Pilot Stepan Mikoyan: biography, photo

Stepan Mikoyan is a Soviet test pilot, aircraft designer, Hero of the USSR, a knight of the Order of Lenin and the Red Banner, all his life was connected with aircraft. It was he who was responsible for the management of the famous Buran, a reusable spacecraft, which was successfully tested in November 1988.

Childhood

Mikoyan Stepan Anastasovich, whose biography is described in this article, was born in Tiflis (now Tbilisi) on July 12, 1922. Father Anastas Mikoyan was a famous Soviet party and state figure, and mother Ashken Lazarevna Tumanyan. Their marriage was long and happy. According to Stepan Mikoyan himself, he did not remember a single instance when his parents quarreled or raised their voices. They always treated each other with great love and respect.

The Mikoyan family had five sons. The elder of them was Stepan. He and three younger children were named in honor of the famous Baku commissars - Sergo Ordzhonikidze, Alexei Dzhaparidze, Stepan Shaumyan and Ivan Violetov, with whom Anastas Mikoyan always maintained friendly relations. The second son was named Volodya, since he was born in the year when VI died. Lenin. All the children spent their vacations at the dacha Zubalovo. According to Stepan Mikoyan, it was a huge area surrounded by a high brick wall. And somewhere in the distance of one kilometer from her was another dacha Zubalovo-2, where Stalin lived with his family.

Since Anastas Ivanovich was a prominent statesman, he was friends with many people from the circle of Joseph Stalin, who were subsequently repressed. Stepan knew them all and since childhood he was friends with the son of the leader Vasily Stalin.

Passion for the sky

In the 30s of the last century almost every teenager dreamed of connecting his life with aircraft. About the sky then dreamed of hundreds of thousands of Soviet schoolchildren. The elder son of Anastas Ivanovich Stepan was no exception. In addition, his passion was also contributed by his uncle Artem Ivanovich, who by that time was a novice aviation designer.

In August 1940, Stepan Mikoyan, along with friend Timur Frunze, entered the Kachinsky Aviation School. A year later in early September 1941 he successfully graduated from the school in Krasniy Kut (Saratov region). After that, he was sent to the 8th Reserve Air Regiment, stationed in a small village of Bagai-Baranovka, located just north of Saratov. Here he hastily had to learn how to fly on a Yak-1 plane. In the middle of December of the same year, according to the distribution, Stepan Mikoyan (photo of the pilot presented in the article) falls into the 11th Fighter Regiment, which is part of the 6th IAK air defense and defended the sky over Moscow.

The Great Patriotic War

Upon arriving at the place of destination, the young pilot learned that his regiment had flown beforehand to storm ground German troops. However, for the whole of December and part of January 1942, he never managed to fly out on a mission, since extremely unfavorable weather conditions prevented him from conducting any active actions in the air. With the onset of fair days, Stepan Mikoyan took part in his Yak-1 aircraft in flight, the purpose of which was to cover Soviet military units near the city of Volokolamsk and, in particular, the cavalry of General L. M. Dovator, who from time to time raided already Occupied territory.

It's no secret that Soviet aircraft were often fired from enemy antiaircraft guns. So it was in one of the January days of 1942. Enemy antiaircraft guns began firing our aircraft, in addition, the weather suddenly deteriorated and a heavy snowfall. But despite this, the squadron managed to land on the runway precisely thanks to Stepan Mikoyan, who knew the location of the Moscow streets adjacent to the Central Airfield of Moscow, where his 11th Fighter Regiment was located.

First wound

In the winter of 1941-1942. The young pilot in his regiment made 10 successful sorties, but the 11th for him could prove fatal. On January 16, during the cover of Istra, his plane was shot down by a minor lieutenant of the 562nd Regiment Mikhail Rodionov for some ridiculous accident. Stepan Mikoyan, whose biography could have ended this, managed to put his burning car, as the pilots say, right on his belly. The fall of the Soviet aircraft was noticed by village teenagers. They dragged the burned-out pilot with the broken leg to the road, and there, after finding some sledges, they took him to the medical battalion.

The guilty Mikhail Rodionov was going to be sent to the tribunal, and to deal with Lieutenant Mikoyan after his recovery. But this case never came to court. In early June 1942, Senior Lieutenant Rodionov was killed in an air battle near Kaluga, for which he was awarded the posthumous title of Hero of the USSR. Stepan had to heal his wounds for several months.

New aircraft

In August 1942, the 434th Aviation Fighter Regiment arrived in Lyubertsy for its third re-formation, which later became the 32nd Guards. It is famous for the fact that 26 pilots who were awarded the title Heroes of the USSR fought in it at one time. Together, they shot down more than 520 enemy aircraft. Then in 1942, the regiment commander was the 24-year-old Hero of the Soviet Union Ivan Kleshchev, and was overseen by Vasily Stalin himself.

The son of the leader from childhood knew the brothers Mikoyanov - Stepan and Vladimir. First, the youngest of them were taken to the regiment, and a little later they enlisted the second one. After the war veterans, who served alongside them, told us that both brothers were extremely disciplined, diligent and modest, so they almost immediately merged into a friendly regimental family.

At the beginning of September 1942, the manned regiment, landing on transport aircraft, flew to Bagai-Baranovka. Here the pilots had to learn new Yak-7B fighters, who had just arrived directly from the Saratov aircraft plant. A few days later, an order was sent for redeployment to another field airfield, located near the state farm "Stalingrad", which was only 60 km from the city itself. The Kleshchevsky regiment was immediately put into the 16th Army.

Air battles over Stalingrad

The first combat flight of the newly formed regiment was personally directed by Ivan Kleshchev. Seeing for the first time Stalingrad from the air, the newcomers were amazed by such a spectacle. Stepan Mikoyan later recalled that he saw a glowing city. The black smoke from the conflagrations rose several kilometers upward, and through it the blue waters of the Don and Volga could be seen. Hundreds of aircraft rushed through the sky, most of them German fighters and bombers.

As you know, the commander of the regiment Kleshchev always introduced newcomers to air combat gradually. And, despite the fact that Stepan Mikoyan already had some combat experience in the sky over the capital, he nevertheless defined him to himself as a slave. Such tactics of the commander helped young pilots to acquire combat experience without excessive risk.

Suspension from flights

However, the second half of September was the hardest: in just three weeks of air fighting, the regiment destroyed more than 80 enemy fighters. But the unit's losses were huge: 25 aircraft and 16 pilots. Among the dead was the younger brother of Stepan Vladimir Mikoyan. The regiment commander Ivan Kleshchev himself was seriously wounded.

After the death of his brother Mikoyan, Stepan Anastasovich was removed from the flights on the orders of the command. In memory of Vladimir, pilots on several airplanes brought out the inscription "For Volodya!". In early October, the remnants of the air regiment were sent to the rear. Several officers were awarded the title of Hero of the USSR, and Vladimir (posthumously) and Stepan awarded the Order of the Red Banner of War.

War Mikoyan finished in the rank of captain and was awarded two military awards. During the time of military operations, he managed to hold only a few battles against enemy aircraft, but according to the documents, 6 group victories were recorded on his combat account.

Studying at the Engineering Academy

In 1945, the victorious year, Mikoyan marries his old acquaintance Eleonora, the daughter of test pilot Peter Lozovsky, who died tragically during the flight on the I-4 fighter. After the wedding, the young man entered the Air Force Academy. NOT. Zhukovsky to engineering faculty. The listeners, who already had flight practice, were allowed to fly the aircraft, which are at the disposal of the academy. The training regiment was then in the village. Belopesok near Kashira. Subsequently, three of them were to master the newest jet fighters.

For his thesis project Mikoyan Stepan Anastasovich chose a difficult and rather bold topic for those times. It concerned the supersonic front-line fighter. Most likely, he received all information about the development of the future MiG-19 aircraft from his uncle Anush Mikoyan.

Stepan's graduation project was led by the famous V.F. Bolkhovitinov, who in the pre-war period was engaged in the construction of heavy bombers "DB-A", and later the creation of the first in the Soviet Union missile fighter "BI." Thus, it can be said with confidence that Mikoyan, with his classmates professional pilots and mechanical engineers, stood at the very beginning of the development of jet aircraft.

Hard work

In August 1951 Stepan Ananstasovich got on the flight-test position in the GCI of the Military Air Force Research Institute. Here, for a long 23 years, he was engaged in testing various combat aircraft belonging to the Yakovlev, Mikoyan and Sukhoi Design Bureau. He, like no other, successfully combined the work of the pilot with the position of the leading engineer of the scientific research institute.

Since 1975, Stepan Mikoyan is a Hero of the Soviet Union. He deserved this high title for testing the latest interceptor MiG-25. For all the time of his work he managed to master 102 types of various aircraft, having spent thus in air more than 3,5 thousand hours.

The Buran Program

In 1974 Stepan Anastasovich was removed from the testing of military vehicles by the decision of the medical board, but he was allowed to work on helicopters and transport-passenger planes. At the age of 56, he realized that he would not be able to successfully pass a medical examination again, so he had to accept an offer to move to another job.

In April 1978 Mikoyan became deputy chief designer of the NGO Molniya. Here GE Lozino-Lozinsky created a reusable orbiter ship "Buran". Under these conditions, the experience of Stepan Anastasovich, accumulated over many years of work, related to the organization of flight tests, when the decision was made to create an atmospheric analogue of a ship called the "Product 002", was very useful. Mikoyan was engaged in flight tests, stand and technical training of pilots. He also answered for the management of the real "Buran" in his first and last flight into space.

Memoirs

Summing up, it's safe to say that Lieutenant-General of Aviation Stepan Mikoyan devoted his whole life to aircraft, or rather, to their piloting. And even being a 70-year-old gray-haired general, he repeatedly operated the Yak-18T car himself.

Despite his busy schedule, he still found time to write the book. Biographical, in essence, memoirs accurately reflected life in the Soviet Union and everything that lived and worked as its famous author Stepan Mikoyan. "Memoirs of a military test pilot" came first in the UK, and then in Russia. This book aroused keen interest not only among aviators, but also ordinary people who are not indifferent to the history of their state.