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Rockets and People
evening devoted to the fiftieth anniversary of the flight and loss of the N-209.
Even fifty years later he remained of the same opinion—if he had flown, the flight
would have ended successfully.
In 1993, as I attended the funeral service of former radio operator, Doctor and
Professor Leonid Lvovich Kerber, I thought about how self-assured he was, yet I
still maintained the same opinion—he would not have been able to ensure the failure-free
operation of one of the engines. The NKVD agents saved Kerber from
death in the Arctic and thereby granted him an additional fifty-six years of life.
That same August of 1937, Air Force Commander-in-Chief Alksnis was
arrested. My meeting with him at the Shchelkovo airfield on 12 August was the
last.The punitive agencies dealt swiftly and mercilessly with the Red Army’s best
command cadres. According to the official information of unclassified reference
publications,Alksnis’ life was cut short in 1938. In spite of his subsequent rehabilitation,
no information has been reported as to the date or site of his shooting.
between 1929 and 1937, Soviet aviation made qualitative and quantitative
leaps. Over a period of only eight years, the following aircraft that attained a
world-wide reputation were developed, put into series production, and accepted
as standard armaments of the Air Force and civilian aviation: the TB-3 (ANT-6),
SB (ANT-40), DB-3 (TsKB-30), TB-7 (ANT-42), and DB-A (limited production)
bombers; the R-5 and R-6 reconnaissance aircraft; the I-16, I-15, and I-153
fighters; and a U-2 (Po-2) trainer. In addition, many aircraft were produced in
only one or two prototypes without going into series production because the
aviation industry lacked the capacity.Among these were the ANT-25, the Maxim
Gorky, the TB-4, and many other aircraft that were epochal in terms of their
outstanding parameters.
All in all, the 1930s, which started with our aviation lagging far behind the level
of achievement abroad, brought much fame to Soviet designers, and even more to
Soviet pilots.
The names Tukhachevskiy and Alksnis influenced the “adolescence” of the chief
designers’ teams that ensured victory in World War II seven years later.These were
talented and visionary leaders who cared about the integrated and comprehensive
development of an air fleet, who maintained close contact with the aircraft KBs
and industry, and who did much to improve the combat training of pilots and the
mastery of new fields of technology.
Long before the appearance of missile launchers among the infantry troops,
airplanes were armed with missiles.This was an unqualified contribution of the Air
Force military leaders of those years.They were the first to appreciate the developments
of the Leningrad-based Gas Dynamics Laboratory and RNII. Airplanes
received missile armaments four years before the infantry forces.
By late 1937, our Air Force had 8,000 aircraft of all classes, including 2,400
heavy and high-speed bombers—more than half of which were produced by
Factory No. 22. In Moscow, Kazan, Kuybyshev,Voronezh, Komsomolsk-on-Amur,
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