Mikhail Devyatayev

Born in 1917 at Torbeyevo, Mikhail was the thirteenth child born to the family of a Mordovian peasant. In 1938 he graduated from a School of River Navigation (Речной Техникум) and worked as the captain of a small ship on the Volga. That same year he was conscripted into the Red Army and began education at a Chkalov Flying School, graduating in 1940.[1]

Devyataev was an early entrant of World War II, destroying his first Ju 87 on 24 June 1941 just two days after Germany attacked the Soviet Union. Soon he was awarded the Order of the Red Banner. On 23 September he was seriously wounded (he was hit in his left leg). After a long stay in the hospital he was assigned to Po-2 unit and then to medical aviation. He resumed his duties as a fighter pilot after his meeting with the famous Soviet ace Aleksandr Pokryshkin in May 1944. Commander of an echelon with the 104th Guards Fighter Aviation Regiment, Senior Lieutenant Devyatayev destroyed nine enemy planes.

On 13 July 1944 Devyataev was downed near Lviv over German-held territory and became a prisoner of war, held in the Łódź concentration camp. He made an attempt to escape on 13 August but was caught and transferred to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. He soon realised that his situation was perilous because as a Soviet pilot, he could expect extreme brutality; therefore, he managed to exchange identities with a dead Soviet infantryman.

With his new identity, Devyataev was later transferred to a camp in Usedom to be a part of a forced labor crew working for the German missile program on the island of Peenemünde. Under hellish conditions, the prisoners were forced to repair runways and clear unexploded bombs by hand. Security was rigidly enforced with vicious guards and dogs, and there was little chance of escape. Even so, by February 1945, Devyataev concluded that, however remote, the chance of escape was preferable to certain death as a prisoner.

Devyataev managed to convince three other prisoners (Sokolov, Krivonogov and Nemchenko) that he could fly them to freedom. They decided to run away in the dinnertime, when most of the guards were in the dining room. Sokolov and Nemchenko were able to create a work gang from Soviet citizens only, as they didn't know foreign languages to communicate freely and coordinate their plans with other inmates.

At noon on 8 February 1945, as the ten Soviet POWs, including Devyataev, were at work on the runway, one of the work gang, Ivan Krivonogov, picked up a crowbar and killed their guard. Another prisoner, Peter Kutergin, quickly stripped off the guard's uniform and slipped it on. The work gang, led by the "guard", managed to unobtrusively take over the camp commandant's He 111 H22 bomber and fly from the island. Devyataev piloted the aircraft.

The Germans tried to intercept the bomber unsuccessfully. The aircraft was damaged by Soviet air defences but managed to land in Soviet-held territory. The escapees provided important information about the German missile program, especially about the V-1 and V-2.

The NKVD did not believe Devyataev's story, arguing that it was impossible for the prisoners to take over an airplane without cooperation from the Germans. After a short time in hospital in late March 1945 seven of the escapees were sent to serve in a penal military unit, of the escapees, five died in action over the following months, while three officers including Devyataev spent time in prison during prolonged investigation. [2]

Devyataev was discharged from the army in November 1945. However, his classification remained that of a "criminal" and so he was unable to find a job for a long while. Eventually, though, Devyataev found work as a manual laborer in Kazan. Soviet authorities cleared Devyataev only in 1957, after the head of the Soviet space program Sergey Korolyov personally presented his case, arguing that the information provided by Devyataev and the other escapees had been critical for the Soviet space program. On 15 August 1957, Devyataev became a Hero of the Soviet Union, and a subject of multiple books and newspaper articles. He continued to live in Kazan, working as a captain of first hydrofoil passenger ships on the Volga. In 1972, he published his memoirs.

Soviet Union

	"Gold Star" Hero of the Soviet Union (15 August, 1957)
	Order of Lenin (15 August, 1957)
	Order of the Red Banner, 2 times (1 February, 1944), (? ?,????)
	Order of the Patriotic War, 1st Class (11 March, 1985)
	Order of the Patriotic War, 2nd Class (7 May, 1944)
	Medal "For the Defence of Moscow"
	Medal "For the Victory over Germany in the Great Patriotic War 1941–1945"
	Jubilee Medal "Twenty Years of Victory in the Great Patriotic War 1941-1945"
	Jubilee Medal "Thirty Years of Victory in the Great Patriotic War 1941-1945"
	Jubilee Medal "Forty Years of Victory in the Great Patriotic War 1941-1945"
	Jubilee Medal "50 Years of Victory in the Great Patriotic War 1941-1945"
	Jubilee Medal "30 Years of the Soviet Army and Navy"
	Jubilee Medal "40 Years of the Armed Forces of the USSR"
	Jubilee Medal "50 Years of the Armed Forces of the USSR"
	Jubilee Medal "60 Years of the Armed Forces of the USSR"
	Jubilee Medal "70 Years of the Armed Forces of the USSR"
	Medal "Veteran of Labour"
	Jubilee Medal "In Commemoration of the 100th Anniversary of the Birth of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin"

Foreign Awards

	Patriotic Order of Merit, 2nd Class

Devyataev became an honoured citizen of the Republic of Mordovia, and of the city of Kazan, in the Russian Federation, along with the cities of Wolgast and Zinnowitz in Germany.

He died at Kazan in 2002, aged 85, and is buried in the Arskoe Cemetery in Kazan near the World War II Memorial. There is a museum of Devyataev in his native Torbeyevo (opened 8 May 1975) and monuments in Usedom and Kazan.

• Bob Hoover
• Sergey Vandyshev