Mikheev, Ivan Vasilyevich

Born in 1898 in the village of Navolok Peschansk parish (now Karelia ) in the family of a shoemaker. Until 1914, the family moved to Moscow.

He graduated from the primary school, then worked in the forge at the nail factory. During the First World War he served in the army as a telephonist and chauffeur. In the Red Army - since its inception.

Since childhood, fond of aviation. Enrolling at the Central Airfield, Ivan became a motorist. At the Moscow Aviation School of air combat and bombing, he collected an airplane from the wreckage of the victims of the accident and decommissioned vehicles and began to secretly fly independently. Thus he made about 200 flights before the authorities found out about this.

In 1923, Mikheev moved from military aviation to civilian - to the newly created Dobrolet. In 1925 he took part in the group flight “ Moscow - Beijing ” as a flight engineer of the Yu-13 “Pravda” (pilot - IK Polyakov). Upon returning from the flight, awarded the Order of the Red Banner, he received permission to retrain for a pilot, whose specialty he mastered in three months instead of two or three years. Over the ten years of his pilot activity, Mikheev has reached the pinnacle of professionalism. Among the first polar pilots, he conducted reconnaissance of seal pastures in the White Sea , carried out flights of the highest class of complexity.

On June 6 - 12, 1929, M. M. Gromov and I. V. Mikheyev on the ANT-9 “Wings of the Soviets” performed the flight Moscow-Sevastopol-Moscow. In July-August, the same crew on the ANT-9 made an international flight Moscow — Travemünde — Berlin — Paris — Rome — Marseille — London — Paris — Berlin — Warsaw — Moscow . On September 25, 1929, Mikheev lifted the first Soviet rotary-wing apparatus Kaskr-1 into the air. From January 31 to March 6, 1931, Mikheyev with a mechanic V. I. Monakhov on ANT-9 performed a flight from Moscow to Obdorsk and back for the removal of fur.

On August 18, 1933, the USSR celebrated Aviation Day for the first time, and the Soviet government awarded orders to a group of civil aviation workers. The highest award of the Motherland - the Order of Lenin was awarded to one Aeroflot pilot - Ivan Vasilyevich Mikheev. It was he who was entrusted to manage the ANT-14 Pravda, the flagship of the Gorky Special Consolidated Aviation and Aeronautical Squadron, established on March 17, 1933 under the Main Directorate of the Civil Air Fleet.

Ivan Vasilyevich died on May 18, 1935 while performing a flight on the ANT-20 “Maxim Gorky”.

Catastrophe

On May 18, 1935, N. S. Zhurov ^[1] and the pilot of the agitation squadron I. V. Mikheev ^[2] carried out a demonstration and at the same time, acceptance and transfer flight of the ANT-20 “Maxim Gorky” aircraft. Pilot N. P. Blagin , for unknown reasons, who started to perform aerobatics near the ANT-20 wing, accompanied the flight of the I-5 fighter, made a piloting error and sent his fighter to the aircraft he accompanied ^[3] . On board, besides the crew of 11 people, there were 38 ^[4] passengers, most of them were workers of TsAGI and their children, they all died. The second escort plane, the R-5 , piloted by V. V. Rybushkin, carried a cameraman, who recorded the flight and the catastrophe. According to the official version (TASS report):

Despite the categorical prohibition to do any aerobatic maneuvers while accompanying the aircraft, the pilot Blagin violated this order and began to perform aerobatic maneuvers in the immediate vicinity of the Maxim Gorky airplane at an altitude of 700 meters. When leaving the dead loop, the pilot Blagin his plane hit the wing of the Maxim Gorky. The aircraft "Maxim Gorky" due to the injuries received from the strike of the training aircraft began to collapse in the air, passed at the peak and fell into parts in the Falcon village, near the airport ... Pilot Blagin, who piloted the training aircraft, also died in the air collision. ^[five]

On February 14 - 16, 1929, Mikheev saved the life of a teacher at the Kanzanavolok primary school, Alexandra Gromtsova, who needed an urgent operation at the clinic. Having departed from Moscow, in a continuous snowfall, Mikheev found the town of Pudozh in the woodland, 850 km away from the capital, and in time managed to deliver the patient to Leningrad .

In those days, a district party conference was held in Pudozh. When it became known on the presidium about the accident with Gromtsova, it was decided to immediately seek help from the relevant institutions of the USSR. The telegrams to Moscow, to the people's health and education commissariats, and also to the Dobrolet aviation society went as follows: “The working people of Pudozh ask to send the plane to provide medical assistance to a seriously ill teacher ... ” The answer did not take long to wait: “ The plane will take off on Tuesday through Leningrad . The choice fell on the civil aviation pilot Ivan Vasilyevich Mikheev. His winged car landed on a snowy floodplain of the bend of the Vodla River, lying between the villages of Zarechye and Sobornaya Gora. ^[6]

Information about this flight of Mikheev to Pudozh was published in the journal “Air Bulletin of the Air Force” No. 4 for 1929:

“This flight, both technically and meteorologically, and its very purpose was extremely difficult. However, due to his endurance and experience, the pilot Mikheev came out of all difficulties with honor and perfectly fulfilled the task entrusted to him, thereby writing one more page in the book of achievements of our young Soviet civil aviation. ”

• The name of Ivan Mikheev was assigned to the first serial AIR-6 , which was part of the propaganda squadron. Maxim Gorky.

• Awarded the Order of Lenin and the Order of the Red Banner.

• Special consolidated propaganda them. Maxim Gorky

• Bobrov N. With. Pilot Ivan Mikheev. M .: Young Guard, 1936 [1]
• Mikheev Ivan Vasilyevich
• I.V. Mikheev (1898-1935)