Takeoff Authorized!

Pavel Ignatov, by the will of fate, was thrown from our present into the year 1938. He finished an aviation school and began fighting from the very first days of the war. No experience—he arrived in a regiment right after training. And, on top of that, the aircraft was morally outdated—the SB. It was shot down; he managed to survive and return to his own. After being wounded, he ferried bombers along the AlSib route—the Lend-Lease “Douglases.” Later he fought on the same plane, in the torpedo-bomber variant in the Baltic. Losses among the pilots of his regiment were higher than among the attack crews or fighters. And when the war ended, he was immediately demobilized—because, on temporarily occupied territory, he had been. But in civilian life he didn’t disappear either: in Yakutia he transported passengers and cargo.