Hero of the Soviet Union Mikhail Denisovich Afanasyev
Mikhail Denisovich Afanasyev was born in 1923 in the village of Staraia Pokrovka, Chui District, Kyrgyz SSR, into a peasant family. He was Russian. A member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. After graduating from high school and an aeroclub in Frunze, he was sent to the Chkalov Military Aviation School. He was a senior lieutenant, an attack pilot, and a flight commander.
He began his combat journey in August 1943. He participated in battles on the North Caucasian, Southern, 4th Ukrainian, 3rd, and 1st Baltic fronts. He proved himself to be a fearless attack pilot, a master of ground attack, and a sniper in bombing and shooting. He completed 149 combat sorties.
For exemplary execution of assignments, M. D. Afanasyev was awarded two Orders of the Red Banner, the Order of the Patriotic War I class, and several medals. On August 18, 1945, he was awarded the high title of Hero of the Soviet Union.
After the war, the Hero returned to peaceful labor. He lived in the Chui District of the Kyrgyz SSR.
AS A STORM ATTACKER
This aviation holiday stirred the soul of Mikhail Denisovich. In Frunze, they celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of the aeroclub. Thousands of townspeople gathered at the airport's airfield. One by one, sports planes soared into the sky, performing cascades of aerobatic figures, while parachutists poured from open hatches, brightening the sky with their colorful canopies.
Under a tent, in a small group, stood graduates of the pre-war aeroclub. Gesticulating with their hands, they animatedly exchanged opinions. Grizzled with age, having gone through the harsh trials of war, they seemed to have returned to their blue youth today. Their eyes sparkled with a mischievous gleam, and their faces, etched with wrinkles, brightened.
And now, returning home, Mikhail Denisovich could not shake off the stirred memories. Again and again, like there at the airfield, they brought him back to events more than forty years ago.
He saw himself as a seventeen-year-old boy, cheerfully walking with friends to a youth evening at the club, where he made the decision that would determine his future. In the foyer, he accidentally picked up a crumpled newspaper with an announcement about recruitment to the Frunze aeroclub. His heart raced. Who among Misha's peers did not dream of aviation at that time?
Stuffing the newspaper into his pocket, he ran home:
— Dad, Dad! I've made a decision; you can't object! — and he handed the newspaper to his father from the threshold.
The next morning, after receiving his parents' blessing, Mikhail left for Frunze in a passing car.
Documents submitted, medical and mandate commissions passed, and he was already a cadet. Every day was filled with intense study. He was meticulous, grasping everything on the fly. And the strict instructor Krayev, having duly appreciated the boy's efforts, was the first in the group to allow him to fly solo.
It was at the end of March 1941. In May, having received orders to the military aviation school, he left for Chkalov.
Just before the war.
...Fierce battles were already raging near Moscow. There, covering the capital, Afanasyev's peers fought to the death. Letters from home reported that seven older brothers were fighting at the front. For Alexander, who was drafted into active service in the border troops back in 1940, a death notice arrived — he died in the Baltics near the town of Elista. How could one calmly attend classes at the training facilities, at the airfield? With a group of comrades, Mikhail wrote a report to the command requesting to be sent to the front.
— How could you even think of such a thing? — the head of the school, General Skrobukh, sternly reprimanded them. — The country is preparing you to be combat pilots, tearing you away from the front with the latest technology, which you will master and become a hundred times stronger. And you want to go to the enemy untrained. This is akin to desertion... Go and study properly.
I will personally oversee it.
The lesson taught by the general had an effect. Mikhail himself understood: war is not a game; the enemy is strong and experienced.
To overcome him, one must study without sparing effort.
In early August 1943, M. D. Afanasyev, promoted to junior lieutenant, arrived at the 807th Assault Aviation Regiment, which was part of the 8th Air Army commanded by T. T. Khryukin. It operated as part of the Southern Front, whose troops were preparing to break through the Mius defensive line erected by the fascists on the path of the Soviet troops to the Donbas. The new reinforcements arrived on brand new planes, received directly from the factory.
The regiment had suffered significant losses in previous battles. On the eve of the offensive, the chief inspector of piloting techniques for the division flew with each newcomer to check their capabilities. He was satisfied with junior lieutenant Afanasyev and granted permission for his first combat flight.
— To be honest, neither the first, nor the second, nor the third flight left an impression on me, — Mikhail Denisovich said in response to my question, — the squadron commander Chechiyev, with his characteristic Caucasian accent (he was Ossetian), ordered: “Stick to the tail, do everything as I do.” And I, like a blind man following a guide, followed him.
However, he would hardly forget the storm attack on enemy artillery positions in the area of Zeleny Gai — Il'inovka. Their group was met by "Messerschmitts" as they approached the target. Our covering fighters engaged them in battle. Taking advantage of this, the "ILs" broke through the barrage of anti-aircraft fire and swooped down on the enemy batteries in level flight. Shells exploded around Afanasyev's aircraft, and he, pulling the control stick towards himself, dove steeper towards the gun hidden under camouflage netting. As he pulled out of the dive, he looked back and saw his rockets hitting the enemy's firing position. On the second pass, Mikhail fired at another enemy gun with his cannons. This was coldly recorded by the subsequently decoded film. He brought the aircraft back to the airfield with numerous bullet holes but was satisfied and proud of himself. He felt like a real fighter for the first time and believed in the great capabilities of the machine.
Yes, it was a remarkable aircraft, the "IL-2." Our soldiers did not call it a "flying tank" for nothing, while the fascists referred to it as the "black death." The armor reliably protected the pilot's cabin and the engine. The attack aircraft was armed with bombs and rocket projectiles, two cannons, and two machine guns. In broad daylight, under the fire of enemy anti-aircraft guns, the "ILs" would approach the target, dive, drop bombs, and then attack again — this time from level flight. In the heated moments of battle, the pilot merged with the machine and felt its obedience.
Every morning, day after day, Afanasyev's aircraft would taxi to the runway and fly to the blazing front line.
The pilots of the 807th regiment faced particularly intense work in the spring of 1944 when fierce battles for Crimea erupted.
As is known, the German-fascist command attached exceptional strategic and political importance to holding this peninsula. They surrounded it with a dense network of defensive lines.
In breaking through them, our command relied on the effective work of artillerymen and aviators. And the assault squadrons did not let them down. They seemed to accomplish the impossible. Descending to 20-30 meters, they pounded the positions of the Nazis, destroying their fortified firing points and not allowing them to raise their heads. They made five to six combat sorties a day. Then, as the enemy began to retreat, the pilots started striking at their ports and sea communications.
Just one "star" raid on the North Bay of Sevastopol was worth it. Hundreds of aircraft took to the air. From different directions, from the sea and from the land, they descended upon the enemy transports gathered in the bay. And it literally boiled from the explosions of bombs and shells, and then was long shrouded in the smoke of the raging fires. Only volunteers, the best pilots of the regiment, Heroes of the Soviet Union Baranov, Sidorin, Stuzhin, Zakharov, and Kitalishvili, responded to that flight. Mikhail Afanasyev was also honored with this. And when they returned to their airfield, the command post of the regiment conveyed the gratitude of the commander of the 4th Ukrainian Front, F. I. Tolbukhin, who had observed the actions of the attackers. Soon after, an order came to award the 807th Assault Aviation Regiment the honorary title "Sevastopol." Almost the entire personnel of the unit was awarded. The flight commander, Lieutenant Afanasyev, was awarded the Order of the Patriotic War I class. This was his third combat award.
His first — the Order of the Red Banner — he received for the liberation of the Donbas.
The moment of front-line respite was short but sweet. They, twenty-year-olds who had already stared death in the face many times, still longed to sit with the girls on warm Ukrainian evenings, to play football on the green lawn, to pour their hearts out in letters to relatives and friends, while in the west, the war continued to rumble, and the enemy still trampled their native land.
Again, sortie after sortie. The combat achievements of Lieutenant M. D. Afanasyev grew. On September 8, 1944, he and his flight delivered a bombing strike on enemy artillery positions south of the city of Tyrva. The fire of two batteries was suppressed, and up to thirty soldiers were destroyed. On October 7, leading a group of ten IL-2s, M. D. Afanasyev struck the railway station of Pogeten, where enemy trains had gathered. Two trains with troops and cargo were set on fire, and one locomotive was destroyed. On October 14, twenty-four attack aircraft, led by M. D. Afanasyev, approached the station of Shtonisken, where the German command had concentrated up to seven hundred infantrymen and thirty tanks, preparing to launch a counteroffensive. Thanks to the skillful and decisive actions of the group commander and the precise choice of approach direction to the target, the counterattack was thwarted. The enemy suffered significant losses in personnel
and equipment. In just over a year, Afanasyev completed 149 combat sorties. His account included eight destroyed fascist tanks, twenty-five vehicles, thirteen guns, two sunk transports, one downed aircraft, and up to four hundred enemy soldiers put out of action.
And yet, the war was a war. Afanasyev's attack aircraft more than once, as the famous song goes, returned from battle "on honest words and on one wing." The unchanging mechanic-gunner Alexei Lisitsyn, very temperamental, would start waving his fist in such cases, threatening: "Well, you bastards, you'll pay for this!" and, gasping, would start patching the holes in the fuselage, wings, and tail assembly. There were times when he got into worse scrapes. The first time Afanasyev's aircraft was shot down was near Nikopol in 1943. He barely made it to the front line and landed the plane in a field. Another time, when Afanasyev was bombing enemy transports in the Black Sea, a fragment of an anti-aircraft shell severed the oil drive. The engine began to fail. The aircraft lost altitude, and it became clear — he wouldn't make it to the shore.
Mikhail unbuckled, took off his parachute, and just at the water's edge, he pulled the control stick towards himself. When the aircraft finally lost speed and, as pilots say, "fell on its tail," he ejected from the cockpit. In the water, the padded suit quickly soaked, pulling him down. He and the gunner would hardly have managed to escape if a boat had not arrived from the shore in time.
What could be scarier for a Soviet pilot than being shot down over enemy territory? Who knows what trials await him? There was also such an episode in the front-line biography of Lieutenant Afanasyev. This happened in the Baltics on October 29, 1944. Paired with a young pilot Kazbanov, they took off on a mission. The weather there at that time was known to be — complete cloud cover. They approached the front line at a low altitude. The anti-aircraft guns were thick. Kazbanov couldn't take it, climbed up into the clouds.
— But I know, — Mikhail Denisovich recounts, — he is inexperienced, he will get lost. I shouted over the radio: “Where have you disappeared to?” And then I heard the voice of the gunner Volodya Medvedev: “Commander, two ‘Fokkers’ to the right!” That’s what we called the fascist fighters “Focke-Wulf-190.” Kazbanov's aircraft was shot down before my eyes. We didn't have time to evade either. A flash appeared before my eyes, like lightning. I came to on the ground. I was lying in the forest, and around me stood Germans, pointing their submachine guns at me. I had a terrible headache, my face was broken. The gunner had a gunshot wound in the shoulder, and his leg was broken. They took us to headquarters, interrogated us for a long time. They got nothing from us. They threw us in a cart and took us somewhere west. On the second night, feeling a bit better, I escaped with one gunner from our own regiment. We spent four days making our way through the forest. That’s where my knowledge of botany came in handy. Both in determining the path and in obtaining food. An old Lithuanian man, whom we accidentally stumbled upon, helped us a lot. He fed us, gave us some food for the road, and advised us on how to best cross the front line.
— When I appeared in the regiment six days later, the guys had already held a memorial for me and sent a death notice home. I had to resurrect from the dead.
Soon after the war ended, due to health reasons, Mikhail Denisovich had to part ways with aviation. In 1956, he returned to his native village and took a job as a sawmill worker in the Chui mobile mechanized column. Recently, the team held a ceremonial farewell for the veteran on his well-deserved retirement.
— They gave me a watch. With a hint: step in time with the times, — Mikhail Denisovich says with a warm smile.
D. PARCHUKOV