Posted on 04/24/2005 7:29:30 PM PDT by struwwelpeter
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Forty years ago the North Osetian publishing house printed a book by Aleksander Lapis and Valery Shanaev: Singed Wings. It was dedicated to the brave and patriotic men and women who defended the North Caucasus during the most difficult years of the war. The main hero was a man of astonishing destiny, aviator Vladimir Zangiev, who unfortunately left this life a few years ago, and did not make it to this 60th anniversary of the great victory.
Life served up harsh trials for Zangiev, events that one could not even imagine in their worst nightmare: fierce aerial combat in the skies of North Osetia, his aircraft shot down, later fascist captivity, holding camps, the cold and gloomy buildings of Concentration Camp 301, doing battle with the partisans against the agressors.
Yet, nonetheless, Vladimir Zangiev returned to his air regiment. He completed another 10 sorties in his Ilyushin 'flying tank', and his exploits were rewarded with many medals.
The history of the creation of Singed Wings is an uncommon one. On the eve of Victory Day, in an army newpaper published for Group of Soviet Forces in Germany appeared a small article by military aviator Colonel M. Khalabaev. During the dark days of 1942 he had fought in the skies over North Osetia, bombing General Kleist's tank columns that were attacking the republic's capital, the oil regions of Baku and Grozny, the Georgian military highway. In the newspaper he told of the combat exploits of ground attack pilot Vladimir Soslanovich Zangiev, a man who became a living legend. Colonel M. Khalabaev asked the journalists to find his regimental mate and write about his combat exploits.
This newspaper article somehow found its way to North Osetia, to former director of the republic's publishing house, D.V. Zangiev.
In those days I worked as a correspondent for Soviet government telegraph and radio in North Osetia, Kabardino-Balkaria, and Chechnya-Ingushetia. I prepared a few descriptions and biographies about the defenders of the Caucasus For radio station 'Mayak', stories about natives of the region.
The military theme was very dear one for me. My father, F.D. Shanaev, was in those days deputy chief of staff of a fighter regiment in the 16th air army, which was commanded by Hero of the Soviet Union S.I. Rudenko, who subsequently became an air marshal of the Soviet Union. My older brother Vasily graduated from Batai military flight school, and another brother - Boris - mastered aerobatics with the Tambov aero club at the military flight school named for Marina Raskova. That's why, perahps, D.V. Zangiev phoned me and asked if I knew of the exploits of Pilot Vladimir S. Zangiev. Unfortunately, very few people in this republic knew of his unusual fate at the front. A humble man with a lot of ribbons on his jacket walked the streets of our city, a man for whom his regiment erected a monument.
Soon we met with Vladimir Zangiev. It's interesting that my fellow author A. Lapis once lived in a house on Nikitin street, where Vladimir Zangiev's office was at the time. Thus was our 'artistic duet' born. I won't say that V.S. Zangiev was a closed person, but when we met, he wanted to talk about his fellow pilots more than about his own exploits in the skies of North Osetia.
About a year went by as we collected the necessary materials (since Singed Wings is a documentary). The authors had to meet with former pilots of the ground attack regiment, look at archive material, carry out correspondence with with military leaders, and former partisans who had fought the Nazis in the occupied territories of the Ukraine, Belarus, Moldavia. Aid in creating the narrative came from the deceased scientist and writer Deblet Gireev and his publisher.
The book was well received by readers, and was lively discussed at reader's conferences, military units, schools, universities, and libraries.
In 1991 the 'Ir' publishing house printed the second edition of Singed Wings. But this had a forward by Hero of the Soviet Union, Air Force Major General Ibrahim Magometovich Dzusov. In particular, he noted: "Remember Pilot Vladimir Zangiev's example. In what would seem to be hopeless situations, he never lost his cheerful spirit and belief in our victory, and like a true patriot he did all he could to bring it closer." Hero of the Soviet Union Supreme Air Marshal K.A.Vershinin, who commanded the 4th Air Army in the North Caucasus in 1942, also spoke warmly of the book Singed Wings.
Let us now look at documents which never made it into the book and, as they say, 'remained in the background'. In those days, alas, a few party officials did not wish that readers and the general public knew the bitter truth about this man. I will not name the party functionary who used to work in state security. He openly hindered the book's creation, and negatively related to it when war veterans from our republic wrote to the Central Committee and Council of Ministers, petitioning them to award V.S. Zangiev the medal Hero of the Soviet Union. God will judge him! The book saw the light of day, anyhow, and Vladimir Soslanovich Zangiev rightfully became a hero of the people.
Autumn of 1942 came to foothills of the Caucasus in a rare form - cold, rainy days with fog that rarely cleared. A fine screen of drizzling rain hung in the air. The Nazi troops stubbornly attacked the capital of North Osetia, since from here there was an almost open road to the oil and mineral resources of the Causasus.
At dawn on November 5th, Pilot Vladimir Zangiev of the 7th Attack Regiment, based in a temporary field aerodrome below Grozny, took off on a combat mission. A mission which for Zangiev and his wingman Pismichenko had become routine: the 4th Air Army was short of fighters, so ground attack aircraft were used to defend bombers.
Shturmoviki made approach after approach over the target. Then, black and white tracks - tracers from enemy anti-aircraft guns - cut the sky. Zangiev suddenly noticed six enemy fighters, and an air battle ensued. Two 'Messers' were brought down by Vladimir.
A track of machine gun fire appeared on the Ilyushin's fuselage. Zangiev turned and saw broken bulletproof glass. 'Time to go... faster...' he thought.
Jerking the control stick toward himself, the pilot caught a 'Messer' in his sights, and pressed the trigger. The machine guns and cannon were silent; the ammo was spent. The cabin smelled of smoke, and a thick brown tail stretched behind the aircraft. Caustic fumes entered the cabin. At any moment the fuel tank could explode. The attack aircraft, losing altitude, rushed swiftly downward.
With difficulty, Vladimir opened the canopy and parachuted from the burning machine. After touching down on earth, he felt a sharp pain in his leg and lost consciousness.
The unequal aerial battle was watched by both friends and enemies. Inhabitants of the village of Khataldon, above which the battle was carried out, thought of the pilot's fate with alarm. The brush around the village in which Zangiev had fallen was swarming with fascist motorcyclists.
Six year old boy Boris Basaev watched and remembered everything. Nowadays he is dean of the Mountain Agricultural university. Boris Beshtauovich recalls: "My grandmother on my father's side, Anush, and my mother, Farus, and other residents of Kataldon were very worried that the pilot would fall into the hands of the fascists. In the evening motorcyclists brought him into our house, unconsious, and threw him on the dirt floor. The pilot was burned all over: face, hands, coveralls, field shirt... All around stood guards with automatics. Grandma Anush was beside herself: how to go up to the half-alive pilot and find out who he was? How to help him?
"Only at night could grandmother and mother get to the wounded man. They got him to drink, and greased his burned face with sour milk. Later they found out that he was a fellow Osetian.
"The pilot was in our house for a few days. Officers and translators came to him. The interrogation began, but Zangiev was silent, refusing to answer the questions: where was his aerodrome, what was his regiment? They beat him to unconsciousness. This was repeated every day.
"When grandma asked Vladimir Zangiev to lay still, since he was in critical condition, the pilot answered: 'It's nothing, Anush, it's just my wings got singed. I can still fly!'"
One morning the German soldiers forced the residents of Khataldon to the school building. One of them dragged the pilot out onto the porch, and with a quick motion threw a noose about the prisoner's burnt hands and tightened the knot. The Nazi tied the other end of the rope to a saddle. The rider spurred the horse. It lunged forward and dragged the wounded man along the ground. On the outskirts of the village, on the side of the road, a pit had been dug. The fascists pushed the disfigured body in and hurriedly covered it with frozen clumps of dirt.
A few days later, when the Soviet forces liberated Khataldon, pilots of the 7th Air Attack Regiment put up marker - a small obelisk with a star. A few years after the end of the war, comrades came to the village and attached to the obelisk a new plate, on which was engraved: 'The Hero Lives! Let this monument recall his exploits!'.
Yes, Vladimir Zangiev miraculously survived. On that November day in 1942 when the fascists had buried the pilot alive, a group of Red Army prisoners had been driven through the village of Khataldon. They noticed that a dirt mound by the road was moving. The prisoners dug up the pilot, dragged him from the pit, and took turns carrying him to Digora.
With difficulty, Vladimir Zangiev returned to life. A damp, clay quarry on the outskirts of Digora, later the Prokhladenskiy transit camp and a long road in an icy railway wagon to the Ukraine, and finally, 'Gross Lazaret Slavuta', Concentration Camp 301. This was a terrible place, where the Nazi doctors tested monstrous methods of mass destruction on the wounded prisoners.
While collecting materials for the book Singed Wings, I was able to visit the former 'Gross Lazaret'. It is located about two kilometers from the Ukrainian hamlet of Slavuta. The Nazis used an old military barracks for the concentration camp. In ten three-storey stone blockhouses, each enclosed in several layers of of barbed wire, thousands of wounded and sick prisoners of war were kept. Along the outer wall, at 20-meter intervals, were guard towers with searchlights and machineguns.
At night, when the gloomy camp buildings had quieted down, Zangiev, relying on hand-made crutches, was learning to walk. He tried to escape from the concentration camp three times, but without success. Only after a fourth attempt, together with a group of prisoners, was he able to pull himself free from that hell.
Residents of the Ukrainian village helped Zangiev make contact with woodland partisans. Thus did the attack pilot, participant in air combat for the North Caucasus, become a partisan in the 1st Moldavian guerilla unit, named in honor of Voroshilov and active in the regions of Shepetovka, Rovno, Slavuta, Kamenets-Podolska. Upon once again finding himself able to fight with a weapon in his hands, Zangiev would take the lead in the most critical combat operations.
In the partisan unit, Zangiev found real friends, but he longed for his air regiment, and impatiently waited for the moment when he could again sit at the stick and climb into the sky. Soon Vladimir's group was crossed by the front. There it was, the long awaited Big World! He wanted to get back to his unit and sit in an aircraft right away, but the doctors sent him to a hospital. Later, he had to spend several months of interrogation from investigators of a special unit of SMERSH, telling how he, a pilot, was captured, and how he ended up in a partisan unit. Here his friends from the front came to his aid. They sent the investigators a letter, though headquarters of the air force, not just confirming the combat achievements of the pilot, but recommending Vladimir Soslanovich Zangiev for the highest award, Hero of the Soviet Union. Unfortunately, this document has been lost somewhere in the offices of military bureaucrats, and the award did not find the hero. Zangiev, however, was soon able to sit at the controls of a frontline aircraft and complete ten more combat sorties, storming Berlin from above. His exploits were noted with many awards.
For ten years after the war, V.S. Zangiev continued to fly, mastering new types of combat aircraft. He transmitted his rich experience to young pilots at the Aktyubinsky flight school. His old wounds, however, began to bother him more and more.
Major Zangiev returned to his native North Osetia. For a few years he was chairman of the republic's DOSAAF (military aid society). Vladimir Soslanovich Zangiev donated a lot of time and energy to the development of this defense organization, an in particular to the republic's aero club. Later he worked as director of a memorial museum dedicated to General of the Army I.A. Pliev, two times Hero of the Soviet Union and Hero of the Mongolian People's Republic. He did a lot for the renovation of the military training center for youths.
Vladimir Soslanovich did not see 73, but memory of this courageous pilot lives on in our republic. A song has been written about him. On his house on Dzhanaev Street stands a plaque, and in Vladikavkaz there is a Zangiev Street. Vladimir Soslanovich was an honorary citizen of the North Osetian capital.
Zangiev's exploits are recalled in Air Marshal Grechko's book Battle for the Caucasus, in the memoirs of Army General Tyulenev Through Three Wars, in the recollections of Chief Air Marshal K. Vershinin The Fourth Air Army, and in a collection of documents titled Soviet Air Forces in the Great Patriotic War 1941-1945.
I would like to end this story with the words of V.S. Zangiev's daughter, Valentina Vladimirovna Zangieva-Kanukova, decorated physician of the Russian Federation:
"My father, like millions of others who served in the war, was a true patriot and internationalist. Fate brought down upon him many incredible trials, but it's not without reason that many believe that man creates his own fate, and he made it through all of these tribulations with honor. His army friends loved and respected him, as did all who worked with him through the years.
"I was always struck by his thirst for knowledge, for everything new, and historical literature. Being already an elderly man, he completed college, and was always up to date on politics.
"He often met with young people in schools, universities, at workplaces and military units. Father said that he compared his youth with that of his young friends. They had a lot in common: the same fervor, inquisitiveness, the thirst for knowledge, and love of country. And still he often loved to say: 'At different ends of the country work my adopted brothers from the front, who walked from the foothills of the Causasus to Berlin. Each has his road in life, his joys and cares. But all of us are united by one feeling: love for our native land. We fought for her freedom and independence against an insidious enemy, and we won'."
Valery Shanaev, decorated worker of culture in the Russian Federation and Republic of North Osetia.>
Very interesting that, after all his trials and tribulations, the pilot had to endure interrogation and danger from his own side, and that the KGB didn't even want his story told.
Excuse my crude translation.
=== Very interesting that, after all his trials and tribulations, the pilot had to endure interrogation and danger from his own side, and that the KGB didn't even want his story told.
Why do you think that was?
In this veteran's memoirs, he discusses being 'debriefed':
The Soviet forces liberate this or that camp. They load up the prisoners into an eschelon. Then, on to the Urals, to the so-called 'filtration camps'. For example, my second cousin was also a prisoner, but he didn't return from the Urals until the beginning of 1947. He didn't come back as a soldier, but as 'having passed through filtration', and because of that, he didn't receive credit for taking part in the Great Patriotic War. I was demobilized on December 30th, 1945, as a teacher and student of the Pedagogue Institute, and do you know why? When they liberated us, I found out that there were in our camp agents of counter-intelligence! They had burrowed into it somehow, I don't know all the details. And so, here were these counter-intel boys, I knew them all, and I'd even been feeding them with the food Zinner gave me. I told them everything, just like I'm talking to you now. Perhaps the counter-intel guys said that I was svoi (one of ours).
This lady was born in a concentration camp, and recounts:
In the maternity hospital worked one girl. Either a nurse or a nanny. Her name was Asya... Mama told me that this Asya worked in Soviet intelligence. Under the very noses of the Germans.
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