Hero of the Russian Federation Igor Olegovich Rodobolsky was included in the Book of Records of the Russian Armed Forces as the most titled officer. Since 2013, the officer has been in reserve. Prior to that, Russian Air Force Colonel Igor Rodobolsky, who has the qualifications of a sniper pilot, had time to take part in the Afghan, first and second Chechen wars. He received the title of Hero of the Russian Federation in 2003.
In narrow circles, especially among military pilots and professionals, the pilot Igor Rodobolskiy was known for a long time as a unique, truly piece pilot. But he gained wide popularity at a new level for himself relatively recently, when the Hero of Russia was entered into the Book of Records of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation compiled by the Ministry of Defense, according to the Zvezda TV channel. In this book, in the "Aerospace Forces" section, Igor Rodobolskiy is listed as the most titled Russian officer. None of them have such a number of combat awards. In open sources it is indicated that, in addition to the Star of the Hero of the Russian Federation, the pilot has two Orders of the Red Star, three Orders of Courage, the Order for Military Merit, the Order for Service to the Motherland in the Armed Forces of the USSR, 3rd degree, two medals "For military valor" and other state awards. Although the officer himself does not like to talk about his awards.
The future Hero of Russia and the famous pilot was born on March 18, 1960 in Grodno on the territory of the BSSR in the family of doctors Oleg and Galina Rodobolsky. At the same time, in the 1960s, the Rodobolsky family moved to the city of Novopolotsk, Vitebsk region. Here the future hero studied at an ordinary secondary school number 6, at the same time attending classes in the flight section of the Vitebsk DOSAAF. By the time he received his high school diploma, he had already made a choice regarding his future - he decided to become a military pilot. Recalling later about his childhood and adolescence, he said that his parents wanted him to become a doctor. But he had seen enough in childhood as they returned home from night shifts in the hospital after several operations and immediately fell to sleep. And he also recalled that for some reason he was afraid of blood, got used to it only later, the service forced me.
In August 1979, Igor Rodobolsky entered the Syzran Higher Military Aviation School of Pilots, and this is how his service in the Armed Forces of the USSR began. He graduated from college with honors in 1983. After graduating from the flight school, he served as a lieutenant in the aviation helicopter units of the Southern Group of Forces, located on the territory of Hungary. He was a navigator of the crew, then six months later he became the crew commander of the Mi-8 helicopter. His colleagues unanimously said that Igor was extremely assiduous, he could literally spend hours analyzing complex flight tasks, consult with more experienced colleagues, and understand the drawings and engineering manuals of the Mi-8 helicopter. All this was necessary in order to use previously found solutions and tips during training flights. The entire foundation laid in peacetime service helped Igor Rodobolsky in all military conflicts in which he had to take part on duty. It so happened that a lot of combat missions fell to his lot.
In 1985, Igor Rodobolsky was first transferred to Nerchinsk (Trans-Baikal Military District), and then to Uzbekistan, where helicopter crews were trained for subsequent dispatch to Afghanistan. The young pilot was seconded to Afghanistan in 1986. Life turned out so that Igor Olegovich spent almost ten years in the war. First Afghanistan, then from beginning to end two Chechen wars.
Already in Afghanistan, the Mi-8 multipurpose transport helicopters have become a real legend. In many ways, the "turntables" made legendary just such pilots as Igor Rodobolskiy. In Afghanistan, the young pilot managed to make more than 200 combat missions, most of them took place in difficult meteorological conditions, often under hurricane fire from the ground. It was in Afghanistan that Rodobolsky came in handy with the thorough knowledge of the helicopter, which he acquired during his training. The mujahideen got into his "turntable" from machine guns, machine guns and even MANPADS, but he always returned the car to the base, often with a punctured fuel tank, a shot through the hull, with torn off parts of the blades. In Afghanistan, his Mi-8 evacuated the wounded, delivered ammunition, took the landing groups. For the valor and courage shown during the Afghan war, Igor Rodobolsky was awarded three orders, and the helicopter formation, in which the pilot served, was the last among the 40th Army's Air Force to leave Afghanistan.
After the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan, in February 1989, Igor Olegovich served in various military districts of the Soviet Union, and then Russia. At a difficult time for the country at the very beginning of the 1990s, he was sent to Cambodia in Phnom Penh, where he spent 8 months from July 1992 to March 1993 as part of the UN mission in this country.
At this time, it became restless on the territory of Russia itself. Radical Muslim groups in the Caucasus called for the division of the country and separation from Russia, the creation of Islamic theocratic states in the Caucasus. The military conflict was brewing and threatened to turn into many troubles, numerous deaths and crippled lives of tens of thousands of people, but politicians could not agree and in the Caucasus, guns really started talking. In the conditions of the military conflict that erupted in Chechnya, helicopter pilots with real experience of military operations and flights in mountainous terrain were literally worth their weight in gold and Igor Rodobolsky was one of the first to be sent to Chechnya. In Chechnya, he fought as part of the 55th separate helicopter regiment of the North Caucasus Military District.
Rodobolsky is extremely reluctant to recall the war, like any military officer and a person who has had to be in a real hell more than once. In an interview with Zvezda, he said that on the eve of the first military campaign in Chechnya, he didn’t believe to the last that Russian troops would enter the republic. But the columns really went to Grozny, in the city the Maikop brigade was almost completely defeated. “I took the soldiers out of there. The Mi-8 was stuffed to the ceiling with bodies, you know? Straight piles of bodies. And I sat with my back to them in the cockpit. And those who loaded them into the helicopter, who were nearby … I don't know what it was like for them then. When you see that 20 fighters are lying like meat, it’s hard,”Rodoblsky recalled.
It was during the hostilities in Chechnya that the pilot became a real legend of combat helicopter aviation. In total, from 1995 to 2004, he flew over 1,700 sorties, with a total flight time of 4,800 hours. Open sources report that Hero of the Russian Federation Igor Olegovich Rodobolsky took about 500 people from the battlefield, the colonel himself admits that he never thought. “At first we talked with some,” the officer smiles. - When you take the guys, they climb into the helicopter under enemy fire, and then they find out the name of the crew commander. They wrote to me later: "Thank you for keeping me alive." But it was much more difficult to transport the killed, "cargo 200"."
The crew of Rodobolsky was engaged in the evacuation of Russian soldiers and officers, very often receiving tasks from the category of impossible ones. “They rescued our guys, who were in such situations that it seemed simply impossible to get out of them. They were doomed. There were only two options left: to die or to surrender. Many chose the former. When you know that human lives depend only on you, then you no longer think about anything. During my combat missions, I could have died 20-30 times, maybe even more. Apparently, God watches over, protects,”Igor Rodobolskiy noted in an interview.
Here are just a few examples of his military prowess and high professionalism, which saved hundreds of Russian soldiers. On February 25, 2000, in the most difficult meteorological conditions with a visibility of less than 300 meters, Rodobolsky's helicopter delivered ammunition and food to a special forces platoon, which was defensively on the high-altitude site of Mount Ekkyrkort (due to adverse weather conditions in this area, it was not possible to deliver food and ammunition within 12 days).
On May 30 (according to other sources, May 31), 2001, a group of three Mi-8 helicopters, commanded by Rodobolskiy, proceeded to evacuate a group of army special forces surrounded in the area of the village of Tsentaroy. The turntable managed to take on board 6 wounded soldiers, when heavy fire was opened on it, the helicopter took off and covered the evacuation of the rest of the wounded with its fire. The Mi-8 was seriously damaged by direct hits from heavy machine guns. Later it turned out that the gas tank was punctured in the car, 30 bullet holes were counted in the hull. The helicopter caught fire, but Lieutenant Colonel Rodobolsky managed to bring the almost uncontrollable helicopter to the nearest Russian military unit, where it landed.
Photo by Alexander Nemenov
On December 31, 2001, during the evacuation of seriously wounded soldiers in the Argun Gorge area into complete darkness, focusing mainly on signal flares launched by scouts, Rodobolsky landed 400 meters from the attacking militants, who were firing at the helicopter, focusing on the sound of working engines. Despite numerous hits from small arms, the helicopter successfully delivered the wounded to the base.
On January 11, 2002, Igor Rodobolskiy took part in the liquidation of a large base of Chechen fighters located in the Sharo-Argun region. On that day, at the head of a group of 6 helicopters, he was the first to bring his car to the enemy's position, causing fire on himself, after which the found positions of the militants were covered with fire from a flight of combat helicopters. After six landing paratroopers were wounded by fire from the machine gun that survived the air attack, Rodobolsky descended and "leaned" the helicopter against a steep mountain slope on two wheels, it was impossible to land completely in this place. When loading the wounded on board, the helicopter received 24 hits, the instrument panel was damaged by the fire of the militants, part of the Mi-8 equipment was out of order, and Rodobolsky himself was wounded in the arm. Continuously maneuvering, he managed to bring the turntable out from under enemy fire. At the same time, one of the rotor blades was damaged by a hit from a grenade launcher. Despite all the damage, the pilot managed to return the helicopter to the base. The result of this operation was the destruction of a large militant base: 36 members of illegal armed groups were killed, an ammunition depot was blown up, and 4 Igla MANPADS were seized.
In the fall of 2002, Rodobolskiy took part in the liquidation of a gang of militants in the region of the Ingush village of Galashki. In that battle, his helicopter received 20 bullets, but the pilot continued to fire at the militants and, using a maneuver, managed to dodge a missile fired from Igla MANPADS.
One should not think that in Chechnya the pilot was engaged exclusively in combat work. He also carried out purely peaceful, humanitarian flights. For example, during a severe flood in Chechnya in the summer of 2002, the Rhodobolskiy Mi-8 helicopter flew 98 flights to the disaster zone, delivering 35 tons of various humanitarian supplies and removing 170 people from the disaster zone, including 50 wounded and sick. Some of them had to be removed from the rooftops. On July 15, 2002, Rodobolskiy took a seriously ill Chechen child and his mother out of a high-mountain village in the Argun region of Chechnya by helicopter to provide urgent medical assistance.
For two Chechen campaigns, Igor Olegovich Rodobolsky was awarded three Orders of Courage, and in 2003 for 12 combat episodes he was awarded the title of Hero of the Russian Federation with the Gold Star medal, the head of the personnel department said then that it was possible to present Rodobolsky to the hero's star for each from these episodes, and the head of the award committee, when she read the list of the pilot's exploits, burst into tears.
This award was especially remembered by the pilot. But not by spoken speeches or a solemn atmosphere, but by a curious case. “We were brought to the Kremlin, to the Catherine Hall, instructed: when the name is called, we need to get up, walk along the carpet paths, approach the president of the country and stand up as expected,” the pilot told Zvezda journalists. - I was named the second in a row, I went along this route, I introduce myself: “Comrade Supreme Commander-in-Chief! Lieutenant Colonel …”And how I got stuck - I forgot my last name! Putin saw this and patted on the shoulder: "Lieutenant Colonel, calm down." He smiled like that. Perhaps, in the Catherine Hall then they did not understand anything. I got myself together and remembered: "Lieutenant Colonel Rodobolsky."
Since 2005, Rodobolsky was the head of the aviation department of the 5th Army of the Air Force and Air Defense of the Volga-Ural Military District (later, the Central Military District would be created on its basis). Igor Olegovich finished his military service as head of the department for combat training and combat use of army aviation, senior inspector-pilot of the aviation department of the association. Just before his transfer to the reserve, in 2012, Igor Rodobolskiy created the Center for Patriotic Education of the Sverdlovsk Region, which he still runs.
In an interview with Zvezda journalists, he noted that he no longer felt nostalgia for flying, that he had retired from the war, memories of it, and dreams of the war had disappeared. “Sometimes it happens, you look at the photos, and Afghanistan comes to mind very much. You begin to think, analyze what kind of fanatic I was then when I was performing impossible combat missions. And now I just want to relax,”noted Rodobolskiy. As an example of a true Russian officer, he deserved this vacation like no other.
