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Factory No. 22
was removed from them. New radio equipment was installed.The pilots’ and flight
mechanics’ panels were replaced with ones that were more elegant. Every conceivable
surface of the interior equipment was chromed or covered with frosted lacquer.
In a word, our dismal, dark green bomb hauler was converted into a comfortable
orange and sky-blue airplane with the most up-to-date navigational equipment.
Olga Mitkevich, the leader of the Soviet delegation, a former Comintern
worker with a command of three European languages, and the director of the
largest aircraft factory in Europe, roused tremendous interest in all levels of French
society. For the French communists, this was a wonderful source of visual agitation
and propaganda. The Soviet pavilion enjoyed the greatest attention. Mitkevich
conducted numerous press conferences, visited workers’ clubs, and met with the
representatives of business circles. These were the finest hours of her life. But
twentieth-century Russian history did not tolerate talented female leaders.
On 1 December, in Leningrad, Kirov was assassinated. 42 Mitkevich understood
that this murder would have serious consequences for the Party and the nation.
She cut short her stay in Paris and returned immediately to Moscow.
In the winter of 1935, at Mitkevich’s direction, I was called to the factory. I had
been included in a commission to determine the causes for the mass failures in the
bomb-release system. Aleksandr Nadashkevich, director of aircraft weaponry
development at the Tupolev design bureau, was appointed commission chairman.
Mitkevich herself assembled the entire commission at the factory airfield. She
showed us the flight field crammed with dozens of aircraft and said, “We cannot
release these planes because the bombs either don’t drop when they are supposed
to or they drop spontaneously. Do something! The factory’s schedule has been
disrupted. Never before has there been such a disgrace. In this commission I have
assembled developers, theoreticians, and practitioners.Are you really not capable of
understanding what needs to be done? Chertok, you’re inventing a new device,
but that will take a while. Figure out what to do with these planes today. Help the
factory!” Now it wasn’t the formidable Central Committee Party organizer
addressing us, but a factory director who was in trouble.You could hear notes of
despair in her appeal.
Always elegantly attired, with a professorial goatee, Nadashkevich had a reputation
as a prominent specialist in aircraft weaponry. Having picked out three practical
workers, among whom I found myself, he said,“Guys! Inspect all the wiring.
From the distributor units on the electric release to each pyrocartridge.We will find
the defects.”
With two master electricians, Mayorov and Eyger, and a team of installers, we
went from airplane to airplane and tested circuit continuity and probed each wire
and each terminal box.We replaced several electric releases.We wrapped a bunch
42. Sergey Mironovich Kirov (1886–1934) was the popular Leningrad Communist Party leader whose
assassination in December 1934 led to a series of events that culminated with the Great Purges in 1937–38.
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