The Soviet Military Archive - DFI Xclusiv

A.V.

New Member
Joined
Feb 16, 2009
Messages
6,503
Likes
1,157
This thread is a dedicated thread made to reflect upon the past military glory of the soviet union , posting in this thread will be detailed only with facts.
 

A.V.

New Member
Joined
Feb 16, 2009
Messages
6,503
Likes
1,157
Lydia Litvyak


Lydia Litviak or Lilya Litviak, was a fighter pilot in the Soviet Air Force during World War II. With 12 solo victories.

Born in Moscow, she was keen on aviation from her youth. At 14, she entered an aeroclub. Aged 15, she went on her first solo flight and later graduated from Kherson mililtary flying school. She became a flight instructor at Kalinin Airclub, in the late 1930s, and when the German-Soviet war broke out, by then she had already trained forty-five pilots.

World War II

Women's regiment
After the German attack on the Soviet Union in June 1941, Litvyak tried to join a military aviation unit, but was turned down for lack of experience. After deliberately exaggerating her pre-war flight time by 100 hours, she joined the all-female 586th Fighter Regiment of the Air Defense Force (586 IAP/PVO, istrebitel'naia aviatsia protivovozdushnoi oborony), which was formed by Marina Raskova. She trained there on the Yakovlev Yak-1 aircraft.

Men's regiment
She flew her first combat flights in the summer of 1942 over Saratov. In September, she was assigned to the 437 IAP, a men's regiment fighting over Stalingrad. On 10 September she moved along with Katya Budanova, Maria M. Kuznetsova and Raisa Beliaeva, the commander of the group, and accompanying female ground crew, to the regiment airfield, at Verkhnaia Akhtuba, on the east bank of the Volga river. But when they arrived the base was empty and under attack, so they soon moved to Srednaia Akhtuba. [12] Here, flying a Yak-1[13] carrying the number "32" on the fuselage, she would achieve considerable success.[14] "Liliia Litvyak was a very aggressive person", but an exceptional pilot, recalled Boris Eremin (later lieutenant general of aviation), who was a regimental commander in the division to which she and Budanova were assigned, "a born fighter pilot". [15]


Restored Messerschmitt Bf 109G: The first fighter shot down by Litvyak was an aircraft of this type, flown by a Luftwaffe "ace".
In the 437th Fighter Regiment, Litvyak scored her very first two kills on 13 September, three days after her arrival and on her third mission to cover Stalingrad, becoming the very first woman fighter pilot to shoot down an enemy aircraft. [16] That day, four Yak-1s—with Major S. Danilov in the lead—attacked a formation of Junkers Ju 88s escorted by Messerschmitt Bf 109s[17]. Her first kill was a Ju 88 which fell in flames from the sky after several bursts. Then she shot a Bf 109 G-2 "Gustav" off the tail of her squadron commander, Raisa Beliaeva.[17][18] The Bf 109 was piloted by a decorated pilot from the 4th Air Fleet commanded by General Wolfram Freiherr von Richtofen (a distant relative of the Red Baron)[16] the 11-victory ace, three-time recipient[clarification needed] of the Iron Cross [1], Staff Sergeant Erwin Maier of the 2nd Staffel of Jagdgeschwader 53. Maier parachuted from his aircraft, was captured by Soviet troops, and asked to see the Russian ace who had outflown him. When he was taken to stand in front of Litvyak, he thought he was being made the butt of a Soviet joke. It was not until Litvyak described each move of the dogfight to him in perfect detail that he knew he had been beaten by a woman pilot.[19] But according to other authors [20] the first air victory of a female pilot was achieved by 586° IAP's Leutenant Valeriya Khomiakova when she shot down the Ju 88 flown by Oblt. Gerhard Maak of 7./KG76 on the night of 24 September 1942. On 27 September Litvyak scored an air victory against a Ju 88, the gunner having shot up the regiment commander, Major M.S. Khovostnikov.[17] For some historians [20] that was her first kill. On 14th of September, Litvyak shot down another Bf 109. [21]
[edit]Free hunter
Litvyak, Beliaeva, Budanova and Kuznetsova stayed in the 437 IAP for a short time only, mainly because it was equipped with LaGG 3s rather than Yak-1s, that the women flew, and was lacking the facilities to service the latter. So the four women were moved to the 9th Guards Fighter Regiment (9 GvIAP, gvardeiskii istrebitel' nyi aviatsionnyi polk). From October 1942 till January 1943, Litvyak and Budanova served, still in the Stalingrad area, with this famous unit, commanded by Lev Shestakov, Hero of Soviet Union. [16]
In January 1943, the 9th was re-equipped with the Bell P-39 Airacobras and Litvyak and Budanova were moved to the 296 IAP (later the 73 GvIAP, Guards Fighter Aviation Regiment) of Nikolai Baranov, of the 8th Air Army, so that they could still fly the Yaks. [22] On February 23, she was awarded the Order of the Red Star, made a junior lieutenant and selected to take part in the elite air tactic called okhotniki, or "free hunter", where pairs of experienced pilots searched for targets on their own initiative.[23] Twice, she was forced to land due to battle damage. On 22 March she was wounded for the first time. [24]That day she was flying as part of a group of six Yak fighters when they attacked a dozen Ju 88s. Litvyak shot down one of the bombers, but was in turn attacked and wounded by the escorting Bf 109s. She managed to shoot down a Messerschmitt and to return to her airfield and land her plane, but was in severe pain and losing blood. [25] While in 73 GvIAP, she often flew as wingman of Alexei Frolovich Solomatin. Kapitan Solomatin was a flying ace. He had claimed a total of 39 victories (22 shared), when he flew into the ground, in Pavlonka, and was killed in front of the entire regiment on May 21 [26], while training a new flyer. Lydia was devastated by the crash and wrote a letter to her mother describing how she realized only after Solomatin's death that she had loved him.[23].
Senior Sergeant Inna Pasportnikova, Litvyak's mechanic during the time she flew with the men's regiment, reported in 1990 that after Solomatin's death, Litvyak wanted nothing but to fly combat missions, and she fought desperately.[27]
Litvyak scored against a difficult target on May 31, 1943: an artillery observation balloon manned by a German officer. German artillery was aided in targeting by reports from the observation post on the balloon. The elimination of the balloon had been attempted by other Soviet airmen but all had been driven away by a dense protective belt of anti-aircraft fire defending the balloon. Litvyak volunteered to take out the balloon but was turned down. She insisted, and described for her commander her plan: she would attack it from the rear after flying in a wide circle around the perimeter of the battleground and over German-held territory. The tactic worked—the hydrogen-filled balloon caught fire under her stream of tracer bullets and was destroyed.[28]
On June 13, 1943, Litvyak was appointed flight commander of the 3rd Aviation Squadron within 73rd GvIAP.[23]
Lydia made an additional kill on July 16, 1943. [29][30] That day, six Yaks encountered 30 German bombers with six escorts. the woman ace downed a bomber and shared a victory with a comrade, but her fighter was hit and she had to make a belly landing. [30] She was wounded again but refused to take medical leave. She shot down two more Bf 109s on 19 and 21 July 1943.[30]
[edit]Last Mission


Krasnyi Luch wall of Honor to the Heroes of War and Labor-Litvyak took off for her last mission from an airfield close to this city where is located a museum dedicated to her
On August 1, 1943, Lydia did not come back to her base of Krasnyy Luch, in the Donbass, from an escort to a flight of Ilyushin Il-2 Shturmoviks. It was her fourth sortie of the day. As the Soviets were returning to base near Orel,[5] a pair of Bf 109 fighters[31] dived on Lydia while she was attacking a large group of German bombers. Soviet pilot Ivan Borisenko recalled: "Lily just didn't see the Messerschmitt 109s flying cover for the German bombers. A pair of them dived on her and when she did see them she turned to meet them. Then they all disappeared behind a cloud." Borisenko, involved in the dogfight, saw her a last time, through a gap in the clouds, her Yak-1 pouring smoke and pursued by as many as eight Bf 109s. [32]
Borisenko descended to see if he could find her. No parachute was seen, and no explosion, yet she never returned from the mission. Litvyak was 21 years old. Soviet authorities suspected that she might have been captured, a possibility that prevented them from awarding her the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.[33]
[edit]Recognition and controversy

In an attempt to prove that Litvyak had not been taken captive, Pasportnikova embarked on a 36 year search for the Yakovlev Yak-1 crash site assisted by the public and the media. For three years she was joined by relatives who together combed the most likely areas with a metal detector.[33] In 1979, after uncovering more than 90 other crash sites, 30 aircraft[33] and many lost pilots killed in action, "the searchers discovered that an unidentified woman pilot had been buried in the village of Dmitrievka... in Shakhterski district." It was then assumed that it was Litvyak and that she had been killed in action after sustaining a mortal head wound.[23] Pasportnikova said that a specialist commission was formed to inspect the exhumed body and it concluded the remains were those of Litvyak.[34]
On May 6, 1990, USSR President Mikhail Gorbachev posthumously awarded Litvyak Hero of the Soviet Union.[35] Her final rank was senior lieutenant.
[edit]Death controversy
Arguments have been published that dispute the official version of Litvyak's death. Although Yekaterina Valentina Vaschenko, the curator of the Litvyak museum in Krasnyi Luch has stated that the body was disinterred and examined by forensic specialists who determined that it was indeed Litvyak,[36] Kazimiera Janina "Jean" Cottam claims, on the basis of evidence provided by Ekaterina Polunina, chief mechanic and archivist of the 586th Fighter Regiment in which Litvyak initially served, that the body was never exhumed and that verification was limited to comparison of a number of reports.[37] Cottam, an author and researcher focusing on Soviet women in the military, concludes that Litvyak made a belly-landing in her stricken aircraft, was captured and taken to a prisoner of war camp.[37] In her book published in 2004, Polunina lists evidence that led her to conclude that Litvyak was pulled from the downed aircraft by German troops and held prisoner for some time.[38]
In 2000, Nina Raspopova, a veteran of the 46th (Taman) Guards Night Bomber Aviation Regiment (also known as the "Night Witches") informed Polunina that she had seen a woman greatly resembling Litvyak, alive and being interviewed on a Swiss television program.[38] Raspopova claimed that the woman concerned was Russian, appeared to be aged in her late 70s, and was introduced as a mother of three and former Soviet combat pilot. The woman supposedly claimed to have been wounded twice during World War II. However, Litvak did not serve in the "Night Witches" and it is not clear whether Raspopova knew her personally.
[edit]Number of kills
There are conflicting claims about Litvyak's victory score in different publications; none are official records. Most often, 11 individual kills and 3 team kills are quoted, but also 8 individual and 4 team, 12 individual and 2 team,[7] or other combinations. Pasportnikova stated in 1990 that the tally was 12 solo kills including the balloon, and three shared.[39] Polunina has written that the kills of top-scoring Soviet pilots, including those of Litvyak and Budanova, were often inflated; and that Litvyak should be credited with five solo aircraft kills and two group kills, including the observation balloon.[38]
The novel Vernis iz Poleta ([40]) (Return from Flight) by Natalya Kravtsova fictionalizes the death of Solomatin, stating that he was killed when he ran out of ammunition while battling with a German Bf 109 fighter plane over his own airfield. Litvyak and others at the airfield watched the fight and witnessed his death.
Litvyak was awarded with the Order of the Red Banner, Order of the Red Star, and was twice honored with the Order of the Patriotic War.
 

A.V.

New Member
Joined
Feb 16, 2009
Messages
6,503
Likes
1,157
Lydia Litvyak


Lydia Litviak or Lilya Litviak, was a fighter pilot in the Soviet Air Force during World War II. With 12 solo victories.

Born in Moscow, she was keen on aviation from her youth. At 14, she entered an aeroclub. Aged 15, she went on her first solo flight and later graduated from Kherson mililtary flying school. She became a flight instructor at Kalinin Airclub, in the late 1930s, and when the German-Soviet war broke out, by then she had already trained forty-five pilots.

World War II

Women's regiment
After the German attack on the Soviet Union in June 1941, Litvyak tried to join a military aviation unit, but was turned down for lack of experience. After deliberately exaggerating her pre-war flight time by 100 hours, she joined the all-female 586th Fighter Regiment of the Air Defense Force (586 IAP/PVO, istrebitel'naia aviatsia protivovozdushnoi oborony), which was formed by Marina Raskova. She trained there on the Yakovlev Yak-1 aircraft.

Men's regiment
She flew her first combat flights in the summer of 1942 over Saratov. In September, she was assigned to the 437 IAP, a men's regiment fighting over Stalingrad. On 10 September she moved along with Katya Budanova, Maria M. Kuznetsova and Raisa Beliaeva, the commander of the group, and accompanying female ground crew, to the regiment airfield, at Verkhnaia Akhtuba, on the east bank of the Volga river. But when they arrived the base was empty and under attack, so they soon moved to Srednaia Akhtuba. [12] Here, flying a Yak-1[13] carrying the number "32" on the fuselage, she would achieve considerable success.[14] "Liliia Litvyak was a very aggressive person", but an exceptional pilot, recalled Boris Eremin (later lieutenant general of aviation), who was a regimental commander in the division to which she and Budanova were assigned, "a born fighter pilot". [15]


Restored Messerschmitt Bf 109G: The first fighter shot down by Litvyak was an aircraft of this type, flown by a Luftwaffe "ace".
In the 437th Fighter Regiment, Litvyak scored her very first two kills on 13 September, three days after her arrival and on her third mission to cover Stalingrad, becoming the very first woman fighter pilot to shoot down an enemy aircraft. [16] That day, four Yak-1s—with Major S. Danilov in the lead—attacked a formation of Junkers Ju 88s escorted by Messerschmitt Bf 109s[17]. Her first kill was a Ju 88 which fell in flames from the sky after several bursts. Then she shot a Bf 109 G-2 "Gustav" off the tail of her squadron commander, Raisa Beliaeva.[17][18] The Bf 109 was piloted by a decorated pilot from the 4th Air Fleet commanded by General Wolfram Freiherr von Richtofen (a distant relative of the Red Baron)[16] the 11-victory ace, three-time recipient[clarification needed] of the Iron Cross [1], Staff Sergeant Erwin Maier of the 2nd Staffel of Jagdgeschwader 53. Maier parachuted from his aircraft, was captured by Soviet troops, and asked to see the Russian ace who had outflown him. When he was taken to stand in front of Litvyak, he thought he was being made the butt of a Soviet joke. It was not until Litvyak described each move of the dogfight to him in perfect detail that he knew he had been beaten by a woman pilot.[19] But according to other authors [20] the first air victory of a female pilot was achieved by 586° IAP's Leutenant Valeriya Khomiakova when she shot down the Ju 88 flown by Oblt. Gerhard Maak of 7./KG76 on the night of 24 September 1942. On 27 September Litvyak scored an air victory against a Ju 88, the gunner having shot up the regiment commander, Major M.S. Khovostnikov.[17] For some historians [20] that was her first kill. On 14th of September, Litvyak shot down another Bf 109. [21]
[edit]Free hunter
Litvyak, Beliaeva, Budanova and Kuznetsova stayed in the 437 IAP for a short time only, mainly because it was equipped with LaGG 3s rather than Yak-1s, that the women flew, and was lacking the facilities to service the latter. So the four women were moved to the 9th Guards Fighter Regiment (9 GvIAP, gvardeiskii istrebitel' nyi aviatsionnyi polk). From October 1942 till January 1943, Litvyak and Budanova served, still in the Stalingrad area, with this famous unit, commanded by Lev Shestakov, Hero of Soviet Union. [16]
In January 1943, the 9th was re-equipped with the Bell P-39 Airacobras and Litvyak and Budanova were moved to the 296 IAP (later the 73 GvIAP, Guards Fighter Aviation Regiment) of Nikolai Baranov, of the 8th Air Army, so that they could still fly the Yaks. [22] On February 23, she was awarded the Order of the Red Star, made a junior lieutenant and selected to take part in the elite air tactic called okhotniki, or "free hunter", where pairs of experienced pilots searched for targets on their own initiative.[23] Twice, she was forced to land due to battle damage. On 22 March she was wounded for the first time. [24]That day she was flying as part of a group of six Yak fighters when they attacked a dozen Ju 88s. Litvyak shot down one of the bombers, but was in turn attacked and wounded by the escorting Bf 109s. She managed to shoot down a Messerschmitt and to return to her airfield and land her plane, but was in severe pain and losing blood. [25] While in 73 GvIAP, she often flew as wingman of Alexei Frolovich Solomatin. Kapitan Solomatin was a flying ace. He had claimed a total of 39 victories (22 shared), when he flew into the ground, in Pavlonka, and was killed in front of the entire regiment on May 21 [26], while training a new flyer. Lydia was devastated by the crash and wrote a letter to her mother describing how she realized only after Solomatin's death that she had loved him.[23].
Senior Sergeant Inna Pasportnikova, Litvyak's mechanic during the time she flew with the men's regiment, reported in 1990 that after Solomatin's death, Litvyak wanted nothing but to fly combat missions, and she fought desperately.[27]
Litvyak scored against a difficult target on May 31, 1943: an artillery observation balloon manned by a German officer. German artillery was aided in targeting by reports from the observation post on the balloon. The elimination of the balloon had been attempted by other Soviet airmen but all had been driven away by a dense protective belt of anti-aircraft fire defending the balloon. Litvyak volunteered to take out the balloon but was turned down. She insisted, and described for her commander her plan: she would attack it from the rear after flying in a wide circle around the perimeter of the battleground and over German-held territory. The tactic worked—the hydrogen-filled balloon caught fire under her stream of tracer bullets and was destroyed.[28]
On June 13, 1943, Litvyak was appointed flight commander of the 3rd Aviation Squadron within 73rd GvIAP.[23]
Lydia made an additional kill on July 16, 1943. [29][30] That day, six Yaks encountered 30 German bombers with six escorts. the woman ace downed a bomber and shared a victory with a comrade, but her fighter was hit and she had to make a belly landing. [30] She was wounded again but refused to take medical leave. She shot down two more Bf 109s on 19 and 21 July 1943.[30]
[edit]Last Mission


Krasnyi Luch wall of Honor to the Heroes of War and Labor-Litvyak took off for her last mission from an airfield close to this city where is located a museum dedicated to her
On August 1, 1943, Lydia did not come back to her base of Krasnyy Luch, in the Donbass, from an escort to a flight of Ilyushin Il-2 Shturmoviks. It was her fourth sortie of the day. As the Soviets were returning to base near Orel,[5] a pair of Bf 109 fighters[31] dived on Lydia while she was attacking a large group of German bombers. Soviet pilot Ivan Borisenko recalled: "Lily just didn't see the Messerschmitt 109s flying cover for the German bombers. A pair of them dived on her and when she did see them she turned to meet them. Then they all disappeared behind a cloud." Borisenko, involved in the dogfight, saw her a last time, through a gap in the clouds, her Yak-1 pouring smoke and pursued by as many as eight Bf 109s. [32]
Borisenko descended to see if he could find her. No parachute was seen, and no explosion, yet she never returned from the mission. Litvyak was 21 years old. Soviet authorities suspected that she might have been captured, a possibility that prevented them from awarding her the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.[33]
[edit]Recognition and controversy

In an attempt to prove that Litvyak had not been taken captive, Pasportnikova embarked on a 36 year search for the Yakovlev Yak-1 crash site assisted by the public and the media. For three years she was joined by relatives who together combed the most likely areas with a metal detector.[33] In 1979, after uncovering more than 90 other crash sites, 30 aircraft[33] and many lost pilots killed in action, "the searchers discovered that an unidentified woman pilot had been buried in the village of Dmitrievka... in Shakhterski district." It was then assumed that it was Litvyak and that she had been killed in action after sustaining a mortal head wound.[23] Pasportnikova said that a specialist commission was formed to inspect the exhumed body and it concluded the remains were those of Litvyak.[34]
On May 6, 1990, USSR President Mikhail Gorbachev posthumously awarded Litvyak Hero of the Soviet Union.[35] Her final rank was senior lieutenant.
[edit]Death controversy
Arguments have been published that dispute the official version of Litvyak's death. Although Yekaterina Valentina Vaschenko, the curator of the Litvyak museum in Krasnyi Luch has stated that the body was disinterred and examined by forensic specialists who determined that it was indeed Litvyak,[36] Kazimiera Janina "Jean" Cottam claims, on the basis of evidence provided by Ekaterina Polunina, chief mechanic and archivist of the 586th Fighter Regiment in which Litvyak initially served, that the body was never exhumed and that verification was limited to comparison of a number of reports.[37] Cottam, an author and researcher focusing on Soviet women in the military, concludes that Litvyak made a belly-landing in her stricken aircraft, was captured and taken to a prisoner of war camp.[37] In her book published in 2004, Polunina lists evidence that led her to conclude that Litvyak was pulled from the downed aircraft by German troops and held prisoner for some time.[38]
In 2000, Nina Raspopova, a veteran of the 46th (Taman) Guards Night Bomber Aviation Regiment (also known as the "Night Witches") informed Polunina that she had seen a woman greatly resembling Litvyak, alive and being interviewed on a Swiss television program.[38] Raspopova claimed that the woman concerned was Russian, appeared to be aged in her late 70s, and was introduced as a mother of three and former Soviet combat pilot. The woman supposedly claimed to have been wounded twice during World War II. However, Litvak did not serve in the "Night Witches" and it is not clear whether Raspopova knew her personally.
[edit]Number of kills
There are conflicting claims about Litvyak's victory score in different publications; none are official records. Most often, 11 individual kills and 3 team kills are quoted, but also 8 individual and 4 team, 12 individual and 2 team,[7] or other combinations. Pasportnikova stated in 1990 that the tally was 12 solo kills including the balloon, and three shared.[39] Polunina has written that the kills of top-scoring Soviet pilots, including those of Litvyak and Budanova, were often inflated; and that Litvyak should be credited with five solo aircraft kills and two group kills, including the observation balloon.[38]
The novel Vernis iz Poleta ([40]) (Return from Flight) by Natalya Kravtsova fictionalizes the death of Solomatin, stating that he was killed when he ran out of ammunition while battling with a German Bf 109 fighter plane over his own airfield. Litvyak and others at the airfield watched the fight and witnessed his death.
Litvyak was awarded with the Order of the Red Banner, Order of the Red Star, and was twice honored with the Order of the Patriotic War.
 

Latest Replies

Global Defence

New threads

Articles

Top