How Ivan Kozhedub shot down Two American Fighters During World War II
Toward the end of the Second World War, the best Soviet Ace had to give a flying lesson to the presumptuous “allies”. Kozhedub downed two American fighters, P-51 Mustangs, who mistakenly tried to attack him over Berlin, but were immediately shot down while repelling the attack. As Ivan Nikitovich himself said, on April 17, 1945, having met several “Flying Fortresses” of the allies in the air, he fought off a couple of Messerschmitts from them, but after a second he himself was attacked by American fighter jets.
“To whom are you firing upon? Me?!” Kozhedub recalled indignantly half a century later. “The tracers were long, bright ones, unlike ours and German tracer shells. Because of the long distance, you could see the end bent down. I rolled over and, quickly moving closer, attacked the American - something exploded in his fuselage, he strongly steamed up and went down in the direction of our troops. On reversal I attacked the next one. My shells lay down very well - the plane exploded in the air ...
When the tension of the battle subsided, my mood was not at all victorious - I had already managed to make out the white stars on the wings and fuselages. "They will arrange for me ...", I thought, putting the aircraft down. In the cockpit of the "Mustang", that landed on our territory, sat a hefty black man. To the question of the guys who came to him, as to who had knocked him down (or rather, when they could translate this question), he replied: "Focke-Wulf" with a red nose ... I do not think he understood what had happened; even then the allies did not learn . . .
When the PCF films were shown, the main points of the battle were fixed on them very clearly. The films were watched by the regimental command, divisions, and corps. The division commander, Savitsky, to whom, after watching, said: "These victories are in the account of a future war." And Pavel Fyodorovich Chupikov, our regiment commander, soon gave me these tapes with the words: "Take them yourself, Ivan, and do not show it to anyone."
Although the future air marshal Ivan Nikitich Kozhedub got to the front only in 1943, his battle score looks impressive. In two years - 366 sorties, 120 air battles and 62 German aircraft shot down, despite the fact that Kozhedub himself was not shot down once. Moreover, from the publications of recent years, it is clear that the real list of victories of the Soviet ace is even more impressive. The best pilots to share their victories with less capable comrades, and as a result, on the fuselage of the La-7 fighter number 27, there turned out to be far less red stars than expected. The fellow soldier Ivana Nikitich, the famous test pilot Alexander Shcherbakov, and a number of other authors wrote about this. However, according to some data, Kozhedub shot down not 62, but 107 enemy aircraft, five of which belonged to the United States Air Force.
The clashes between Soviet and American air groups, which began in the second half of 1944, were by no means a result of the confusion that was traditional for any war. Even then, the States considered the entire European continent their zone of influence. Once, the commander of the US Air Force even defiantly refused to discuss with Marshal Zhukov the procedure for flying over the Soviet zone, impudently declaring that "American aircraft flew everywhere, and flew without any restrictions." (GK Zhukov. Memories and reflections.
Demonstrating its right to fly anywhere, the US command at the same time tested Russia, and also worked out methods of total air terror, which became the hallmark of American aviation in the coming decades. Few people know that, along with the militarily pointless destruction of the residential quarters of the German and Japanese cities, the Yankees no less fiercely bombed Yugoslavia. The beginning of the air genocide was marked by the "bloody Easter" on April 16, 1944. (https://www.strategic-culture.org/…/that-way-it-started-70-&hellip{smile{1f609.svg}} On this day, a whole air division of heavy bombers with the characteristic name "Liberator" dropped thousands of bombs on Yugoslav cities, killing 1,160 people in Belgrade. In total, there were nine such raids, and after 45 years the history , as is known, was repeated. And in order to emphasize the conscious choice of the date of the blows, the bombs falling on Belgrade were decorated with the inscription "Happy Easter!"
In the first attack on the Red Army four dozen heavy American fighter "Lightning" also chose a symbolic date - November 7, 1944. As a result of the storming of the headquarters of the 6th Guards Rifle Corps and the airfield of the 866th Fighter Aviation Regiment near the city of Nis, Corps Commander Hero of the Soviet Union Grigory Kotov and 30 others died. In addition, two of Russian aircraft were destroyed and a dozen aircraft were burned. Only when Soviet fighters soared, and in turn, shot down several of the bastards, the rest fled. Subsequently, the witness of this battle, the pilot Boris Smirnov, wrote in his memoirs that they found on the map in the wreckage of one of the Lightnings shot down, Niš was marked as an aerial target. After that, few people believed the official American version of having lost their way.
The 25-year-old Major Kozhedub, the deputy commander of the 176th Guards Fighter Aviation Regiment, who flew over Germany, faced brazen "allies" twice. First, on April 22, 1945, a pair of American Mustang fighters attacked his aircraft, but soon they had to bitterly regret their arrogance. In less than two minutes, one of the "Mustangs" was scattered into pieces, and the second pilot barely managed to jump with a parachute.
Kozhedub survived an even hotter battle with the Americans just before Victory Day, when a squadron of Flying Fortress bombers loaded to the eyeballs, ignoring warning shots, entered the space of the Soviet occupation zone. Having driven three multi-motor giants into the ground, the major put the others to flight, but he was not allowed to include them in the official list of his victories. The regiment commander Pavel Chupikov just joked that he would have to fight with the Americans very soon, and on the very first day of the next war, their downed aircraft would be credited back to his account.