Under what bridge did the chkalov fly. "MiG" glory. As a Soviet pilot, Privalov did the impossible. On the magical power of art
BRIDGE UNDER WHICH VALERY CHKALOV FLEW
Who in our country does not know that Chkalov flew under Troitsky
bridge over the Neva? If not from books, then from the famous movie by Mikhail Konstantinovich Kalatozov. But few people know that in the Chkalovsky times, the Trinity Bridge in Leningrad was the Equality Bridge. And Valery Pavlovich Chkalov never flew under this very bridge of Equality. It is not at all difficult to be convinced of this. It is enough to carefully and impartially look at the biography of V.P. Chkalov and the history of domestic aviation. Based on documents, of course, and not on falsified materials from Soviet publications.
Let's take the initial data: it is claimed that Chkalov flew under the bridge in 1928, and in a number of sources that in 1927. All of them say that Chkalov did this on a Fokker D.XI fighter, in front of his future wife, Olga Erazmovna. For "recklessness" he was seriously punished by the regiment commander I. Antoshin - he was put in a guardhouse!
About the flight date
In Podolsk, the Central Archive of the Ministry of Defense (TsAMO) stores the personal file of the famous pilot V.P. Chkalov No. 268818. It has long been declassified and is now available for comprehensive study. In a personal file, as expected, there is a track record of a pilot. From it and many other documents it follows that in 1928 the red military pilot V.P. Chkalov served in the "15th Air Squadron" of the Bryansk Air Brigade and never flew to Leningrad. Unofficially, he could not make such a flight either. It was IMPOSSIBLE to fly to Leningrad without landing and refueling on any of the fighter jets that were in service with the brigade and to return back. 1928 is categorically eliminated!
On January 19, 1929, the doors of the prison cell kindly opened for Chkalov for the second time. To this day, his prison diary is kept in the memorial museum of the legendary pilot in the city of Chkalovsk, Nizhny Novgorod Region, where it can be easily found. Chkalov was demobilized from the army. He could not fly under the bridge in 1929.
Consider other dates.
Not a single source says that Chkalov flew under the bridge in 1924. Everyone understands that only a pilot who came to the combat unit was not able to pull off such a trick.
1925... In St. Petersburg, where I live, there are three unique libraries: the Russian National Library, the Library of the Academy of Sciences and the Central Naval Library. Together, these three huge book depositories have in their funds everything that has ever been published about Valery Pavlovich in our country. Anyone can look into them and see for themselves: in all her numerous interviews and books, when and how her husband flew under the bridge in Leningrad, Chkalov's second wife, Olga Erazmovna. for which, according to the film, Valery Pavlovich flew under the bridge of Equality, she always answered: “He didn’t fly with me ...”.
By the way. Valery Pavlovich and Olga Erazmovna met on the last day of 1924! In her last book, "The Life of Valery Chkalov" iM 1979), Olga Erazmovna wrote: "... it happened in 1925," which contradicts her own words, all official statements and the personal file of V.P. Chkalov.
“In 1925 he was demobilized by court” - from personal file No. 268818. Here is another extract from this document: “SENTENCE IN THE NAME OF THE RSFSR .. Field session on November 16 (1925) ... having considered in an open meeting at the location of the 1st squadron ... case No. 150 on the charge of citizen Chkalov Valery Pavlovich ... recognized as proven: on September 7, 1925 in Leningrad, gr. Chkalov, being in the position of a military pilot of the 1st squadron ... and being obliged to report to the airfield for a training group flight by 3 o'clock in the afternoon. arrived at the indicated time in a completely drunk state, as a result of which he not only could not fly, but generally behaved unacceptably, shouted, made noise, etc., which attracted the attention of those present at the airfield.
Being arrested and then sent home by car with the pilots Blagin and Bogdanov, Chkalov was very dissatisfied on the way that he was sent from the airfield and not allowed to fly on the apparatus, loudly expressed his displeasure with shouts and gestures ...
By these actions, Chkalov discredited the authority and title of the commander-fighter of the Red Army, i.e. committed a crime, and therefore the visiting commission of the VT LVO SENTENCED c. Chkalov Valery Pavlovich to imprisonment with strict isolation for ONE year, without affecting his rights.
Taking into account Chkalov's first conviction, voluntary service in the Red Army, youth and proletarian origin, remove strict isolation and reduce Chkalov's prison term to SIX months. Chkalov appealed against the verdict, but the response "Determination" read: "The verdict is upheld."
Drunkenness is common in our country. And in the aviation of the RKKAF of those years, in general, general and ubiquitous - a legacy civil war when, for lack of gasoline, it was necessary to fill the engines of worn-out coffin airplanes with a mixture of alcohol and ether. In the 1st Red Banner Squadron, the young military pilot Valery Chkalov was quickly turned into a drunkard. How this happened is described in sufficient detail in the book of his daughter V. V. Chkalova “Valery Chkalov. Aviation Legend "(M 2005).
For drunken debauchery they were put in a guardhouse or given fifteen days. And then 6 months in prison! .. One can only guess how outstanding Chkalov's drinking bouts were. Boiled, you see, at the command ...
1926th ... In 1926, V.P. Chkalov practically did not serve. At first he sat in the "Ispravdom", as the prison was then called, and then knocked on the thresholds of the offices of military leaders and military registration and enlistment offices, trying to recover in military service. Persistence paid off. As follows from his personal file: “... in 1926 he was accepted back to Kr. Ar. in the 1st squadron ... ". After the restoration, Chkalov behaved "quieter than water and lower than grass", during this period he had only positive characteristics. In that year, Chkalov had no time for hooligan flights under bridges. Yes, and when he again began to fly, the Neva was already ice-bound A. As stated, Chkalov flew over the water. 1926 disappears.
1927… From January to spring there is ice on the Neva. The first quarter is gone. On March 24, Chkalov, during a training battle, got into an accident on a Fokker D-XI fighter: "A collision in the air, after which he planned it." An official hearing follows. Chkalov, of course, is temporarily suspended from flying. In May, another service characteristic was requested for him, and already in June the pilot was sent for training in Lipetsk. From where, of course, he could not fly to the Leningrad bridge of Equality in any way. To all of the above, it is worth adding that in 1927 Chkalov was already married to O.E. Chkalova, and she, as noted above, always claimed that her husband under the bridge over the Neva "did not fly with her."
It turns out that V.P. Chkalov could fly under the Equality Bridge only in 1925.
About serious punishment
The famous "dad" - I.P. Antoshin, the commander of the 1st Red Banner Squadron, did NOT PUNISH for any flight under the Chkalov bridge! In his memoirs (see: I. Antoshin "First Flights in the Squadron", M. 1969), he does not mention a single word about Chkalov's flight under the bridge over the Neva. Moreover, he claimed all his life that he had heard about this flight only from third parties. After Chkalov's arrest in November 1925, Antoshin was sent for further service in Turkestan. So, under Antoshin, Chkalov did not fly under the Equality Bridge. Especially in 1928.
In the personal file of V.P. Chkalov, NO punishments for flying under the bridge were recorded. There are many punishments:
- “Penalties in court and disciplinary, announced in the order in part and above: 2 times tried by the court of the Military Tribunal. He was repeatedly subjected to disciplinary sanctions "...
- As a member of the RKSM, he was "expelled for 6 months for indiscipline." There is no data on the restoration in the RKSM in the personal file ...
There are many punishments... But punishment for unauthorized flight over Leningrad and flying under the bridge is not among them. At all! Not in any year of his service!
About the witnesses of the flight
You can fly under the bridge only during the day. In broad daylight near the Summer Garden, Petropavlovka, the embankments are always full of people. There must have been many eyewitnesses. But they are not. No one! It is officially registered that there were 106 people dragging with V.I. Lenin had a log on a subbotnik. There, the date was known, when Lenin was dragging a log, it was easy for false assistants to lie. But there were no witnesses of Chkalov's flight under the bridge! No real eyewitnesses, no “sons of Lieutenant Schmidt. For the exact date of passage under the bridge DOES NOT EXIST None!
The flight of an airplane under the bridge what then what now is a stunning phenomenon, a sensation! All newspapers should have written about such an event. Here, the Petrograd newspapers in 1916 excitedly reported on the passage of a naval pilot, Lt. G.A. Fride under the Trinity Bridge on the M-5 plane. And in the autumn of 1916, they enthusiastically described the flight of the naval pilot, Lt. A.E. Georgians under all bridges at once!!! In 1940, the Leningrad newspapers wrote with the same admiration about the flights under the Kirov Bridge by the pilot of the Northern Directorate of the Civil Air Fleet Yevgeny Borisenko during the filming of the film "Valery Chkalov". Borisenko flew under the Kirov Bridge on an LU-2 plane four times. Two on the first day of shooting, two on the second. But about the flight under the Chkalov Bridge NEVER wrote ANY Leningrad newspaper, not a single city magazine.
About span descriptions
All the descriptions of Chkalov's flight under the bridge over the Neva (and there are only 3-4 of them) that exist in the literature are dated much later than 1940. That is, they are given by the authors who saw the film "Valery Chkalov". And all these descriptions retell frames from the film… None of the authors witnessed that flight.
About the vigilant OGPU and the command of the LenVO Air Force
To fly under the Equality Bridge, Chkalov had to build an approach from the side of Smolny. It is alleged that he tried on the bridge span several times. That is, he circled over Smolny, over Liteiny, where the leadership of the OGPU was located, over Shpalernaya, where the prison was the OGPU, and the house of the Politkatorzhan, in which the entire top of the Bolshevik authorities of the city lived. Such a flight should have been followed by a trial in the OGPU, at least. But wasn't the morally unstable pilot Chkalov, expelled from the RKSM, the son of a steamship owner - a socially alien element, planning to bomb Smolny? Shoot at party members-Leninists? Didn't you want to take revenge for your arrest, to vent your anger? Nothing of the sort happened. There was no such trial.
Following the Trinity is the Palace Bridge. After flying under the bridge of Equality, Chkalov immediately had to transfer the car to a climb. Just opposite the Palace Square, where the headquarters of the LenVO Air Force has been located since the first years of Soviet power. Respectively. Chkalov had to do this during test runs as well. Is it possible that no one from the command of the LenVO Air Force took an interest. what kind of fighter is roaring under their windows, grossly violating the ban on military aircraft flying over Leningrad? But there is no information about Chkalov's punishment for this flight in his personal file. I have not seen anything like this in the reporting documentation of the LenVO Air Force.
On the magical power of art
A thorough and comprehensive study of library collections today allows us to state with absolute accuracy that before 1939 there were NO publications about the passage of V.P. Chkalov did not exist under any bridge.
The first story about the flight of V.P. Chkalov under, mind you, the "Troitsky" bridge appears ... in "Roman-Gazeta" No. 13/1939. The magazine published a story by the beginning writer G. Baidukov called "About Chkalov", which was a literary version of the screenplay "Valery Chkalov".
In this description, Chkalov is flying under the bridge out of high flying motives. A colorful, detailed description of the flight ends with a phrase that a tired, but pleased with himself, pilot returns home to his loving wife. How can one not recall again the statement of O.E. Chkalova that under her Chkalov did not fly under the bridge.
From Roman-Gazeta, the description of the flight migrated to all other books, including the one published by O.E. Chkalova on behalf of V.P. Chkalov book “High above the ground. Pilot's stories "(1939)
But back to the script. The director was not happy with the original script. There was no main thing without which a good movie cannot exist - a love line. The reasons for Chkalov's expulsion from the Air Force were also indistinct. The script for the propaganda film was revised several times, but Mikhail Kalatozov (real name Kalatozishvili) did not like it.
How did the flight scene acquire a knightly-heroic appearance in the film - for the sake of the heart of the beloved woman! - installed from the source. An outstanding historian, Navy Air Force fighter pilot, WWII participant Nikolai Andreevich Goncharenko managed to find the members of that film crew at one time. And they told him who was the author of this plot twist: Once in a smoking room, during a break in filming, the pilots who advised the film told the details of how pilots flew under the Trinity Bridge back in tsarist times. There were legends about this among aviators.
Kalatozov sat with us and listened attentively to this story. The very next day, according to his vision, the script was redone once again. Now Chkalov was being expelled from the Air Force for a hooligan flight under a bridge, committed to win the heart of his beloved.
Since then, this invention of the director went "to the people." Like how footage of the “storming of the Winter Palace” from Eisenstein’s film “October” began to pass off as a documentary chronicle.
The famous pilot and friend of Chkalov, Georgy Baidukov, the main author of the film script, in fact, the creator of the myth about the “flying under the bridge,” later admitted: “Chkalov himself told me about this! ..”. Which is not surprising, because G. Baidukov did not serve in Leningrad and could not see this himself ...
About the truth of life
In 1939, after the death of V.P. Chkalov, in the publishing house "Children's Literature" the Central Committee of the Komsomol issued a very interesting book: Valery Chkalov, Hero of the Soviet Union “High above the ground. Pilot's stories. Foreword by Olga Erazmovna Chkalova. In it, Olga Erazmovna, with her own hand, described how, when and under what circumstances V.P. Chkalov flew under the bridge. And under what bridge:
“One morning - it was several years ago in Leningrad - Valery Pavlovich returned after a flight. He greeted me and my son and looked around the room with some strange alien look. This is how a person looks who has just experienced a great danger and still does not believe that he is again in his native, familiar environment.
- Has something happened to you?
He quickly passed his hand over his forehead and smiled.
- Nothing, nothing. Go to work, you'll be late, I'll tell you in the evening.
In fact, these "trifles" looked like this.
The plane was in imminent danger of death. Winter fog pressed him to the ground, his wings were iced over, there was a forest all around. Not far away is the railway bridge, on which the train was going, blocking the path to the only and pathetic likeness of the landing site. And Valery Chkalov landed the plane on this small saving island, flying ... under the arch of the railway bridge.
In her latest book, Olga Erazmovna was more frank: “Somehow he and a mechanic were assigned to overtake a plane from Novgorod. And suddenly another accident! He returned home bruised.
“I can’t believe I’m at home, alive,” he told me when I came home from school.
For the first time I saw that Chkalov lost his nerve, as they say.
Having taken off from Novgorod, he got into difficult meteorological conditions. The plane was icy, and it was impossible to gain the desired height. I had to fly low, just above the forest. A railroad track stretched under the wing. The moment came when Valery realized that he needed to make an emergency landing. And there is nowhere to sit. You can try to sit on the tops of trees - there is a chance to save your own life, but Valery rejected this option right away. Even then, he developed a principle for himself - to fight for the life of the machine, as for his own, to the last.
While Valery was thinking, a train appeared in the distance. Suddenly, a bridge flashed ahead. It was already within reach of him. There is only one way out - to dive under the bridge and sit down. Chkalov dived, but a semaphore prevented him from landing behind the bridge. In a moment, he and the mechanic were lying on the ground among the aircraft debris.
A special commission found that if the pilot had tried to choose a different option for an emergency landing, the car would have crashed into a railway platform and the death of the crew would have been inevitable ”(O.E. Chkalova“ The Life of Valery Chkalov ”, M. 1979).
This bridge stands near the Vyalka station, which was located on the 225-km track of the Oktyabrskaya Leningrad-Moscow railway. In the documents, this event does not look as beautiful as in the stories of Olga Erazmovna.
In 1929 V.L. Corwin (by mother, first surname, by father - Kerber) in own apartment designed and built an amphibious aircraft. During the civil war, since 1919, he was in the ranks of the Donskoy hydroaviation division of the Whites, worked at the Taganrogr aircraft factory, where the planes of the Dobroarmiya were repaired. After the war, Korvin ended up in Leningrad, where he proposed his seaplane project, but he was not accepted - the Soviet authorities did not have confidence in the designer. And then he started building a car in his apartment. He was assisted by a graduate of the Institute of Communications V.B. Shavrov. When the work came to an end, Korvin had fears that he, a former White Guard officer, would be credited by the authorities with the construction of an aircraft as an attempt to prepare a terrorist attack against the leaders of the city and country. Then the creator of the aircraft suggested to his assistant Shavrov that the aircraft be passed off as his own, and then apply to the Osoaviakhim of the North-Western Region with a request for financing the final work. Shavrov agreed with pleasure. The amphibian received the Sh-1 index (photo on the splash screen) and the 85 hp Walter engine, bought with the money of Osoaviakhim. The plane turned out to be successful. Shavrov instantly became a famous aircraft designer, however, until the end of his life he was not able to create any of his serial aircraft. Corwin did not see all this. He was arrested.
State tests were carried out in Moscow. The plane was piloted by test pilot B.V. Glagolev. In February 1930, he flew the plane home to Leningrad, but got stuck in Borovichi due to bad weather. A few days later, Glagolev was recalled to Moscow, and Osoaviakhim of the North-Western Region was offered to pick up his car himself.
Ivanov, like Valery Pavlovich, was a big drinker (in a few years he would be fired from Osoaviakhim for regular drinking). Either they had it with them, or they had a good time in the dining car, but when the train reached Borovichi, the sea was already knee-deep. Despite the snowfall, the almost complete lack of visibility and very low cloud cover, they boarded the plane and, contrary to the advice not to fly, took off.
At first everything went well, but the further they flew away from Borovichi, the worse the weather became. Chkalov did not even try to rise above the clouds - he did not master the art of instrument flight. He could only navigate on the ground. And so he had to press the car lower and lower to the ground, so as not to lose sight of the railroad track. In addition, icing has begun. After a while they were already flying at low level. Valery Chkalov later liked to tell his listeners about this “And once on a misty day I was forced to rear up an icy amphibian dozens of steps in front of a speeding steam locomotive, jumped over it and, without touching the snow-covered roofs of the cars with skis, disappeared behind the tail of the train into frosty mist."
The locomotive rushed forward, illuminating the space with a powerful headlight. We managed to notice its light in time. But, having jumped the train, the Sh-1 crew finally realized that every minute they were catching up with the train going ahead of them to Leningrad. And they will not be able to notice the dim light of the red lights of his last car in time. With all your will! I had to sit down. They started looking for a place to land. At the next railway bridge, a suitable bank flashed by. The clearing allowed landing, but it was necessary to enter it from the side of the railway bridge. Having made a turn, Chkalov led the amphibian to land, trying to fly over the canvas as low as possible in order to have more space for a run. The engine had already been turned off when another train suddenly jumped out of the forest onto the bridge. The collision could have been avoided only by diving under the bridge. There was no other way out. We successfully fit into the span. But it was no longer possible to sit on the bank of the frozen river. It was necessary to go on a re-entry. Turning on the engine, Chkalov put the car into a turn, at the same time trying to gain altitude. But the icy plane stubbornly did not go up. Ahead on the course was a railway platform and a semaphore sticking out. Chkalov chose a semaphore. (Later, the commission investigating the causes of the disaster would establish that a blow to the platform would have been fatal for the crew). The impact of the wing on the semaphore broke the car into pieces. The crew was thrown into the snow. They miraculously survived. Coming to their senses from what they had endured, Ivanov and Chkalov bandaged each other and went on foot to the Vyalka station ..
A criminal case was opened on the fact of the plane crash. During the investigation, the crew was acquitted. In the flight book of V.P. Chkalov No. 279, issued by the Main Directorate of the Civil Air Fleet under the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR (GUGVF) on July 10, 1933, this disaster was recorded with the wording: "Weather conditions are to blame."
Not a single pilot will talk about his failures, but, apparently, he really wanted to tell about the flight under the bridge. Most likely, Chkalov spoke about his flight with a fair amount of fantasy, replacing the true scene of action with a fictional, more spectacular one. What is called, "poisoned airfield stories." It was not difficult to change the bridge across Vyalka to Troitsky. Every aviator in those years knew about the phenomenal flights under the Neva bridges by naval aviation pilots Frida and Gruzinov.
PUSH: Soviet propaganda piled up a lot of lies, sending the best representatives of our people into oblivion. No matter how I tried, I could not find the biographies of Lieutenant of the Fleet G. A. Frid and Staff Captain A. E. Gruzinov, outstanding designers and test pilots of their time, who stood at the origins of the birth of naval aviation. But at least a photograph of G. A. Frida managed to be found.
Pilot naval aviation G.A. Frida on the Curtis plane. Sevastopol
Taken from here:
On June 3 (according to some sources - June 4), 1965, the whole of Novosibirsk was agitated by an extraordinary incident. The townspeople shared the news with each other: the trick that Valery Chkalov did 30 years ago (either in 1927, or in 1928) in Leningrad was repeated in the city, namely: flying under one of the city's bridges!
Whether such a thing (a flight in a fighter plane under the Trinity Bridge) was actually carried out by Chkalov or not - history, frankly, is silent. We know about this only from the film "Valery Chkalov", but in Novosibirsk it was a real action. And this was done on the wrong antediluvian fighter I-5(1) , on which Chkalov flew in his years, and on a fairly modern car for that time, especially a jet one: on the MiG-17 fighter. And military pilot Valentin Privalov did it.
On that day, many saw how a red-star silver combat aircraft at great speed descended to the water surface of the Ob so low that waves dispersed behind it like a boat, and in this position flew exactly into the alignment of the central arch (30 by 120 meters) of the Communal Bridge. There were only a few seconds left before the next bridge, along which a freight train was going, but the fighter managed to soar up with a “candle” and disappeared into the clouds without a trace. The deaf and dumb witnesses of the fantastic spectacle on both sides of the Ob applauded in unison...
MiG-17 fighters; Valentin Privalov flew on an airplane of this type in 1965:
Communal bridge of Novosibirsk
As it turned out later, it was the MiG of the captain of the Air Force, sniper pilot Valentin Privalov, sent to Novosibirsk. Then he was 30 years old, and he had a reputation as a recognized ace, although his colleagues ironically called him Jack among themselves.
Valentin was born in the Moscow region, his childhood fell on wartime. While still at school, he was involved in the flying club. After college, he served in naval aviation, in Kaliningrad and the Arctic, was awarded the Order of the Red Star. Later he was transferred to Kansk Krasnoyarsk Territory. In June 1965, as part of a flight of 4 MiGs, Privalov was seconded to the exercises taking place in the Siberian Military District - anti-aircraft divisions conducted training firing at the training ground near Yurga. Returning from a mission in Tolmachevo, Valentine flew under the Communal Bridge. (For reference: the size of the arch is approximately 30 by 120 meters, the wingspan of the MiG-17 is 9.6 meters).
MiG-17 flying under the Communal Bridge, according to one version, the picture was taken by a foreign photojournalist who happened to be in the right place at the right time ...
Recalls Anatoly Maksimovich Rybyakov, retired Air Force Major:
“From the third turn, he descended and passed under the bridge. Speed - somewhere around 400 km / h. It was a clear, sunny day. People on the beach were swimming, sunbathing, and suddenly - a roar, and the plane soared up like a candle, avoiding a collision with the railway bridge. It was clear that this could not be hidden. Air Marshal Savitsky flew in and set up an investigation. They asked Privalov what his motives were. He replied that he wrote two reports about being sent to Vietnam, but they remained unanswered. That's why I decided to fly under the bridge to draw attention. This act was evaluated in different ways. Young pilots are like heroism, the older generation is like aerial hooliganism.
Privalov could be severely punished, up to the tribunal, but still pardoned. It is known that the Minister of Defense of the USSR, Marshal Malinovsky, personally participated in his fate, and sent a telegram with approximately the following content:
“Pilot Privalov should not be punished. Limit yourself to the activities that were carried out with him. If you haven't been on vacation, go on vacation. If there was, give ten days of rest at the unit.
Approximately, because popular rumor stubbornly adds one more line to the telegram:
"The regimental commander to announce a reprimand."
And there were also rumors that the first secretary of the Novosibirsk Regional Committee of the CPSU Goryachev, who was in good relations with L.I. Brezhnev.
And although Privalov was never sent to Vietnam, his further career was generally successful. He was transferred to the Gorky region (some sources claim that Privalov served further in Kubinka), rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel, was both a squadron commander and deputy regiment commander, but in 1977, due to heart disease, he was forced to leave for "citizen".
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Aviation historians claim that Chkalov's flight under the Trinity Bridge is a legend without proof. Back in the 1990s, Alexander Solovyov, then director of the Leningrad state museum aviation, left no stone unturned from this beautiful myth.
After all, everyone believed that Valery Chkalov flew under the bridge in 1927 for the sake of his beloved, future wife Olga. But she denied this fact.
Another Olya
And here is the sensation! 86-year-old Nadezhda Nikolaevna Alexandrova called the editorial office of "MR", after the release of material about the filming of the film "Chkalov". And she discouraged: “Valery, as if I’m telling you, flew under the Kirov Bridge (as she calls Troitsky in the old fashioned way. - Auth.)! And he did this when he was courting my husband's sister Olya Alexandrova, even before marriage!
Nadezhda Alexandrovna lives alone on Sablinskaya Street, in a spacious apartment with stucco ceilings and antique windows - once the dwelling of a large Alexandrov family: her father-in-law and mother-in-law, their four sons and four daughters.
“I have been living here for 64 years, since I got married. And already alone I keep our family stories ... ”she says sadly, smoothing the only surviving photograph of 1923 with trembling fingers.
In the photo, the eye is drawn to the four beauties - the Alexandrov sisters: Shura, Asya, Olya and Lisa. They, as Nadezhda Nikolaevna recalls, were called “Petersburg beauties” - no one could take their eyes off when the fashionistas sisters went out for a walk.
From left to right - Shura, Olya, Liza and Asya
“Olya said that in her youth she was looked after by a military officer from the NKVD, older than her, and Valera Chkalov. Valery proposed to her, but he was young, poor, no rank yet. And the military is already in position. Valery looked after her for a long time, helped his mother with the housework ... But Olga doubted. And I told him that he hadn’t done anything special in his life.”
It was then, according to the narrator, that he told the girl to come to the Equality Bridge (now Trinity Bridge), to stand in the middle.
“It was during the day, there were almost no witnesses. She came, but he was not. And suddenly it flies right at her. Olga grabbed the railing. And he flew under the bridge. She froze in fear. A passer-by helped her get home. On the same evening, Chkalov came to her house - he said that he had been expelled from the air squadron. And that she had to choose right now - to be with him or not. She chose the second ... ".
Exactly in what year it happened, Nadezhda Nikolaevna does not remember. Then Olya married her military man, and they moved. The last time he and Chkalov saw each other was at the registry office of the Petrogradsky district, where they came to register their children.
Olga worked all her life at Lenfilm, sewed hats, for example, all the ladies in the film The Lady with the Dog are her work, says Nadezhda Nikolaevna. “She was a simple, open woman and it is unlikely that she came up with all this!” she thinks.
You can't escape fate
Olga's husband, working in the NKVD, eventually began to drink and died.
Life did not caress the rest of the beautiful sisters either.
The elder Shura, a well-known milliner, died during the war years. But not from hunger - from love. Her husband wrote to her from the front that he loved the nurse. The woman's heart gave out.
Asya had a civil marriage, but suddenly it turned out that her husband was engaged. His father forbade him to live with Asya. He left her under pressure from his father. Asya nearly committed suicide by shooting herself in the chest with Olya's military husband's pistol. But she hit the lung, and she was saved. She later married Mikhail Shapiro, brother of the famous Soviet cameraman Evgeny Shapiro.
Lisa dated a married man for many years. He took care of her, helped her survive in the blockade, but she was very lonely all her life.
"Mom" of the first six-year-olds
Nadezhda Nikolaevna herself buried her husband and son. All her life she worked in kindergartens in the Petrograd region. It was she who, in the late 1980s, was instructed to prepare the first children who went to school from the age of 6. For this, she was awarded the medal "For Labor Valor", which she is very proud of.
“Several years ago I called a newspaper, where they wrote that there was no Chkalov flight. But they didn’t listen to me there ... ”she says. Apart from memory, she has no evidence.
“It couldn't be!«
Vladimir Korol, aviation historian, member of the Writers' Union
At one time, I wrote a review of a book by Chkalov's wife Olga Erazmova and personally asked her if there was a fact of flying under the bridge. She replied that she did not have it.
I also met with the mechanic Proshlyakov, who worked with Chkalov - he also said that there was no overflight. At the Institute of History of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the historian Radimov, the former head of the Mozhaisky Academy, who was in Chkalov's detachment in his youth, also refutes this fact.
Then I met with Zarkhi, head of the "Air Club-Air Museum", where Chkalov studied - they also did not hear anything about the flight. There are other competent opinions that there was no flight.
True, one winter Chkalov, while in distress on an airplane, flew under a railway bridge in the vicinity of the city, while the plane caught on a support, fell, and Chkalov himself bruised his head.
I must say that the very personality of Chkalov was raised artificially - Stalin simply liked him. The country needed heroes. He was not a high-class pilot, he drank a lot and died, in general, from recklessness: he was only given the task of taking to the air and landing. And he flew, violating the order. It is proved that he drank well the day before.
In the newspaper "Petersburg Diary" in 2007, a sensational article by Alexander Solovyov, the former director of the Leningrad Aviation Museum, was published. Solovyov also believes that Chkalov's special role in aviation and his flight under the bridge are myths. He cites many documents about drunkenness, disciplinary sanctions, court verdicts of the Military Tribunal.
The fact of flying under the bridge, he writes, was invented by director Kalatozov on the set of the film Valery Chkalov. He, according to the stories, remembered that he had heard about such a flight of some pilot even before the revolution.
“You can fly under the bridge only during the day. In broad daylight, the embankments are always full of people. There must have been many eyewitnesses. But they are not. No one! Not a single Leningrad newspaper of the period 1924-1928 wrote about such a span. In 1940, newspapers enthusiastically wrote about Yevgeny Borisenko flying under the Kirov Bridge during the filming of the film Valery Chkalov. But the real Chkalov himself never flew under any bridge in Leningrad, ”says Solovyov.
Here is a photo and a story that has been circulating on the Internet for more than a year. Have you ever wondered if she is real? Could it be that much of what is written on the Internet is a fake? Let's try to figure it out...
In the Guinness Book of Records, we will not find any mention of the Novosibirsk Communal Bridge, nor the name of Privalov - this is not surprising, because the Soviet press did not write about the incident that occurred on June 3 (according to some sources - June 4), 1965.
Rumors spread throughout the country, and even leaked abroad, already acquiring some completely ridiculous details, but since there was no official message, there was no official recognition. Moreover, the only flight of a jet fighter under the bridge in world history was not recorded by the on-board equipment, you will not be able to detect film and photo documents either.
Let's see how they describe it artistically:
As eyewitnesses recall, the day of June 4, 1965 turned out to be hot. On a lazy Friday afternoon, it was crowded on the embankment, and on the city beach - in general, there was nowhere for an apple to fall. Young Novosibirsk students and schoolchildren have just started their holidays. Silence, calmness and goodness - summer in the Soviet Novosibirsk.
The city was preparing to fall into an afternoon slumber, when suddenly… a roar came from the sky. The sound grew and quickly turned into a menacing one. On the embankment, they began to look around anxiously: what is making noise?
And suddenly a silvery lightning appeared over Otdykha Island (the Ob island closest to the Communal Bridge). And ... began to fall into the Ob, but not vertically, like a stone, but in a smooth downward direction. When the water was a few meters away, the silver car leveled off and went straight.
Yes, it's an airplane! A real combat fighter! - exclaimed someone on the embankment.
The crowd fell silent in horror: the fighter flew low over the waves straight to the Communal Bridge. The water under the plane boiled with white breakers - either from the incredible speed of the machine, or from the blows of a jet stream from a nozzle. It seemed that a silver boat was flying over the water, and a white trail stretched behind it (it is called a wake).
Novosibirsk was anxiously silent: if an unknown hooligan at the helm of a fighter makes a mistake even by a millimeter, a tragedy will happen. On the bridge - hundreds of people in cars, trolleybuses and buses hurry about their business. God forbid, the ace will crash into the support of the Communal ...
The plane dived right under the central arch of the bridge and immediately exited on the other side. From the shore, it seemed like an unprecedented trick. Someone breathed a sigh of relief. But then the jet engine howled like a fool, and there, behind the bridge, silvery lightning darted upwards.
People on the other side of the embankment, where the Gorodskoe Nachalo park is located today, were dumbfounded: a silver plane that emerged from under the Communal Bridge was flying straight at the railway bridge. The city history began with it, the fate of the country depends on it, and just now a freight train with a forest is going along it!
Silvery lightning missed the railway bridge by only a dozen meters. The plane went into the sky, and the whole embankment, without saying a word, applauded.
Clickable 2500 px
So, on June 4, 1965, in the company of friends, I was heading to the city beach. Then the tram route 6 ran from the left bank to the right bank. This is how we got to the resting place. The trams did not run very often and therefore were packed full of passengers. June 4 was no exception, and not everyone managed to get off at the Beach stop. Thus, I moved to the right bank and from there, without waiting for the return tram, I was forced to cross the bridge to the left bank of the Ob. A few other people were walking in the same direction besides me. A man of athletic build walked first, I followed him, and a corporal followed me. internal troops in dress uniform. Unbuttoning his tunic and pushing his cap back on the back of his head, the servant moved with measured steps towards the sandy shore.
And so, when we were somewhere in the middle of the bridge, something happened that could not be imagined in the most terrible dream. Suddenly, a silvery silhouette of an airplane flashed from under the bridge and immediately soared into the sky at a large angle to the horizon, exposing the bottom of the river for a second! A wave went to the beach, washing the clothes and shoes of careless bathers into the water. The man walking ahead of me and I stopped and, as if spellbound, looked at the amazing action, and the corporal held his cap tightly to his head with both hands, fearing the loss of government property. A little later we smelled the smell of kerosene.
By evening, almost all of the Left Bank knew about what had happened, although there was a "damaged telephone effect." Instead of the MiG-17 fighter, the passenger Tu-104 has already appeared. They said that under the bridge a plane flew from the plant. Chkalov, who allegedly lost control during the tests. But there were obvious inconsistencies, since in those years the plant was already producing the Su-15, and the tests of new aircraft were carried out far outside the city. Local media did not report anything about the incident, and curious citizens after 2-3 days learned some details from transoceanic enemy radio broadcasts. But the Maoist mouthpiece from Beijing announced the start of Soviet pilots working out a new tactic for destroying bridges and crossings. Not somewhere on the training ground, but in the center of a large city!
Of course, the main event was the flight, but the MiG-17 is not a rocket, which means there was a pilot. There were a lot of rumors about him then. Popular rumor reported that the desperate flight under the bridge was the result of a dispute. It was also said that the pilot took the extra risk because of the inaccessible beauty.
Captain Privalov's argument
Rumors were rumors, but it was not at all like that. On June 4, 1965, thirty-year-old captain Valentin Vasilyevich Privalov made his flight under the bridge not on a dare and not because of a woman. The reason was different. He wanted to show that there are still pilots with a capital letter in the Armed Forces, that the ill-conceived dashing "cutting" of the native army during the Khrushchev thaw did not eradicate Chkalovsky traditions and pilot dashing. In addition, it was also a kind of protest against the kholuy suppression of innovation, initiative and the “rubbing out” of combat pilots.
The peak of “cutting” and reduction Valentin Vasilyevich experienced while serving in naval aviation, in the 691st Fighter Aviation Regiment of the Red Banner Baltic Fleet in the city of Mamonovo, Kaliningrad Region. The very west of the USSR, flights over the sea, a black naval uniform, and suddenly - a transfer to the depths of Siberia, a change from a naval uniform to an all-army one ... Service in the Chernigov Guards Fighter Aviation Regiment in the city of Kansk, Krasnoyarsk Territory was much more prosaic and, moreover, Siberia is not the Baltic .
In early June 1965, anti-aircraft artillery of two motorized rifle divisions of the Siberian Military District began to pass a kind of combat exam at a training ground near the city of Yurga. In order for everything to be natural, as in a real battle, a flight of four MiG-17s was sent from the 712th Guards Aviation Regiment to Tolmachevo. Among the pilots was Captain Privalov.
Ground anti-aircraft gunners from 57-millimeter guns fired at the mirror reflection of fighters, and the authorities with large stars on shoulder straps drew conclusions about the degree of preparedness of each of the divisions. After such an imitation of the defeat of the air enemy, Privalov, following to the airfield in Tolmachevo, “subdued” the Communal Bridge.
As Alexander Kamanov (a Novosibirsk resident who met and talked with Valentin Privalov) tells in his memoirs, the pilot noticed the Communal Bridge a long time ago. The ace, who came from Kansk to Novosibirsk for flight training, immediately thought to himself: “I will definitely fly under this bridge!”.
After one of the training sessions, Privalov was going to return to the airfield. But, flying over the Ob, he decided to fulfill his promise to himself.
The target was approached in the direction of the Ob, at a speed of about 700 kilometers per hour. It was scary - to darkening in the eyes. Still - at such a speed to get into the narrow "window" of the bridge arch (30 meters high and 120 wide) seemed simply impossible. Even a slight touch on the control stick changed the height of the car by whole meters.
But the worst was yet to come. Immediately after the Communal Bridge - just 950 meters away - there is already a railway bridge, the most important transport artery of Russia. Privalov had exactly five seconds before the collision. And during this time, he managed to drastically change course and, experiencing wild overload, screw into the sky.
The next day, June 5, 1965, all four pilots seconded from Kansk were in for a "surprise". According to a number of orders and instructions, the emergency was reported vertically, and soon everyone who was supposed to be in office learned about an incident unseen since the time of Valery Chkalov. They also reported to the Minister of Defense of the USSR, Marshal of the Soviet Union R.Ya. Malinovsky.
Anticipating numerous thunders and lightnings from the General Staff Olympus and the near prospect of giving Privalov to the tribunal, the communists of the regiment hastily expelled the desperate pilot from the ranks of the CPSU. And in those years, this meant the end of aviation biography, even in the most favorable scenario.,
Privalov, without an airplane, but with a parachute (as it was supposed to be in form), went back to Kansk by train. He was threatened, if not by a tribunal, then by the end of his flying career. However, when the ace arrived in his native part, a telegram arrived there: “Pilot Privalov should not be punished. Limit yourself to the events that were carried out with him (meaning an educational conversation with the marshal. - Approx. ed.). If you haven't been on vacation, go on vacation. If there was, give ten days of rest at the unit. Minister of Defense of the USSR Marshal R. Malinovsky.
Apparently, the suicidal courage of the air hooligan subdued the marshal, who was familiar with both Chkalov and Pokryshkin. Which, by the way, were also not against demonstrating their aerial skills. And rightly so. Well, hide it, or what?
Now it is difficult to say why the Minister of Defense took with regard to Privalov unexpected decision. Maybe, the marshal realized that such pilots in the event of war would be very useful to native aviation, or maybe something else happened, but Captain Privalov was ordered not to punish, but to send him on vacation, and if he already had, then provide ten days' rest at parts! After that, the ex-communist was quickly returned to the ranks of the Leninist party, and the caliber of the stars on the shoulder straps of the desperate pilot soon changed. He became a squadron commander and even a deputy regiment commander, but not immediately.
They did not forget about the Chkalovsky follower in the capital - in the early 70s, Major, and then Lieutenant Colonel Privalov, continued to serve in a training air regiment in the village of Savasleyka, Gorky Region. Soon, the training regiment became the 148th center for combat use and retraining of air defense aviation flight personnel. Only in 1977 cardiovascular disease forced Valentin Vasilyevich to leave the flight service. He could not and did not want to remain in the ranks of the army without his favorite job - he had to retire, although there was an option to serve for some time in a rear position. In the late 80s, he underwent surgery to implant an electrical pacemaker to the heart muscle. Currently, Valentin Vasilyevich Privalov lives in Moscow.
Not everyone is given
It would be wrong to say that no one else tried to fly the Chkalovsky route under the bridge. Despite the bans, such attempts in Soviet aviation took place. You can already talk about one of them. In the late 80s, Senior Lieutenant K. was transferred from the west to the bomber regiment stationed near the city of Komsomolsk-on-Amur. Quite a decent pilot with a worthy biography for those times. Even then, flights became a holiday for aviators - either there was no kerosene, or something else. In general, the pilots yearned for the sky.
In the spring of 1988, the aforementioned senior lieutenant went on vacation from Khabarovsk to Dnepropetrovsk. The intermediate landing in Tolmachevo dragged on for several hours. It is simply unacceptable for a non-resident to sit at the airport and not see the capital of Siberia, so the Far Eastern pilot made an excursion by taxi. When driving along the Communal Bridge, the taxi driver said that when he was still a kid, a MiG flying under the trusses of the bridge washed away his trousers in the Ob. Prior to this, the pilot heard all sorts of stories, but then the “victim” told. Immediately there was a desire to repeat Chkalovsky's trick, but not in Novosibirsk, but in the Far East.
The target was a railway bridge near the village of Pivan, Khabarovsk Territory. The means is the native Su-24. The starley also persuaded his friend, Captain R., to perform the trick, because the crew of the aircraft was supposed to consist of two people. For more than a month, friends drew diagrams, calculated parameters, angles of approach, and so on. We were not too lazy to go to the Pivan bridge, but the sailors from the internal troops unit, who were guarding an important object, prevented us from looking around.
They decided to combine the conquest of the bridge with a flight to the training ground in the Khabarovsk region. A day before the proposed flight, “kind” people were found, they reported where necessary and even attached copies of the diagrams and calculations during the span of the bridge, as many as four options, depending on wind speed and other factors. As a result, instead of the airfield, the pilots ended up in a special department of the air division, where, after a series of preventive measures abstained from risky activities. In the early 90s, starley, without receiving another star, joined the military aviation of independent Ukraine and even rose to the rank of colonel, and the captain, having retired to the reserve, organized a private company.
Years passed, no one else conquered the Communal Bridge. A commemorative plaque telling about the events of June 1965 did not appear either.
Victor MININ, especially for "G-S"
The author is grateful for the help in preparing the material to retired colonels L.A. Agafonov (Novosibirsk), G.F. Selivanov (Moscow), Yu.P. Makarov (N. Novgorod)
Yes, by the way, is the photo real? Of course not, here it says that this is a collage (see the lower right corner of the central photo):
Yes, and on the Internet you can easily find 100,500 reasons that this particular photo is a montage.
BY THE WAY
"Suicide Bridge" or "Guardian Angel Bridge"?
Alas, in recent years, the symbol of Novosibirsk has gained a bad reputation. Say, it turned into a "suicide bridge". How many cases there were when the townspeople tried to commit suicide by jumping from it, no one counted. We tried to do this and found that all known cases ended ... happily.
According to the workers who maintain the bridge, suicide jumps are most active between ten in the evening and one in the morning.
- In the summer of 2001, a car stopped in the middle of the bridge. A man stepped out of it and, taking a few steps to the parapet, jumped into the water. Rescuers from the city beach noticed the unfortunate and pulled him out of the water. And the man who had suffered fear decided not to repeat the jump.
- A little later, in winter, another person jumped from the bridge onto the ice. They say that he badly damaged the bones, but, thank heavens, he survived.
- On City Day 2002, a desperate thirty-year-old woman jumped from the bridge, but already in the water she changed her mind about taking her own life and swam herself to the right bank of the river.
- The incident, which occurred in the fall of 2002, is still considered unique to this day. Then a twenty-year-old guy jumped from the Communal Bridge to the Ob, fleeing an unhappy love. The water did not soften his fall - the young man hit the bottom. Later, when he was rescued and taken to the hospital, the doctors were surprised for a long time: the young man fell from the height of a 12-story building (considering the fall that he continued under water) and escaped with only a couple of bruises.
But how really jet aircraft fly over water.
One of my attentive and very meticulous readers (shamefully sitting in LiveJournal through the mail.ru account, so I don’t mark him) noticed that not a word was said about how the famous test pilot flew under this very bridge (called from 1918 to 1934 Equality Bridge). I correct and tell...
I see that experts on Soviet pre-war cinematography have already tensed up and prepared to write in the comments "Deception!", "Set up!", "From friend!", "Burn him ...". Don't, don't rush. The frame above, like all the others in this post, is really taken from the movie "Valery Chkalov", this is not a newsreel. And the film itself is not a documentary, but an art one ... But first things first.
So, for starters, the legend itself. It is believed that in the twenties, the then military pilot Valery Chkalov, already then known for systematic violations of discipline, made a risky flight through one of the spans of the bridge. According to one version - wanting to impress his beloved. But legends are legends, and skeptics claim that this actually never happened. Judge for yourself - there are no witnesses, no photographs, no disciplinary sanctions for such a violation either ... Meanwhile, legends say that Chkalov was suspended from flying for this trick, this would certainly have been reflected in the documents!
Nevertheless, the creator of the biographical film "Valery Chkalov" did not stop this episode from being included in his tape. According to one version, the idea with the trick was born in a smoking room during another discussion of the plot, in which the love line did not stick in any way ... The idea, obviously, seemed very successful, and it was realized by Yevgeny Borisenko in 1940 on the set of the film. Let's see what it looked like.
Olga, Chkalov's beloved, meets with his commander, nicknamed Batya, on the Equality Bridge. Batya asks Olga to act on Valery before he gets himself into trouble with his desperate antics... Valery himself finds out about this meeting (absolutely in the wrong way!) and, becoming jealous, decides to make a daring trick to show everyone his coolness! 
Troitsky Bridge, by the way, is unmistakably guessed. And by the views of Petropavlovka, and by modern lamps. 
And Chkalov, meanwhile, is already preparing for his daring trick ... By the way, he comes from the east, from the Bolshaya Nevka. This is clearly seen from the building of the current Nakhimov School below (and in those years - an ordinary school). But no, it looks like the construction of a residential building for employees of the NKVMF is in full swing below. 
But in the next episode, they already show how it flies from the west, along the Peter and Paul Fortress. And the heroes on the bridge react as if the flight was made from the other side... 
In fact, it was the other way around! 
The flag tower of the Naryshkin Bastion (on the right) clearly shows this. Well, okay, the main thing is that the flight is completed, and everything else is the conventions of the movie! 
So it goes. So they flew under the bridge on an airplane, and it’s not so important that it was not Chkalov himself, but another pilot ...
UPD: And in the comments they report that flights under the Trinity Bridge generally began even before the revolution: " All Petrograd newspapers in 1916 excitedly reported on the flight of the naval pilot Lt. G.A. Fride under the Trinity Bridge on the M-5 plane. And in the autumn of 1916, they enthusiastically described the flight of the naval pilot, Lt. A.E. Georgians under all bridges at once!!!"
P.S. Another reason to watch the film (yes, I really watched it and cut the frames myself, and did not drag it from the Internet) was the promise to my friends from Okko to review their online cinema service. The review will be later (I have something to say to them !!!), and I mention them because the film "Valery Chkalov" can be watched completely free of charge (as well as about a hundred more films related to the classics of world and domestic cinema). In any case, registering on the site is faster than downloading a movie from torrents ;-)
