The flight logs that we studied were printed by the Military Publishing House of the Ministry of Defense of the USSR in 1951. We will examine thoroughly Berezin's flight log which is the most complete. Section I, entitled "General Data" only has one page. It includes the holder's rank and function, his name and year of birth, his level of education, his military diploma and the date it was obtained, and finally his date of entry into the VVS. Next, the aircraft types, the number of hours flown and the number of flights by aircraft type are stated, however, only aircraft from the war and pre-war periods are addressed in this section. Unfortunately all the FPN that were in the pre-1951 flight log disappeared with it and the first FPN mentioned is the one of the unit with which the navigator was active when his new flight log started to be used.

Only Sections I and II of Matyunin's flight log are accessible. The last available page ends in 1954 (while he was assigned to the 931.OKRAP until November 1955) - before the change of FPN at the end of 1955 - and consequently and quite logically we only find the FPN 42004 in the available pages of his flight log, so necessarily the FPN of 931.OKRAP. Just as logically, it should be the same for Berezin's flight log, except the latter is more complete and the last page of Section II of his flight log ends in 1956, a few months before his departure from the unit in April 1957. Berezin's flight log is therefore also stamped with the FPN 42004 seal, then 82377 starting from 1956. But, as we pointed out at the beginning of this article, an enigma remains unsolved: it is the fact that in Berezin's flight log, the FPN 68083 is present for the years 1954 and 1955. In addition, the Lieutenant Colonel who signed Section III of the flight log in 1954 still manually indicates the FPN 42004 while the seal is that of FPN 68083. In 1955, only FPN 68083 appears. However, the latter corresponds to a land unit, in this case the Altengrabow Unified Artillery Training Camp. Why on earth is this number of a land unit present in the flight log of an airman who continued to carry out his missions in flight as usual? While this contradiction posed a problem for a long time, a new contact in Russia made it possible to understand this "logic" which is detailed in the next page of this article.
Only two aircraft types are mentioned for the post-war period in Berezin's flight log until his arrival in the GDR: A-20J and Po-2. That of Matyunin, Il-2 and Po-2. Things change when they join the GDR, which corresponds to the inauguration of the new flight logs.

Le boîtier photo AFA-3 d'un Il-2KR. On distingue bien la radio RSB-3bis.

The AFA-3 camera of an Il-2KR. The RSB-3bis radio is easily distinguishable. Berezin will now fly aboard A-20G, Po-2, Tu-6 and finally Il-28. On the other hand, Matyunin assigned to the 931.OKRAP during the same period continues to fly on Il-2, Po-2 and finally Yak-11. Given the nature of the regiment, the Shturmovik had to have been Il-2KR models like during the war, capable of carrying AFA-I or AFA-3 cameras. An AFA-3 camera was sometimes mounted in lieu of the defensive machine gun. Originally, only one camera was mounted under the fuselage, behind the wing trailing edge, offset to the right. However, that was insufficient and several cameras often were arranged in such a way as to cover a larger surface. Moreover, standard Il-2s were likely to receive the same cameras (see possible layout diagram in this > Link). A more powerful RSB-3bis radio was housed behind the pilot - the Il-2KR was easily identified by the antenna mast mounted above the front windshield.

> The aircraft types are written exactly as they appear in the flight logs.

Flight Logs  < Part 1

> Part 3

> Part 4

> Part 5

> Part 6

Plan du site - Sitemap