“Mistakes here pay with their lives”: how pilot Ivan Drachenko became a Hero of the Soviet Union

80 years ago, the title of Hero of the Soviet Union was awarded to attack pilot Ivan Drachenko. He was awarded for more than a hundred combat missions, the timely delivery of valuable intelligence data to the command, and the courage shown in doing so. During the war, Drachenko shot down five enemy aircraft and destroyed dozens of Nazi military equipment on the ground. He was the only pilot in the history of the USSR to be a full holder of the Order of Glory. At the dawn of his military career, Drachenko was shot down, captured by the enemy and fled. Due to the consequences of a severe wound, he lost an eye, but returned to duty and subsequently performed most of his exploits.

On October 26, 1944, Ivan Drachenko, a pilot who fought against the Nazis with one eye, became a Hero of the Soviet Union. After receiving a serious injury, he flew combat missions, shot down enemy aircraft and had a reputation as a high-class aerial reconnaissance officer. Historians call his fate an example of unprecedented heroism and self-sacrifice.

“There were fierce battles over the Kursk Bulge”

Ivan Drachenko was born on November 15, 1922 in the village of Bolshaya Sevastyanovka, Cherkasy region of the Ukrainian SSR into a peasant family. In the 1930s, he and his parents moved to the Leningrad region. His father got a job as a guard at a military camp.

Ivan spent his childhood in a military unit. He helped the Red Army men repair military equipment. The boy shot, ran and swam with the soldiers. As a teenager, Ivan learned to drive a BT-7 tank and a truck. However, after watching the film “Fighters,” Drachenko became eager to become a pilot.

While studying in his last year of school, in 1940, Drachenko enrolled in the Leningrad Aero Club. There he first took the plane into the air himself. The so-called merchants who came to the club – representatives of the Tambov Military Aviation School of Pilots – became interested in the young enthusiast. Ivan wanted to become a fighter, but he was persuaded to study to become an attack aircraft.

Soon after Drachenko entered aviation school, the war began. Pilot training was moved to Central Asia. In April 1943, Ivan received the rank of junior lieutenant and his first assignment. Although the young officer was eager to go to the front, he was sent as a pilot to a reserve air regiment. He served at the test site – he ferried aircraft to front-line airfields. Several of his reports on transfer to the active army were rejected, but during his next business trip he was left at the front. This happened on the eve of the Battle of Kursk.

“The young pilot found himself in the thick of it. There were fierce battles in the air above the Kursk Bulge,” said Valery Kulichkov, head of the scientific and methodological department of the Victory Museum, in a conversation with RT.

Moreover, in reality, the air war turned out to be not quite what Drachenko had previously imagined.

Soviet pilots on IL-2 planes attack an enemy column during the Battle of KurskRIA Novosti Fedor Levshin

“It became especially clear to us young people that we had not learned everything, that there was still a lot to learn, and this would have to be done in a tense combat situation. An environment in which there is no allowance for youth or inexperience, an environment where no one has the right to make a mistake. They really pay for mistakes here with the lives of their comrades and their own,” the pilot noted many years later in his memoirs.

During the Battle of Kursk, Drachenko made 21 combat missions, destroying three enemy tanks and twenty vehicles, blowing up an ammunition depot, and suppressing four anti-aircraft points. Covering the regiment navigator, he made a successful air ram and jumped out of the plane with a parachute.

On August 14, 1943, Drachenko’s plane was shot down and made a hard landing on enemy-occupied territory. Ivan was seriously wounded and was taken prisoner in an unconscious state. In a prisoner of war camp, the Nazis provided first aid to the Soviet pilot in order to start a “game” with him. They tried to persuade Drachenko to betray – transferring information about Soviet flying units and transferring to the service of Nazi Germany. According to Ivan’s memoirs, the Nazis emphasized the Ukrainian origin of the pilot, increased his portion of bread, and offered him a high salary, but he stubbornly refused to cooperate with the enemy. Then they began to brutally beat the captured pilot. Having failed to achieve anything from him in this way, the Nazis sent him to a prisoner of war camp in Kremenchug, whose prisoners died en masse. However, on the way, Drachenko escaped with several comrades, killing the guard.

Battle of KurskRIA Novosti Sergei Loskutov

A local resident, from whom the fugitives asked for help, called the collaborationist police, and they barely managed to escape. The exhausted soldiers were picked up by Soviet intelligence. Having reached the positions of the Red Army, Drachenko met a college friend who helped him return to his unit. From there, Ivan was sent to the Institute of Traumatology and Orthopedics in Moscow. It became clear that the eye, damaged as a result of injury and torture by the Nazis, could no longer be saved. Doctors removed what was left of it and made a high-quality prosthesis identical to the real eye.

Doctors told Drachenko that he should forget about flying service. But Ivan could not come to terms with this thought and convinced the doctors to give him a chance. When Drachenko explained in detail under what circumstances he lost his eye, they agreed to provide him with a “neutral” medical report that he could continue to serve in the armed forces.

“Another person in Drachenko’s place, after everything he had experienced, could have given up and left, but he was different. His act is in itself an example of heroism and self-sacrifice in the name of the Motherland,” said Valery Kulichkov.

“Outstanding results”

At first, Ivan only told his closest friends about the absence of his eye, but soon the rest of the servicemen in his unit found out about it. Drachenko feared that he would not be able to find a shooter willing to fly with him on the same plane. But the first colleague who learned about the injury declared his readiness to join his crew.

Drachenko participated in the Iasi-Kishinev and Lvov-Sandomierz operations. According to historians, Ivan demonstrated the highest performance. For several months of fighting, he received the Order of the Red Star, the Order of the Great Patriotic War, 1st degree, as well as the Order of Glory, 3rd and 2nd degrees. The award sheets contain a description of the exploits performed by the pilot.

So, on June 4, 1944, while reconnaissance of enemy positions, he was attacked by a group of eight German fighters. Despite the fact that his plane was seriously damaged, Drachenko brought the practically uncontrollable machine to his airfield, landed and transferred to the command valuable data about the German group of troops he had identified.

Bust of Ivan Drachenko in Tambov Georgy Dolgopsky/CC BY-SA 4.0

On June 26, 1944, Drachenko was again attacked by Nazi fighters. In the ensuing battle, a German plane was shot down. On the same day, a German train was also set on fire.

On July 29, 1944, Drachenko was nominated for the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. By this time, he had already completed a hundred combat missions, destroyed 11 tanks and armored vehicles, as well as 55 vehicles with cargo and enemy personnel. The award sheet emphasized Drachenko’s high professionalism as an aerial reconnaissance officer and his contribution to the liberation of a number of Soviet cities.

On October 26, 1944, Ivan Drachenko was officially awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.

In addition, in October 1944, Drachenko was again awarded the Order of Glory, II degree. However, after the end of the war he was “reawarded”, awarded the Order of Glory, 1st degree. So he became the only pilot in the history of the USSR – a full holder of the Order of Glory.

For the exploits accomplished during the Vistula-Oder and Berlin operations, Drachenko was awarded the Order of the Red Banner. Once in the capital of the defeated Third Reich, the pilot personally signed the Reichstag building.

Vistula-Oder strategic offensive operationRIA Novosti

In total, during the war years, he made 151 combat missions, shot down five enemy aircraft, destroyed another nine at airfields, and bombed four bridges. And this is not counting the destroyed Nazi armored vehicles, anti-aircraft guns and manpower, as well as achievements in the field of aerial reconnaissance.

“Drachenko has outstanding results. He flew the low-maneuverability Il-2. Shooting down five enemy aircraft with it is in itself extremely remarkable,” aviation historian Nikolai Bodrikhin emphasized in a conversation with RT.

After the victory over Germany, Ivan received leave to visit his family. His father died on the Leningrad Front, his sister worked throughout the war in a hospital in Vyborg, and his mother and younger brother ended up in Auschwitz, and from there – forced labor in a private sector in the Reich. The owner of the farm forced Ivan’s mother to work from morning to night and fed her along with her pets. The pilot wanted to meet him. Returning to his place of duty, Ivan asked for an interpreter at the local commandant’s office and stopped at the farm where his mother was enslaved. Having learned who was in front of them, the owner and his wife knelt down.

“Both began to wail with one voice, cursing, of course, Hitler. They said: people were forced to work from dawn to dusk, but they were not beaten. They can get sick from beatings and will not work well… I looked at the owner for a long time, trying to understand where in Germany Marx, Schiller, Goethe, Gutenberg came from millions of such Schultzes?” Drachenko wrote in his memoirs.

Soviet KievGettyimages.ru

Drachenko entered the Air Force Academy, but during his studies his healthy eye began to become inflamed from stress. The hero was cured, but the doctors’ verdict this time was clear: he would have to forget about further military service.

Subsequently, Ivan graduated from the Faculty of Law of Kyiv State University and made a successful civilian career – he worked as the director of an evening school for working youth, deputy director of the Palace of Culture “Ukraine”, and deputy chairman of the Council for the Study of the Productive Forces of the Ukrainian SSR. The war hero devoted his free time to writing memoirs. Ivan Drachenko died on November 15, 1994.

“Drachenko left a bright mark on the history of domestic aviation. He was given an extremely difficult path, and he passed it with honor. There are only a few such people. Service in attack aircraft is in itself difficult and dangerous, and Drachenko’s life story is simply outstanding,” concluded Nikolai Bodrikhin.