Pavel Ivanovich Belyayev

Pavel Ivanovich Belyayev was born on 26 June 1925 in the village of Chelishchevo in Roslyatino district of Severo-Dvinsk province, now Babushkinsky district of Vologda region. He attended the junior secondary school at Minkovo from 1932 to 1937, then school no. 3 at Kamensk-Uralsky and, in 1941-42, school no. 1 there. In those years he took up hunting and trapped fur-bearing animals with some success. After finishing the ten-year school he worked as a lathe operator at the Sinarsky pipe works. In 1943 he volunteered for the Red Army and was sent to the Yeysk military aviation school for pilots, which in 1943-44 was housed at Sarapul; he graduated in 1945. In August and September 1945 he fought in the Soviet-Japanese war as a fighter pilot of the 38th Guards Fighter Aviation Regiment, 12th Assault Aviation Division, Pacific Fleet. He then served in naval aviation units. He flew the U-2, UT-2, Yak-7B, Yak-9, Yak-11, La-11, MiG-15 and MiG-17, with more than 500 flying hours in total. From 1956 to 1959 he studied at the Air Force academy. In 1960 he was selected for the cosmonaut corps. Of the pilots taken in he was the oldest, the highest in rank — major — and the highest in post, a squadron commander. He was the only one in the group whom his colleagues addressed by his name and patronymic. On 18-19 March 1965 Belyayev made his spaceflight as commander of Voskhod-2, during which the second pilot, Alexei Leonov, made the first spacewalk in history. In the final stage of the flight the craft's orientation system failed and an automatic landing became impossible: Belyayev oriented the craft by hand and fired the retro-rocket. Those operations had never been performed before in manned spaceflight. He was made a Hero of the Soviet Union in 1965 for that spaceflight — not for the war. He is in this archive as a participant in the Soviet-Japanese war, which is a separate fact about him. He was promoted colonel on 18 March 1965. In the years that followed he trained for flights on Soyuz spacecraft. He died on 10 January 1970 of intoxication following purulent peritonitis after surgery. He is buried at Novodevichy cemetery in Moscow.