Nikolai Petrovich Kamanin
Nikolai Kamanin ( Russian Николай Петрович Каманин * 5 . Jul / 18th October 1909 greg. In Melenki , Russia ; † 11. March 1982 in Moscow , Soviet Union ) was a Soviet pilot and had last the rank of colonel general of the reserve. From 1960 to 1971 he headed the Soviet cosmonaut training .
Life
Nikolai Kamanin was the son of a shoemaker and a textile worker and the sixth of a total of eleven children. He joined the army in 1927 and completed the theoretical flying school in Leningrad from 1927 to 1928 and then the flying school in Borisoglebsk. He achieved national fame in 1934 when he was one of the pilots who were able to rescue the crew of the cargo ship Cheliuskin from an ice floe in a dramatic rescue operation . Because of this achievement, the Hero of the Soviet Union award was introduced. Kamanin was one of the first to receive this honorary title on April 20, 1934.
He then went to the Air Force Academy , which he successfully completed in 1938. He was then transferred to the Far East. Before the Second World War he was the commander of a light bomber brigade in the Kharkov military district. Kamanin took part in the winter war against Finland in 1939/40 , after which he took up his service as commander of the air forces of the Central Asian Military District. In the war he was in July 1942 commander of a battle Air Corps within the Kalinin Front . From February 1943 he commanded the 8th Mixed Air Corps within the 2nd Ukrainian Front , and later the 5th Attack Air Corps.
1953 to 1958 he held leading positions in the "civilian air fleet" and the paramilitary DOSAAF . In the meantime he graduated from the General Staff Academy in 1956. From 1960 to 1971 he headed the Soviet cosmonaut group and coordinated the training for the cosmonauts who were scheduled for the moon flight. Before that he was deputy chief of staff of the air force and commanding an air army. In 1967 he was appointed Colonel General of the Aviators.
Kamanin resigned as head of cosmonaut training in August 1971, and was succeeded by Vladimir Shatalov .
In total, he received three orders of Lenin and other prestigious awards such as the Order of the Red Star .
Nikolai Kamanin's son, Arkadi Nikolai Kamanin, passed the pilot's examination in 1943 at the age of 14 and flew as a liaison pilot with a Po-2 during the Second World War . He survived the war but died on April 15, 1947 after a serious illness.
Kamanin is the author of several books, including Flieger und Kosmonauten , which has been translated into German . His diaries are extremely important historical sources on Soviet space travel from its inception to Kamanin's resignation in 1971.
literature
- Wilfried Copenhagen : Lexicon Soviet Aviation. Elbe – Dnjepr, Klitzschen 2007, ISBN 978-3-933395-90-0 .
Web links
- Summary of Kamanin's diaries in the Encyclopedia Astronautica (English)
- Literature by and about Nikolai Petrowitsch Kamanin in the catalog of the German National Library
- Article Nikolai Petrovich Kamanin in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia (BSE) , 3rd edition 1969–1978 (Russian)
- Biography , Geroi strany (Russian)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Heinz Machatschek: Personalities of Soviet aviation (2): Nikolai Kamanin, Michail Snergijow, Ilja Masuruk in Flieger-Jahrbuch 84, Transpress, Berlin, 1984, pp. 102-104
- ↑ Wladimir B. Kazakow: The young pilot , Fliegerkalender der DDR, P. 16-22
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Kamanin, Nikolai Petrovich |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Каманин, Николай Петрович (Russian) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | soviet pilot |
| DATE OF BIRTH | October 18, 1909 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Melenki |
| DATE OF DEATH | March 11, 1982 |
| Place of death | Moscow |