Soviet P-63 pilot, escaping with He 111 w.V1(s)

[Josh Osborne]

Originally Posted by marsyao

Josh Osborne, you info is not correct,as Andrey said above, in the war time, the most of the liberated Soviet POWs were sent back to their units, and after the war, they were released and return home

I admit that I was wrong when I said "all SU former POWs". I should have said "some". Surely some were sent back to their units. Indisputably, some were sent to the gulag for no other crime than having been exposed to "western culture" even as a prisoner. Therefore, the fact that the hero of the He 111 escape was sent to the gulag was not due only to the suspicious circumstances. He was one of many tragic cases of a SU POWs who were victimized first by the Nazis, and then by their own government.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulag
QUOTE
After WWII the number of inmates in prison camps and colonies rose again sharply and reached the number of approximately 2.5 million people by the early 1950s (about 1.7 millions of whom in camps). While some of these were deserters and war criminals, there were also repatriated Russians prisoners of war and "Eastern workers", who were universally accused of treason and "cooperation with an enemy" (formally, they did work for Nazis). Large numbers of civilians from the Russian territories which came under foreign occupation, as well as from the territories annexed by the Soviet Union after the war were also sent there. It was not uncommon for the survivors of Nazi camps to be transported directly to the Soviet labour camps.
UNQUOTE

[Josh Osborne]

According to Wikipedia, the "evidence" that p-63 saw service on the eastern front was identification by pilots and flak crews (no official reports or photos) and the memoirs of "a member of Pokryshkin's squadron who published his memiors in the '90s". I have no idea who this pilot would be, if these memoirs are reliable, or if they are even available in English.

About the story of a group of escaped POWs and the He 111: if it was real, wouldn't there be several feature motion pictures made by now? This story makes the Great Escape seem like a stroll in the park.

[marsyao]

Originally Posted by Josh Osborne

According to Wikipedia, the "evidence" that p-63 saw service on the eastern front was identification by pilots and flak crews (no official reports or photos) and the memoirs of "a member of Pokryshkin's squadron who published his memiors in the '90s". I have no idea who this pilot would be, if these memoirs are reliable, or if they are even available in English.

About the story of a group of escaped POWs and the He 111: if it was real, wouldn't there be several feature motion pictures made by now? This story makes the Great Escape seem like a stroll in the park.

Josh Osborne, that incident actually was simple than thought,Mikhail Devyatayev managed to disguised his pilot identidy in POW camp, German in the POW camps did not he could fly an airplane, and he was sent to an island as a labor to build and maintain the German airport, one day, when he and other 9 Soviet POWs found a He-111 on the runway when they were working, and there were no Germans around, so that Devyatayev and his fellows quicky take a vote and decide to take the risk( a risk indeed, Devyatayev was a fighter pilot, never flew a mulit-eninge airplane before !), then they simply lined up, climbed into the He-111, start the engine and took off, Germans realised what was happening only too late, and before the Flak could open fire, they were gone.
In this case, I do not blame those NKVD guys found hard to believe Devyatayev's story