Mark Lazarevich Gallai

Mark Lazarevich Gallai

Mark Lasarewitsch Gallai ( Russian Марк Лазаревич Галлай * 3 ^{. Jul} / 16th April  1914 ^greg. In St. Petersburg ; † 14. July 1998 in Moscow ) was a Soviet test pilot , engineer and writer.

Life

Gallai studied at the Aviation Institute in Leningrad . He became interested in aircraft from an early age . He acquired a sailing and motorized flight license and completed a parachutist course . In 1936 he completed his studies as an aircraft engineer and in 1937 switched to the Central Aerohydrodynamic Institute (ZAGI) as a test pilot .

During the Second World War , Gallai fought from 1941 first as a pilot and then as a commander against the German invaders. On July 22, 1941, during the German air raids on Moscow , he succeeded in his first shooting down with a MiG-3 , a Do 17Z . Ultimately, at that time he could not be replaced as a test pilot on the LII and was therefore taken out of the fighting again in 1943. Graduated at the airfield of the LII in the Moscow district Kratowo Gallai four-engine bombers Pe-8 of 45. bombers division, with ASch-82 - radial engines were equipped test flights, but again also inserts. During one such battle flight, the Pe-8, in which he was co-pilot of M. W. Rodnych, was shot down by enemy flak during an attack on the Brijansk -II railway junction on the night of June 9, 1943 , and the crew had to parachute over jump off occupied area. After landing, Gallai and the bombardier G. N. Gordejew managed to break through to a partisan group operating in the Rognedino area , where both were flown out a few days later with a U-2 and returned to Kratowo on June 16.

Gallai was considered a brilliant pilot , he flew at least 124 different types of aircraft by the end of his active career in 1957. The aircraft types were very different, from helicopters ( Mil Mi-1 ) to heavy bombers such as Tupolev Tu-4 or Myasishchev M-4 and from gliders to a captured Me 163S missile interceptor . He had to give up his work as a test pilot at the LII in 1950 because he had been classified as unreliable in the course of a political "purge". The real reason, however, is to be sought in his Jewish origin, which displeased the anti-Semitic Josef Stalin . In his autobiographical book “On Invisible Barriers”, which appeared in the GDR, this is only dealt with very vaguely. From 1953 he then worked as a test pilot in the OKB Mjassistschew. At the end of his test pilot career, he was named Hero of the Soviet Union in 1957. In 1959, Gallei was one of the first ten Soviet pilots to be awarded the title of Honored Test Pilot of the USSR .

Gallai held the military rank of colonel . He published over 20 scientific papers on aerodynamics, control technology and flying in aircraft, as well as three books. He also wrote several articles for the GDR magazine Fliegerrevue and its forerunner Aero-Sport. He belonged to the group of specialists who conducted the preparatory training for the first manned space flight with the cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin .

On March 5, 1996, an asteroid was named after Gallai: (6719) Gallaj .

Works

• Over invisible barriers - memories of a test pilot . Military Publishing House of the GDR , Berlin 1978 (Russian: Через невидимые барьеры - Испытано в небе . Translated by Traute & Günther Stein).
• With a person on board . Brandenburgisches Verlagshaus, Berlin 1990, ISBN 3-327-00988-0 (Russian: С человеком на борту . Translated by Hans-Joachim Lambrecht).

Web links

• Literature by and about Mark Lasarewitsch Gallai in the catalog of the German National Library
• ГАЛЛАЙ Марк Лазаревич. In: testpilot.ru. Retrieved August 11, 2015 (Russian, biography). 

Individual evidence

1. ^ Ulrich Unger: Pe-8 - The Soviet long-range bomber. Brandenburgisches Verlagshaus, Berlin 1993, ISBN 3-89488-048-1 , pp. 130-132.
2. ^ Ulrich Unger on the death of Mark Lasarewitsch Gallai , Flieger Revue 10/1998, p. 73.