Air raids on Gorky

Air raids on Gorky

Part of: Second World War

Soviet infantry soldiers in Soviet Square before being sent to the front. (Nov. 1941)

date	November 4, 1941 to June 23, 1943
place	Gorky , Soviet Union
output	Red Army victory

Parties to the conflict
German Empire	Soviet Union
Commander
Theodor Rowehl Hans-Henning von Böst	Nikolai Markov Sidor Slyusarev Nikolai Alifanov
Troop strength
air force	Western Front, 784th Anti-Aircraft Artillery Regiment

The air raids on Gorky , today's Nizhny Novgorod , by the air force of the Wehrmacht took place from 1941 to 1943 during the Second World War in the German-Soviet War . The main aim of the bombing was to destroy the city's industrial center. The Gorkier Automobile Plant suffered the greatest damage. During the war, enemy bombers carried out 43 attacks, 26 of them at night. 33,934 incendiary bombs and 1,631 high-explosive bombs were dropped over the city. The air raids on Gorky were the most destructive of the German Air Force on the Soviet hinterland during the war.

background

The destruction of the Gorkier industry was planned from the start as part of the Barbarossa Company . The German Reich planned to take and occupy the city in the second half of September 1941. Gorky was one of the largest manufacturers and suppliers of weapons for the Red Army and the most important center of the entire Volga region . Both industry and administration of the Volga region were concentrated in it, with which a capture of the city would have meant control of the whole area. Initially, plans were made to destroy the armaments industry, making the Gorkier automobile plant, the Sokol aircraft factory , the Krasnoye Sormowo shipyard and the engineering company Dwigatel Revolyuzii targets of attack. After taking the city, the general district of Gorky was to be created as part of the Reichskommissariat Moskowien . The municipal machine factory was to be retained for the production of German military equipment.

On October 31, 1941, Stalin ordered the Gorkier Automobile Plant to increase production of T-60 tanks . In the same month Nikolai Markov was appointed commander of the Gorky Air Defense Brigade District. When he got there, he found that the military possibilities for city defense were not sufficient. Only about 50 anti-aircraft guns and very few searchlights were stationed. At the same time, many strategically important points were close together. The military leadership of Gorky knew that attacks by the German air force could occur at any moment. It was therefore necessary to strengthen the city's air defense and camouflage the factories, but this was no longer possible in time.

The attacks

November 1941

Map of Gorky with the bombing targets

Nitel factory after the air raid

On October 9, 1941, the first German reconnaissance aircraft , a Junkers Ju 88, appeared over Gorki. From then on, the planes flew at great heights over the city and circled over the automobile plant. First, the Air Force bombed the suburbs, primarily damaging grain silos and warehouses. This was followed by two major attacks on the city, in which Heinkel He 111 machines from Kampfgeschwader 100 were involved.

The first attack on the night of November 4th to 5th began at 4:30 p.m. According to air defense estimates, about 150 planes took part, eleven of which flew into the city. The planes approached individually and in groups of three to sixteen planes at an interval of 15 to 20 minutes. The bombing lasted all night and, in addition to bombs, leaflets were dropped. The Gorkier Automobile Plant, Nitel and the Dwigatel Revolyuzii Factory were attacked, 55 people died, 141 were wounded. According to German information, only 15 aircraft took part in this air strike. When Nitel's main building was hit, the director and part of the company's management died. During the night only strategically unimportant objects, residential areas and grain fields were fired at. There were fire and high-explosive bombs kg and weighing from 70 to 250 kg heavy bomb dropped mines weighing 871st In addition to dropping bombs, the German air force soldiers also shot into the streets with machine guns.

The second attack took place on the night of November 5th to 6th. An air raid alarm was triggered during this attack . At 11:34 p.m., the power lines of the power station in Balachna were damaged by an air raid, which temporarily cut off power to parts of the industry in Gorky. At 1:47 a.m., the attack on Gorky began, with the main targets being the automobile plant, the Krasnoye Sormowo factory, the Sokol aircraft factory, and residential buildings. The air defense made the bombing less precise. According to air defense data, 14 planes flew into the city. The attack killed five people in the area around the automobile plant and wounded a further 21.

These two attacks destroyed the main office of the automobile plant, the administrative building of Dwigatel Revolyuzii, many workshops, a power station and a residential area in the district. Panic broke out in several places, which was also due to the large number of refugees from the capital as a result of the battle for Moscow . Some of the residents began to leave the urban areas. The factories stopped production, only the production of the T-60 tanks in the automobile plant continued to ramp up. The destruction of anti-aircraft guns made it possible for German aircraft to bomb from a low altitude. A total of 127 people died, 176 were seriously injured and another 195 were slightly wounded, with data varying by source. A large number of the victims were refugees from Moscow who were housed in the Avtosavodski district (automobile plant). No German aircraft was shot down.

On November 8, 1941, the Gorky Brigade Air Defense District was reinforced by the 58th and 281st Thousand Aircraft Artillery Divisions, the 142nd Fighter Aviation Area and the 45th Flak Search Belt. On the same day at 3:20 a.m., a Junkers Ju 88 D reconnaissance aircraft flew over Gorky.

From November 12 to 18, 1941, the Germans launched a series of attacks to destroy the bridge over the Oka , but they did not succeed.

The 1942 attacks

On the night of February 3 to 4, 1942, a plane flying high and diving broke the anti-aircraft shield and dropped three bombs on the automobile plant. The bike workshop and the engine workshop were damaged. 17 workers died and 41 were wounded. In this attack, German agents entering Gorky were seen for the first time. They carried out target marking and launched red and white flares from the ground.

On the nights of February 5th, 7th and 24th three attempts were made to attack Gorky again. Due to the Soviet air defense, only one of twelve aircraft managed to penetrate into the airspace of the city. Five bombs were dropped on the automobile plant and the village of Stachanowski . In the second and third attacks no German breakthroughs were made. According to German data, on February 6, only one plane had made an attack.

A total of 20 people were killed and 48 people injured as a result of the February bombing. The damage to industrial facilities was only minor.

At the end of May, five reconnaissance flights were carried out over the city.

On May 30th and June 10th, the air defense estimates that around 20 planes carried out two unsuccessful attacks on Gorky, Bor and Dzerzhinsk . Barrier balloons and anti-aircraft guns from gunboats of the Volga flotilla were used to defend the most important buildings . According to German data, the raids were carried out on the night of May 30th.

From May 30th to June 1st and June 10th, a single plane dropped about 50 bombs from a great height on residential areas and repair base No. 97, where tanks made as part of the lend-lease action were assembled were.

The individual Junkers Ju 88 and Dornier Do 215 reconnaissance aircraft flew at different heights over the city from June 1st to 5th. On June 23, the Junkers Ju 88 attempted to hit the Sokol aircraft factory from a great height, but the bombs fell in Sormowski Park.

On the night of June 24-25 , a group of planes dropped bombs near the village of Strigino on the outskirts of Gorky. Another plane dropped two 500 kg bombs over the Sokol aircraft factory, but one of them did not explode .

On July 27, Pyotr Shavurin, the deputy squadron commander of the 722nd Fighter Regiment, intercepted a Junkers Ju 88 reconnaissance aircraft in his MiG-3 and destroyed it by ramming it in the air. The two planes went down near the villages of Koslowka , Sannitsa and Tumbotino . The MiG-3 was the only high-altitude fighter in the air defense arsenal at the time, but the armament of the aircraft was so weak that Shavurin had no choice but to sacrifice his own aircraft by ramming it. The wreckage of the German planes was collected and exhibited on the Soviet Square near the monument in honor of Valery Chkalov .

On the night of November 5-6, a group of German planes made an unsuccessful attempt to bomb the oil refinery. Nine high-explosive bombs and several incendiary bombs were dropped in the automobile plant. As a result, the boiler room was badly damaged, four workers died and the factory did not work at all for three days and was then able to produce only with limited capacity for another three weeks. Most of the incendiary bombs fell on the Gorkier machine works, and several light bombs exploded not far from the Moskovsky train station .

June 1943

Aerial view of Gorky with details of bomb attacks and the central target of the attack, the “ Kremlin ”.

After a seven-month period of rest, Gorky experienced a series of massive night raids by the German Air Force in June 1943, the main target of which was again the automobile plant. The air strikes were carried out in preparation for Operation Citadel (summer / autumn 1943), during which bombing raids were carried out on the industrial centers of the Volga region - Gorky, Yaroslavl and Saratov . It was one of the largest air raids on the Soviet hinterland during the entire war.

They were twin-engine bombers from Kampfgeschwader 27 and 55 , which rose from the airfields near Orel and Bryansk , bypassed the Moscow anti- aircraft zone and flew to Gorky from the direction of Dzerzhinsk, Bogorodsk and Arsamas . In order to remain undetected as possible, the attacks were carried out at night in the dark between midnight and 2 a.m. First, the bombers illuminated the targets with flares and then attacked anti-aircraft positions. The tactics changed every time. Highly explosive fragmentation and incendiary bombs of various calibers up to 2000 kg and incendiary liquids were dropped over Gorky. The results of each attack were recorded by reconnaissance aircraft that flew over the city at 5 p.m. the next day at an altitude of 7 km.

The bombing of the workshops of the automobile plant during an air raid on the night of June 4th to 5th, 1943

For the night of June 5th, false information was deliberately launched about the preparation of an air force attack on Moscow, only to then attack Gorky by surprise. According to air defense data, around 45 Heinkel He 111 , Junkers Ju 88 and Focke-Wulf Fw 200 aircraft took part. The planes flew from Vladimir via Kovrov and from Kulebaki via Arsamas to Gorky. The bombing began at 0:45 a.m., around 20 aircraft managed to break through to the city area. A total of 289 bombs were dropped, 260 of them on the automobile plant, which put the main workshop, the leaf spring workshop and the forge No. 3 out of service. Several houses and a hospital were destroyed. In the Avtosavodski district and at the factory, 70 people died and 210 were wounded. In attempts to get to the northern part of the city to Krasnoye Sormowo, the Sokol aircraft factory and the Gorkier machine factory, five German aircraft were lost. According to German data, a total of 168 Heinkel He 111 and Junkers Ju 88 took part in the attack, of which 149 aircraft attacked Gorky.

According to air defense estimates, 80 Heinkel He 111s took part in the second attack on the night of June 5th to 6th. The bombing lasted from 12:31 a.m. to 2:08 a.m. and was carried out by six groups from different heights and directions. Mainly the western and northern sides of the automobile plant were attacked. The main power line was destroyed and the water supply network was badly damaged. The assembly workshop, the main workshop, a division of neighboring industries, a rubber warehouse, a series of tow trucks, a locomotive warehouse, a chassis workshop and the diet canteen burned out completely. About 100 bombs were dropped on the factory. The residential area and the tuberculosis hospital were also badly hit. Around 60 to 80 houses were destroyed in the village of Monastyrka . According to German information, 128 aircraft were involved in the attack, two of which were lost. At the same time, some of the planes had been assigned to bomb Stalinogorsk .

On the night of June 7th, the largest attack took place, in which 157 Heinkel He 111 and Junkers Ju 88 or, according to German data, 154 aircraft, which also included the Stalinogorsk bombing, took part.

The main part of the bombs fell on the central and southwestern parts of the city (Automobile Plant , Sotzgorod , Mysa ). The wheel workshop of the automobile plant burned out completely, as well as the punching tool body, the pressing workshop and the mechanical workshop. The railway depot was damaged. A total of 170 bombs were dropped into the plant (?). 38 people died and 83 were injured. The micro-districts of Sotzgorod, Amerikanski and Monastyrka were badly damaged. The telephone exchange , the district council, the polyclinic , the association, the substation , the police station and the garage of the district committee of the CPSU were also damaged. Several houses on Molotowallee, today's Oktoberallee, were destroyed. In the Avtosavodski district, 73 people died and 149 others were injured. Soviet air defense shot down four German planes and two more were destroyed by Soviet fighter planes.

On June 7th, the planned complete destruction of the Gorkier automobile factory was announced on German radio. In the fourth attack from June 7th to 8th, around 50 to 60 aircraft took part. Three of them were destroyed on the plant. According to air defense data, nine high-explosive and seven incendiary bombs were dropped, which hit the foundry workshop and the residential area. Six planes were shot down. According to German data, 39 tons of bombs were dropped on Gorky.

After four attacks in the plant, a total of 993 air bombs had been dropped. According to the medical service, 233 people died during this time, 24 of them died later in hospitals from their injuries, where 465 others had to be treated.

In the fifth attack on June 11th, depending on the source, around 50 to 110 aircraft took part. Due to heavy flak fire, the German attacks that night were much more uncoordinated than usual. Bombs were dropped from heights between 4000 m and 5500 m villages Ljachowo , Monastyrka , shcherbinka and Mysa were attacked.

About 50 to 80 planes took part in the sixth attack from June 13-14. The eastern part of the automobile plant was attacked. According to German data, the planes flew in small groups from Ryazan via Murom and Pavlovo to Gorky. The bombing damaged the water intake station in the Leninsky district. 16 high-explosive and 20 heavy incendiary bombs were dropped on the Dwigatel Revolyuzii factory, which destroyed several buildings and part of the roof of the main machine-tool workshop. The shipyard was also attacked. The squadron commander Hans-Henning von Böst personally supervised the actions of German pilots by flying high over the city himself. During this attack, the machine factory, the Sokol aircraft factory and the Krasnoye Sormowo factory and bridges over the Oka and the Volga were not shot at.

The seventh and last air raid on Gorky took place on the night of June 22, exactly two years after the start of the German-Soviet war . Hence this attack was expected. According to the air defense, 75 aircraft took part in the attack, 40 of which made a breakthrough into the city area. On the territory of the automobile plant, 31 light bombs, 15 high explosive bombs , 80 combined and about 300 small incendiary bombs were dropped. This damaged the foundry, the reinforcement radiator building and the Novaya Sosna factory. There were also four fires in the residential area. According to German data, the entire lower town, the Vorobyov machine factory, the food concentrate plant and residential areas were attacked. Several power lines were damaged, but attempts to destroy the Okski Bridge (now Kanawinski Bridge) and the Borski Bridge failed. The squadron commander Hans-Henning von Böst took part again. 88 people died and 180 were injured during the bombing.

In the end, a total of 645 missions were carried out by German aircraft, in which 1631 high-explosive and 3390 incendiary bombs were dropped on the city. 254 civilians and 28 air defense soldiers died. Another 500 civilians and 27 soldiers were injured. In the factory, 52 buildings were destroyed and a large number of equipment was taken out of service. Strong fires arose because of the hot weather. The fires spread quickly through the wooden masking of the automobile plant. A significant part of the factory was destroyed or burned. Production could only continue to a small extent; as long as most of the machines were not running, all labor was used for repairs. The Luftwaffe could not continue its success after the destruction of the automobile plant. Subsequent raids attacked secondary industrial properties and residential areas that were less protected. Industrial companies in the northern part of the city saw almost no bombing.

Consequences of the air raids

The bombing of the country's largest industrial center sparked an immediate response from the Supreme Power of the Soviet Union. On June 5, Stalin personally drafted a State Defense Committee Resolution No. 3524 "On the Air Defense of Gorky". In order to discuss the reasons for the non-performance of the tasks, a commission was appointed, consisting of the head of the Ministry of Interior of the USSR Lavrenti Beria , the chief of the People's Commissariat for State Security Vsevolod Merkulov , the secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU (b) Alexander Shcherbakov , the chairman of the Moscow Soviet Vasily Pronin and the air defense commander of the country Mikhail Gromadin . After the commission's investigation, the regional air defense commander Alexei Osipov was demoted and the director of the automobile plant Alexander Lifschiz was dismissed. On June 8, 100 small and medium-caliber anti-aircraft guns, 250 large-caliber machine guns, 100 searchlights and 75 blocking balloons were allocated to strengthen the air defense of the Gorky industrial area. The restoration of the automobile plant began almost immediately on the initiative of the engineer Andrei Lipgart . Immediately after the first air raid, the factory's design archive was evacuated, gasoline was removed from the area, and camouflage systems dismantled that represented fire loads .

Semjon Ginsburg , People's Commissar for Construction, traveled to Gorky to start repairs immediately.

City air defense

Gorky air defense

In October 1941, Colonel Sidor Slyusarev arrived at Seima airfield to receive three new regiments with LaGG-3 fighter planes. He stayed here for a while and tried to calm the turbulent situation in the city.

After the November air raid on Gorky, the colonel received an order from Stalin to immediately leave Seima in order to defend the Gorky district, as the Commander-in-Chief put it. Slyusarev immediately set off for Gorky despite the snow and frost. Later he said:

“It was problematic to come to Gorky. Dark night, the street deserted and without traffic. I decided to walk into town, the distance from Sejma to Gorky was about 50 km. After an hour's walk towards Gorky, a car appeared: SIS-101 . I stood in the middle of the street and held up my hand, but the driver drove past me to my right and accelerated towards town. I pulled the gun and shot in the air. The passengers of this machine were frightened and stopped. There were some leading figures from Moscow. After a tough conversation with you, I got into the car and arrived in Kanawino at sunrise, where the city council was at that time. "

- Sidor Slyusarev

First, Colonel Slyusarev ordered the creation of day and night patrols in Gorky. Immediately after this decision he went back to Seima, where eight air regiments were stationed. He ordered them to distribute themselves to the airfields of the sub-area.

In December the organizing committee decided to create several large bomb protection areas in the upper town. On February 15, 1942 it was decided to create five such institutions:

1. The Nizhny Novgorod Kremlin - Ivanovsky Descent under the Mining Garden,
2. The Zhdanov Dam (today Oberwolga Dam) - in front of the Gorkier Industrial Institute,
3. Potschtowy descent on Mayakovsky Street (now Roshdestvenskaya Street),
4. Kazansky Railway Station,
5. The gorge at the end of Vorobyov Street (now Malaya Pokrovskaya Street).

They were built by 2,300 people. The citizens of the whole city dug trenches and built defenses after the German offensive in Moscow . Later, however, they were not needed, because on December 5, 1941, the Red Army launched a counter-offensive .

Air defense operations

The air defense in the city had 433 medium-caliber pistols and 82 small-caliber pistols, 13 SUN-2 pistol radar pistols, two RUS-2 pegmatite radars , 231 searchlights, 107 blocking balloons and 47 fighter jets located at Strigino , Pravdinsk and Dzerzhinsk airports .

Despite the considerable number of air defense forces and their equipment, which should prevent the bombing, this did not succeed. Because the bombing did not take place for a long time and the Red Army's offensive was successful, vigilance had become less. There were many shortcomings in the organization of the defense. Avtosavodsky district was defended by the 784th Anti-Aircraft Artillery Regiment, which consisted mainly of women who had recently joined the army. One of the pegmatite radars had a large "dead zone" in the target area because of the high banks of the Oka. Pistol station departments were also unprepared, anti-aircraft artillery was fired without a precise target designation, and working with searchlights was not sufficiently practiced. Air defense squads in the building basements were destroyed, and wire telephone communications were often interrupted by bomb explosions. The pilots of the Soviet planes had no nightly combat experience and they tried to launch ram bombers with full ammunition. Most of the air defense forces also defended the northern industrial area of ​​the city, where the Sokol aircraft factory, the Krasnoye Sormovo factory, and the Gorkier machine factory were located, which were of great strategic importance.

After the first bombing raids, urgently needed measures were implemented, namely to bring additional anti-aircraft cannons and ammunition to the Avtosavodski district. New communication and control systems improved the barrage scheme. Two lines of defense were created on the attackers' approach path. At a distance of two to three and six to seven kilometers from the automobile plant, machine guns were mounted on the roofs of the workshops for shooting low-flying aircraft. The defense against the next air raids was more organized. A total of 14 aircraft were shot down.

Camouflage of Gorky

In addition to improving the city's anti-aircraft defenses, the Soviet Union government decided to build a number of "fake objects" in Gorky. The Nizhny Novgorod Archives contain the resolution of the Defense Committee of the Gorky City "on the construction of false objects in Gorky's industrial enterprises" of August 1, 1942.

As a result, in the village of Mordwinzewo , near Fedjakowo , a gigantic mock plant made of glass and plywood was built for the automobile plant. At night the false factory was lit and switched off after warning of attack, which actually led to the German planes shooting at the bogus facility.

The Dwigatel Revoljuzii factory was also camouflaged by painting the streets and the factory itself, which continued to produce despite severe destruction, with buildings following the Moscow model, so that from the air it looked as if it were just an offshoot of the strategically unimportant Molitowka village.

Another camouflage option was used on the Oka Bridge. For this purpose boats drove on the water, which lay next to the bridge the whole time. When the air alarm was announced, they emitted fog that made it impossible to see the bridge from the air.

Repair of the automobile plant

Repair work began during the bombing and continued at an increasing pace. Construction and assembly brigades from Moscow, the Urals , Siberia and Central Asia were involved. The total number of employees reached about 35,000. On June 7th, the out-of-office newspaper Pravda began working in the facility to provide propaganda support . First the wheel workshop was repaired again, which took four months. The official date for the re-inauguration of the Gorkier Automobile Plant was October 28, 1943. On that day, a report signed by about 27,000 workers was sent to Joseph Stalin.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Игорь Александрович Кирьянов: История города Горького . Волго-Вятское книжное изд-во, 1971 ( google.ru [accessed September 27, 2017]).
2. ↑ Горьковчане в годы Великой Отечественной войны. Retrieved September 27, 2017 (Russian). 
3. ↑ Редактор портала: Бомбардировки Горького . Волга . May 8, 2013. Retrieved January 26, 2015.
4. ↑ Как нас бомбили | Централизованная библиотечная система Автозаводского района г. Нижнего Новгорода. Retrieved September 27, 2017 . 
5. ↑ ^{a b} Баженов Николай + Дегтев Дмитрий + Зефиров Михаил: Свастика над Волгой. Люфтваффе против сталинской ПВО - Баженов Николай + Дегтев Дмитрий + Зефиров Михаил. Retrieved September 27, 2017 . 
6. ↑ «Мы у станков стоим, как у орудий». Часть 1 | Централизованная библиотечная система Автозаводского района г. Нижнего Новгорода. Retrieved September 27, 2017 . 
7. ↑ «Война и нас покрыла своим крылом» | Централизованная библиотечная система Автозаводского района г. Нижнего Новгорода. Retrieved September 27, 2017 . 
8. ↑ "Сто дней и ночей ..." Retrieved September 27, 2017 (Russian). 
9. ↑ Муляж ГАЗа для отвлечения бомбардировщиков . Энциклопедия Нижнего Новгорода. Retrieved February 20, 2017.