Kozlov, Matvey Ilyich

Born May 16, 1902 in the village. Turovo (now in the Zadnelsel settlement of the Ust-Kubinsky district , Vologda region ).

He graduated from the Vologda real school, for some time he was a village teacher in the village of Troitsko-Yenalskoye near the station of Vozhega SZD . He became a Komsomol member and was sent to the Naval Academy in Petrograd by a permit of the Komsomol Provincial Committee. In 1924 , while practicing on the cruiser Aurora , rounding Scandinavia, he traveled to Murmansk and Arkhangelsk . In the same year, at his own request, he was enrolled in the Higher School of Marine Pilots named after L. D. Trotsky in Sevastopol , which he graduated in 1925 and then served in the Air Force units of the Black Sea Navy, including the cruiser just created for ship aviation Chervona Ukraine and on the battleship Paris Commune.

He began his flying activities flying on seaplanes . One of the teachers at the school was Anatoly Dmitrievich Alekseev - the future famous polar pilot, Hero of the Soviet Union . After meeting with him in Moscow in 1932, M.I. Kozlov, as the best marine Komsomol pilot, was sent to the Arctic. The second expedition followed the second, the third third, and remained to work in polar aviation. He flew over the vast expanses of the Arctic, as before over the warm waters of the Black Sea.

As the co-pilot of the aircraft, N-169 was a member of the first high-latitude air expedition Sever , which served the first Soviet polar station North Pole-1 .

Member of the CPSU (b), since 1952 - CPSU since 1940 ; adopted by the party organization Glavsevmorput .

World War II

He took part in the rescue of the passengers of the ship " Marina Raskova " convoy BD-5 . It seemed that the pilots of the rescue squad accomplished the impossible: they not only landed their Catalina seaplane on the waves of the stormy Kara Sea , but also carried people who still had signs of life on their hands. Here are the lines from the report of Matvey Ilyich Kozlov:

“Bortmekhanik Kamirny, navigator Leonov, engaged in the transfer of people from Kungas to an airplane, found there 14 people alive and more than 25 corpses. The corpses lay in two rows at the bottom of a kungas, filled knee-deep with water. Survivors lay and sat on the corpses, of which about six were able to move with difficulty on their own. ”

There was not enough fuel for the plane’s return flight, Kozlov decided to go by water on engines. ^[one]

The Military Council of the Northern Fleet, on the proposal of the leadership of the Main Northern Sea Route, awarded M. I. Kozlov and his comrades orders. The crew of the aircraft:

• the second pilot - V. A. Popov, who soon died in the Arctic during an airplane accident;
• senior mechanic N.P. Kamirny - an expert on technology and a man of extraordinary courage, he ensured the smooth operation of the engines for 33 hours;
• navigator I.E. Leonov, flight engineer N. A. Bogatkin and second flight engineer A. D. Zemskov are people of equally high courage and nobility.

After the war

After the war, M. I. Kozlov lived in Moscow on Nikitsky Boulevard, house 9 - in the famous "House of Polar Explorers" (cultural heritage site " Glavsevmorputi Residential Building "). ^[2] In his apartment was a commemorative gift made of aviation glass. An engraving was engraved on the Plexiglass plate - a torpedo-torn ship sinking into water, next to it was a boat with people dancing on the waves and a two-engine seaplane Katalina abruptly descending. On the stand is the inscription:

“My second father, a pilot of polar aviation, Kozlov Matvey Ilyich, who saved me and my comrades after a seven-day stay in the Kara Sea as a result of the death of the transport“ Marina Raskova ”on August 12, 1944. Let this small souvenir remind you of the truly heroic everyday life of your glorious crew during the days of World War II. With deep gratitude and respect to you A. Ya. Bulakh, Izium, December 28, 1965. "

The last time I flew to the Arctic in 1973 was at the North Pole-22 station.

At the end of his life, he worked as a night watchman in one of the ministries of the USSR on Kalinin Avenue.

He died in 1981 . ^[3]

Family

• Father - Kozlov Ilya Matveevich, was engaged in scrubbing and agriculture, died in the siege of Leningrad in 1942.
• Mother - Kozlova Mastradel Viktorovna, a housewife, died in 1931.
• The first wife is Dobromyslova Galina Petrovna.
• Second wife - Elena Sakharova, born in 1908, married since 1954.
• Son - Sakharov Andrey Leonidovich, born in 1940.

• He was awarded three Orders of Lenin, four Orders of the Red Banner of War, the Order of the Red Banner of Labor, two orders of the Patriotic War of 1 degree, the Order of the Red Star and medals. He presented himself to the title of Hero of the Soviet Union, but the views were rejected due to family troubles. ^[four]
• Awarded the Certificate of Merit of the Main Directorate of the Northern Sea Route (1944).

• In honor of the famous polar pilot mountains in Antarctica are named, mapped in 1962 . ^[five]

• Kozlov I.A., Shlomin V.S. Red Banner Northern Fleet. - M.: Military Publishing House of the Ministry of Defense of the USSR, 1977.

• Convoy BD-5

• Kars expedition-2009 (Biography of M.I. Kozlov)
• Birthday of Matvey Ilyich
• OVER THE KARA SEA