The Great Patriotic War showed the world the courage, resilience, heroism of the Soviet soldier. Millions of defenders of the country of the Soviets fought to the death, to the last drop of blood. Their memory should be eternal. Again and again we open the Book of Memory. Nikolai Markelov, pilot, Hero of the Soviet Union. A short biographical note, a couple of blurry photographs, military merit…
Nikolai Markelov in the photo is a youth who has not smelled gunpowder. The uniform with epaulets was completed by retouchers when they could not find a photo of the Hero of the USSR.
About life before the war
Kolya was born on June 20, 1920 in Altai, in Barnaul. He received his secondary education certificate in Alma-Ata, in Kazakhstan, a sister republic of the Soviet Union. In the same place, in 1938, he entered the Kazakh Mining and Metallurgical Institute at the Faculty of Geology and Exploration. Having passed the session for the third year, he celebrated his 21st birthday. Two days later I learned that the war had begun.
There is no more information about childhood and youth in official sources. Normalboy, ordinary life. No, there is still a fad that turned out to be of decisive importance in the further biography - the flying club. In the distant past, in the DOSAAF flying clubs, teenagers built model aircraft, jumped with parachutes, engaged in physical training and learned to be patriots.
Get up, the country is huge
In the first days of the war, Nikolai received a summons from the military registration and enlistment office, immediately went to the Chkalovsky flight school, where Il-2 pilots were trained in an accelerated mode. The children were given less than a year to master the profession. In 1942 he was sent to the front. The movie "Only Old Men Go to Battle" is about Markelov, a young, inexperienced, fighting man.
How Nikolai Markelov fought, awards say: Red Star, Order of the Red Banner (2), World War II degree, medals. There were many heroes, but there were no biographers. It is still impossible to collect information about every soldier of the Second World War, because the lines of the biography of Nikolai Markelov are so meager. What tasks he performed, what medals he received - there is no data in the Book of Memory.
Year 1944
Fate was merciful to the young man. Judging by the awards, he did not sit out at alternate airfields: he climbed into the thick of fights, deceived the weather, fascist aces, even the laws of aerodynamics. This was written in the award sheet (September 1944), as the car, smashed into the trash, was returning to its native airfield. At the same time, the pilot in the war did not receive a single wound.
In 1944, the lieutenant already commanded a unit of the 806th assault regiment of the 14th air army. Behind him are 4 Ukrainian, Southern, 3 B altic, North Caucasian fronts. The Nazis calledIL-2 "Black Death", plague, concrete aircraft. Soviet designers gave the nickname - "flying tank". But in the first year of the war, the losses of this equipment were very high - the pilots were inexperienced, there were no defensive weapons.
Attacks from low altitudes of 400 m, strafing flights, skillful activation of maximum angular velocity, reliable machine gunner, experience and courage helped the lieutenant in this war. 105 combat successful sorties. During the bombing, the following were recorded on his account: 25 tanks, 100 vehicles, 70 transports, 20 artillery batteries, 8 fuel and weapons depots, a barge, an airfield with aircraft.
From the award list
In September 1944, the commander of the air regiment, senior lieutenant Karpov, sent an award list to Nikolai Markelov through the authorities. Thanks to him, today it is known how a young fighter of the worker-peasant Soviet army fought. Here are the lines from the document:
…Assault Strike Master. Brave, courageous pilot-attack aircraft. Heroically fought in the Kuban, Mius, Donbass, the Molochnaya River. Participant in the defeat of the Nikopol bridgehead, the Crimean group.
…liberated Kuban, Dnieper, Crimea, Estonia. Markelov's fearlessness and courage, assault and bombing strikes are always unexpected and effective. Most sorties - leading a group of attack aircraft.
27.11.43 …destroyed 2 artillery batteries in the B. Lepetikhi area. The planes, the steering wheel, the depths of the car are damaged, the steering wheel is jammed, the shields are beaten. Thanks to the piloting technique, the plane landedto your home airfield.
08.04.44 …in the Tarkhan area, 2 multiple rocket launchers, a minbattery, 4 trucks with cargo were destroyed. On April 19, near Balaklava, he shot down an FV-190.
07.05.44 … in the area of Sevastopol, the group came under fire from anti-aircraft guns, attacked by seven fighters. Markelov made three visits to the target, completed the combat mission, captivating the wingmen by personal example. His shooter shot down a fighter jet.
The plane was heavily damaged: the right aileron was broken, the shields, keel, rudder, center section were damaged, the cantilever part of the propeller blade was broken off, the other part was shot through by a shell, bulletproof glass was broken. Markelov gathered his wingmen, brought them home, and landed.
23.02.1945 Markelov was awarded the title of Hero of the USSR. Medal "Gold Star" No. 5935 and the Order of Lenin - confirmation of high status.
Remember everyone by name
Nikolai was lucky, he met Victory alive, saw the country free and rejoicing. And he's only 24! He did not return to exploration, he remained in the Air Force. Although some sources claim that he went into civil aviation. Then again a failure and a short message: art. Lieutenant Markelov died tragically on November 16, 1945. One source called it an on-duty plane crash. Most likely, it happened in Ukraine. In the Rivne region, in Chervonoarmeysk, he was buried.
Streets in Barnaul and Almaty are named after Nikolai Danilovich. The name is immortalized on the plate of the Memorial of Glory in the capital of the Altai Territory.
Orenburg VVAKU pilots(disbanded), which became the successor to the Chkalov Pilot School, keeps the memory of its graduates. 309 Heroes of the Soviet Union appear on the lists. A graduate of 1942, Markelov is listed alphabetically as No. 181.
