Pavel Fyodorovich Zhigarev (Па́вел Фёдорович Жи́гарев; November 6, 1900 – August 2, 1963) was a Soviet commander-in-chief of the

Soviet Air Forces The Soviet Air Forces (, VVS SSSR; literally "Military Air Forces of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics"; initialism VVS, sometimes referred to as the "Red Air Force") were one of the air forces of the Soviet Union. The other was the Sovie ...

(VVS) twice (1941–1942, 1949–1957), and also served as the

Chief Marshal of Aviation Chief marshal of the branch () was a senior military rank of the Soviet Armed Forces. It was immediately above the rank of Marshal of the branch. Both ranks were equal to general of the army. History The ranks of chief marshal of aviation, arti ...

from 1955 to 1959.

Early life and education

Zhigarev was born on November 6, 1900, to a poor peasant family in the village of Brikovo, located in present-day

Tver Oblast Tver Oblast (, ) is a federal subject of Russia (an oblast). Its administrative center is the city of Tver. From 1935 to 1990, it was known as Kalinin Oblast (). Population: Tver Oblast is a region of lakes, such as Seliger and Brosno. Much o ...

. He joined the

Red Army The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army, often shortened to the Red Army, was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Republic and, from 1922, the Soviet Union. The army was established in January 1918 by a decree of the Council of People ...

in 1919 and fought in the

Russian Civil War The Russian Civil War () was a multi-party civil war in the former Russian Empire sparked by the 1917 overthrowing of the Russian Provisional Government in the October Revolution, as many factions vied to determine Russia's political future. I ...

. While serving the Red Army, he attended Cavalry School and switched to a cavalry unit after graduating in 1922. He turned to the Air Force after the civil war, graduating from Military Pilot School in 1927 and the N. E. Zhukovskii Air Force Academy in 1932.

Rise to prominence

In 1937, Zhigarev became the commander of 52nd Light Bomber Aviation Brigade, his first major command position. From 1937 to 1938, he was also the Deputy Military Attaché to

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. With population of China, a population exceeding 1.4 billion, it is the list of countries by population (United Nations), second-most populous country after ...

. Zhigarev then served as the Head of the Directorate for Combat Training of the Air Force in the People's Commissariat of Defence from 1938 to 1939. In 1939 Zhigarev was promoted to the position of Commanding Officer of the 2nd Separate Red Banner Army Air Forces, and then to Commanding Officer of the Far Eastern Front Air Forces a year later.

World War II

Operation Barbarossa

Before the outbreak of the

Great Patriotic War The Eastern Front, also known as the Great Patriotic War (term), Great Patriotic War in the Soviet Union and its successor states, and the German–Soviet War in modern Germany and Ukraine, was a Theater (warfare), theatre of World War II ...

Zhigarev served as First Deputy Head of the Main Directorate of the Air Force in the People's Commissariat of Defence. He was then promoted to become its Head in 1941, as well as simultaneously holding the positions of Commander in Chief of the Air Force and Deputy People's Commissar of Defence. As Commander of the Air Force, he was also a member of the Supreme Military Council of the Red Army. Zhigarev's promotion to the position of Commander of the Air Force was largely due to the elimination of high-ranking officers in the

Great Purge The Great Purge, or the Great Terror (), also known as the Year of '37 () and the Yezhovshchina ( , ), was a political purge in the Soviet Union that took place from 1936 to 1938. After the Assassination of Sergei Kirov, assassination of ...

. The Air Force, or VVS as it was then called, suffered particularly badly in the Purge, and Zhigarev's three predecessors (

Aleksandr Loktionov Aleksandr Dmitriyevich Loktionov (; ) – 28 October 1941) was a Soviet general. In 1923 he was given command of the 2nd Infantry Division in Belarus, and the next year he became a member of the Minsk City Council. In 1925 he became a member of ...

Yakov Smushkevich Yakov Vladimirovich Smushkevich ( Lithuanian: Jakovas Smuškevičius, ; – 28 October 1941) was the Commander of the Soviet Air Forces from 1939 to 1940 and the first Jewish Hero of the Soviet Union. Arrested shortly before the start of Operati ...

, and

Pavel Rychagov Pavel Vasilievich Rychagov (; 2 January 1911 – 28 October 1941) was the Commander of the Soviet Air Forces (VVS) for a brief time from 28 August 1940 to 14 April 1941.Hooton, E.R. ''The Luftwaffe: A Study in Air Power, 1933–1945''. London: ...

) were all executed in 1941 by the

NKVD The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (, ), abbreviated as NKVD (; ), was the interior ministry and secret police of the Soviet Union from 1934 to 1946. The agency was formed to succeed the Joint State Political Directorate (OGPU) se ...

for perceived military failures. Zhigarev was the Commander of the Air Force during the entirety of

Operation Barbarossa Operation Barbarossa was the invasion of the Soviet Union by Nazi Germany and several of its European Axis allies starting on Sunday, 22 June 1941, during World War II. More than 3.8 million Axis troops invaded the western Soviet Union along ...

.''World War II Chronicle'', 2007. Legacy/ Publications International, Ltd. Page 146. Upon the outbreak of war, the VVS possessed 7,850 aircraft in the Western Soviet Union, in addition to the 1,500 aircraft of the

Soviet Navy The Soviet Navy was the naval warfare Military, uniform service branch of the Soviet Armed Forces. Often referred to as the Red Fleet, the Soviet Navy made up a large part of the Soviet Union's strategic planning in the event of a conflict with t ...

. Hooton, E.R. ''The Luftwaffe: A Study in Air Power, 1933-1945''. London: Arms & Armour Press, 2010. At the very beginning of the war, German bombers launched a massive operation to destroy Soviet planes on the ground. Since the Soviets had been caught by surprise, 3,000 aircraft were destroyed on the first day alone. Throughout Operation Barbarossa, Soviet aircraft were proven deeply inferior to German planes in terms of combat capability; the Soviet bomber fleet was almost completely wiped out. However, despite disastrous losses, the VVS did manage to recover slowly for the rest of Operation Barbarossa, though the

Luftwaffe The Luftwaffe () was the aerial warfare, aerial-warfare branch of the before and during World War II. German Empire, Germany's military air arms during World War I, the of the Imperial German Army, Imperial Army and the of the Imperial Ge ...

did continue to hold air superiority, if not supremacy.Muller, Richard. ''The German Air War in Russia''. Nautical and Aviation Publishing Company of America, 1992.

Vyazma and Operation Hannover

As the speed of the German advance slowed and the VVS began reasserting itself, the Soviets launched a major operation which became the

Battles of Rzhev The Battles of Rzhev () were a series of Red Army offensives against the Wehrmacht between 8 January 1942 and 31 March 1943, on the Eastern Front of World War II. The battles took place in the northeast of Smolensk Oblast and the south of Tve ...

. In particular, Zhigarev presided over the

Vyazma airborne operation The Vyazma Airborne Operation was a Red Army airborne landing in the rear of German lines during the Battles of Rzhev. It took place from 18 January to 28 February 1942. The objective of the airborne landing was to help troops of the Kalinin ...

, a major operation conducted by the 4th Airborne Corps which was intended to cut off German supply and communication lines. However, the operation was not a success, and airborne elements were eliminated by German forces in Operation Hannover.Christopher Chant, ''The encyclopedia of codenames of World War II'', Routledge, 1986,
Google Print, p. 77
As a result, Zhigarev's stint as Commander of the Air Force lasted only a short time, as he was replaced in 1942 by

Alexander Novikov Alexander Alexandrovich Novikov (; – 3 December 1976) was the chief marshal of aviation for the Soviet Air Forces during the Soviet Union's involvement in the World War II, Second World War. Lauded as "the man who has piloted the Red Air F ...

. He then returned to serve as the Commanding Officer of the Far Eastern Front Air Forces.

Soviet–Japanese War

In 1945 he became the Commanding Officer of the

10th Air Army The 10th Air Army was a unit of the Soviet Air Forces during World War II and the Cold War years. World War II The unit was originally formed on Sakhalin Island on August 15, 1942, on the basis of the Air Force of the 25th Army of the Far East ...

, participating in the

Soviet–Japanese War The Soviet–Japanese War)Known in Mongolia as the Liberation War of 1945 () was a campaign of the Second World War that began with the Soviet invasion of Manchuria following the Soviet declaration of war against Japan on 8 August 1945. The ...

, and was then transferred to the 29th Air Army in the same year. In the Soviet-Japanese War, the Soviets began with 5,368 aircraft, against only 1,800 Japanese aircraft,Glantz, David M. & House, Jonathan (1995), ''When Titans Clashed: How the Red Army Stopped Hitler'', Lawrence, Kansas: University Press of Kansas, , p. 300 of which only 50 were first-line. The Soviet-Japanese War was in many ways a perfect operation for the

, as Japanese forces collapsed rapidly and the entirety of

Manchukuo Manchukuo, officially known as the State of Manchuria prior to 1934 and the Empire of Great Manchuria thereafter, was a puppet state of the Empire of Japan in Northeast China that existed from 1932 until its dissolution in 1945. It was ostens ...

was liberated within days.

Post-war

From 1946 to 1949 Zhigarev simultaneously served as the First Deputy Commander in Chief of the Air Force and as the Commander in Chief of Long Range Aviation. In 1949 he returned once again as the Commander in Chief of the Air Force, a position that he would hold until 1957. During this period he was also the Deputy Minister of War (1949–53), the Deputy Minister of Defence, (1953–55), and the Chief Marshal of Aviation (1955–59). From 1959 to his death in 1963, he was the Commandant of the Military Command Academy of Air Defence. He held the non-military position of Head of Main Directorate of Civil Aviation from 1957 to 1959.

Political career

Zhigarev was a deputy in the third, fourth, and fifth convocations of the

Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union The Supreme Soviet of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (SSUSSR) was the highest body of state authority of the Soviet Union (USSR) from 1936 to 1991. Based on the principle of unified power, it was the only branch of government in the So ...

, and also a candidate member of the

Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union The Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union was the Central committee, highest organ of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) between Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Congresses. Elected by the ...

from 1952 to 1961.

Honours

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Zhigarev, Pavel 1900 births 1963 deaths Recipients of the Order of Lenin Recipients of the Order of the Red Star Recipients of the Order of the Red Banner Recipients of the Order of Kutuzov, 1st class Candidates of the Central Committee of the 19th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Candidates of the Central Committee of the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union People from Tver Governorate Soviet Air Force marshals Military personnel of the 1st Cavalry Army