Senior Lieutenant, Boris Stepanovich Bystrykh.

Hero of the Soviet Union. Flight commander of the 99th Bomber Aviation Regiment of the 270th Bomber Aviation Division of the 8th Air Army of the Stalingrad Front.

Boris was born at the Mysovaya station (now it is the Buryat city of Babushkin) on the very shore of Lake Baikal. The Bystrykh family came here in 1915. Father, Stepan Mitrofanovich, was from Vyatka, Mother, Olga Afanasievna, was born in the Perm province. The head of the family worked on the construction of the Trans-Baikal Railway since 1908.

A large family lived in a spacious state-owned apartment, comfortable at that time: my father worked as the head of the track service office at Mysovaya station. But in 1926, his father died, the service apartment was taken away from the family. I had to work odd jobs. It was difficult for Olga Afanasyevna Bystrykh to raise seven children.

The elder sister, Lyudmila, got married and left for Leningrad, over time, the whole family moved to the northern capital.

After school, Boris got a job as a mechanic in aircraft workshops, later he entered the Balashov Flight School. After graduating from it, Boris Bystrykh was assigned to the Tyumen air squadron of the Civil Air Fleet, flying the Sh-2, transporting passengers, mail and cargo, while learning to fly the new twin-engine PS-40.

In October 1940, being a 4th class pilot, he was transferred to the disposal of the Main Directorate of the Red Army Air Force and seconded to the 99th Bomber Aviation Regiment near Rzhev.

Already on the sixth day of the Great Patriotic War, the Bystrykh plane was damaged in battle, but the pilot went on a second bombing strike, finishing off a column of enemy equipment.

By the Decree of the Presidium of the USSR Armed Forces of September 11, 1941, he was awarded the Order of the Red Banner for this feat.

In August 1941, Boris Stepanovich received a new machine - a Pe-2 dive bomber, on which he later fought.

On March 2, 1942, Bystrykh was given the task of cutting off three spans of wires over the Sumy-Belopolye railway. On a strafing flight, he bombed a railway echelon. The blown-up boiler of a steam locomotive and the wagons that went downhill solved the problem of breaking the telegraph wires. Returning, he was attacked by six enemy fighters, whose pilots demanded to land the plane at their airfield. Bystrykh, having gone to the trick, agreed to land and on a low-level flight left the chase, landing at his base, despite serious damage: holes in the gas tank, loss of the left aileron, as well as several hundred bullet holes in the planes and fuselage.

By order of the Armed Forces of the Southwestern Front No.: 77 / n dated: 06/17/1942, the pilot of the 99th short-range bomber aviation regiment, Lieutenant Bystrykh, was awarded the Order of Lenin for 115 sorties on a Pe-2 aircraft, participation in the battles over Novgorod-Seversky , Konotop, Kharkov and exceptional courage and flying skills.

July 13, 1942 near the village of Olshana Bystrykh discovered an enemy airfield, which housed about 130 aircraft of various types. Despite the fire of anti-aircraft guns and enemy fighters, he managed to photograph the airfield. On July 28, 1942, while conducting reconnaissance at the Kalach-Tsimlyansk sector, Bystrykh's plane was attacked by three German fighters, as a result of which it was shot down at a distance of 40 kilometers behind the front line. Bystrykh managed to bring the damaged aircraft to the front line. When the bomber began to fall apart in the air, the crew jumped out with parachutes. During the landing, Bystrykh and the radio operator received severe bruises, and the navigator died.

August 8, 1942 Bystrykh, performing reconnaissance south of Kalach, discovered a German airfield, which housed about 100 aircraft, and immediately reported it to the command.

By September 1, 1942, the flight commander of the 99th Bomber Aviation Regiment of the 270th Bomber Aviation Division of the 8th Air Army of the Stalingrad Front, Senior Lieutenant Boris Bystrykh, made 168 sorties, 35 of which were reconnaissance.

In November 1942, Boris's relatives, who lived in evacuation in Krasnoyarsk, received a letter: "Hello, dear relatives! I can please you that your son and brother are a Hero of the Soviet Union. I was awarded by order of the Supreme Council on November 5, 1942 years, so you can judge for yourself how your son, a former shepherd for the whole village, is now a big man and how pleasant it is to wear two Orders of Lenin and one Red Battle Banner..."

Bryansk region. A "pawn" - a Soviet twin-engine dive bomber - glides over the forest. The navigator looks out for the positions of the Wehrmacht's punitive detachment, which encircled a detachment of partisans. A strip of forest suddenly breaks off and several armored vehicles of the enemy are found in the clearing. The machine sharply nods down, enters a controlled dive in order to accurately hit the target, bombs are separated from the underwing pylons and fly at the enemy. Mission completed. But the Germans also snarl furiously, hitting the plane with anti-aircraft machine guns from two cars. Pe-2 comes out of the dive at low altitude, becoming a target for anti-aircraft gunners. The rudders and both engines were damaged, the crew commander was wounded. With difficulty, he lands the plane at the edge of the forest, but due to blood loss, he no longer has the strength to get out of the chair. The navigator leads the wounded radio operator into the forest, away from the German cordon, and the body of the commander is taken out of the plane by enemy soldiers. In his tablet - documents addressed to Nikolai Funaev, the navigator of the crew. Under this name, the Germans bury him right at the landing site of the plane - these are the customs of war. The partisans later exhumed the body of the pilot and reburied it in the village of Prolysovo, Navlinsky district, Bryansk region, already under his real name - Boris Bystrykh. And in 1975, his ashes were reburied in the village of Revny in the same region.

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The combat biography of Bystrykh has many similarities with the plot of the 1967 feature film The Chronicle of a Dive Bomber filmed in the USSR. In the role of the commander of the Pe-2 crew Sergei Arkhiptsev (prototype B. S. Bystrykh) - Gennady Saifulin.

The same reconnaissance sorties of airfields are reproduced in the film, photographing them and calling attack aircraft; escaping enemy fighters trying to land the bomber, with a dive and low-flying trick over the treetops, with hundreds of holes in the plane after that. And the last landing of a bomber by a mortally wounded pilot: this is how B. S. Bystrykh died in June 1943. The film's military consultant was Major General A. A. Anpilov, Hero of the Soviet Union, who in January-August 1942 was deputy commander of the 99th Bomber Aviation Regiment, in which B. S. Bystrykh served.

Now his name is immortalized on a memorial stele on the Alley of Heroes in Volgograd.

In May 2022, a UTair aircraft Boeing 737-400 with registration number RA-73068 was named after pilot Boris Bystrykh.

Eternal glory to the Heroes who fell in the battles for the freedom and independence of our Motherland!

• OBD Memorial
• UTair / Elena Lantranova /