Or the unfortunate poisoned your brain
The coming wars are a terrible sight:
Night flyer, in the stormy haze
The earth carrying dynamite?
(Aviator. A. A. Blok)
What person is not pleased when they talk about his native land as a place that gave his country great poets, writers, scientists, historians, military men - in a word, people who left a significant trace in history? So my native Penza and the Penza region were noted here with a whole bunch of names. After all, although M. Yu. Lermontov was born in Moscow, but spent all his childhood years on the estate in Tarkhany, then Belinsky was right there, Saltykov-Shchedrin worked for us (and the city of Foolov, they say, copied from Penza - ha-ha!), A house-museum Klyuchevsky, the Meyerhold house-museum - are almost half a kilometer apart, and these are only those people who immediately come to mind, and local historians would have written much more.
This is how they bombed during the Balkan Wars - both the first and the second! True, this is a photo of 1914, but nothing has changed in two years!
Well, since we are in the VO, then in this case we will talk about a man of a military biography, interesting for us because this Penza man took part as an aviator in the First Balkan War, that is, he fought abroad even before the First World War!
It will be about Peter Vladimirovich Yevsyukov, born in 1890, and in his family was - which is truly amazing - the Metropolitan of Moscow, and then of All Russia, Joasaph Skripitsin (1539 - 1542), who baptized Ivan the Terrible himself! The father of the future pilot was the Penza zemstvo doctor Vladimir Ivanovich, who … really wanted to build an aircraft at home! His son Boris (senior) and the younger Peter helped him in this and often jumped from the barn to try out the wings he had made.
After his death, his wife in 1908 sold a house in Penza, an estate in the province and, together with her sister and five sons, left for St. Petersburg. There, Pyotr Vladimirovich entered the Mining Institute, but did not stop dreaming of the sky and in 1911 he entered the flight school of the First Russian Aeronautics Association. His instructor was Lieutenant E. V. Rudnev.
After completing his studies, P. V. Evsyukov received a pilot diploma number 22, that is, he became one of the first Russian pilots. And just then the First Balkan War began and … how not to help the brothers-Bulgarians, the pilots decided and went to war as part of a volunteer Russian aviation detachment, which was organized by the director of their own flying school S. S. Shchetinin. The detachment fought in Bulgaria from 1912 to 1913 and was engaged in conducting aerial reconnaissance, communicating between parts of the Bulgarian army, photographing the positions of Turkish troops and even dropping the first aerial bombs on them! True, the living conditions were not pleasing. Aviators had to sleep in boxes from under their aircraft.
The combat work was intense, no worse than our pilots in Syria now, especially considering what kind of "whatnot" they flew on. For example, on October 27, Yevsyukov flew three times, maintaining contact between the two Bulgarian armies, and during the latter, the Turks managed to fire shrapnel at his airplane. Apparently they guessed to put the guns at an upward angle, but, fortunately, did not hit. The command of the Bulgarian army sent a telegram to Russia, where it was reported that in two hours and twenty minutes Evsyukov flew 200 kilometers, and part of this distance he flew over enemy territory!
As a result, the Bulgarians awarded the entire detachment of Shchetinin with the People's Order "For Military Merit" of the 6th degree, and the head of the detachment and two pilots, one of whom was Yevsyukov, received the same order, but already the 5th - with swords, and Shchetinin with a crown and swords!
Evsyukov tried to design airplanes himself, met with Sikorsky, Gakkel, but never created his own aircraft. But in the summer of 1914, he became a member of two rescue expeditions at once: Sedov and Rusanov. For this purpose, he modernized the Farman airplane, that is, most likely, put it on floats. But then the First World War began, which Yevsyukov learned already in Murmansk and immediately returned to St. Petersburg to go to the front as a volunteer pilot. However, he did not have to fight. On August 31, 1914, during the tests of the M-2 seaplane designed by Grigorovich, he died. The wing hit the water on a bend and crashed.
Well, now it makes sense to return to the events of the Balkan War, in which the Penza pilot took part, and see what he was there or could have witnessed, and how it enriched the military art of that time in relation to the field of aviation.
"Albatross" of the Bulgarian pilot Radul Milkov.
First, the mercenaries. It was they who were first involved in this war in such numbers, although there were also enough volunteers in it. Interestingly, the backbone of the Bulgarian Air Force was then only three pilots, who had only one plane! But soon three Albatrosses arrived from Germany to Bulgaria, and then the pilots appeared. Moreover, an interesting picture was observed: Germany supplied aircraft to Bulgaria, but the Germans volunteered for some reason went to Turkey. Foreign volunteer pilots came to Bulgaria, each with their own airplane - that's how it was, and, again, they went both to Bulgaria and to Turkey.
The Bulgarians formed the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd airplane squads of a mixed composition, where pilots were Bulgarians, Russians, French and Italians. At the beginning of the war, they had only 21 units, but by the end their number had increased to 35, both through purchases and trophies.
Bulgarian "Farman" M. F.7.
They fought mainly like this: they flew to reconnoitre enemy positions, took pictures of them, delivered orders, and only occasionally threw hand grenades and bombs on the enemy's heads. In total, the Bulgarians made 80 aerial bombs weighing half a pound with a handle in the back, so that, weighing over the side of the airplane, throw them on the heads of the Turks. Moreover, as A. Blok wrote, they were then stuffed with dynamite, which increased their destructive power tenfold. And the Italians did use "bombs" the size of an orange, stuffed with potassium picrate! They took the grenades in boxes, and, having ripped off the pin, threw them down, often without aiming. The main thing was to keep the height so that the grenade would explode immediately after the fall. And it worked very strongly psychologically. Out of habit, of course. However, the Turks fired guns at the Bulgarian airplanes. In particular, this is how the Russian pilot N. Kostin was shot down near Adrianople, who was captured by the Turkish before the end of the war.
However, if we talk about personalities, then … not Russian aviators were in this war the most, well, let's say - "indicative". Well, they flew, well, they honestly did their duty. Much more interesting for the public and that time, and also the modern story of the American pilot Bert Hall. With the outbreak of war, he immediately went to the Balkans, but not to the Bulgarians, but to the Turks. Apparently he thought that the Asians would be a curiosity, and they would pay him more. And so it turned out. The "salary" of the mercenary flyer was $ 100 a day, and he agreed with the Turks that he would fly only for reconnaissance, although it was hinted to him that it would be nice to drop bombs!
He flew on a French airplane "Bleriot" and had a French mechanic Andre Pierce, and it was precisely this circumstance, as it turned out later, that saved his life. And it so happened that once the Turks delayed his salary and the American "don't be a fool" immediately took it and flew with his mechanic to the Bulgarians! And now he began to fly for them, and performed several very risky flights. So, the Bulgarians asked him to land a spy behind the front line, and the American at first refused. They say that intelligence is one thing, but espionage is something else! Then the Bulgarians just offered more money and what do you think? The American agreed! Principles are principles, and currency is currency! And he took the spy where he needed to, and he sat down on an unprepared platform (this is on his own "whatnot"), and then he also took off from it. But then the Bulgarians delayed his salary payment for a whole month, and … our brave American decided to fly back to the Turks. And somehow he gave himself away, because the Bulgarians immediately arrested him for aiding the enemy, tried and sentenced to death. Moreover, he was not even allowed to contact the American consulate - that's how they got angry with him!
Replica "Bleriot" in flight.
And then a French mechanic took him, and took part of the money he had received earlier to one of the ranks of the Bulgarian army. So what? The American was released literally a few hours before the execution. As the saying goes, "everyone is happy with money," the main thing is to know who to give!
Well, this valiant Yankee, having escaped from Bulgaria, did not abandon his adventurous activities. With the outbreak of the First World War, he enrolled in the French Foreign Legion, where he was noticed and transferred to the pilot. Soon he was already flying the planes of the Lafayette squadron, shot down several German planes and at the end of the war was the second surviving pilot from its original composition!
