Semyon Trofimovich Bychkov

Semyon Trofimovich Bychkov, 15 May 1918 – 4 November 1946. A Soviet fighter pilot made a Hero of the Soviet Union in 1943, who then flew for formations fighting on the German side, and was stripped of the title in 1947. Both halves of that history belong to the same man and this page states both. He was born in the village of Petrovka in the Nizhnedevitsky uyezd of Voronezh governorate, finished an aeroclub in 1938 and the Borisoglebsk aviation school named after Valery Chkalov in 1939, and entered the Red Army on 16 January 1939. He flew with the 42nd and then the 287th Fighter Aviation Regiments, and from 20 July 1942 was a deputy squadron commander. In July 1942 a military tribunal found him guilty of an accident that wrecked an aircraft and sentenced him to five years in labour camps; the term was suspended and he was sent to the front instead. On 1 October 1942 the Military Council lifted the conviction, by decision 037/44, on the grounds of his record in the fighting. Three weeks later, on 23 October 1942, an order of the Stalingrad Front awarded him the Order of the Red Banner. He became a captain on 28 May 1943, served as navigator of the 937th Fighter Aviation Regiment and then as deputy commander of the 482nd Fighter Aviation Regiment of the 322nd Fighter Aviation Division, and on 23 August 1943 an order of the 15th Air Army gave him a second Order of the Red Banner. The title Hero of the Soviet Union was conferred on 2 September 1943, together with the Order of Lenin and the Gold Star medal. The two sources do not agree on the score behind it: the award citation gives 15 enemy aircraft shot down personally and one in a group, while the research of M. Yu. Bykov puts it at 10 personal and 5 shared victories at the time of the nomination. The nomination itself described a fighter pilot in whom courage was joined to great skill, who entered combat boldly and imposed his own will on the enemy, and an able organiser of group air fighting. On 10 December 1943 he was shot down by anti-aircraft fire, wounded, and taken prisoner. He was held near Suwalki and then at Moritzfelde. Early in 1944 Colonel Viktor Maltsev, who had been working with the German authorities since 1941, brought him into the "Ostland" aviation group. Here too the sources diverge, and the disagreement is material: under investigation in 1946 Bychkov said he acted under extreme pressure, that Bronislav Antilevsky — another Hero of the Soviet Union who had already gone over — beat him together with other men of Vlasov's movement, and that Vlasov himself spoke to him three times; by other accounts he decided voluntarily and he and Antilevsky were friends. Which account is true is not established here. What he then did is documented. He ferried aircraft from the factories to Eastern Front airfields and took part in anti-partisan operations near Dvinsk, now Daugavpils. With Antilevsky he appealed to captured Soviet airmen, in writing and in person, to collaborate. After the Ostland group was disbanded in September 1944 he went to Cheb and helped Maltsev form the 1st Aviation Regiment of the KONR air force, commanding its 5th Fighter Squadron, and was made a major on 5 February 1945. At the end of April 1945 he surrendered to American forces, was interned at Cherbourg, and in September 1945 was handed to the Soviet authorities under the Yalta agreements. On 24 August 1946 the Military Tribunal of the Moscow Military District sentenced him to death under article 58.1-B. His petition for clemency was refused, and he was executed on 4 November 1946. By decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of 21 March 1947 he was stripped of all his awards and of the title Hero of the Soviet Union.