Boris Safonov: The best Soviet ace of the beginning of the war against Germany (PHOTO)

“An excellent, strong-willed pilot… He controls the plane perfectly… He has a very developed sense of time and distance. Unhurried, thorough,” was how Admiral Arseny Golovko, commander of the Northern Fleet, described Boris Feoktistovich Safonov, one of the most famous Soviet pilots of World War II, in June 1941.

Senior Lieutenant Safonov met the German invasion in the Arctic as a squadron commander of the 72nd mixed aviation regiment of the Northern Fleet Air Force. The pilots then had to literally hang in the sky, since the Luftwaffe was bombing Murmansk, naval bases, airfields and coastal anti-aircraft batteries without interruption.

Already on June 24, Boris Safonov, in an I-16 fighter, was the first in the Arctic to shoot down a German Heinkel He-111 bomber. Three days later, he destroyed a Henschel Hs-126 reconnaissance aircraft. From then on, his tally of shootdowns began to grow rapidly and steadily.

The pilot did not tolerate cliches and, in each battle, tried to think and act outside the box, using new tactical techniques. He never flew in a straight line for long, he was always maneuvering, weaving between hills, making loops, sharply changing altitude and he preferred to achieve victory by delivering “bold and sudden strikes.”

Safonov also proved himself to be a capable commander. He taught the pilots of his squadron to act as a single organism, not to break away from him even for a meter, to feel every maneuver he made.

During the first three months of the war, Boris Safonov’s squadron shot down 48 enemy aircraft, becoming the best in the Northern Fleet. “Interaction between the links, coherence in battle are of decisive importance. When my leading link crashes into a formation of bombers, we are absolutely calm…” the ace claimed. 

By mid-September, the pilot’s tally of shootdowns reached 11 enemy aircraft. And, on the 16th, he became a ‘Hero of the Soviet Union’. Then, in October, he was awarded the rank of major and appointed commander of the 78th Fighter Aviation Regiment.

In the fall, Safonov got acquainted with the Hurricane fighters that Great Britain had supplied to the USSR as part of the military aid program. The ace highly praised the flight characteristics of the combat aircraft, but was unhappy with its armament.

Boris Feoktistovich obtained permission from Major General of Aviation Alexander Kuznetsov, commander of the Northern Fleet Air Force, to rearm the fighters, first with Soviet machine guns and then with ShVAK aircraft cannons, which significantly increased the combat effectiveness of the aircraft.

In the Spring of 1942, Lieutenant Colonel Safonov, with 25 shootdowns, was the most successful Soviet fighter pilot and had every chance of subsequently joining the ranks of the best aces of the Red Army Air Force: Nikita Kozhedub and Alexander Pokryshkin. However, this was not destined to happen – on May 30, Boris Feoktistovich died in battle, defending convoy PQ-16 in the Barents Sea.

In June of the same year, the pilot was posthumously awarded the title ‘Hero of the Soviet Union’. He became the first serviceman during the war to be awarded the honor twice.