Nikolay Gastello (review)
Nikolai Frantsevich Gastello - (born April 23 (May 6) 1907 - death June 26, 1941) - Soviet pilot, captain, Hero of the Soviet Union (1941 posthumously). Graduated from the Luhansk Military Aviation Pilot School (1933). He took part in battles in the area of the river. Khalkhin-Gol, the Soviet-Finnish and the Great Patriotic War.
1941, June 26 - during the execution of a combat mission, a projectile hit the gas tank of his bomber, a fire broke out, the aircraft crew could use parachutes, but the captain sent the burning aircraft to a cluster of German-fascist armored vehicles.
The battering ram of the ground target, committed by Gastello and his crew members, Lieutenants Anatoly Burdenyuk, Grigory Skorobogaty and Senior Sergeant Alexei Kalinin, became a symbol of heroism and devotion to the Motherland. Streets in many cities and towns bear the name Gastello. At the place of the feat of Gastello, near Radoshkovichi (Belarus), a monument to the heroic crew was erected.
Biography of Nikolai Gastello
Father - Franz Pavlovich Gastillo, Belarusian, originally from the village of Pluzhyny. Mother - Anastasia Semyonovna Kutuzova (maiden name), Russian.
1924 - the Gastello family moved to live in the city of Murom, where his father got a job at a locomotive repair plant as a cupola operator. In those days, Nikolai was 17 years old, he got a job at the same plant as a mechanic, at the same time studying at a comprehensive school. 1928 - the future hero became a communist, about then he became interested in sports. Nikolai was an excellent skater, skiing and parachute jumper. 1930 - the Gastello family returned to Moscow, where a young guy got a job as a rationing fitter at an engineering plant.
Promotional video:
1932 - Nikolay Gastello entered the Lugansk pilot school. From 1933 to 1941, Gastello was the commander of a long-range heavy bomber aviation ship in Rostov-on-Don. 1939 - fought on Khalkhin Gol, was a squadron commander, and in June 1940 he took part in the annexation of Northern Bukovina and Bessarabia to the Soviet Union. In the same year he was given the rank of captain.
Nikolay Gastello in his youth.
Personal life
Little information has come down to us about the personal life of the pilot Nikolai Frantsevich Gastello. It is known that Gastello was married. Nikolai Frantsevich and Anna Petrovna had two sons who were not destined to wait for their father from the war.
The feat of Gastello
1941, June 26 - the squadron of the 207th long-range bomber aviation regiment under the command of Captain N. Gastello was sent to strike at the fascist combat columns advancing to Minsk.
There was no fighter cover. The squadron met a German column in the area of the Molodechno-Radoshkovichi highway. Having descended to 400 meters, they dropped bombs on enemy tanks and vehicles. After leaving the attack, Gastello gave the order to his wingman lieutenants Vorobyov and Rybas to return to the airfield, and he himself flew to another road, a country road. A column also walked along it. Having descended to an extremely low height, he walked along it. Shooters Kalinin and Skorobogaty, firing machine-gun fire, were able to destroy 12 German vehicles. Enemy anti-aircraft guns opened fire on the bomber.
Nikolay Gastello with his wife.
The plane was hit. The gas tank caught fire. It was not possible to knock down the flame, it was not possible to reach our own. And Captain Gastello directed the burning car into the center of the enemy mechanized column.
This is how the legendary "fire battering ram" or battering ram of the ground target Gastello, which will become a model of courage and self-sacrifice, was accomplished. The bomber's crew died heroically. They did not want to leave the plane by parachute and went to their deaths together with their commander. Subsequently, the pilots who carried out the "fire ram" were called Ghatellers.
Arrived at the airfield from the Gastello link, Lieutenants Vorobiev and Rybas submitted a report outlining everything that happened. Captain Gastello was posthumously awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union, and on July 10, 1941 the Pravda newspaper glorified this feat throughout the country.
1951 - exhumation. Who performed the feat?
The only witnesses of Gastello's "fiery ram" - Lieutenants Vorobiev and Rybas, soon died. Vorobyov, returning from a combat mission, was shot down on August 23 near the town of Orel, and Rybas died on November 15, 1941. After their death, the history of the legendary ram began to acquire new details.
1951 - on the eve of the 10th anniversary of Gastello's feat, it was decided to exhume the hero of the Soviet Union and his crew for a subsequent ceremonial burial. However, at the site of the alleged grave of Gastello, the remains and belongings of his colleague - the commander of the 1st squadron of the 207th regiment, captain Alexander Maslov and the gunner-radio operator Grigory Reutov were found.
During further investigation, it was found out that at the place where, as it was believed, Gastello rammed the enemy column, the crew of Alexander Maslov, who was considered missing, crashed. At the same time, he disappeared on the same day when Gastello's feat was accomplished.
Then, not far from the death of Maslov, in the Matskovsky swamp, another plane was discovered. It contained one charred corpse with a letter addressed to Skorobogataya and a tag from the engine - "M-87B" with number 87844, which was identified as part of the wrecked Gastello bomber. At that time they kept silent about this, and a bust of Gastello was erected at the site of the death of Maslov's plane. And before perestroika, everyone had forgotten about it.
New versions
The 90s of the XX century brought up the Gastello secret together with other "secrets" of the USSR. The author of the new version was retired major Eduard Kharitonov, who suggested that A. Maslov was the one who committed the "fire ram", because the remains of his crew were found.
1996 - Maslov and his crew members were posthumously awarded the title of Hero of the Russian Federation, and streets with their names appeared in many cities. True, in the wording of the 1996 award there was not a word about what exactly A. Maslov carried out the ram.
According to the next version, not a single crew was able to carry out the fire ram.
Captain Maslov, who was trying to ram the German column on a burning bomber, missed and crashed in a field 200 meters from the road. Gastello who flew out later, according to some of the assumptions, tried to direct the downed plane to enemy positions in the village of Matski, but the Il-4 could not hold out and fell not far from the target, into the Matskovskoe swamp, where it was later discovered.
As for the reports of Vorobiev and Rybas, their reliability is questioned. Firstly, the originals of the reports have not survived to this day, and secondly, according to the supporters of alternative versions, the pilots who left the battle might not have seen the ram, having connected it with the smoke from the bomber crash. It is impossible to refute or confirm these versions, the last eyewitnesses died in 1941.
Heroes of "fire rams"
Examples of courage like Gastello's feat were not rare among Soviet pilots. According to the calculations of military experts, only in the first year of the war 152 feats were recorded, when a burning plane became the last weapon of the pilots. All in all, during the Great Patriotic War, Soviet pilots carried out "fiery rams" about 500 times. The first place belongs to the crews of bombers, their number is 288. More than 800 people during the Patriotic War became heroes of "fire rams".