Video: The feat of Mikhail Devyatayev, a Soviet pilot who escaped from a Nazi concentration camp on an enemy plane
2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55
Many pilots of the Great Patriotic War were awarded the high title of Hero of the Soviet Union. But Lieutenant Mikhail Devyatayev accomplished a feat that really has no equal. The brave fighter escaped from Nazi captivity in an airplane that he captured from the enemy.
When the Great Patriotic War began, 24-year-old fighter pilot Mikhail Petrovich Devyatayev was a lieutenant, flight commander. In just three months, he shot down 9 enemy aircraft, until he himself was shot down and seriously wounded.
After the hospital, the Soviet ace flew on a messenger, and then on an ambulance plane. In 1944, Mikhail Devyatayev returned to fighter aviation, began flying the P-39 Airacobra in the 104th Guards Fighter Aviation Regiment. On July 13, Devyatayev shot down the 10th enemy plane, but on the same day he himself was shot down. The wounded pilot left the burning car with a parachute, but landed in the territory occupied by the enemy.
After being captured and interrogated, Mikhail Devyatayev was sent to a prisoner of war camp in Lodz (Poland), from where he tried to escape. The attempt failed, and Devyatayev was sent to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. The Soviet pilot miraculously managed to avoid death, as he obtained the form of another person. Thanks to this, he managed to leave the death camp. In the winter of 1944-1945. Mikhail Devyatayev was sent to the Peenemünde missile range. Here German engineers designed and tested the most modern weapons - the famous V-1 and V-2 missiles.
When Mikhail Devyatayev got to an airfield full of planes, he immediately decided to run, and fly away in a German car. Later, he argued that this thought arose in the very first minutes of being in Peenemünde.
For several months, a group of ten Soviet prisoners of war carefully thought out an escape plan. From time to time, the Germans from the air unit attracted them to work on the airfield. It was impossible not to take advantage of this. Devyatayev had been inside the German bomber and was now confident that he could lift it into the air.
On February 8, ten prisoners, under the supervision of an SS man, cleared the airstrip from snow. At the command of Devyatayev, the German was eliminated, and the prisoners rushed to the standing plane. A removed battery was installed on it, everyone climbed inside, and the Heinkel-111 bomber took off.
The Germans at the airfield did not immediately realize that the plane had been hijacked. When it turned out, a fighter was raised, but the fugitives were never found. Another German pilot flying by heard a message about the hijacked Heinkel. He gave only one burst before the cartridges ran out.
Devyatayev flew 300 kilometers southeast, towards the advancing Red Army. When approaching the front line, the bomber was fired upon by both German and Soviet anti-aircraft guns, so they had to land in an open field near a Polish village. Of the ten people who escaped from German captivity, three were officers. Until the end of the war, they were checked in a filtration camp. The remaining seven were assigned to the infantry. Only one of them survived.
Mikhail Devyatayev reported in detail to the Soviet command about the German rocketry and the infrastructure of the Peenemünde test site. Thanks to this, Germany's secret program fell into the "right" hands. Devyatayev's information and assistance to our missilemen was so valuable that in 1957 Sergei Korolyov achieved the title of Hero of the Soviet Union to the brave pilot.
And while some Soviet citizens armed themselves and began to fight to the death against the enemy, others collaborated with the Germans and even organized a real fascist republic.
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