Surnames of captured military personnel who hijacked enemy planes. Seven of the most daring known escapes from German captivity

What happenedFebruary 8, 1945can be safely called an amazing miracle and an example of incredible multiple luck. Judge for yourself.

Fighter pilot Mikhail Devyatayev was able to figure out the control of an enemy bomber completely unfamiliar to him, at the helm of which he had never sat before.

The security of the airfield could have prevented the hijacking of a top-secret plane, but it did not work out for her.

The Germans could simply block the runway, but did not have time to do so.

The fire of the air defense anti-aircraft guns covering the military base and the airfield could stop the escape attempt instantly, but this did not happen.

The German fighters could intercept the winged car flying to the east, but they also failed to do this.

And at the end of the heroic flight Heinkel-111 with German crosses on the wings, Soviet anti-aircraft gunners could shoot down - they fired at him and even set fire to him, but luck that day was on the side of the brave fugitives.

I'll tell you more about HOW IT WAS now.

After the war, Mikhail Devyatayev in his book "Escape from Hell" remembered it like this: “How I survived, I don’t know. In the barracks - 900 people, bunks in three floors, 200 gr. bread, a mug of gruel and 3 potatoes - all the food for the day and exhausting work.

And he would have perished in this terrible place, if not forfirst case of fateful luck - a camp hairdresser from among the prisoners replaced Mikhail Devyatayev with his suicide bomber patch on a camp uniform. The day before, a prisoner named Grigory Nikitenko died in Nazi dungeons. In civilian life, he was a school teacher in Kyiv Darnitsa. His sewn-in number, cut off by a hairdresser, not only saved Devyatayev's life, but also became his pass to another camp with a "lighter" regime - near the town of Peenemünde, which was located on the island of Usedom in the Baltic Sea.

So the captured pilot, Senior Lieutenant Mikhail Devyatayev, turned into a former teacher, Grigory Nikitenko.

The development of German V-rockets was led by a talented engineer Wernher von Braun who later became the father of American astronautics.

The Germans called the military base Peenemünde, located on the western tip of the island Usedom "Goering Reserve" . But the prisoners had another name for this area - "Devil's Island" . Every morning, the prisoners of this devilish island received work orders. The airfield brigade had the hardest time: prisoners of war dragged cement and sand, kneaded the mortar and poured them into the craters from British air raids. But it was precisely in this brigade that the “teacher from Darnitsa Nikitenko” was eager. He wanted to be closer to the planes!

In his book, he recalled it this way: "The roar of the planes, their appearance, their proximity with great force stirred up the idea of escape."

And Michael began to prepare an escape.

At the junkyard of wrecked and defective aircraft, Devyatayev studied their fragments, tried to delve into the design of unfamiliar bombers, and carefully examined the dashboards of the cockpits. Mikhail tried to understand how the engines are started and in what sequence the equipment should be turned on - after all, the time count during capture will go to seconds.

And here Devyataev lucky again. And it got lucky very funny : a noble German pilot, being in a good mood and in a good mood, CAM showed the wild barbarian and subhuman HOW the Aryan celestials start the engines of a flying machine.

It was like this, I quote the memoirs of Mikhail Petrovich: “The case helped trace launch operations. Once we were clearing snow at the caponier, where the Heinkel was parked. From the shaft I saw in the cockpit. And he noticed my curiosity. With a grin on his face - look, they say, a Russian onlooker, how easily real people cope with this machine - the pilot defiantly began to show the launch: they brought him up, connected the cart with batteries, the pilot showed his finger and released it right in front of him, then the pilot specially for me raised his leg to shoulder level and lowered it - one motor started working. Next - the second. The pilot in the cockpit laughed. I, too, could hardly contain my glee - all the phases of the Heinkel launch were clear ”...

While working at the airfield, the prisoners began to notice all the details of his life and routine: when and how the planes are refueled, how and at what time the guards change, when the crews and servants go to dinner, which plane is most convenient for capture.

After all the observations, Mikhail chose Heinkele-111 with nominal monogram on board "G.A." , which meant "Gustav-Anton" . This "Gustav-Anton" took off on missions more often than others. And what else was good about it - after landing it was immediately refueled again. The prisoners began to call this plane nothing more than "our" Heinkel ".

February 7, 1945 Devyataev's team decided to escape. The prisoners dreamed: "Tomorrow at lunch we slurp gruel, and we have dinner at home, among our own."

The next day, in the afternoon, when the technicians and servants were drawn to lunch, ours began to act. Ivan Krivonogov neutralized the guard with a blow of a steel bar. Pyotr Kutergin took off his lifeless sentry overcoat with a cap and put them on. With a rifle at the ready, this disguised watchman led the "prisoners" in the direction of the aircraft. This is so that the guards on the watchtowers do not suspect anything.

The captives opened the hatch and entered the plane. Interior Heinkel Devyatayev, accustomed to the cramped cockpit of a fighter, seemed like a huge hangar. Meanwhile, Vladimir Sokolov and Ivan Krivonogov uncovered the engines and removed the clamps from the flaps. The ignition key was there...

Here is how Mikhail Devyatayev described this disturbing moment: “Pressed all the buttons at once. The devices did not light up ... there are no batteries! ... "Failure!" - cut to the heart. A gallows and 10 corpses dangling on it swam before my eyes.

But fortunately, the guys quickly got the batteries, dragged them on a cart to the plane, and connected the cable. The instrument needles immediately swung. The turn of a key, the movement of a foot, and one motor came to life. Another minute - and the screws of another engine were twisted. Both engines were roaring, but there was no noticeable alarm on the airfield yet - because everyone was used to it: "Gustav-Anton" flies a lot and often. The plane began to pick up speed and, accelerating, began to rapidly approach the edge of the runway. But the amazing thing is for some reason he could not get off the ground! ... And almost fell off a cliff into the sea. Behind the pilot there was a panic - screams and blows in the back: "Mishka, why don't we take off!?"

But Mishka himself did not know why. I guessed it only a few minutes later, when I turned around and went on the second attempt to take off. Trimmers were the culprit! The trimmer is a movable, palm-wide plane on the elevators. The German pilot left her in the "landing" position. But how to find the control mechanism for these trimmers in a few seconds in an unfamiliar car!?

And at this time the airfield came to life, vanity and running around began on it. Pilots and mechanics ran out of the dining room. Everyone who was on the field rushed to the plane. A little more - and the shooting will begin! And then Mikhail Devyatayev shouted to his friends: "Help!". The three of them, together with Sokolov and Krivonogov, they fell on the helm ...

… and at the very edge of the Baltic water Heinkel got his tail off the ground!

Here it is - another happy luck desperate guys - emaciated prisoners-walkers lifted a heavy multi-ton machine into the air! By the way, Mikhail found the trimmer control, but only a little later - when the plane dived into the clouds and began to climb. And immediately the car became obedient and light.

Only 21 minutes passed from the moment of hitting the head of the red-haired guard to leaving for the clouds...

Twenty-one minutes of strained nerves.

Twenty-one minutes of fighting fear.

Twenty-one minutes of risk and courage.

Of course, a chase was sent for them and fighter jets took to the air. To intercept, among other things, a fighter took off, piloted by a famous air ace - chief lieutenant Günter Hobom, the owner of two "Iron Crosses" and "German cross in gold". But, without knowing the course of the escaped Heinkel it could only be discovered by chance, and Günter Hobom did not find the fugitives.

The rest of the air hunters also returned to their airfields with nothing. In the first hours after the hijacking, the Germans were sure that British prisoners of war had hijacked the secret plane, and therefore the main interceptor forces were thrown in a north-westerly direction - towards Great Britain. So Fate once again favored Devyatayev and his comrades.

An interesting and very dangerous meeting took place over the Baltic. hijacked Heinkel walked over the sea to the southeast - to the front line, towards the Soviet troops. A caravan of ships moved below. And he was escorted from above by fighter jets. One Messerschmitt left the formation from the guard, flew up to the bomber and made a beautiful loop near it. Devyatayev was even able to notice the bewildered look of the German pilot - he was surprised that Heinkel flew with landing gear extended. By that time, Mikhail had not yet figured out how to remove them. And I was afraid that during landing there might be problems with their release. "Messer" the strange bomber did not shoot down, either because there was no order for this, or because of the lack of communication with the main command. So, it was another favorable combination of circumstances that day for the crew of Mikhail Devyatayev.

The fact that the plane flew over the front line, the fugitives guessed from three important observations.

First, endless convoys, columns of Soviet vehicles and tanks stretched on the ground below.

Secondly, the infantry on the roads, seeing a German bomber, ran up and jumped into a ditch.

And thirdly, by Heinkel hit our anti-aircraft guns. And they hit very accurately: the wounded appeared among the crew, and the right engine of the aircraft caught fire. Mikhail Devyatayev saved the burning car, his comrades and himself at the same time - he abruptly threw the plane into side slip and thereby shot down the flames . The smoke disappeared, but the engine was damaged. It was necessary to land quickly.

Runaways-from-Hell landed on a spring field at the location of one of the artillery battalions of the 61st Army. The plane plowed the bottom of most of the field, but still landed successfully. And in this successful landing on a melting February field on a machine that has not yet been mastered to the end with only one serviceable engine, there is a very great merit ... guardian angel Mikhail Devyataev. Clearly, it could not have done without the Higher Forces!

Soon the former prisoners heard: "Fritz! Hyundai ho! Surrender, otherwise we will shoot from a cannon! But for them, these were very dear and dear Russian words. They said: “We are not Fritz! We are ours! We are from captivity ... We are our own ... ".

Our soldiers with machine guns, in sheepskin coats, ran up to the plane and were stunned. Ten skeletons in striped clothes, shod in wooden shoes, spattered with blood and mud, came out to them. Terribly thin people cried and constantly repeated only one word: "Brothers, brothers..."

The gunners carried them to the location of their unit in their arms, like children, because the fugitives weighed 40 kilograms ...

You can imagine what exactly happened on the devilish island of Usedom after a daring escape! At that moment, a terrible commotion reigned at the missile base in Peenemünde. Hermann Goering, having learned about the emergency in his secret "Reserve", stamped his feet and yelled: "Hang the guilty!"

The heads of the perpetrators and those involved survived only thanks to the saving lie of the head of the department for testing the latest technology, Karl Heinz Graudenz. He told Goering, who arrived with the inspection: "The plane was caught over the sea and shot down."

I repeat once again - at first the Germans believed that Heinkel-111 taken by British prisoners of war. But the truth was revealed after an urgent formation in the camp and a thorough verification: 10 Russian prisoners were missing. And only a day after the escape, the SS service found out: one of the fugitives was not a school teacher Grigory Nikitenko at all, but pilot Mikhail Devyatayev from the division of Alexander Pokryshkin.

For hijacking a secret plane Heinkel-111 with radio equipment for field testing of ballistic missiles V-2 Adolf Hitler declared Mikhail Devyatayev his personal enemy.

The British for two years, starting in 1943, bombed the island of Usedom and its facilities, but the thing is that most often they "fought" with a false airfield and sham planes. The Germans outwitted our allies - they skillfully camouflaged a real airfield and rocket launchers with mobile wheeled platforms with trees. Thanks to the fake groves, the secret objects of the Peenemünde base looked like copses from above.

last rocket V-2 with serial number 4299 took off from launch pad No. 7 on February 14, 1945.

More German missiles from the Peenemünde base did not rise into the air.

The main merit of Mikhail Petrovich Devyatayev to our Motherland is that he made a great contribution to the development of Soviet rocket science.

First of all, (As you already know) the plane he hijacked Heinkel-111 had unique missile flight control equipment V-2.

And secondly, he showed the Peenemünde base several times Sergei Pavlovich Korolev- the future general designer of Soviet missiles. Together they walked around the island of Usedom and examined its former secrets: launchers V-1, launch pads V-2, underground workshops and laboratories, equipment abandoned by the Germans, the remains of rockets and their components.

In the 1950s, Mikhail Devyatayev tested hydrofoil river boats on the Volga. In 1957, he was one of the first in the Soviet Union to become the captain of a passenger ship of the type "Rocket". Later drove along the Volga "Meteors" was a captain-instructor. After retiring, he actively participated in the veterans' movement, often spoke to schoolchildren, students and working youth, created his own Devyatayev Foundation, and provided assistance to those who especially needed it.

P.S.

M. Devyataev (pictured left) and I. Krivonogov. Krivonogov hatched a plan to escape from captivity on a boat, but Devyatayev persuaded him to hijack a German plane Photo from militera.lib.ru

The prisoners of the camps, trying to break free, showed the soldier's ingenuity and perseverance in achieving the goal. They fled, covering many hundreds of kilometers on foot, breaking free on captured enemy vehicles and even on a tank. But the most incredible escapes were made by Soviet pilots. On February 8, 1945, fighter pilot Mikhail Devyatayev, who was taken prisoner on July 13, 1944, captured the Heinkel-111 heavy bomber along with nine fellow campers. After an incredible adventure, he miraculously lifted the plane into the air and flew over the front line. And he ended up with his comrades in the filtration camp of the NKVD ...

Meanwhile, Mikhail Devyatayev was not the first pilot to escape from captivity on a German plane. History has preserved the names of at least a dozen pilots who made aerial escapes. However, most of them were convicted of treason. Why did senior lieutenant Devyatayev pass this bitter cup?

Before answering this question, let's turn to the history of several Soviet pilots who succeeded in a daring attempt - to capture and lift an unfamiliar enemy aircraft into the air and get to their own.

Pilot-guardsman Nikolai Loshakov agreed to cooperate with the Germans with the idea of escaping

Junior Lieutenant Nikolai Loshakov, pilot of the 14th Guards Fighter Regiment, was shot down on May 27, 1943. The wounded pilot managed to jump out of the burning plane by parachute. In the prisoner of war camp, Loshakov began to put together a group to escape. However, someone betrayed them, and the accomplices were scattered across different camps. At the new place, Loshakov began to work hard, inducing him to cooperate. The pilot agreed, thinking at the first opportunity to run ...

How many Soviet soldiers were taken prisoner during the war?

According to the surviving German documents from the war, as of May 1, 1944, there were 1,53,000 Soviet prisoners in the camps. Another 1 million 981 thousand prisoners had died by that time, and 473 thousand were executed. 768 thousand people died in transit camps... In the end, it turned out that from June 22, 1941 to May 1, 1944, more than 5 million Soviet military personnel were captured.

Domestic historians consider this number to be overestimated, since the German command, as a rule, included all male civilians of military age in reports on prisoners of war. Nevertheless, the figures specified by our researchers are shocking - 4 million 559 thousand people were in German captivity during the entire period of the war.

And how many prisoners of war went over to the side of the enemy?

Conscious betrayal or a way to survive?

You can’t throw away the words from the song: quite a few Red Army soldiers and commanders in captivity voluntarily agreed to cooperate with the enemy. How massive was this phenomenon, was it always behind the concept of "betrayal of the Motherland"? There are no exact numbers. According to some estimates, the total number of armed combat units of the Wehrmacht and the SS, as well as police forces in the occupied territory, consisting of citizens of the USSR, amounted to approximately 250-300 thousand people. Moreover, according to German sources, there were about 60 percent of prisoners of war in such units. The rest are local residents, emigrants from tsarist Russia.

Comparing these data with the total number of captured Soviet generals, officers and soldiers, you are convinced that millions of our compatriots remained faithful to the military oath behind barbed wire. But even among those who agreed to cooperate with the enemy, not all were staunch opponents of Soviet power. Many were driven by the desire to survive, by all means, and then try to escape ...

Concerned about the escapes of prisoners, the Germans even organized special training for the camp guards.

In the German documents of 1944 mentioned above, the number of prisoners of war who had escaped directly from the camps by that time was recorded - about 70 thousand. How many failed runs? We will never know about this.

It is interesting to note that in 1943 an "exhibition for official use" was organized in Germany about various methods of escaping from captivity. The prisoners of the camps, trying to break free, really showed the soldier's ingenuity and perseverance in achieving the goal. They fled, covering many hundreds of kilometers on foot, breaking free in seized vehicles and even in a tank.

It is not known whether the escape of Nikolai Loshakov got to the "exhibition"? After all, he was the first prisoner of war who literally flew away from under the nose of the airfield guards ...

"For the courage shown when escaping from captivity on an enemy plane" the pilot was awarded ... a hunting rifle

After Loshakov agreed to cooperate, he was sent to a spare German airfield in the Pskov region. Here he met the tanker of military transport aviation, captured sergeant Ivan Denisyuk, who also hatched escape plans. Having access to aircraft, Denisyuk memorized the location of the instruments in the cockpit and drew diagrams for Loshakov in the evening.

One day, luck smiled at them: a light-engine two-seat reconnaissance aircraft "Storch" was refueled on the runway. Having seized the moment, Loshakov and Denisyuk climbed into the cockpit and successfully took off. Following the fugitives, fighters rushed in pursuit. Loshakov was wounded, but managed to evade persecution, and after a 400-kilometer flight landed in the Novgorod region. This happened in the summer of 1943.

The pilot and his friend were arrested by military counterintelligence. During the interrogations, Denisyuk, unable to bear the torture, gave "confessing" evidence of committing treason. Loshakov could not be broken. On December 4, 1943, the Special Meeting of the NKVD of the USSR sentenced I.A. Denisyuk by the age of 20, and N.K. Loshakova - to three years in prison. On August 12, 1945, Loshakov was released a year ahead of schedule with the removal of a criminal record. Denisyuk was released from the camp in 1951.

Loshakov stayed in Vorkuta, worked in the air squadron of the Vorkutaugol plant, then at the mine. He became a full cavalier of the Order of Miner's Glory. In the early 60s, he was unexpectedly invited to Moscow by the Commander-in-Chief of the USSR Air Force K.A. Vershinin. He thanked the former fighter pilot "for the steadfastness and courage shown while being in captivity and escaping from captivity on an enemy plane" and handed him ... a hunting rifle.

Why Moskalets, Chkuaseli and Karapetyan recruited into the 1st Eastern Squadron

An even more amazing story of the escape of senior lieutenant Vladimir Moskalets, lieutenant Panteleimon Chkuaseli and junior lieutenant Aram Karapetyan. She looks like an action-packed detective story. It began with the fact that the captured pilots became friends in the concentration camp, agreed to stick together and break free at the first opportunity. To this end, in January 1944, they enlisted in the 1st Eastern Squadron ...

What is this unit, who did it consist of, and what tasks did it perform?

"Hidden desertion of individual pilots" continued until the end of the war

On August 19, 1941, an order was issued by the NPO of the USSR "Measures to combat hidden desertion among individual pilots." The reason for the order was the facts of the voluntary surrender of "Stalin's falcons". Already on the first day of the war, the navigator of a bomber jumped out with a parachute over the territory occupied by German troops. In the summer of the same year, the crew of the SU-2 bomber separated from the group of their aircraft returning to the airfield and headed west.

According to German sources, in 1943 and early 1944 alone, more than 80 aircraft flew over to the Germans. Surprisingly, the last case of "hidden desertion" was noted a few days before the end of the war. In April 1945, Pe-2 (commander senior lieutenant Batsunov and navigator Kod) from the 161st Guards Bomber Aviation Regiment left the formation in the air and, without responding to commands, disappeared into the clouds on the opposite course.

The idea to create a combat flight unit from yesterday's opponents, who deliberately inclined to cooperate with the German military command, belonged to Lieutenant Holters from the headquarters of the Luftwaffe "Vostok". The German officer made a bet on the former aviation colonel Maltsev. In the early 1930s, he was head of the Air Force of the Siberian Military District, and in 1937 he was appointed head of the Civil Air Fleet for Central Asia and Transcaucasia. Colonel Maltsev was presented with the Order of Lenin, but did not manage to receive it - in March 1938 he was "swept away" by another purge. A year and a half spent in NKVD prisons made him an implacable enemy of Soviet power.

Maltsev energetically set about organizing aviation units, which, under his command, then became part of the so-called Russian Liberation Army (ROA) of the traitor General Vlasov. Moskalets, Chkuaseli and Karapetyan got into one of them, located in the Belarusian city of Lida ...

The pilots first became partisans of the NKVD brigade, and then - prisoners of this people's commissariat

The Germans put them on the obsolete Arado Ar-66C and Gotha Go-145A two-seat training aircraft used for night bombing. Given their low speed and limited flight range, the pilots decided to seek contact with local partisans in order to land at their base. They were lucky, and on July 3, 1944, three aircraft took off directly from the parking lot - across the runway.

After landing in a designated place, the pilots were included in the NKVD special purpose partisan brigade and fought the Germans until it was disbanded. Then they were sent to Moscow, and from there - to a check-filtration camp near Podolsk. On December 29, 1944, all three were arrested.

During interrogations, they told the investigator that "they went to the service of the Germans in order to quickly go over to the side of the Soviet troops and that during the bombing flights they dropped bombs on the "non-explosion" and into the swamp" (supervisory proceedings of the military collegium No. 12143/45 in case V .S. Moskalets et al., S.20-21). But, despite this, on March 17, 1945, the military tribunal of the Moscow Military District condemned them for treason to the Motherland to imprisonment in labor camps for a period of 10 years, with a loss of rights for 5 years each.

Justice triumphed only in 1959. After the Chief Military Prosecutor's Office conducted an additional check, the issue of canceling the illegal sentence was raised. On March 23, 1959, the Military Collegium of the USSR Armed Forces issued a ruling to dismiss this case due to newly discovered circumstances. These circumstances were the testimonies of former partisans that the pilots in 1944 were telling the truth. It took about 15 years to interrogate witnesses.

Mikhail Devyatayev was known in the concentration camp as Grigory Nikitenko

Fighter pilot Senior Lieutenant Mikhail Devyatayev was captured on July 13, 1944. After an unsuccessful escape attempt, he ended up in the Sachsenhausen death camp. Here the underground fighters changed his token of a suicide bomber for the token of teacher Grigory Nikitenko, who died in the camp. Under this name, in October 1944, he and a group of prisoners ended up in a concentration camp on the island of Usedom in the Baltic Sea.

Here Devyatayev became close to prisoners I. Krivonogov and V. Sokolov, who were planning to escape with their comrades on a boat across the strait. The pilot convinced them that only the capture of the aircraft could guarantee success. Near the airfield there was a dump of broken aircraft, and Devyatayev began to study the equipment of the cockpits and instrument panels of German bombers.

"Now let's fly home..."

The escape in a heavy twin-engine bomber was facilitated not only by a happy coincidence of many circumstances, but also by the amazing composure of the pilot and his comrades.

On the morning of February 8, 1945, during work, Devyatayev and a group (10 people) carefully observed the movements at the airfield. When the mechanics left for lunch, Krivonogov killed the guard, and he and Devyatayev secretly crept up to the Heinkel-111. The pilot knocked down the lock and climbed into the cockpit, and Krivonogov uncovered the motors. However, the plane did not have batteries to start the engines. Within a few minutes, they managed to find a cart with batteries and fit it to the bomber. The members of the group climbed into the fuselage and Devyatayev loudly announced: "Now we will fly home ..."

"Me, my crewmates weren't particularly enthusiastic..."

At home, as Mikhail Petrovich Devyatayev recalled many years later, “they didn’t particularly admire me, my crew friends. Quite the opposite. We were subjected to a rather cruel check ...” Nevertheless, after checking in the NKVD filtration camp, seven out of ten former prisoners of war at the end of March 1945 returned to the front, and three officers - Devyataev, Krivonogov and Yemets - were reinstated in officer ranks. But the war had already ended by then.

According to some reports, 1,836,562 people who returned from captivity at the end of the war passed such a test. About a million of them were sent for further service, 600 thousand - to work in industry as part of worker battalions. 339 thousand, including 233.4 thousand former military personnel, were found to have compromised themselves in captivity and convicted. It is not necessary to talk about the universal condemnation of all former prisoners of war, as some unscrupulous researchers like to assert ...

As for senior reserve lieutenant Mikhail Petrovich Devyataev, in August 1957 he was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. The former pilot was awarded this highest award thanks to the petition of Sergei Pavlovich Korolev.

But where does the person known today to millions of people as the general designer of Soviet space technology have to do with it?

Mysterious island - almost like Jules Verne

The fact is that Devyatayev and his comrades in captivity ended up on one of the most secret islands in the history of mankind. Launch sites for German V-2 ballistic missiles and launch control bunkers were equipped at Usedom. The prisoners who got here were waiting for one outcome - death. Devyatayev not only survived, but, without knowing it, captured a specially equipped aircraft that was part of the launch system. And after returning from captivity, he spoke in detail about everything he saw on Usedom.

Immediately after the occupation of the island by Soviet troops, specialists who dealt with problems of rocket science urgently arrived here. Unexpectedly for himself again visited the "mysterious" island and Mikhail Petrovich Devyataev. He was brought here at the request of a certain Colonel Sergeev ...

Colonel Sergeev, aka Sergei Pavlovich Korolev

Today, it is probably no longer possible to establish how information about the pilot who fled from Usedom reached Korolev. According to Devyataev's memoirs, the colonel, introducing himself as Sergeyev, asked him to show the places of launch pads, bunkers, and underground workshops. During the inspection, entire rocket assemblies were found. And already in 1948, the first Soviet ballistic missile was tested.

It is interesting to note that Sergey Pavlovich Korolev came out with a petition for conferring a Hero of the Soviet Union to Devyataev on the eve of the launch of the first artificial Earth satellite into space.

The heroic escape from German captivity of the Soviet pilot Mikhail Devyatayev predetermined the destruction of the Reich missile program and changed the course of the entire Second World War.

While in captivity, he hijacked a secret Nazi bomber, along with the control system for the world's first V-wing cruise missile. With these missiles, the Wehrmacht planned to remotely destroy London and New York, and then wipe Moscow off the face of the earth. But the captive Devyatayev was able to single-handedly prevent this plan from coming true.

The outcome of the Second World War might have been completely different if it were not for the heroism and desperate courage of one Mordvin named Mikhail Devyataev, who was captured and was among the few who withstood the inhuman conditions of the Nazi concentration camp. On February 8, 1945, he, along with nine other Soviet prisoners, hijacked the latest Heinkel-1 bomber with an integrated radio control and target designation system from a secret long-range V-2 cruise missile on board. It was the first ballistic cruise missile in the world, which was capable of reaching targets at a distance of up to 1500 km and destroying entire cities with a probability close to 100%. London was the first target.

In the Baltic Sea, on the line north of Berlin, there is an islet called Usedom. At its western tip was the secret Peenemünde base. It was called "Goering's Reserve". The newest aircraft were tested here and a secret missile center headed by Wernher von Braun was located right there. From ten launch sites located along the coast, at night, leaving fiery tongues, went into the sky "fau - 2. With this weapon, the Nazis hoped to reach right up to New York. But in the spring of 45, it was important for them to terrorize a closer point - London. However serial "fau - 1? She flew only 325 kilometers. With the loss of the launch base in the West, the cruise missile began to be launched from Peenemünde. From here to London more than a thousand kilometers. The rocket was raised on an airplane and launched already over the sea.

The aviation unit that tested the latest technology was headed by the thirty-three-year-old ace Karl Heinz Graudenz. Behind him were many military merits marked by Hitler's awards. Dozens of Heinkels, Junkers, Messerschmitts of the top-secret division took part in the feverish work on Peenemünde. Graudenz himself participated in the tests. He flew on the "Heinkel - 111?", which had the monogram "G. A." - "Gustav Anton". The base was carefully guarded by fighters and anti-aircraft guns, as well as by the SS service.

February 8, 1945 was an ordinary, busy day. Ober - Lieutenant Graudenz, having had a hasty lunch in the dining room, put the flight documents in order in his office. Suddenly the phone rang: who is it you took off like a crow? - Graudenz heard the rude voice of the air defense chief. - no one took off from me ... - didn’t take off ... I myself saw through binoculars - somehow "Gustav Anton" took off. “Get yourself another pair of binoculars, stronger ones,” the Graudens flared up. - my "Gustav Anton" with covered motors is standing. Only I can fly it. maybe our planes are already flying without pilots? - you look - it's better if "Gustav Anton" is in place ....

Ober - Lieutenant Graudenz jumped into the car and two minutes later was in the parking lot of his plane. Cases from motors and a trolley with batteries - that's all that the numb ace saw. "Raise fighters! Raise everything you can! Catch up and shoot down!" ... An hour later, the planes returned with nothing.

With a tremor in his stomach, Graudenz went to the telephone to report to Berlin about what had happened. Goering, having learned about the state of emergency at the most secret base, stamped his feet - “hang the guilty! On February 13, Goering and Bormann flew in on a Peenemünde ... the head of Karl Heinz Graudenz survived. Perhaps they remembered the former merits of the ace, but, most likely, Goering’s fury was softened by a saving lie : "The plane was overtaken over the Sea and shot down." Who hijacked the plane? The first thing that came to the mind of the Groudens was "tom-mi" ... The British were worried about the Base from which the "fau" flew. Probably their agent. But in a caponier - an earthen shelter for the aircraft, near which the hijacked "Heinkel" was located, they found the guard of a group of prisoners of war killed. They filled up the bomb craters that day. Urgent construction in the camp immediately showed: there were not enough ten prisoners. All of them were Russians. And a day later, the SS service reported : one of the fugitives is not the teacher Grigory Nikitenko at all, but the pilot Mikhail Devyatayev.

Mikhail landed in Poland behind the front line, got to command, handed over a plane with secret equipment, reported everything he saw in German captivity and, thus, predetermined the fate of the Reich's secret missile program and the course of the entire war. Until 2001, Mikhail Petrovich did not even have the right to talk about the fact that he was introduced to the title of Hero of the Soviet Union by the designer of Soviet missiles s. P. queens. And that his escape from the Peenemünde missile base on February 8, 1945 allowed the Soviet command to find out the exact coordinates of the V-2 launch sites and bomb not only them, but also the underground workshops for the production of the "Dirty" uranium bomb. This was Hitler's last hope for the continuation of the Second World War until the complete destruction of the entire civilization.

The pilot said: “The airport on the island was false. Plywood mock-ups were put up on it. The Americans and the British bombed them. When I flew in and told Lieutenant General of the 61st Army Belov about this, he gasped and grabbed his head! fly 200 m from the seashore, where a real airfield is hidden in the forest. It was covered by trees on special mobile wheelchairs. That's why they couldn't find it. But there were about 3,5 thousand Germans and 13 V-1 installations and "V-2".

The main thing in this story is not the fact itself that exhausted Soviet prisoners from the concentration camp hijacked the latest military plane from a specially guarded secret base of the Nazis and reached "Own" in order to save themselves and report everything that they managed to see from the enemy. The main thing was the fact that the hijacked aircraft was not - 111 ... the control panel of the V-2 rocket - the world's first long-range cruise missile developed in Germany. Mikhail Petrovich in his book "Escape from Hell" publishes the memoirs of an eyewitness to the escape of Kurt Shanpa, who that day was one of the sentries at the Peenemünde base: "The last test launch of V - 2 ("V-2") was prepared ... unexpectedly, some plane took off from the western airfield ... when it was already over the sea, a V-2 rocket projectile rose from the ramp. ... Russian prisoners of war fled in the plane, which was placed at the disposal of Dr. Shteingof.

Devyatayev later said: “There was a radio receiver on the plane to set the course for the V-2 rocket.” The plane flew from above and guided the rocket by radio. We didn’t have anything like that then. and flew into the sea.

The heroic escape from German captivity of the Soviet pilot Mikhail Devyatayev predetermined the destruction of the Reich missile program and changed the course of the entire Second World War.

To break out of captivity, you needed ingenuity, determination and reliable comrades.

How many of our soldiers and officers were taken prisoner during the Great Patriotic War has not yet been counted. From the German side they talk about five million, Russian historians call the number 500 thousand less. How the Nazis treated the prisoners is known from documents and eyewitness accounts. About 2.5 million people died from exhaustion and torture, and 470,000 were executed. Even more passed through the concentration camps - 18 million people from different countries, of which 11 million were destroyed. Everything happened in the nightmare of the camps. Someone immediately resigned to fate, others, saving their own skin, joined to serve the Nazis. But there were always those who, with minimal chances of success, nevertheless decided to escape.

hijacked a plane

It was the 12th sortie of the 19-year-old Nikolai Loshakov. The Yak-16 engine failed, the pilot turned towards Leningrad, which was defended by their regiment in November 1942. In battle, he knocked out a Messerschmitt, but was squeezed in a vise by two enemy aircraft. Wounded in the arm and leg, Nikolai parachuted out of a burning plane over our territory, but a strong wind carried him towards the Fritz.

The Germans began to persuade the captured pilot to go over to their side: they decided that the youngster was shot down in the first battle and, out of fright, would agree to serve in their aviation. On reflection, Loshakov agreed, but decided to himself - this is the best way to thwart the Nazis' plan to form a squadron of traitors. He was sent to an alternate airfield in the city of Ostrov. However, the planes were not allowed. But freedom of movement was not restricted. An assistant was found for Nikolai - a captured infantryman Ivan Denisyuk who worked as an attendant. He was able to get a German flight jacket and cap, copy the location of the instruments on the plane. On August 11, 1943, a cargo Storch landed at the airfield, and the German pilot went to rest. Denisyuk quickly refueled the car, Loshakov quietly changed into a German uniform, calmly approached the plane, started the engine and soared into the sky. When the Germans realized that they had been scammed, it was too late. The fugitives, having covered 300 kilometers, landed the plane in a potato field. It was the first escape from captivity on a plane captured from the enemy.

valuable cargo

fighter pilot Mikhail Devyataev was taken prisoner in July 1944. Interrogations, torture, and Devyatayev is sent to the Lodz POW camp, from where he and his comrades try to escape a month later. They are caught, and now they - suicide bombers, in overalls with appropriate stripes - are sent to the Sachsenhausen camp. Here, 27-year-old Mikhail is helped by a local hairdresser: he changes the suicide tag for the identification number of an ordinary prisoner who died a few days ago. Under the name Grigory Nikitenko Mikhail ends up in Peenemünde, a training ground on the island of Usedom in the Baltic Sea, where V-missiles were tested. The prisoners were needed to perform unskilled work.

Mikhail DEVYATAEV stole the most important "Heinkel"

The thought of running away was constant. Look how many planes are around, and he is an ace pilot. But accomplices were needed - such that they would not surrender under any circumstances. Devyatayev slowly gathered a team and tried to get closer to the aircraft in order to study the dashboards. They decided to escape on a Heinkel-111 bomber. On February 8, 1945, ten conspirators won places for themselves in the brigades that were supposed to clean the airfield. They killed the escort with a sharpener, pulled off the covers from the plane, Devyatayev sat at the helm, and it turned out that the battery ... was removed. And every minute counts. They rushed to look, found, brought, installed. The car started up. But she couldn’t take off the first time: Mikhail didn’t fully understand the levers. I had to turn around for a new run. The Nazis were already rushing along the strip. The pilot flew the plane straight at them. Someone rushed to the anti-aircraft guns, others raised a fighter to intercept. But the fugitives managed to break away from the chase. Rising above the clouds, guided by the sun. They flew to the front line, and then Soviet anti-aircraft guns began firing at the Nazi plane. I had to land right in the field. Of course, they were not immediately believed that they were traitors who had fled from captivity, and not traitors who had gone over to the side of the enemy. But it soon became clear that of all the planes at the training ground, the daredevils hijacked the one on which the equipment for launching the world's first V-2 ballistic missiles was installed. So they not only saved themselves, but also delivered the most valuable cargo for our rocket scientists. Mikhail Devyatayev was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union in 1957 for his contribution to Soviet rocket science. Unfortunately, of the ten who fled by the end of the war, only four remained alive.

Frenzied Tank

The Kummersdorf test site, 30 kilometers from Berlin, served as a test center for the Germans since the end of the 19th century. During the war, military equipment captured in battle was delivered there for a thorough study. Captured tankers also ended up in Kummersdorf: to understand how a tank works in battle, a crew was needed.

Another firing at the end of 1943. Prisoners are promised freedom if they survive after the ordeal. But our people know: there is no chance. In the tank, the commander orders to obey only him and sends the car to the observation tower, where the entire command of the Nazis is located. An armored personnel carrier called on alarm, the tank crushes with caterpillars at full speed and leaves the training ground without hindrance. In the concentration camp, which was located nearby, the tank demolishes the booth at the checkpoint and part of the fence - several prisoners escape. When the fuel runs out, the tankers will go to their own on foot. Only the radio operator made it alive, but he also died of exhaustion, having only briefly told his story to Lieutenant Colonel Pavlovtsev. He tried to find out the details from the Germans who lived near Kummersdorf. But no one wanted to talk, except for a decrepit old man, who confirmed the story with the "escaped" tank. Grandfather admitted that they were most struck by the episode with the children who were on the road. The tankers, who cared about every minute, stopped, drove the children away, and only then rushed on.

There are no witnesses to this incident, and its heroes are nameless. But the story formed the basis of the film "The Lark", filmed in 1964.

Revolt of the doomed

Polish Sobibor was an extermination camp. But workers were also needed at the death factory. Therefore, the strongest were left alive - for the time being. In September 1943, another group of Soviet Jewish prisoners of war arrived. Among them is a 34-year-old Alexander Pechersky who was assigned to the construction team. He organized an underground group and began planning an escape. At first they wanted to dig an underground passage. But to get through a narrow hole for several dozen people would take a considerable amount of time. It was decided to raise an uprising.

Untersturmführer became the first victim Berg. He came to a local atelier to try on a suit, but ran into a rebel axe. The next was the head of the camp guard. They acted clearly: some liquidated the leadership of the camp, others cut telephone wires, and others collected captured weapons. The rebels tried to get to the arsenal, but they were stopped by machine-gun fire. It was decided to get out of the camp. Some died in the minefield that surrounded Sobibor. The rest hid in the forest, divided into groups and dispersed. Most of the fugitives, including Alexander Pechersky, joined the partisans. 53 prisoners managed to escape alive.

Hunting for hares

Early 1945. Austria, Mauthausen concentration camp. A Soviet pilot was brought here Nikolai Vlasov- Hero of the Soviet Union, who made 220 sorties. He was taken prisoner in 1943, when his plane was shot down and he was wounded. The Nazis even allowed him to wear the Golden Star. They wanted to get an ace for themselves and called for joining the army of a traitor - a general Vlasov. And Nikolai tried to escape from all the camps where he happened to be. And in Mauthausen he organized a resistance group.

First, the headquarters, which consisted of several people, developed a plan. As weapons, they will have cobblestones from the pavement, sticks, wash basins broken into fragments. The guards on the towers are neutralized by jets from fire extinguishers. The current passed through the barbed wire will be shorted out by wet blankets and clothes. Agreed with the rest. 75 people, emaciated to the point that they could not walk, promised to give their clothes: they don’t care anymore, and the fugitives could freeze in ten degrees below zero. The date was set: on the night of January 29th. But there was a traitor. Three days before the escape, the Nazis burned 25 people alive in the crematorium, among them all the organizers. But that didn't stop the others. On the night of February 3, the prisoners carried out their plan.

419 people escaped from the camp. 100 were killed by machine-gun fire from towers. The rest were hunted down. They raised everyone: the military, the gendarmerie, the people's militia, the Hitler Youth and local residents. They ordered not to take them alive, to bring the corpses to the backyard of the school in the village of Ried in der Riedmarkt. The dead were counted by crossing out the sticks with chalk on the blackboard.

The operation was called "Hare hunting in the Mühlviertel district."

People were excited! They shot at everything that moved. Fugitives were found in houses, carts, barnyards, haystacks and cellars and killed on the spot. The snow was stained with blood, - then the local gendarme wrote down Johan Kohout.

However, the nine sticks on the blackboard were not crossed out. Among the survivors were Mikhail Ryabchinsky and Nikolai Tsemkalo. They ventured into the hayloft of one of the houses: it was the only one without a portrait. Hitler. Then Mikhail, who spoke German, went to the hosts - Mary and Yogan Langthalers. Pious peasants, whose four sons were at the front, decided to help the Russians. They thought to appease God so that their offspring would remain alive. They managed to shelter the fugitives from the SS search teams until the very surrender. The sons of the Langthalers have indeed returned home. And Ryabchinsky and Tsemkalo kept in touch with their saviors all their lives and even visited them in Austria in 1965.

Mysterious Infection

Vladimir Bespyatkin in 1941 there were 12. His mother died four years before the start of the war, his father and older brothers were called to the front, and the boy stayed with his five-year-old sister Lida. They lived in the Donbass, in a factory barracks, starving. I had to beg for bread from the invaders. Once Volodya was seized by the police and taken to the building of a local orphanage. Begging to let him go, the boy let slip that his little sister was waiting at home. Then Lida was also brought to the orphanage.

It didn't get any better in this establishment. They were fed with a brew of burnt grain from burned fields. They were beaten for the slightest infraction. They could, angry, throw them out the window from the third floor or slash their throats with a knife. And, as it turned out, they conducted medical experiments on children. The only one who tried to somehow help the prisoners was the manager, Frau Betta, a German from the Volga region.

The worst thing for the children was to get into the isolation ward. They did not know what they were doing there, but no one returned from there. Only wooden boxes were taken away and burned, and the ashes were buried in a quarry. Once Volodya got into the isolation ward. There were two of them in the room. The second boy was drained of blood, and he fell asleep, exhausted. And Volodya's body was scratched with a metal brush. After a few hours, he became covered in blisters and realized that he, too, would be taken to the quarry in a wooden box. Gotta run!

As an adult, I recalled this situation many times and realized that Frau Betta had saved me, - Vladimir Bespyatkin recalled. - At night, the nurse snored very deliberately, and the office window turned out to be open. I wanted to call the boy who was being bled, but it turned out that he had died. Then I quietly went to the window and ran away. Crawling, rushing, hiding, he reached the Shchebenka station and knocked on the first house.

Irina Omelchenko, who sheltered the boy, became his second mother. After the liberation of Donbass, she also took Lida. Periodically appearing scabs bothered Vladimir all his life. The doctors could not figure out what the Nazis had infected him with.

Sang and dug

The Stalag Luft III camp contained officers - pilots of the allies, mainly the British and American armies. They lived in completely different conditions than Soviet prisoners of war: they were well fed, allowed to play sports, and arrange theatrical performances. This helped them to dig four deep tunnels: the sound of work was drowned out by choral singing. In one of the passages, a trolley even ran and there were ventilation pipes made up of milk cans. 250 people were digging tunnels. Each tunnel was given a name. "Harry" was the longest: 102 meters and passed at a depth of 8.5 meters. 76 people escaped during the night. However, most were caught. 50 were shot, the rest were returned to the camp. Only three managed to survive and get to their own.

Portal for the student. Self-training