Nikolai Vlasov

Nikolai Ivanovich Vlasov (; 11 November 1916 – 26 January 1945) was a flying ace, lieutenant colonel of the Soviet Air Forces, and a Hero of the Soviet Union. On 29 July 1943 his Yak-1 fighter was shot down over Leningrad by anti-aircraft fire from the ground. After being taken captive he led underground resistance efforts in the various concentration camps he was held in and managed to make multiple escape attempts. After one escape attempt he was sent to Mauthausen where he made preparations for a prisoner uprising. However, he did not live to participate in the prison revolt as he had been betrayed by another prisoner and held under close watch of the SS. After being tortured by the SS he was thrown alive into a crematorium furnace on 26 January 1945 as Allied troops were approaching the area. Several of his fellow prisoners went on with the uprising after his death, and on 3 February 1945 roughly 500 prisoners from his block broke through a fence and escaped.

Early life Vlasov was born on 11 November 1916 to a working-class Russian family in Petrograd, then part of the Russian Empire. Upon completing seven grades of secondary school he worked as a mechanic at a factory and served as secretary of a Komsomol committee until joining the Red Army in 1934. After completing flight courses at a military aviation school he became qualified as a flight instructor in 1936 before joining the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1939.

World War II Vlasov was active in the defense of the Soviet Union after the first day of Operation Barbarossa as a squadron commander of a fighter aviation regiment on the Western Front. In August 1941 he committed an aerial ramming after the guns on his plane jammed while he was attempting to intercept a German reconnaissance plane. The ramming was successful and the German plane was destroyed, but Vlasov was seriously injured upon bailing out of his aircraft. His injuries left him unable to fly for a year and required a long stay in the hospital. Once he was released from the hospital he spent his time training young fighter pilots. Eventually in June 1942 he was permitted to return to flying, but instead of flying a fighter he started by flying a Po-2 night bomber. On one mission he was tasked with landing his plane near enemy troops to transport a wounded pilot, Hero of the Soviet Union Filipp Demchenkov, to safety. Vlasov successfully carried out the mission under heavy enemy fire; after making 220 sorties in the war, participating in 27 dogfights, and shooting down ten enemy aircraft he was awarded the title Hero of the Soviet Union on 23 November 1942. He travelled to the Kremlin to receive the award.

Commemoration and legacy

Unlike many Soviet prisoners of war, Vlasov remained praised by the Soviet military for his loyalty and courage in the war. After his brutal death he was not posthumously repressed for the act of being captured but was hailed as a hero and a role model for other personnel of the Soviet Armed Forces for his refusal to change loyalties or act against his military oath. In 1971 his portrait was featured on a Soviet postage stamp; streets throughout the Soviet Union were named in his memory and memorials were dedicated in his honor.