In 1941, Soviet aviation carried out a series of air raids on the capital of Nazi Germany - Berlin. Nobody could believe it. The Germans themselves thought at first that they were bombed by the British. How this operation was planned - in the author's column of journalist Sergei Lyutykh especially for Gazeta.Ru. Pearl Harbor by Michael Bay is one of the most famous films about the Second World War. This movie cannot be called a genius, but its creators managed to show a wide audience living outside the United States how great was the significance of the Japanese aviation attack on the Hawaiian harbor of the same name, where the central base of the US Pacific Fleet was located.

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The attack on Pearl Harbor took place exactly 80 years ago, in December 1941. It was sudden and treacherous because the Americans were not at war with Japan.

According to the apt remark of military expert Ilya Kramnik, it was with the beginning of this attack that World War II became truly world war.

A special place in Michael Bay's action movie is given to the story of the American symbolic response air raid on Tokyo under the leadership of the ace pilot Lt. Col. James Doolittle.

I remember how impressed I was by this episode when, as a 16-year-old boy, I watched 2001's Pearl Harbor for the first time. I then thought that I knew the history of the Second World War and the Great Patriotic War. The marks in the school magazine spoke of the same thing.

But, to my shame, I did not know anything about the feat of the pilots of the 1st mine-torpedo aviation regiment of the Baltic Fleet Air Force. Between August 8 and September 4, 1941, they carried out ten daring raids on Berlin and its suburbs.

This happened at the very time when Hitler already felt himself the master of all of Europe, when the Soviet troops, despite all attempts of resistance and desperate counterattacks, had to retreat under the pressure of German tank armies rushing to Moscow.

Then the front line moved away from the pre-war borders with Germany so much that no threat from Soviet long-range bombers seemed to exist for it. In addition, the Germans believed that the military aviation of the USSR, as such, was in its death throes.

In general, until the night of August 7-8, Nazi Berlin lived a carefree, peaceful life without blackouts.

Our pilots remembered that the city was brightly lit by lanterns and neon advertisements. They did not bomb residential buildings. The targets were clearly defined before departure: the buildings of the Reich Chancellery and the Ministry of Propaganda, military factories. In addition to high-explosive and incendiary bombs, bombs with Soviet leaflets and mi flew to Berlin and its suburbs.

The strike group of 15 DB-3 aircraft was led by the regiment commander Yevgeny Preobrazhensky. On August 13, 1941, he, along with several other pilots, received the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. By the way, by order of Stalin, each crew member who raided Berlin was also entitled to a tangible material reward - 2,000 rubles.

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The participants in the first raid, whom the Germans first took for their own, managed to get out from under powerful searchlights and dense anti-aircraft gun fire without loss.

The initiator and leader of the entire operation, the commander of the USSR Navy Air Force, Semyon Zhavoronkov, on the morning of August 8, himself met the returning bombers on the runway of the airfield on the Estonian island of Saaremaaa, the closest strongpoint to the capital of the Third Reich, which was still under the control of Soviet troops.

German propagandists hastened to spread the message that the raid on Berlin, on the night of August 7-8, was carried out by British aircraft and half of the planes were allegedly shot down. But Soviet leaflets have already fallen into the hands of the inhabitants of the capital of the Third Reich, and the British themselves have denied this statement.

I learned about all this after meeting the professor of MATI Alexander Lisov, who during the Great Patriotic War was a gunner on the IL-4. He himself did not participate in these attacks on Berlin, but he knew firsthand how difficult it was in the war for the crews of night bombers.

“Searchlights, in the literal sense, dazzled the pilots, but they could determine the speed and altitude, focusing on their feelings,” said Lisov.

I am glad that in April 2022 Konstantin Buslov's film "Wings over Berlin" about the events to which I dedicated this text should be released. I hope that the film will not disappoint and will help today's schoolchildren to be inspired not only by worthy Americans, but also by their compatriot heroes. I am afraid they will no longer have such a luxury as the opportunity for personal communication with veterans of the Great Patriotic War.

The opinion of the author may not coincide with the position of the editorial board of Gazeta.Ru.

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