Worked in several shifts at aircraft factories
In the harsh autumn of 1941, dozens of large enterprises were evacuated to the city of Kuibyshev (now Samara) from the west of the country, which, just two or three months after the move, were already issuing products for the front. In the vicinity of the Bezymyanna railway station (now it is located within the city of Samara), factories numbered 1, 18 and 24 of the People's Commissariat of the Aviation Industry (NKAP USSR) were operating at full capacity. Subsequently, they respectively received the names: plant "Progress", Kuibyshev Aviation Plant and Motor-building Association named after M. V. Frunze.
Victory Weapon Price
These enterprises moved to Bezymyanka in an extremely short time. The installation of equipment in ready-made buildings has become the main task of the plant workers. It is clear that no one even thought about creating more or less acceptable conditions for personnel - for example, heating workshops. When the factories finally began to turn on the machines, the temperature in the room was the same as outside - minus thirty degrees.
Even the heroes of labor in such an environment could not last long. Home-made electric heaters (popularly called "goats") or simple wood-burning stoves ("stoves") began to appear in the workshops, and since little attention was paid to fire safety then, the homemade heating system eventually turned into dozens of fires in factories millions of rubles in losses and, worst of all, hundreds of human lives.”Few people knew about such incidents in the Soviet years, because the information about all such incidents had been stamped“Top Secret”for decades.
For researchers, closed factory archives have become available only in recent years. It can be seen from these documents that in the winter of 1942-1943, several large fires occurred monthly at the bezymyanskie enterprises and in the adjacent residential areas, sometimes with numerous human casualties. One of the most serious incidents occurred on the night of January 17, 1943, at the plant No. 1 named after Stalin. There, from a homemade electric stove, an aircraft assembly shop caught fire, where numerous small rooms and nooks were built from plywood and boards in violation of all instructions. On dry wood, the flame went very quickly, and therefore more than a dozen workers did not manage to get out of the fire trap. The exact number of those killed, and even more so, their names have not yet been found out. Material damage from this fire amounted to almost 10 million rubles in the prices of that time.
A month earlier, a similar incident took place on the territory of the plant No. 463 of the NKAP, which in the summer of 1941 was evacuated from Riga to an unnamed site. During the construction of aviation enterprises, component parts were made in his workshops, which were then used to assemble aircraft. However, on the evening of December 10, 1942, a fire broke out at the plant, as a result of which a production workshop with an area of 2,200 square meters with all the property in it burned down. The cause of the incident turned out to be the same: electric "goats" and littering of the territory.
After that, by order of the People's Commissar of the Aviation Industry of the USSR Alexei Shakhurin, plant No. 463 as an independent unit was liquidated, and the equipment that survived the fire was transferred to plant No. 1. The director of the enterprise, Peter Bukreev, and the chief engineer, Vladimir Vozdvizhensky, were dismissed from their jobs without providing them with other positions in the People's Commissariat, and the deputy director Pavel Rychkov and five other middle managers were put on trial. Then this meant the almost inevitable sending of the culprit to the front in the penal battalion.
O Beaters of Yungorodok
During 1942, thousands of young people were gathered here to provide defense enterprises with workers. Many of them until recently were residents of various villages of the Kuibyshev region. A significant part of it were very young girls, but there were also quite a few young men who had received a reservation to work at the factory.
Young collective farmers were quickly trained in working specialties - a turner, a locksmith, a milling machine operator, a riveter … And they were placed in dozens of wooden barracks, which during 1942 was hastily built up a huge territory around the Bezymyanka defense factories. Since the average age of local residents at that time did not exceed 16-18 years, this barracks village (now the territory of the Kirovsky district of Samara) was named Yungorodok.
Living conditions here were, to put it mildly, very difficult. The facilities were located outside, and the interior of the premises consisted of long rows of two- or three-story wooden bunks, on which workers sometimes slept without even mattresses. With the onset of the cold season, temporary stoves - "stoves" were placed inside the wooden buildings, which, however, did little to help the residents in severe frosts. It was because of them that in the winter of 1942-1943 several serious fires occurred in the village of Yungorodok. Here is an extract from the order on the 15th department of the NKAP of the USSR, which does not require comment.
• Despite repeated demands to strengthen fire prevention, these measures are not fully implemented. So, on March 14, 1943 at 8 o'clock. 45 minutes a fire broke out in barracks No. 32 of plant No. 18 from electric heating devices. As a result of the fire, one person died and three people were burned. The fire itself was quickly localized thanks to the energetic work of the fire brigades. The barrack could be repaired, but due to the irresponsible attitude of the heads of the plant's housing and communal services at 24 hours on March 14 this year. the same barrack caught fire a second time and burned down. Upon arrival at the place of the fire, the fire brigades did not find water nearby, since the reservoirs were used in the morning to extinguish the same barracks and were not filled with water afterwards.
The director of the plant No. 18, t. Belyanskoy, should identify the culprits of this fire and bring them to justice. Immediately establish night watch for each house from among the residents, familiarize residents with the rules of fire safety and extinguishing a fire during the period of fire."
Medal • For Valiant Labor in the Great Patriotic War"
Fiery, tragedy of barrack number 48
However, the measures stipulated in the M order did not succeed in preventing I from the next fiery tragedy, which happened just two weeks after the incident described above. It took place at about two o'clock in the morning on March 30, 1943 in barrack no. 48 in the village of Yungorodok, where at that moment more than a hundred people were sleeping. The fire began / from an iron stove in the night attendant's cap, which was located at the very entrance. The watchman fell asleep at his post, having thrown wood into the firebox before that. Either the stove left unattended by him overheated, or fell out a burning firebrand, but soon the premises of the storehouse were burning with an open flame. After a few minutes the fire engulfed the entire entrance vestibule of the barrack, thereby cutting off the path to salvation for people.
The emergency exit located at the other end of the wooden structure turned out to be tightly closed with a padlock and littered with all kinds of rubbish. When the fire spread to the living quarters and panic began here, some workers were able to knock out the frames on the windows and get out through the openings, but most of the inhabitants of the barrack remained under its burnt debris. According to the reports, on that fateful night, 62 people died in the fire, and another ft 38 residents, although they were burned to varying degrees, still survived. The fire-VD naya team arrived at the scene of the incident only half an hour after the start of the fire, since the nearest telephone was at the checkpoint of the enterprise, three kilometers from the scene.^ In the entire Soviet history of the L region, this incident is now considered the largest in terms of the number of victims killed in one fire. And at the beginning of 1943, its causes and consequences were considered not only by the management of the enterprise, but also by members of the Bureau of the Kuibyshev Regional Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks and the Collegium of the NKAP, but no one was seriously punished for the death of dozens of young workers. By the decision of the directorate of plant No. 18, the commandant of Yungorodka Isakov was removed from his post, but they did not consider it necessary to initiate a criminal case on the fact of the incident, since the main culprit of the tragedy, the watchman of the ill-fated barrack, died during the fire. And just a few days later, information about the death of 62 people in Kuibyshev as a result of an accident was completely lost against the background of frontline reports of 1943, which spoke of the losses of the Red Army, which were tens and hundreds of times more than this figure.
