War excavations, friends, are not only shell casings and helmets (with great success and desire), but also military equipment. Every year there is less and less of it, but there are still many places where you can get fragments of various equipment, especially when it comes to airplanes. During the Great Patriotic War, several dozen planes crashed every day in different parts of the huge Soviet-German front. And when a plane crashes, upon impact the plane breaks and its fragments scatter many hundreds of meters in all directions. By the scattering of fragments, the exact location of the plane crash can be determined. However, if the plane falls into a river or swamp, it can be preserved in fairly good condition. In this case, only fragments remained from the DB-3, but the pilots and their belongings were found, identified, and it’s good that several names from that war went from the “missing in action” category.
Photos courtesy of Fedor Kozmin.
The DB-3 was a twin-engine long-range bomber that made its first flight in 1935, right before the war. At one time, this aircraft set five world records – innovative technology was then built in the USSR!
The DB-3 bomber went through several modifications before the war and was, in general, an aircraft that fully met the requirements of that time. During the outbreak of the war, in 1941, these aircraft suffered the greatest losses due to their use for bombing troops and supporting ground forces from the air, that is, practically a long-range bomber was assigned attack aircraft tasks. A forced measure of the first days of the war – for example, on June 22, 1941, out of 70 DB-3F 96 dbap aircraft, 22 aircraft did not return, more than half of which were shot down. Difficult times require the use of extreme measures, alas.
In this case, the plane was found near Vyborg, as we see – the Nagan revolver and the aviation sergeant major’s kubari were perfectly preserved.
As well as documents with a military ID.
Food card. The pilots kept all documents either on a tablet or in their tunic pocket.
I myself saw the restored and in good condition documents and maps that were lifted together with the pilot of the Il-2 attack aircraft. So there is nothing to be surprised about the preservation of papers after 70 years!
There may still be traces of marks on the map that the pilot made before departure. It is interesting that in this case the map is pre-revolutionary.
Like all young guys at that time, the pilots were members of the Komsomol and the Lenin Komsomol.
The crew was installed: pilot junior lieutenant Petr Ivanovich Nechipurenko, navigator foreman Terentyev Alexey Alekseevich, air gunner-radio operator junior platoon commander Nikolai Fedorovich Ivanov, air gunner junior platoon commander Vasily Markovich Mamonov. In the photo above, the tunic and things, judging by the rank, belonged to the navigator – foreman Alexey Alekseevich Terenyev.
There are fewer nameless heroes thanks to the initiative of a large number of search engines who, taking their metal detectors and the necessary equipment, go digging in the forests for several days, and sometimes weeks. They search in the archives, then they search in the ground. Silent heroes of our time! These are not armchair analysts in the cops – these guys know their stuff!
More about the raised planes can be found here , and if you are interested in coping with the war, then many interesting posts and stories on the topic can be found here . No fluff!
