Mikhail Petrovich Devyataev

Fighter pilot, Hero of the Soviet Union (15 August 1957), Guards Senior Lieutenant, who escaped German captivity in a captured bomber. Born on 8 July 1917 in the village of Torbeyevo, Penza province (Mordovia), the thirteenth child in his family. He graduated from the Chkalov military aviation school. Shot down near Lvov on 13 July 1944, he was taken prisoner. He passed through several camps and, after a failed escape, was sent to Sachsenhausen and then to the island of Usedom, site of the Peenemünde rocket range where work on the V-weapons was carried out. On 8 February 1945, with nine other prisoners, he seized a German Heinkel He 111 bomber on the airfield and took off. Flown by a pilot who had never seen the type before and was weakened by captivity, the aircraft crossed the front line and landed among Soviet troops. The group brought out information on the range and the rocket installations there. On his return he was screened as a former prisoner of war and was not allowed back to flying duties. He worked at the Kazan river port and became captain of one of the first Soviet hydrofoils. His Hero of the Soviet Union title came only in 1957, twelve years after the escape. He died in Kazan on 24 November 2002.