Dimitar Airanov

Dimitar Wassilew Airanow ( Bulgarian Димитър Василев Айрянов ; born September 5, 1893 in Stara Sagora ; † November 18, 1950 ) was a lieutenant general of the armed forces in Tsarist Bulgaria , who was, among other things, commander of the air forces during the Second World War between 1941 and 1944 .

Life

Dimitar Wassilew Airanow trained as an officer of the armed forces in Tsarist Bulgaria from 1910 to 1913 at the military school in Sofia and was transferred as an ensign to the 4th engineering department on November 22, 1912 and took part in the Balkan wars with it. There he was promoted to lieutenant on April 23, 1913 . After his promotion to first lieutenant on August 2, 1915, he was transferred back to the 4th engineering department and took part in the First World War with this until 1918 . During this time he was promoted to captain on September 18, 1917 . After various posts in the post-war period, he was a lecturer in vehicle technology at the Military Academy in Sofia between 1923 and 1926, and as such was promoted to major on June 5, 1924 . Between 1925 and 1929 he was head of the royal vehicle fleet and was promoted to lieutenant colonel on May 6, 1928 , and after further assignments took over the post of head of the army's vehicle department in 1932.

After his promotion to colonel on May 6, 1935, he succeeded Captain Christo Stoikow as commander of the 2nd engineering regiment , but was replaced shortly afterwards by Colonel Wassil Mirtschew . After he was briefly commander of the 1st engineer regiment, he also completed a course at the military academy between 1935 and 1936. Between 1935 and 1937 he was the first chairman of the officers' sports club OSK- AS 23 Sofia (Ofitserski sporten klub Atletik-Slava 23) , which in 1931 was the Bulgarian football champion . At the same time he acted as stage manager of the engineering troops in the general staff between 1935 and 1938 and then from 1938 to 1941 as commander of the 4th Infantry Division. As such, he was promoted to major general on October 3, 1940 .

During the Second World War , Airanov succeeded Major General Vasil Boidew as commander of the air force in July 1941 and held this position until the government of Prime Minister Konstantin Muraviev was overthrown by a coup on the Fatherland Front on September 9, 1944, following the invasion of the Red Army acted. He was also Undersecretary of State for the Air Force from July 1941 to September 9, 1944. Between 1942 and 1944 he was again chairman of the AS 23 Sofia sports club, which in 1941 also won the soccer cup . He was promoted to lieutenant general on May 6, 1944 . Then he was captured by the communists on September 11, 1944, along with several hundred leading figures . These days went down in Bulgarian history as the "Days of Red Terror".

On March 15, 1945, Dimitar Airanov, who was awarded the Officer's Cross of the Order of St. Alexander , was charged by the People's Court (Народен съд) as a war criminal and sentenced to life imprisonment. After the founding of the People's Republic of Bulgaria on May 16, 1946, the prison sentence was reduced to 15 years and then to 8 years. However, he disappeared from prison in 1950 without a trace and was finally executed on November 18, 1950.

Web links

• Entry in The Generals of World War II
• CV (Bulgarian)
• Charles D. Pettibone: The Organization and Order or Battle of Militaries in World War II: Volume VII: Germany's and Imperial Japan's Allies & Puppet States , Trafford Publishing, 2012, ISBN 1-466-90351-1 ( online version )

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Pettibone, p. 192 f.
2. ↑ Pettibone, p. 199
3. ↑ Pettibone, p. 192
4. ↑ Commanders of the Air Force (Bulgarian)
5. ^ Pettibone, pp. 186, 188