Ivan Vasilyevich Smirnov

Ivan Smirnov (1929)

Iwan Wassiljewitsch Smirnow ( Russian Иван Васильевич Смирнов , scientific transliteration Ivan Vasil'evič Smirnov; born January 30, 1895 in Vladimir , † October 28, 1956 in Palma ) was a successful fighter pilot of the Imperial Russian Air Force in the First World War .

Life

Smirnow was born the fourth child of a peasant family. At the outbreak of war he joined the Omsk 96th Infantry Regiment and reached the front for the first time near Łódź . According to personal reports, he experienced there how his unit ran as "cannon fodder" against the German positions and of 90 men in his unit only 19 survived the mission. Smirnov, meanwhile promoted to corporal , received the George Cross for his bravery .

After being seriously wounded, Smirnov refused to have his shattered right foot amputated and had to spend the period from December 4, 1914 to April 4, 1915 in the hospital in Petrograd , where he could watch the military flight school from the window. Through the mediation of a nurse, a relative of Grand Duke Mikhail Alexandrowitsch Romanov , he was briefly accepted as a flight student in Gatchino in August 1915. From October 1915 to August 1916, Smirnov was trained at the military flight school in Moscow.

Then he became the Fliegerstaffel ("Eskadra") of the XIX. Corps transferred to Lutzk , which was led by the famous aviator Alexander Alexandrowitsch Kazakow . Smirnoff initially took over a reconnaissance aircraft. After just four days, he managed to curve a German aviation out of a formation of three aircraft and shoot it down. Smirnow was then promoted from squadron leader to sergeant and received a French combat single-seater Nieuport 11 C1. With this aircraft he won another victory against a German two-seater.

When the squadron was converted to newer French aircraft of the type Morane-Saulnier N with synchronized frontal MG and 110 hp engine, the fighter pilots marked their aircraft with a black and white skull and chose the slogan "Death or Honor" as the motto of their unit.

Shortly before the February Revolution in 1917 , the squadron was relocated from Galicia to Iași on the Romanian front , where they had to move into a snow-covered airfield without an airplane shed.

Smirnow, meanwhile promoted to ensign , scored more kills, including a. when the 19 squadron succeeded in shooting down six machines from a formation of 20 German bombers.

In the course of the year the squadron received more powerful fighters of the Zyps SPAD S.VII C.1 with 140 HP engine. Smirnov's twelfth and last victory in the air took place on November 10, 1917, after which the revolutionary collapse of Russia led to the withdrawal. The plane had received numerous high bravery awards, including the George Cross the 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th grade, the St. Vladimir Order with swords, the swords to the George Cross, the French Croix de guerre , the Serbian White Eagle -Orders and others.

Smirnov settled in Vladivostok and made a detour to England, where he joined the Royal Air Force , was no longer in the front, but fought on the side of the British expeditionary force in Russia against the Bolsheviks .

After the war he served the White Government in exile for a while and then worked as an aviator for the Belgian airline SNETA and later for the Dutch KLM .

In 1923, Smirnow caused an international stir when he had to make an emergency landing on October 19, 1923 during a flight for KLM from Amsterdam to London with a Fokker F.III aircraft on a Goodwin Sands sandbank , which was temporarily above water due to the ebb. He and his passengers had to wait several hours while they were sitting on the wings of the machine when the tide rose until passing ships discovered and rescued them.

During the Second World War he flew as a captain in the Dutch Air Force , was seriously wounded by three Japanese Zero fighters in his transport aircraft on March 2, 1942 , and was missing for five days after a crash landing. After his recovery he flew in the 317th Troop Carrier Group of the USAAF at the American headquarters in Brisbane / Australia .

After the war he worked as a flight instructor at KLM.´

Fonts

• Iwan Smirnoff: een leven vol avontuur , 1959.

literature

• Visser, Johan GH: Iwan Wasilievich Smirnoff "Number Two Star Ace of the Tsar", from: Over The Front, League of WWI Aero Historians, Vol. 3, No. 2, Dallas 1988

Web links

Commons : Iwan Wassiljewitsch Smirnow  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files