812 IAP Ml.Lt Mikhail Karasev lost on 13 or 14 March 1944

[Laurent Rizzotti]

Hello,

According to the book "Dragons on Bird Wings", Ml.Lt Mikhail Karasev of 812 was killed on 13 March 1944 while crash-landing after an air battle over the Sivash area, north of Crimea, overturning and being burned to death.

But the OBD Memorial and the pilot list for 812 IAP on http://allaces.ru both have the loss date of this pilot of 14 March 1944.

For this latter date, this matches well with the claim of Lt Walter Wolfrum of 5./JG 52 who claimed a Yak-1 shot down in this area this morning.

Can someone confirm one date or the other ?

Thanks in advance

[HGabor]

I can just confirm the AC type they flew in the area:

- с-a Михаил Лаврентьевич Патраков (812 IAP) was shot down in Yak-1b, S/N: 23120, tactical white "23", engine: 4-2865 on May 2, 1943.
- мл.л-т Куреев Юрий Михайлович (812 IAP) was shot down and killed in another Yak-1b (S/N: 45138, tactical white "45") on April 12, 1944.

So the 812 IAP still used the Yak-1b fighters on March 14, 1944. Looks like they used the "Plane-in-batch" numbers for their tactical markings, eg. the 23rd plane of the 120th batch (S/N: 23120) was marked white "23", the 45th plane of batch №138 was white "45" (S/N: 45138), etc. So plane serial numbers reveal the applied tactical numbers of the 812th IAP for that time period.
Later the 812th regiment switched for Yak-9, eg:

- п.п-к Попов Иван Феоктистович (KIFA) in his Yak-9TD (S/N: 1315312, ВК-105 ПФ engine № 415-1182) on December 11, 1944 in Poland.

Gabor

[Laurent Rizzotti]

Thanks Gabor, but it adds more fog to the case. The book says that Karasev was flying a Yak-9 when he was lost.

During most of the war Soviet units flew several types of aircraft. It seems to me that this was less and less the case as war progressed, but it might still be the case there.

[HGabor]

True, the soviet regiments used whatever they had at the moment, they could not be picky. But in April, 1944 the Yak-1 model was still in use. Claimed AC types usually did not mean too much as realistically the Axis pilots could not see the differences between the Yak models, and soviet pilots frequently missed even the Bf 109s and Fw 190s (!!!) - according to distance and/or weather factors.

Gabor