[kolya1]

OK, here is the Soviet claim I thought could check with that loss : 751st IAP's Vasiliy Reshetnikov's Il-4 bomber was attacked that night by a night fighter while it was returning from a bombing mission against Balbasovo airfield near Orsha. The bomber was damaged, but the night-fighter was reportedly shot down by one of the gunners (Nikolay Chernov).

Chernov reported the enemy aircraft was down and Reshetnikov, looking outside, saw something burning on the ground. The bomber being damaged, Reshtnikov ordered the gunners (Chernov and Alexey Nezhentsev) to bail out to safety, while he made a forced landing with his heavily wounded navigator, St. Lt. Vasiliy Zemskov, who died a few days later.

In his memoirs, Reshetnikov remembered having been surprised that a big plane such as a Me-110 could have been shot down by only one burst (even a long one) from a 7.62 mm ShKAS machine gun and speculated that the pilot must have been killed by the bullets.

I am sorry but I could not find the rank of the aircrews except Zemskov's as they are not mentioned in Reshstnikov's memoirs and I could not find them elsewhere. In July 1943, Reshtnikov was named Hero of the Soviet Union while being a guards captain and commanding a squadron of 19 Gv. AP DD. At the time, he had completed 204 combat sorties , ans finished the war with 307. His memoirs are often imprecise, because he precisely remembered mostly marking events or missions such as this one, but I found them a good reading to have an idea of the kind of war waged by the ADD.