In the first days of that terrible war for our Motherland, not only ground troops suffered losses from the rapidly advancing German tank formations. A tragic carnage unfolded in the sky. The air force of the Western Special Military District was destroyed in large numbers on June 22, 1941 by sudden German raids. The losses were so crushing that the commander of the air force of the district, General I. I. Kopets, shot himself in despair …
In his personal diary “Different days of the war,” Konstantin Simonov wrote in those days: “On June 30, 1941, selflessly carrying out the order of the command and striking blow after blow on the German crossings near Bobruisk, the regiment, flying into battle led by its commander Golovanov, lost 11 machines.
The Chief Marshal of Aviation Alexander Evgenievich Golovanov himself later is silent about the fact that he himself sat at the helm of one of those aircraft of the 212th Separate Long-Range Bomber Regiment. He was such a man, why in vain to push out his heroism?
Alexander Golovanov was born in 1904, in Nizhny Novgorod, in the family of a river worker. It is interesting that the mother of the future air marshal was the daughter of Nikolai Kibalchich, a People's Will, one of the participants in the assassination attempt on Alexander II.
The Golovanov brothers in the Moscow Cadet Corps named after Catherine II. Shura - sits second from the left. Tolya - in the second row, third from the right
As a boy, Sasha Golovanov entered the Alexander Cadet Corps, and already in October 1917 he joined the ranks of the Red Guard. The Red Guardsman Golovanov fought on the Southern Front, as a scout of the 59th Reconnaissance Regiment, was wounded in battle and was shell-shocked.
Since 1924, Alexander Evgenievich has served in the OGPU, having managed to rise to the position of head of the department. In his service asset - participation in the arrest of a fairly well-known in white revolutionary circles, Socialist-Revolutionary Boris Savinkov (for a long time Golovanov kept the parabellum of this terrorist, in memory of his capture).
[size = 1] AE Golovanov - commissioner of the special department of the division named after F. E. Dzerzhinsky. 1925 g
Alma-Ata. 1931 g.
Chief pilot of Aeroflot. 1940 g.
Since the beginning of the 30s, Golovanov was assigned to the People's Commissariat of Heavy Industry, as the executive secretary of the Deputy People's Commissar, and Alexander Evgenievich began his flying career by graduating from the OSOVIAKHIM aviation school in 1932, after which he worked at Aeroflot until the beginning of World War II (as a pilot, later becoming a detachment commander). In 1938, Soviet newspapers wrote about Golovanov as a millionaire pilot: there were over a million kilometers behind his soul /
Alexander Golovanov took part in the battles at Khalkin-Gol and in the Soviet-Finnish war.
Page of a draft letter to J. V. Stalin with a proposal to create a compound of long-range bombers
The fate of this remarkable pilot changed in 1941, and a sharp turn is associated with the name of I. V. Stalin. The fact is that back in January 1941, Joseph Vissarionovich received a letter from Golovanov with a proposal to create a modern powerful long-range bomber aviation. Stalin's proposal was approved, and from that moment on, Golovanov's dizzying career began, which many close associates of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief could not forgive him until the end of his life.
A. E. Golovanov - regiment commander (far right). Smolensk, spring 1941
TB-3 before departure. In the center - A. E. Golovanov. Smolensk, 1941
Since February 1941, Alexander Golovanov has been the commander of the 212nd Long-Range Bomber Aviation Regiment, and since August 1941 he becomes the commander of the 81st Long-Range Bomber Aviation Division, directly subordinate to the Headquarters of the Supreme High Command. And in February 1942, Stalin appointed Alexander Evgenievich as commander of Long-Range Aviation (in military history, it is customary to call it the abbreviation ADD for brevity). Finally, since December 1944, Golovanov is the commander of the 18th Air Army, which has collected all long-range bomber aviation, and he is now the Chief Marshal of Aviation.
It must be said that the ADD corps were the striking force of the Supreme Command Headquarters and its aircraft were used exclusively in the interests of strategically important fronts. A telling fact - if at the beginning of the war Golovanov commanded only 350 bombers, then closer to the end of the war it is already a whole air armada: more than 2,000 combat aircraft.
ADD in those years really thundered: night raids on Kenisberg, Danzig, Berlin in 1941, 1942, unexpected and hurricane air strikes on railway junctions, military reserves and the front flank of the German enemy. And also - the transportation of wounded partisans from the battlefield, assistance to the heroes of the People's Liberation Army of Yugoslavia and many, many other special operations. The transport of VM Molotov by plane for negotiations in England and the United States over the territory of belligerent Europe, and then across the Atlantic Ocean, stands apart in the history of the ADD. The actions of the pilots of Golovanov's corps were distinguished not only by personal courage, but also by accuracy and skill during flights.
Even the Germans gave high marks to the actions of both Golovanov and his brave celestial fighters. Serious experts in the Luftwaffe wrote this: “It is significant that none of the captured pilots could say anything negative about him, which is completely opposite in relation to many other generals of the USSR Air Force … is the preferred type of aviation in the USSR, has greater authority than other types of aviation, and has become a favorite of the Russian people. An unusually large number of guards formations in the ADD is the highest expression of this."
In an office in the Petrovsky Palace. 1944 year
The plane is piloted by the Chief Marshal of Aviation A. E. Golovanov
Ordinary pilots not only appreciated their high-ranking commander, but (according to war veterans) respected, loved and idolized him. The style of Alexander Evgenievich is to gather the entire personnel of the regiment right on the airfield, put people on the grass and immediately, on the spot, with officers from the headquarters, solve all the pressing everyday issues, issues of conferring titles and awards. Such an attitude on the part of the command of any soldier will bribe.
Golovanov's friendly relationship with Stalin was the cause of various kinds of speculation. Some anti-Stalinist historians interpreted these service-friendly relations in a rather interesting way: they wrote that Golovanov was Stalin's personal bodyguard, a pilot, an investigator, or even just a spy in the army's military environment. So, for example, V. Rezun-Suvorov in his book "Day-M" writes that Alexander Evgenievich was a Stalinist "executor of dark tasks." Rezun, not embarrassed and not bothering to confirm his arguments with any serious evidence base, ascribes to Golovanov that he allegedly transported future victims of Stalin's terror to Moscow (including Marshal V. K. Blyukher) on his plane.
If all this were true, would Golovanov's fate after the war, how did it develop? It seems that it is unlikely …
And his fate was unfavorable … Appointed commander of the long-range aviation of the USSR in 1946, Alexander Golovanov was removed from his post in 1948 (and no longer received posts corresponding to his rank).
Having graduated with honors from the Academy of the General Staff in 1950, Golovanov was appointed commander of the airborne corps. How bitter it was for him to feel the bitterness of his fall - after all, quite recently all the airborne troops of the USSR were subordinate to him …
The final fall took place after the death of Stalin. And although, unlike some other major military leaders of the Stalinist era, he was relatively lucky (he was not repressed, for example, as A. A. Novikov and A. I. Shakhurin), life was rather difficult for him. It came to the point that in order to provide for a large family - and Golovanov had neither many nor fewer five children, he had to engage in subsistence farming in the country (the pension was small, you couldn't feed your relatives on it).
At the dacha in the garden. One of the last photos
Alexander Golovanov devoted all his last years of his life to working on his memoirs. Sparing no effort, week after week in Podolsk, he studied the documents of the Central Archives of the Ministry of Defense in order to draw up a complete picture of the war that had lifted him to the marshal's peak.
It is interesting that Alexander Evgenievich showed chapters from the manuscript to Mikhail Sholokhov, who lived next door to the "Marshal's" house on Sivtsev Vrazhka. Sholokhov highly appreciated Golovanov's book and recommended it for publication.
Alas, the book never came out during the life of the former marshal. The reason for this is Golovanov's disagreements with officials from Glavpur (Main Political Directorate of the Soviet Army and Navy), who, in addition to a number of censorship instructions to the manuscript material, strongly advised Golovanov to include in it a mention of Leonid Brezhnev. Which, of course, was unacceptable for Alexander Evgenievich.
This unusual man passed away in September 1976.
