such questions, after all, he is a pilot himself. I gave my institute phone number for communication. This is how our friendship began.
Then, after a month and a half, Yan Borisovich calls and says: “Tell Mikhail Petrovich that I got permission to go to the authorities and check.”
Mikhail Petrovich: The matter reached Ignatiev, the secretary of the regional party committee. Yan Borisovich Vinetsky wrote big article, I read it, checked it. Bulat said: “No need to go to Soviet Tataria, let’s go straight to Moscow, to our Literaturnaya Gazeta, it will immediately go to the whole world.”
In "Literature" they promised New Year publish an article about me. Then they moved it to Red Army Day on February 23. Then a colonel from the DOSAAF magazine “Patriot” came to me: “Mikhail Petrovich, let’s have a drink with you. So they sent me to check Vinetsky’s material.”
It turns out they didn’t believe it yet. I come to Yan Borisovich, he calls Moscow in front of me. They said that it will definitely be released by March 8th. Didn't come out. Then they say that March 23rd will be exact.
I come home and say there will be an article tomorrow. I don’t believe it myself, I went to the train station this morning. There I give the kiosk guy 10 rubles and take the full amount of Literary Works.
On my way home, my son Lesha greets me: “Dad, the article has come out!” What a joy it was.
The bosses immediately respected me. The director of the backwater calls to him, expresses respect, says that the minister is waiting for me on the phone river fleet USSR Shashkov Zosim Alekseevich. And at that time I taught courses in Arakchino. Junior specialists were trained there - helmsmen, mechanics, etc. On this day I had my last lesson. And off we go. I was intercepted by Lieutenant Colonel Georgy Evstigneev from the editorial office of Soviet Aviation. He and I flew on an Il-14 transport plane to Moscow, to the Ministry of River Fleet.
And they carried wine on the plane. As soon as the pilots found out who they were taking, they immediately began carrying vodka and cognac. In general, when we landed in Moscow, Zhora and I didn’t know what to do, how to go to the minister in this form. We go out and ask where Devyatayev is. I say he is there, in the cabin. We catch a taxi and go to Zhora’s house. This morning I woke up, let's wash my hair cold water, I think, how can I go to the minister with such a face.
The minister gathered everyone, told them about me, how I was kicked out of work for captivity, and said: “Let Mikhail Petrovich open the door to any of you’s offices with his foot.”
Wherever I was visiting then. They gave me money. I bought gifts and came home to Kazan.
When the Hero was awarded, already in August, after Moscow, he went to Torbeevo. And in Moscow I lived for a week at Konstantin Simonov’s dacha. We went fishing and picked mushrooms. He asked for so long. Then I met with Volodya Bobrov, my commander. And he and Simonov, it turns out, lived on the same street in Lugansk.
Simonov arranged a banquet in my honor. They served oysters, Volodya stabs an oyster in his mouth, but I feel uncomfortable, the oysters squeak, and they, devils, fellow writers, just eat. God forbid, what a banquet it was. I think, let me find out how much Simonov will pay for the evening. And he took it, signed it on a piece of paper and that’s it. He was on the state account.
And began traveling around the country, meeting people. I remember that in 1957 they invited me on a trip to Mordovia. Deputy Minister of Culture Syrkin and I traveled to different regions and performed in Saransk. I traveled to Germany alone dozens of times, and went there many times with Faya. Once, in 1968, the whole family, with children, went.
Fauzia Khairullovna: In my youth, I dreamed of becoming a historian and archaeologist. I really loved history. It turned out that my father died, and I am my mother’s eldest, after me there are three more. Mom is illiterate. Life was very hard and in 1938 I went to study at a medical school. In 1939, she graduated from college and worked in one place until retirement - first as a laboratory assistant, then as a senior laboratory assistant at the Kazan Institute of Epidemiology and Microbiology.
When I was at school, our Tatar language was in the Latin script. That Tatar alphabet was called "Yanalif". Even now it’s easier for me to read in Yanalife. I will be glad when the Tatars switch back to the Latin alphabet. Here the grandchildren learn the Tatar language at school, they come, grandma, how to write correctly, but now they write Tatar in Russian letters and I get confused whether to write “e” or “e”. This is very difficult for me. It was good on Janalif.
My mother’s cousin’s husband was the muezzin of the Marjeni mosque. Their daughter divorced her first husband, a Tatar, and married Uncle Petya, a Russian, very good man. He died at the front.
So I was not the first in my family to marry a non-Tatar. Nobody has ever reproached me for this. In general, everyone here loved Misha. My grandmother, my father’s mother, she spoke excellent Russian, she told him everything about Kazan.
Mikhail Petrovich: She and I went to the city bathhouse together for ten years. We’ll come with her, there the Tatar women will take her home and wash her. And I go to the men's department and worry. Then the two of us go home again.
Fauzia Khairullovna: She told us how the Czechs fired cannons at Kazan, how they captured it, and how they then fled. She could tell about every house in Kazan. My mother didn’t speak Russian very well, but then she learned. She was originally from the village of Chulpych, Sabinsky district. And my father was born in the village of Burtasy, Tetyush district.
Mikhail Petrovich: Our both sons graduated from medical school. Alexey is a candidate of medical sciences. Alexander - Doctor of Medical Sciences. Nellie graduated from the Kazan Conservatory and teaches piano and music theory at a theater school.
The eldest works as a surgeon at the military registration and enlistment office. He has a daughter, and his wife separated. The daughter's name is Irina. Great-granddaughter's name is Nastya. Great-granddaughter, Russian granddaughter. Alexey is registered as Russian and knows the Tatar language perfectly. Alexander is recorded as a Tatar, but speaks Tatar worse. Nellie's daughter is also registered as a Tatar.
Fauzia Khairullovna: Alexander's wife's name is Firdaus. She graduated from the Institute of Culture. Firdaus is very beautiful, when she was in Torbeevo, they said she was like a Tatar princess. Their children: the eldest Alina, the second Diana. The eldest is 16 years old, studying in the 11th grade, the youngest is 14 years old, studying in the 9th grade. They speak Tatar perfectly - they grew up in a village near Firdaus, in Balykly, Tyulyachinsky district.
Nelly’s husband Rustam Salakhovich Fasakhov works at the Department of Allergology at GIDUV. Their daughter Dina entered the first year of the pedagogical institute and is studying English. They also have a son, Misha, 12 years old, and a younger daughter, Leila, 11 years old.
Nellie cried from the age of 4: “Buy me a piano, I want a piano.” At the age of 6 she went to study at a music school. But first I entered the history department of the university. I finished two courses with excellent marks and couldn’t stand it: “Mom, I made a mistake in life, I need to go to the conservatory.” My dad had to go ask her to be released from the university.
Mikhail Petrovich: I do not regret anything. We defended our Motherland, Fatherland. Now I have a family, a wife, children, grandchildren, and a great-granddaughter. What else does? And if we had not fought, we would have chickened out, there would have been no one, we would have been slaves.
Of course, we cannot say that everything in our family was smooth. It used to be that a letter would arrive from some woman, Faya, let’s be jealous. A lot of women pestered me, all kinds - both beautiful and in positions of power. Of course, a hero, a celebrity.
And I didn’t need anything except my three children. So not a single woman, even the most beautiful one, had a chance. I have been married for 56 years and in the most difficult years my family, my children, my relatives were with me.
We're sitting well! Visiting Mikhail Petrovich and Fauzia Khairullovna. Karim Dolotkazin comes from Bolshaya Polyana, Kadoshkinsky district, and is proud of his famous fellow countryman.
(07/08/1917-11/24/2002) - fighter pilot, Hero Soviet Union(1957), guard senior lieutenant.
Participant of the Great Patriotic War from the first day. He fought as part of the 237 IAP and 298 (104 Guards) IAP, and was a flight commander. Shot down 9 enemy aircraft. On July 13, 1944, in an air battle over Lvov, he was shot down and captured. He was imprisoned in the camps of Lodz, Sachsenhausen and on the island. Usedom. On February 8, 1945, he hijacked a He-111H-22 from Peenemünde airfield and took out 9 more people on it.
In 1957 he became the first captain of the hydrofoil ship "Raketa". Then he drove Meteors along the Volga. Honorary citizen of the Republic of Mordovia, the cities of Kazan, Wolgast and Tsinovichi (Germany).
Mordvin.
Member of the CPSU since 1959. He was the thirteenth child in the family. When he was 2 years old, his father died of typhus. In 1933, he graduated from the 7th grade of high school and went to Kazan, intending to enter an aviation technical school.
Due to a misunderstanding with documents, he had to study at a river technical school, from which he graduated in 1938. At the same time he studied at the Kazan flying club.
In 1938, the Sverdlovsk RVC of Kazan was drafted into the Red Army. In 1940 he graduated from the Orenburg Military Aviation School named after. K. E. Voroshilova.
Sent to serve in Torzhok.
Later transferred to Mogilev to the 237th Fighter Aviation Regiment (Western OVO). Participant of the Great Patriotic War since June 22, 1941. Already on the second day, he took part in an air battle in his I-16. He opened his combat account on June 24, shooting down a Ju-87 dive bomber near Minsk. Then he defended the sky of Moscow.
In one of the air battles in the Tula region, together with J. Schneier, he shot down a Ju-88, but his Yak-1 was also damaged.
Devyatayev made an emergency landing and ended up in the hospital.
Having not fully recovered, he fled to the front to join his regiment, which at that time was based west of Voronezh. On September 23, 1941, while returning from a mission, Devyatayev was attacked by Messerschmitts. He knocked down one of them, but he himself was wounded in the left leg. After the hospital, the medical commission assigned him to low-speed aviation.
He served in a night bomber regiment, then in an air ambulance.
Only after a meeting in May 1944 with A.I. Pokryshkin did he again become a fighter.
Flight commander of the 104th Guards Fighter Aviation Regiment (9th Guards Fighter Aviation Division, 2nd Air Army, 1st Ukrainian Front) Guard, Senior Lieutenant Devyatayev M.P. shot down 9 enemy aircraft in air battles.
On the evening of July 13, 1944, he took off as part of a group of P-39 fighters under the command of Major V. Bobrov to repel an enemy air raid.
In an unequal air battle near Lvov, he was wounded in the right leg, and his plane was set on fire.
At the last moment, the falling fighter left with a parachute.
Captured with severe burns. Interrogation followed interrogation.
Then he was sent by transport plane to the Abwehr intelligence department in Warsaw.
Having failed to obtain any valuable information from Devyatayev, the Germans sent him to the Lodz prisoner of war camp.
Later transferred to the New Koenigsberg camp.
Here, in the camp with a group of comrades, Devyatayev began to prepare an escape. At night, using improvised means - spoons and bowls - they dug a tunnel, pulled out the earth on a sheet of iron and scattered it under the floor of the barracks (the barracks stood on stilts). But when there were already a few meters left to freedom, security discovered the tunnel.
Based on a denunciation from a traitor, the organizers of the escape were captured.
After interrogation and torture, they were sentenced to death.
Devyatayev and a group of suicide bombers were sent to Germany to the Sachsenhausen death camp (near Berlin).
But he was lucky: in the sanitary barracks, a hairdresser from among the prisoners replaced his death row tag with the tag of a penal prisoner (No. 104533), who was killed by the guards of a teacher from Darnitsa, Grigory Stepanovich Nikitenko.
In the group of “stompers” I wore out shoes made by German companies. Later, with the help of underground workers, he was transferred from a penal barracks to a regular one.
At the end of October 1944, as part of a group of 1,500 prisoners, he was sent to a camp on the island of Usedom, where the secret Peenemünde training ground was located, where rocket weapons were tested.
Since the site was secret, there was only one way out for the concentration camp prisoners - through the crematorium pipe.
In January 1945, when the front approached the Vistula, Devyatayev, together with prisoners Ivan Krivonogov, Vladimir Sokolov, Vladimir Nemchenko, Fedor Adamov, Ivan Oleynik, Mikhail Yemets, Pyotr Kutergin, Nikolai Urbanovich and Dmitry Serdyukov, began to prepare an escape. A plan was developed to hijack a plane from an airfield located next to the camp.
While working at the airfield, Devyatayev secretly studied the cockpits of German aircraft.
Instrument plates were removed from damaged aircraft lying around the airfield.
In the camp they were translated and studied.
Devyatayev assigned responsibilities to all participants in the escape: who should remove the cover from the pitot tube, who should remove the chocks from the landing gear wheels, who should remove the clamps from the elevators and steering wheels, who should roll up the cart with batteries.
The escape was scheduled for February 8, 1945. On the way to work at the airfield, the prisoners, choosing the moment, killed the guard.
So that the Germans would not suspect anything, one of them put on his clothes and began to pose as a guard.
Thus, they managed to enter the aircraft parking lot.
When the German technicians went for lunch, Devyatayev’s group captured a He-111H-22 bomber. Devyatayev started the engines and began to taxi to the start. To prevent the Germans from seeing his striped prison clothes, he had to strip naked.
But it was not possible to take off unnoticed - someone discovered the body of the murdered guard and raised the alarm.
German soldiers were running towards the Heinkel from all sides.
Devyatayev began his takeoff run, but the plane could not take off for a long time (later it was discovered that the landing flaps had not been removed). With the help of his comrades, Devyatayev pulled the helm with all his might. Only at the end of the runway did the Heinkel take off from the ground and fly over the sea at low altitude. Having come to their senses, the Germans sent a fighter in pursuit, but it failed to detect the fugitives.
Devyatayev flew, guided by the sun.
In the area of the front line, the plane was fired upon by our anti-aircraft guns.
I had to go forced. The Heinkel made a belly landing south of the village of Gollin at the location of the artillery unit of the 61st Army. Special officers did not believe that concentration camp prisoners could hijack the plane.
The fugitives were subjected to a harsh test, long and humiliating.
Then they were sent to penal battalions.
In November 1945, Devyatayev was transferred to the reserve. He was not hired.
In 1946, with a captain's diploma in his pocket, he found a job as a loader in the Kazan river port with difficulty. They didn't trust him for 12 years.
He wrote letters addressed to Stalin, Malenkov, Beria, but all to no avail. The situation changed only at the end of the 50s. On August 15, 1957, M. P. Devyatayev was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. In 1957, he became one of the first captains of the Raketa hydrofoil passenger ships. Later he drove Meteors along the Volga and was a captain-mentor.
After retiring, he actively participated in the veterans’ movement, created the Devyatayev Foundation, and provided assistance to those who especially needed it.
Awarded the Order of Lenin, 2 Orders of the Red Banner, Orders of the Patriotic War 1st and 2nd degrees, medals.
Honorary citizen of the Republic of Mordovia, the cities of Kazan (Russia), Wolgast and Tsinovichi (Germany).
A Hero Museum has been opened in Torbeevo. Died November 24, 2002. He was buried in the Alley of Heroes of the Arsk Cemetery in Kazan.
“He was allowed to mention both Peenemünde and the designer Korolev only a year before his death, 57 years after the flight”
Last week marked the anniversary of the legendary flight-escape from fascist captivity of Mikhail Devyatayev with 9 other comrades on board. On February 8, 1945, from the second approach, crushing the airfield staff, the Heinkel-111 bomber took off from the runway of the top-secret German base of Peenemünde and the pursuit aircraft. Those who fled did not know that they were stealing not just a plane, but a V-missile launch control...
CURSED ISLAND
Near the town of Peenemünde on the island of Usedom, in the Baltic Sea in northern Germany, during the Second World War they were located Research institute, missile base, factory, airfield and concentration camp. Its prisoners were laborers, and sometimes “guinea pigs” for testing the notorious V-1 and V-2 rockets produced here, in underground workshops. The Fuhrer called them his weapon of retaliation. The database was personally supervised Hermann Goering, Reich Minister of the Reich Air Ministry, second in command after Adolf Hitler in the Third Reich. It was one of Germany's most secret military installations.
From here the Germans bombed Europe (Antwerp, Paris) with missiles, but the British especially suffered. "Angels of Death", "V-2", each of which carried a ton of explosives at the speed of sound, did not give Winston Churchill, English Prime Minister, begin active actions the second front under their fire.
On August 17, 1943, the British Royal Air Force carried out its first raid on Peenemünde. 597 heavy bombers dropped thousands of bombs. The action made it possible to delay the serial production of missiles for six months. And yet, in 1944, the massive bombing of London and other British cities with V-2 radio-controlled ballistic missiles resumed. About 10 thousand deadly shells again fell unhindered on the British Isles. England began to think about leaving the coalition and neutrality.
It was not possible to intercept the missiles at launch. So the only way to fight them was to destroy the base itself, along with its launchers and their production workshops. But the Anglo-American bombing of Peenemünde, with all its activity and scale, for some reason no longer brought results. And further. If you mentally draw a radius from the island of Usedom to London and outline the range of the V-2, then it will include not only all of Poland and the Baltic states, but also a significant part of Belarus, Ukraine and Russia, including Minsk, Kyiv and St. Petersburg. So the threat emanating from the island of Usedom was also relevant for us. It was necessary to penetrate the damned island and find out the exact coordinates of the target. No matter how the most powerful Allied intelligence agencies struggled with this problem, they could not solve it. And so, hundreds of kilometers from the Baltic, over Lvov, on July 13, 1944, in an air battle, a fighter pilot of the famous division was shot down and captured by the Germans Alexandra Pokryshkina. The captured pilot completed this task six months later. His name was .
“AND YOU CAN’T TOUCH ME!”
A native of the Mordovian village of Torbeevo, Mikhail Devyataev remembered himself well from the age of seven. "Mother? How kind she could be with 14 children! ( His father died in the civil war when Misha, the 13th of the children, was two years old, and the youngest, Vasya, “was still in his mother’s belly” -approx. ed.). She, like any mother, naturally wanted the best for us and wished us good things. But due to her position, due to her poverty, she could neither put shoes on us nor clothe us. She herself would buy a sheep or some kind of animal at the market, she would slaughter and skin it herself; liver, head-legs, entrails - for us; and the meat - to the market, to the train. This is how we ate... I never got sick. I remember well, I ate onions from my neighbors’ garden, I got a stomach ache and fell. This neighbor, Uncle Matvey, came up: “What are you doing, Mishenka?” I say: “Well, I ate your onion.” I look: he brought a mug of milk and bread. He knew that if he beat me, he would no longer have a garden. And if he does good to me, then no one else will get into the garden.”
Misha was kicked out of school for his behavior, but then they took him back when he promised to improve before the formation. Then I studied well.
August 7, 1932 on the initiative Secretary General Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks Joseph Stalin the “Law on Three Spikelets” was adopted - this is how the people called the famous resolution of the Central Executive Committee and the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR “On the Protection of Property state enterprises, collective farms and cooperation and strengthening public (socialist) property." His ignorance did not exempt him from responsibility, including execution. Seventh-grader Misha might not have been freed either, when in 1933 he and a friend picked up these same rye ears left on the harvested field and cooked a delicious stew. The police didn't let me finish eating. On the way, we managed to swallow the ill-fated stew, but the police still drew up a report. They were released for a while, and the juvenile criminals decided: it’s time! They rushed to Kazan, to their dream - to an aviation technical school. Without documents (there was no time for them when escaping!) they didn’t take me there. We took it to the river. The director looked at the ragged newcomers, at the red Devyaevskaya T-shirt sewn by his mother from the banner stolen by Misha from the roof of the village executive committee, at their bare dirty feet and heeded the argument of the assertive teenager: “So you’ll still kick out someone, well, those who with documents, but studies poorly.”
CALL SIGN - “MORDVIN”
In 1937, in his 4th year, 20-year-old Devyatayev was arrested by the NKVD for espionage. He blurted out the truth to his friend about the dubious beauty of his older girlfriend, and he let it slip out of drunkenness. A girlfriend, an NKVD informant, stole from the offender and burned the signature sheets for the census entrusted to him as an activist, saying in the office that Devyatayev sold them to the Germans. After seven months of imprisonment and constant interrogation, Mikhail was released from the barracks (“What? If I had nothing to do with it”). By that time, both my studies at the flying club and my first unforgettable solo flight had taken place. In 1938, Devyatev was drafted into the Red Army by the Sverdlovsk RVC of the city of Kazan, and in 1940 he graduated from the Chkalov Military Aviation Pilot School. On June 24, 1941, he shot down the first fascist in the sky over Minsk.
“And a day later he himself came under fire from a Messerschmitt and jumped out with a parachute from a burning donkey (I-16 fighter), writes the classic Soviet journalist, having met Devyatayev, in the essay “The Feat of Mordvin from Torbeev” Vasily Peskov. - If he had not shown resourcefulness, the war and life would have ended for him in this battle near Minsk - the Messerschmitt turned around to shoot the pilot. Mikhail pulled the lines and quickly rushed like a “sausage” to the ground. A hundred meters away, he allowed his parachute to open and escaped. Then he left burning planes more than once. By the summer of 1944, he shot down nine enemy aircraft. They shot him down five times. He was shot in the arm and leg. I was in the hospital."
Then there was an escape from the hospital, long months on the "corn farm" of the air ambulance and - again without documents, but under the patronage - the division of the legendary ace Pokryshkin. By 1944, Devyatayev was awarded three military orders.
And now - an unequal battle, in the headphones the heart-rending order of the commander: “Mordvin ( Devyatayev's flight call sign - approx. ed.), jump!” He fell out of the plane with a parachute. Unconscious, seriously wounded and burned, Devyatayev was captured.
GOOD RUSSIAN HAIRDRESSER
After interrogation, Mikhail Devyatayev was transferred to the Abwehr intelligence department, from there to the Lodz prisoner of war camp, from where, together with a group of captured pilots, he made his first escape attempt on August 13, 1944. But the fugitives were caught, declared death row and sent to the Sachsenhausen death camp. They would have destroyed him, but...
And you, my friend, why did you get caught? - he asked and looked at my card. Seeing the reason for my being sent to a concentration camp, he sighed and shook his head. - I see... Organizing an escape and sabotage. For this - a crematorium. Exactly...
Even though I knew what awaited me, these words made me feel uneasy, as if a bucket of ice water had been poured on my head.
Don’t be shy, brother, we’ll help you out of trouble,” the hairdresser said sympathetically. - Just do everything I tell you.
The new friend took the tag with the number from me, went out somewhere and a minute later returned and handed me the tag with the new number.
Here you go... Forget your own last name for now. Now you will be Nikitenko. I also changed the card...
Whose tag is it? - I got worried.
One person just died. Let them think it's you. Understand?..
I nodded my head: everything is clear.”
So, according to the official literary version, Devyatayev became Grigory Nikitenko, a teacher from the Ukrainian Darnitsa. Kazan researcher Ravil Veniaminov On February 8, 2015, he wrote for BUSINESS Online about this book that it is “the fruit of the labors of two professionals who literary processed the memories of the hero, one reviewer, three editors and two proofreaders; only the modest employees of Glavlit - the Main Directorate for Literary Affairs - are not mentioned and publishing houses." In a word, censors. Both censors and editors in our case distinguished themselves either by increased vigilance, or by a stunning lack of professionalism: there are so many embellishments, inconsistencies and other flaws in the book.
And the head of the museum-memorial of the Great Patriotic War in the Kazan Kremlin Mikhail Cherepanov in a conversation with a BUSINESS Online correspondent, he couldn’t help but laugh maliciously: “So that the Nazis, with their counterintelligence and the Gestapo, would allow an enemy pilot, who had not been shot, to get to a secret base, and even with an airfield! And when they tell us that it was some kind hairdresser who gave him the documents of a deceased teacher and thus provided him with a “ticket” to the missile camouflage team - well, it’s just not even funny!”
REAL COLONEL
Nevertheless, let us turn again to the book “Escape from Hell” - at least the truth is still present there, albeit in a greatly truncated form. Devyatayev... well, or, let’s say, the main character writes: “I met and then became friends with two suicide bombers: Colonel Nikolai Stepanovich Bushmanov and political instructor Andrei Dmitrievich Rybalchenko... They never lost heart, instilled in people faith in our victory, organized masses of prisoners to actively fight the enemy in concentration camp conditions... Back in 1942, in one of the prisoner of war camps near Berlin, they created an underground organization that disrupted many German activities directed against our Motherland.
Since 1943, Bushmanov and Rybalchenko led active work in the Berlin underground, producing and distributing leaflets calling on prisoners of war and foreign workers taken to work in Germany to actively resist and sabotage military enterprises - damaging machines and equipment, destroying materials and finished products, producing defective products.
Through foreign communists, Nikolai Stepanovich and Andrei Dmitrievich organized material assistance for exhausted Soviet patriots and foreign anti-fascists... They told us about the situation at the fronts according to latest reports Sovinformburo, adopted by the underground camp radio."
“Yes,” continues Mikhail Cherepanov. “It was after meeting these people that Mikhail Petrovich soon found himself at the Peenemünde base under the new name of the Ukrainian Nikitenko. After the war, Hero of the Soviet Union Devyatayev met Bushmanov as an old friend and fellow soldier. And they always showed mutual sympathy for each other. So who exactly was Colonel Nikolai Stepanovich Bushmanov?
He was born in 1901 in the Kurgan region. In the ranks of the Red Army - from February 18, 1918, at the same time he became a communist. Civil War ended up as a platoon commander. Since 1931 - head of the regimental school. Since 1937 - senior teacher of tactics at the special faculty of the Frunze Military Academy. That is, while preparing intelligence officers, he himself was preparing for illegal intelligence work. Since 1938, Colonel Bushmanov was already the head of the academy department, a candidate of military sciences. He spoke four languages.
When the Great Patriotic War broke out, Colonel Bushmanov served as chief of staff of the 32nd Army of the reserve front. On October 22, 1941, he was captured. And in March 1943 he was already... assistant to the head of the Dabendorf school of the ROA (Eastern Special Purpose Propaganda Department) in the Berlin suburb of Wulheide. Deep behind enemy lines, in the barracks of the Wehrmacht intelligence school, Nikolai Stepanovich creates an underground organization “Berlin Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks)” with an extensive international agent network throughout Germany. The organization carried out sabotage and sabotage at German factories, and had its agents in both the ROA and the Idel-Ural legion.
The scale of the subversive work could not remain unnoticed by the Gestapo. On June 30, 1943, Bushmanov was arrested. He was held in the Berlin Moabit prison. In his letters to the Kazan publicist and jalilev writer Rafael Mustafin a former prisoner described his communication in prison with the legendary Tatar poet. In November 1943, Bushmanov was transferred to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp as a suicide bomber, where he met with Devyatayev.
Thanks to the efforts of fellow anti-fascists, Nikolai Bushmanov lived to see liberation. But, like most GRU secret agents, he was convicted under Article 58 for “anti-Soviet activities” on July 29, 1945 and sentenced to 10 years in the camps. He was released on December 5, 1954, but was in exile until October 25, 1955. On September 1, 1958, he was rehabilitated by the Military Tribunal of the Moscow Military District and declared a personal pensioner of the USSR Ministry of Defense. Worked in the central archive of the USSR Ministry of Defense. He died on June 11, 1977 and was buried with military honors on the territory of the Donskoy Monastery in Moscow.”
ACT “ACCORDING TO THE CIRCUMSTANCES”!
Why did such a seasoned intelligence officer, in the opinion of Mikhail Cherepanov - “of Sorge’s level,” Bushmanov choose Devyatayev for his “business trip” to Peenemünde? I think that the civilian “feats” and military deeds described above provide a comprehensive answer to this. A 27-year-old irrepressible troublemaker, persistent, unyielding, incredibly tenacious, man-like, tenacious and inventive, keen-eyed, possessing an extraordinary memory, and despite his youth, having vast experience in combat missions, Mikhail Devyatayev was the best suited for the operation when action was needed it was, as the military says, “according to the situation,” in absolute uncertainty, as in pitch darkness, controlled and shot through by the fascists down to the second and millimeter. “According to the situation” - more detailed instructions Not a single intelligence service in the world, even one consisting of solid Stirlitz, could give in this situation. True, in the same book, the main character says that the idea of hijacking the plane was suggested to him by political instructor Rybalchenko, but, alas, there is no one to ask how true this is.
In November 1944, through the efforts of underground intelligence officers, Devyatayev-Nikitenko found himself at his cherished goal - at the Peenemünde base. He managed to get a job in the “bomb team”, which dug up and removed unexploded landmines. “Volodya Sokolov was from orphanage and he knew German perfectly,” Devyataev says in an interview with the Doskado website. - And he told the Germans that he was not Russian, but from the Volga Germans. He is made the foreman of this team... The Germans were poorly dressed. On his feet are boots made of bast and an overcoat. We also used paper - from under the cement coolies - and made holes for the hands and for the head. They were so thin that they could climb into a cement bag. But if such a bag was found on us, they scolded us and even beat us. And the poor thing is freezing! Then Volodya Sokolov approached the German: “Herr comrade, why are you freezing? Yesterday your friend, Hans, sent us over there, we got some reeds, lit a fire, and then he sent us over there, to the landfill - where the plane crashed. We not only brought firewood from there, but we even took rubber from the tanks and rubber protectors. And they burn like gasoline!” The German was jealous: “Go, get it too.” “Will you allow me to take this prisoner?” And he points at me. “Well, take it.” Volodya and I go there, to the landfill. I’m in the cockpit, starting to study the plane, and Volodya is watching so that no one captures us. That's how we studied. They tore off inscriptions and devices. Where to push, say, the blinds... Volodya was my translator - he read the instrument inscriptions.”
“Working at the airfield, we now noticed all the details of his life: when the planes refueled, when the teams left for lunch, which car was most convenient for capture. We stopped our attention on the twin-engine Heinkel-111. He flew more often than others, we read in Vasily Peskov’s essay. - The incident helped to trace the launch operations. One day we were clearing snow near the caponier, where there was a Heinkel just like “ours.” From the shaft I saw the pilot's cockpit. And he noticed my curiosity. With a grin on his face - look, they say, Russian onlooker, how easily real people cope with this machine - the pilot defiantly began to demonstrate the launch: they drove up, connected the cart with batteries, the pilot showed his finger and let it go straight in front of him, then the pilot specially for me I raised my leg to shoulder level and lowered it - one motor started working. Next is the second one. The pilot in the cockpit laughed. I, too, could barely contain my jubilation - all phases of the Heinkel launch were clear.”
And the plane “favored” by the conspirators turned out to be the personal car of the commandant of the aviation garrison, Steinhof. And not just an executive vehicle for a high-ranking boss. On it stood the V-missile launch control.
"Certainly, this remote control There was more than one missile control officer at the base, notes Mikhail Cherepanov. “But time was lost.” Therefore, the flight from captivity of Devyatayev and his comrades, albeit briefly, disrupted further tests of the “weapon of retribution” and gave a respite to England, exhausted from the barbaric bombings.
THE END OF THE WARPEN'S NEST
To say that his escape by plane from his own lair swarming with enemies was dramatic would be an understatement. Much has been written about it; just don’t be lazy and use an Internet search engine. Not even the most intricate script of the most Hollywood action movie can compare with Nyatyaev’s “actions according to the situation.” Just as no fiction can surpass the devilish ingenuity of life itself. In general, one way or another, Heinkel-111 with a dozen prisoners of war landed on Polish soil, already liberated Soviet troops. The fugitives ended up at the location of the 61st Army. The magic word “Penemünde” led to Devyatayev’s swift summons to the commander. “When I told Belov, Lieutenant General, where to bomb, he gasped,” the pilot recalled. - Blow two hundred meters from the seashore, I say, and you’ll get there. They [the missile launchers] are all camouflaged, they are in the forest. And the ones that were bombed were not real. Layouts. “Can you draw?” “I can.” Then he apparently contacted the front commander. For five days, from the 13th, ours and allies bombed.” The last missile left this test site on February 14, 1945. The Peenemünde base ceased to exist as a combat unit. The task was completed, the Soviet pilot deprived Hitler of his last hope for continuing the war. The Fuhrer included him in the camp of his personal enemies.
Mikhail Petrovich Devyatayev, having delivered strategically important intelligence data to his homeland, spent from February to September 1945 as a German spy in the central camp in Poland. Neither the SMERSH counterintelligence officers nor the specialist pilots believed his story. “First a senior lieutenant came, then a general,” says a former prisoner of friends and foes. - “Which school did you graduate from with the Germans? Who trained you and where? What is your task? A fighter cannot immediately transfer to a bomber. Especially in German!” “You know, it’s a shame that someone gave you a general,” I told him. He was offended...”
EXCURSIONS FOR THE CHIEF DESIGNER
“They started taking us away on foot from the central concentration camp in September,” says Mikhail Petrovich. - They drove me along the stage, without asking... They took me away on a horse. Polish territory. We: “Sir, give me sausages, give me vodka!” Give me some tobacco." And only then others, dressed in uniform: “Sir, you bought a stolen horse!” And they took the horse back. The second time we “sold” it. Third...
The American Willys is catching up. The senior lieutenant and two soldiers put me under guard and brought me to this island [Usedom]. Right here. Right here in this place. This is our camp. I ended up at the disposal of “Sergeev” Sergei Pavlovich. It was Korolev. The senior lieutenant says: “Comrade Colonel, I am responsible for him.” “Get out of here! When I tell you, then you will come.” He was a hot colonel. September 12, 13 and 14 - at this time Korolev and I went and inspected the missiles. Here is the von Braun Institute.”
Korolev and Devyatayev managed to find and bring to Kazan the so-called mixer, the most important part of the V-2 engine. It is still studied by KAI students. On its basis, the first Soviet rocket engine was designed in Kazan in 1945. But this is a completely different story, for which Mikhail Devyatayev received the title of Hero of the Soviet Union at the suggestion of Korolev only in 1957, after the launch of the first Earth satellite...
“He was allowed to mention Peenemünde, and designer Korolev, and other rocket matters only about a year before his death, 57 years after the flight,” Mikhail Cherepanov, one of the last close acquaintances of the legendary pilot, tells the BUSINESS Online correspondent. - In February 2001, another interview with Mikhail Devyatayev, “Vertical of Courage,” appeared in “Red Star”. It was the first time it was mentioned that, largely due to the feat of the Russian pilot, the German rocket Research Center in Peenemünde, he was unable to bring to fruition Hitler’s so-called weapon of retaliation. That's where he first began to call a spade a spade. And that's not all. And on February 8, 2002, just on the day of the escape, he called me: “Urgently grab your video camera and come to me! I’ll tell you something.” And he told me. But questions remained - he did too much work to immediately understand it to the end...”
Hero of the Soviet Union. Next to the Golden Star, the Hero has the Order of Lenin, two Orders of the Red Banner, the Order of the Patriotic War of the 1st and 2nd degrees, and many medals. Mikhail Petrovich Devyatayev - Honorary Citizen of the Republic of Mordovia, the cities of Kazan, Wolgast and Tsinovichi (Germany).
Born on July 8, 1917 in Mordovia, in the working-class village of Torbeevo. He was the thirteenth child in the family. Father, Petr Timofeevich Devyataev, a hardworking, artisan man, worked for a landowner. The mother, Akulina Dmitrievna, was mainly busy taking care of the children. At the beginning of the war there were six brothers and one sister alive. All of them took part in the battles for their homeland. Four brothers died at the front, the rest died prematurely due to front-line wounds and adversity. His wife, Faina Khairullovna, raised the children and is now retired. Sons: Alexey Mikhailovich (born 1946), anesthesiologist at the eye clinic, candidate of medical sciences; Alexander Mikhailovich (born 1951), employee of the Kazan Medical Institute, candidate of medical sciences. Daughter, Nelya Mikhailovna (born 1957), graduate of the Kazan Conservatory, music teacher at the theater school.
At school, Mikhail studied successfully, but was too playful. But one day it was as if he had been replaced. This happened after the plane arrived in Torbeevo. The pilot, who seemed like a sorcerer in his clothes, the fast-winged iron bird - all this captivated Mikhail. Unable to restrain himself, he then asked the pilot:
How to become a pilot?
You need to study well, came the answer. - Play sports, be brave, brave.
From that day on, Mikhail changed decisively: he devoted everything to studies and sports. After the 7th grade, he went to Kazan, intending to enter an aviation technical school. There was some misunderstanding with the documents, and he was forced to enter the river technical school. But the dream of heaven did not fade away. She captured him more and more. There was only one thing left to do - sign up for the Kazan flying club.
Mikhail did just that. It was difficult. Sometimes I would sit until late at night in the airplane or motor class of the flying club. And in the morning I was already in a hurry to the river technical school. One day the day came when Mikhail took to the air for the first time, albeit with an instructor. Excited, beaming with happiness, he then told his friends: “Heaven is my life!”
This lofty dream brought him, a graduate of a river technical school who had already mastered the Volga open spaces, to the Orenburg Aviation School. Studying there was the happiest time in Devyatayev’s life. He gained knowledge about aviation bit by bit, read a lot, and trained diligently. Happy as never before, he took off into the sky, which he had only dreamed of quite recently.
And here is the summer of 1939. He is a military pilot. And the specialty is the most formidable for the enemy: fighter. First he served in Torzhok, then he was transferred to Mogilev. There he was lucky again: he ended up in the squadron of the famous pilot Zakhar Vasilyevich Plotnikov, who managed to fight in Spain and Khalkhin Gol. Devyatayev and his comrades gained combat experience from him.
But war broke out. And on the very first day - a combat mission. And although Mikhail Petrovich himself failed to shoot down the Junkers, he, maneuvering, brought it to his commander Zakhar Vasilyevich Plotnikov. But he did not miss the air enemy and defeated him.
Mikhail Petrovich soon got lucky too. One day, in a break in the clouds, a Junkers 87 caught his eye. Devyatayev, without wasting a second, rushed after him and a moment later saw him in the crosshairs. He immediately fired two machine-gun bursts. The Junkers burst into flames and crashed to the ground. There were other successes too.
Soon those who distinguished themselves in battle were called from Mogilev to Moscow. Mikhail Devyatayev, among others, was awarded the Order of the Red Banner.
The situation became increasingly tense. Devyatayev and his comrades already had to defend the approaches to the capital. Using brand new Yaks, they intercepted planes rushing to drop their deadly cargo on Moscow. One day, near Tula, Devyatayev, together with his partner Yakov Schneier, entered into battle with fascist bombers. They managed to shoot down one Junkers. But Devyatayev’s plane was also damaged. Still, the pilot managed to land. And he ended up in the hospital. Not fully cured, he fled from there to his regiment, which was already located west of Voronezh.
On September 21, 1941, Devyatayev was assigned to deliver an important package to the headquarters of the encircled troops of the Southwestern Front. He carried out this assignment, but on the way back he entered into an unequal battle with the Messerschmitts. One of them was shot down. And he himself was wounded. So he ended up in the hospital again.
In the new part he was examined by a medical commission. The decision was unanimous - to low-speed aircraft. So the fighter pilot ended up in the night bomber regiment, and then in the air ambulance.
Only after meeting Alexander Ivanovich Pokryshkin did he manage to become a fighter pilot again. This was already in May 1944, when Devyatayev found “Pokryshkin’s farm.” His new colleagues greeted him cordially. Among them was Vladimir Bobrov, who in the fall of 1941 gave blood to the wounded Mikhail Petrovich.
Devyatayev took his plane into the air more than once. Repeatedly, together with other pilots of the division, A.I. Pokryshkina entered into battles with fascist vultures.
But then came the fateful July 13, 1944. In an air battle over Lvov, he was wounded and his plane caught fire. At the command of his leader Vladimir Bobrov, Devyatayev jumped out of a plane engulfed in flames... and ended up captured. Interrogation after interrogation. Then transfer to the Abwehr intelligence department. From there - to the Lodz prisoner of war camp. And there again - hunger, torture, bullying. Following this is the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. And finally - the mysterious island of Usedon, where super-powerful weapons were being prepared, which, according to its creators, no one could resist. The prisoners of Usedon are actually sentenced to death.
And all this time, the prisoners had one thought in their minds - to escape, to escape at all costs. Only on the island of Usedon did this decision become a reality. There were planes nearby, at the Peenemünde airfield. And there was the pilot Mikhail Petrovich Devyatayev, a courageous, fearless man, capable of carrying out his plans. And he did it, despite incredible difficulties. On February 8, 1945, a Heinkel with 10 prisoners landed on our soil. Devyatayev delivered strategically important information to the command about the classified Usedon, where the Nazi Reich's missile weapons were produced and tested. There were still two days left before the reprisal against Devyatayev planned by the fascists. He was saved by the sky, with which he had been endlessly in love since childhood.
The stigma of being a prisoner of war took a long time to affect. No trust, no worthwhile work... It was depressing and created hopelessness. Only after the intervention of the already widely known general designer of spacecraft, Sergei Pavlovich Korolev, did the matter move forward. On August 15, 1957, the feat of Devyatayev and his comrades received a worthy assessment. Mikhail Petrovich was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union, and the participants in the flight were awarded orders.
Mikhail Petrovich finally returned to Kazan. In the river port he returned to his first profession - riverman. He was entrusted with testing the first high-speed boat "Raketa". He became its first captain. A few years later he was already driving high-speed Meteors along the Volga.
And now the war veteran can only dream of peace. He is actively involved in the veterans' movement, created the Devyatayev Foundation and provides assistance to those who especially need it. The veteran does not forget about the youth; he often meets with schoolchildren and soldiers of the garrison.
Next to the Golden Star, the Hero has the Order of Lenin, two Orders of the Red Banner, the Order of the Patriotic War of the 1st and 2nd degrees, and many medals. Mikhail Petrovich Devyatayev - Honorary Citizen of the Republic of Mordovia, the cities of Kazan, Wolgast and Tsinovichi (Germany).
As in his youth, he is interested in literature about aviation and the exploits of our pilots.
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