75 years ago, on August 1, 1943, the last battle of the Soviet pilot Lydia Vladimirovna Litvyak took place. A fight from which she did not return. A short life was meted out to this girl - she did not live to be 22 years old. She had a fairly short frontline biography. And she had only a month of personal happiness …
And at the same time, she was given a lot. First of all, the huge sky, which she dreamed of since childhood. An extraordinary gift to feel like a fish in water in flight. External attractiveness combined with a fighting character. She was called the White Lily of Stalingrad.
Litvyak became the most productive female pilot during the Great Patriotic War and even entered the Guinness Book of Records in this capacity. Behind her - 168 sorties, 89 air battles, 11 shot down planes, and even one enemy balloon.
The future heroine was born on August 18, 1921 in Moscow. Soon this day began to be celebrated as a holiday of Soviet aviation. It would seem a coincidence, but … Lydia's life path really turned out to be connected with flights. By the way, she herself did not like her real name too much - she preferred to be called Lilia.
At the age of 14, Lida joined the aviation club. A year later, her first flight took place. Unfortunately, this coincided with a family tragedy - the girl's father, a railway worker by profession, was repressed on false denunciation and shot. It would seem that she could, like many, harbor a grudge against the state, but she chose a different path and gave her life to defend her country. But this will be later, but for now, after graduating from school, Lydia enters geology courses, after which she takes part in an expedition to the Far North. But the sky continues to beckon as before.
After the expedition, the girl moved to Kherson, where she graduated from flight school in 1940. She began to work as an instructor at the Kalinin club, preparing future pilots. They said about her that she was able to "see" the air. And then the war began …
Like many Soviet girls, Lydia was eager to go to the front from the very first day, when the hardest test fell upon the Soviet people. Naturally, she wanted to serve as a pilot. At first, the authorities were not overly encouraged by the participation of women in combat aviation. But in the conditions of war, when many combat pilots were needed, and they suffered losses, the country's leadership decided to form women's air regiments. The legendary pilot, Hero of the Soviet Union Marina Raskova personally sought from Stalin that these regiments were created, especially since there were plenty of people willing to serve in them.
To get into combat aviation, Lydia Litvyak had to go for a trick - she attributed to herself additional flight hours. Well, in the conditions of the front it was not uncommon when people who were eager to fight were forced to go to such tricks. She was enlisted in the 586 Fighter Regiment.
She was different from many other girls in that even in those difficult conditions she tried to be a woman as much as possible. A short, fragile girl was not a classic "kid". She wanted to decorate her clothes, and one day Lydia cut her high fur boots and made herself a fur collar. Raskova subjected the student to disciplinary punishment and forced her to alter the fur back. But this did not kill the craving in the girl to brighten up her harsh life. She loved to wear white parachute silk scarves. There were always modest bouquets of meadow flowers in the cockpit of her plane. According to legend, a lily was painted on the fuselage of her plane. She chose the name of this flower as her callsign.
The 586th Fighter Aviation Regiment, where Litvyak fell, took part in the defense of Saratov. In the spring of 1942, she made her first flights on the Yak-1, covering the sky of this city. But the tasks seemed routine to her - she rushed to where the battles were more intense. And in the fall of the same year, she achieved her dispatch to the very hell - to Stalingrad.
When she was transferred to the 437th Aviation Regiment, to defend Stalingrad, she almost immediately shot down two Nazi planes. They began to call her the White Lily of Stalingrad. She amazed all her colleagues, even the most seasoned men, with her skill. There is such a legend about her: once the Hitlerite pilot she shot down was taken prisoner. He asked to show him who shot down his plane. They called Lydia. Seeing a fragile, short blonde, at first he did not believe that she could inflict such a defeat on him. But after Lydia reminded him of the details of the battle, he took off his gold watch and wanted to give it to the girl. She refused the gift.
At the end of 1942, Litvyak was transferred to the 9th Guards Odessa Fighter Aviation Regiment, then to the 296th. In March 1943, near Rostov-on-Don, in one of the battles, she was seriously wounded, but despite this, she managed to reach the airfield on a downed plane. She was sent home for treatment, but she returned within a week.
That same spring, the girl met a man whom she loved with all her heart. It was the pilot Alexei Solomatin. In April they got married, and on May 1, Solomatin was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. Alas, the happiness was short-lived - on May 21, Alexei died in front of his young wife. Lydia vowed that she would take revenge on her enemies for her beloved. Shortly thereafter, she shot down a Nazi balloon that was correcting artillery fire. It was difficult to hit him, for this they had to go deep into the rear of the enemy. For this risky operation, Litvyak was awarded the Order of the Red Banner.
Soon, another bereavement befell her. At the front, Litvyak made good friends with the pilot Yekaterina Budanova. On July 18, both of them participated in aerial combat and were shot down. Litvyak survived, but her friend's heart stopped beating.
End of July. Lydia is fighting on one of the most difficult sectors of the front - at the turn of the Mius River, defending Donbass. Soviet troops are trying to break through the defenses of the Nazis. Aviation, including the regiment in which Litvyak served, supports the ground operations of Soviet soldiers.
The fateful day came - August 1. Three sorties of Junior Lieutenant Lydia Litvyak, by that time the commander of the third squadron of the 73rd Guards Fighter Regiment, were successful. They were crowned with two personally shot down enemy planes. Another was defeated with her participation. But the fourth sortie turned out to be the last … Lydia's plane was shot down. No bodies were found.
The pilot was nominated for the title of Hero of the Soviet Union, but … Soon rumors spread that a certain blonde girl had been seen in the car of fascist officers. Allegedly, Lydia was captured. And instead of “died” in her documents there was a record “missing”. By the way, she feared this most of all, since she was the daughter of a repressed person, and any ambiguity could be interpreted not in her favor. However, colleagues to the last did not believe in the version of captivity.
After the war, in 1967, in the city of Krasny Luch (now the territory of the Lugansk People's Republic), one of the teachers, Valentina Vashchenko, organized a search detachment. It was these guys who revealed the fate of Lydia Litvyak. Her plane crashed on the outskirts of the Kozhevnya farm, and the brave pilot herself was buried in a mass grave in the village of Dmitrievka. The body was identified. It turned out that Lydia was fatally wounded in the frontal part of the head. In 1988, instead of the words “Missing” in the personal file of the pilot, “Killed while performing a combat mission” was recorded. Finally, in 1990, a well-deserved award - the Golden Star - found a hero. This is in addition to her previous awards: the Orders of the Red Star, the Red Banner and the First Class of the Patriotic War.
Recently in Moscow, on Novoslobodskaya Street, in the very house from which Lydia went to the front, a memorial plaque was erected. Monuments have been erected to her in the village of Dmitrievka and in the town of Krasny Luch. Fortunately, this territory is under the control of the people's republics, otherwise it’s scary to imagine what the current Ukrainian neo-Nazis could do with these monuments … However, they tried to “decommunize” the city of Krasny Luch, but they didn’t reach their hands. As well as the memorial signs in honor of this girl who died for the Donbass and for the entire USSR.
