Nikolai Pavlovich Blagin

Nikolai Pavlovich Blagin ( Russian Николай Павлович Благин ; born August 29, ^jul. / 10. September  1899 ^greg. In Khabarovsk ; † 18th May 1935 in Moscow ) was a Soviet test pilot . He gained notoriety through the crash of the large airplane "Maxim Gorki" which he caused in 1935. In this serious accident at the time, including Blagin, 50 people were killed. Other sources give his date and place of birth as October 7, 1899 in Vitebsk .

Life

Nikolai Blagin was the son of a topographer in the tsarist army with the rank of first lieutenant. In 1917 he graduated from secondary school and then completed several aviation courses at the flying school in Moscow. A year later he joined the Communist Party and volunteered for the Army , where he in November 1918 in a with Ilya Muromets - bombers did equipped Division service, short but recorded on his studies at the flying school again. After graduation, he returned to his unit, but was shortly sent to the Moscow Higher Aviation School, which he finished as a fighter pilot in 1923 . He then led an observer class at a military school .

When Blagin was expelled from the party in 1922 because of his origins and "lack of political aptitude", this meant serious difficulties for him in his professional career.

In 1924, Blagin was the first to operate a night flight in the Soviet Union. In May 1925 he was appointed chain commander in Fighter Squadron 1. At the beginning of 1930 he was transferred to the Fliegerstaffel for special use, in October of the same year he was appointed instructor at the NII WWS (the Scientific Research Institute of the Air Force). In 1931 he switched to ZAGI as a test pilot , where he was mainly responsible for testing Tupolev designs. For example, he carried out the tests with the heavy fighter DIP armed with large-caliber cannons and, in 1933, carried out missile launches with a TB-1 for the first time in the Soviet Union .

On May 18, 1935, Blagin rammed the eight-engine "Maxim Gorki", at that time the world's largest land plane, in an escort aircraft of the type I-5 during a flight demonstration over Moscow. He had tried to make a loop around the aircraft , but misjudged the exit and crashed into the right wing, which caused both aircraft to crash. In the official account, there was talk of an unauthorized act by Blagin, who, despite the prohibition, suddenly started to fly artificial figures during the performance. However, it can be assumed that Blagin, who was regarded as a disciplined and experienced pilot, received instructions from the highest authority for what from an aviation point of view was irresponsible to act. It was probably intended to demonstrate the efficiency of Soviet aviation technology to the foreign observers present. After the catastrophe, those responsible put all blame on the “pilot known as a show-off”.

Blagin were buried with the other victims of the crash in the Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow.

literature

• Juri Albert, Ulrich Unger: Catastrophe over Moscow - The end of "Maxim Gorki" in Flieger Revue Extra No. 31, Möller, 2010, ISSN  0941-889X