Four years ago, on August 23, 2010, Marcel Albert, the legendary pilot of the famous Normandie-Niemen aviation regiment, died. The date, of course, is not round, but it is a sin not to remember such well-deserved people. Marcel Albert was one of the very French military pilots who fought on the side of the Soviet Union in the Great Patriotic War as part of the Normandie-Niemen regiment. Moreover, in two years of air battles, the French pilot showed himself to such an extent that on November 27, 1944, he was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. In addition to Albert, only three other French officers of the regiment - Lieutenants Jacques Andre, Roland de la Poip and, posthumously, Marcel Lefebvre, were awarded the highest award of the Soviet state.
Marcel Albert was one of the first French military pilots who volunteered for the Soviet Union to take part in repelling the aggression of Hitlerite Germany. He arrived in the Soviet Union in November 1942, at the age of twenty-five. By this time, Marcel Albert had already four years of service in the French Air Force. Unlike many other officers of the regiment, who came from aristocratic or at least wealthy families, Marcel Albert was originally from the working class. He was born on October 25, 1917 in Paris into a large working-class family, and after leaving school he worked at the Renault plant as a simple mechanic. At the same time, the young man did not abandon his romantic dream of becoming a pilot. In the end, he found paid flight courses and, for his money earned at the plant, learned from them at his own expense, after which he entered the air force school and in 1938 was enrolled in the French Air Force with the rank of sergeant (then pilots Aviation undergoing training received not an officer rank, but the rank of non-commissioned officer).
At the outbreak of World War II in 1939, Albert was serving at a flight school in Chartres as an instructor. On February 15, 1940, at his own request, he was transferred to an active aviation unit - a fighter group armed with Dewuatine 520s. On May 14, 1940, Albert, then still holding the rank of senior sergeant, shot down his first plane, the Me-109. The next downed enemy aircraft was the He-111.
Then Albert was transferred along with other pilots to an air base in Oran - in the then French colony of Algeria. It was there that Marseille received the news of the armistice between France and Hitlerite Germany and the coming to power of the collaborationist Vichy government. Not all French officers and soldiers agreed to admit the defeat of their homeland and serve the new masters. Among the opponents of the Vichy regime was the twenty-three-year-old aviation lieutenant Marcel Albert. Like other patriotic French servicemen, he was just waiting for the moment to leave the Vichy command and go over to the side of Fighting France.
Together with two colleagues - twenty-two-year-old lieutenant Marcel Lefebvre and twenty-two-year-old graduate student (the lowest officer rank in the French army) Albert Durand, Marcel Albert fled from the air base in Oran during a training flight on D-520 aircraft. The pilots headed for the British colony of Gibraltar - the nearest territory of the Allies. From Gibraltar on a ship "the Orange Runaways", as they were later called in the regiment, went to Great Britain. On English soil, French pilots joined the Free France movement and were assigned to the emerging Ile-de-France aviation squadron. In turn, the Vichy government sentenced Albert, Lefebvre and Durant to death in absentia for "desertion".
In 1942, General Charles de Gaulle, who led the Free France movement, agreed with Joseph Stalin on the participation of French military pilots in hostilities on the Russian front. The Soviet side was entrusted with the responsibility for the material and military-technical support of the French aviators. The Chief of Staff of the Air Force of the Fighting France, General Martial Valen, and the Commander of the Air Force of the Fighting France in the Middle East, Colonel Cornillon-Molyneux, were directly involved in the formation of a battle group from among reliable French pilots. This is how the history of the famous Normandie-Niemen regiment began - a glorious page of Franco-Russian military cooperation in the Great Patriotic War.
After an agreement was signed on November 25, 1942 on the formation of a French aviation squadron on the territory of the USSR, the first group of pilots was transferred to the Soviet Union. On December 4, 1942, a fighter squadron was formed in the city of Ivanovo, named "Normandy" - in honor of the famous province of France. The squadron's coat of arms was the coat of arms of the province of Normandy - a red shield with two golden lions. The first squadron commander was Major Pulikan, but on February 22, 1943, Major Tyulyan took command. Lieutenant Marcel Albert was among the first French troops to join Normandy Squadron.
François de Joffre, author of the popular book Normandie-Niemen published in the Soviet Union and a veteran of the regiment, described his colleague Marcel Albert in this way: “Albert (later the famous“Captain Albert”) is one of the most prominent figures of the French air force. Apprentice apprentice, mechanic at Renault factories in the past, this man later became an aviation fanatic, an aerial reckless driver. He began by extracting money from his small earnings to pay for flight training hours at the airfield at Toussus-le-Noble near Paris. This Parisian guy, modest and shy, blushing for no reason, very quickly reached the zenith of fame. Now we can say with firm confidence that Albert was the soul of the "Normandy" and made a great contribution to the glorious deeds of the regiment. " On the pages of the book "Normandy - Niemen", Albert often appears as a cheerful person, with a sense of humor, and, at the same time, one can see a deep degree of respect from the author - the military pilot of the "Normandy" to this hero.
Initially, the Normandy squadron included 72 French aviators (14 military pilots and 58 aircraft mechanics) and 17 Soviet aircraft mechanics. The unit was armed with Yak-1, Yak-9 and Yak-3 fighters. On March 22, 1943, the squadron was sent to the Western Front as part of the 303rd Fighter Aviation Division of the 1st Air Army. On April 5, 1943, the squadron's personnel began combat missions. Already on July 5, 1943, after another replenishment of volunteers - French pilots, the "Normandy" squadron was transformed into the "Normandy" regiment, which included three squadrons named after the main cities of the province of Normandy - "Rouen", "Le Havre" and " Cherbourg ". As one of the most experienced pilots, it was Albert who took command of the Rouen squadron. His friend and colleague in the Orange Getaway, Marcel Lefebvre, took over the Cherbourg squadron.
Starting in the spring of 1943, Marcel Albert began to take part in air battles, almost immediately showing himself as a very skillful and courageous pilot. So, on June 13, 1943, after being hit by a German shell, the fuel supply system of the aircraft piloted by Marcel Albert was damaged. The lieutenant, using a hand pump feeding the aircraft engine with gasoline, flew 200 kilometers and landed at the airfield. Throughout the summer of 1943, Albert took part in many air battles, like the other pilots of the squadron. He himself, recalling this period, emphasized that only the lack of organization of the squadron kept it from more active struggle with the enemy - instead of five sorties a day, only one was made. In February 1944, Lieutenant Marcel Albert was awarded the Order of the Red Banner for victories in aerial battles in the summer of 1943.
October 1944 was marked by the famous battle of a group of eight Yak-3 aircraft under the command of Marcel Albert against thirty German Junkers, covered by 12 fighters. Albert personally shot down 2 enemy planes in this battle, his colleagues - five more. The French pilots suffered no losses. On October 18, 1944, Normandy fighters attacked 20 German bombers and 5 fighters. As a result of the battle, 6 bombers and 3 fighters were shot down, and Marcel Albert personally shot down 2 enemy aircraft. On October 20, eight Yak-s of Marcel Albert attacked German bombers that bombed the positions of the Soviet troops. And there are many such pages in the combat biography of the French pilot.
On November 27, 1944, Senior Lieutenant Marcel Albert, who commanded the 1st Rouen Squadron of the Normandie-Niemen Regiment, was awarded the highest USSR award - the Gold Star of the Hero of the Soviet Union. At the time of the award, Albert flew 193 sorties and shot down 21 enemy aircraft. By the way, the day after Albert was awarded, Stalin signed a decree on assigning the honorary name “Neman” to the Normandy aviation regiment - in honor of the air battles during the liberation of the territory of Lithuania from the Nazi troops. In mid-December 1944, Hero of the Soviet Union Marcel Albert went on vacation to France, upon returning from where he was assigned for further service in the newly formed France air division in Tula and never returned to service in the Normandie-Niemen regiment.
After the end of the war, Marseille Albert continued to serve in the French Air Force for some time. He served as French air attaché in Czechoslovakia, then retired from military service in 1948. Having married a US citizen, Marcel Albert moved to the United States. Yesterday's military pilot and hero of air battles devoted himself to one of the most peaceful professions - he became a restaurant manager. Moreover, in the status of a restaurateur, Captain Albert proved to be no less effective than during his service in the Air Force. In Florida, Marseille Albert lived a long and happy life. He died on August 23, 2010 in a nursing home in Texas (USA) at the ninety-third year of age.
The fate of the other "Oran fugitives", with whom Marcel Albert escaped from an air base in Algeria and through England came to the Soviet Union, was much less happy. On September 1, 1943, in the Yelnya area, Junior Lieutenant Albert Durand did not return from a combat sortie. By that day, he had managed to shoot down six enemy planes. On May 28, 1944, Marcel Lefebvre's plane was shot down. On a burning plane, the pilot managed to go beyond the front line and return to the airfield. But on June 5, 1944, Senior Lieutenant Marcel Lefebvre died from burns received. He had shot down 11 enemy aircraft by the time they were wounded. On June 4, 1945, he was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union (posthumously).
The French air regiment Normandie-Niemen became the most famous example of military cooperation between Soviet military aviation and foreign pilots. Despite the many decades that have passed since the end of the Great Patriotic War, both in Russia and in France they are trying to preserve the memory of the military feat of the French pilots who fought on the side of the Soviet Union. Monuments to the regiment's pilots stand in Moscow, Kaliningrad, Kaluga region, the village of Khotenki in the Kozelsk region, streets in Ivanovo, Orel, Smolensk, Borisov are named after the regiment. There is a museum of the "Normandy-Niemen" regiment. In France, a monument to the pilots of the regiment stands in Le Bourget. It so happened that the Soviet Union recognized the merits of the hero of our article much earlier than his native France. If the title of Hero of the Soviet Union Marcel Albert received in 1944, then the Order of the Legion of Honor - the highest state award of the French Republic - the famous military pilot was awarded only on April 14, 2010 - at the age of ninety-two, a few months before his death.
