Aleksei Ivanovich Shakhurin

When Aleksei Shakhurin became People's Commissar for the Aviation Industry in January 1940 at age 36, he faced two enormous tasks: replacing obsolete aircraft with new-generation fighters and ground-attack planes (the Yak-1, MiG-3, LaGG-3, and Il-2) and raising daily output from 27 to something capable of sustaining a major war. At one meeting, Stalin wrote on a document bearing the names of Shakhurin and all his deputy commissars: "We hereby pledge to bring the daily output of combat aircraft to 50 by June 1941."

When Germany invaded on 22 June 1941, the calculus changed overnight. Roughly 85% of Soviet aviation industry capacity lay in the western USSR, directly in the path of the Wehrmacht's advance. Shakhurin began reviewing evacuation plans on the very first day of the war. On 6 July he signed Secret Order No. 632ss, setting timetables and destinations for the evacuation of Moscow's aviation enterprises. The great exodus (across the Volga, into the Urals, Siberia, and Central Asia) ultimately moved roughly 100 aviation plants, nearly one million machine tools, and over 500,000 workers and engineers. Some factories, at Zaporozhye and Taganrog, had to be dismantled under artillery fire.

The most dramatic moment came in October 1941. State Defense Committee Order No. 801ss ordered all commissariats to leave Moscow for Kuibyshev within 24 hours. Shakhurin personally appealed to Stalin for permission to remain in the capital with a small operational group until the last Moscow-area aviation plants were evacuated, and got it. He traveled to factory sites where workers, having not been paid amid the chaos, were growing restive, calmed them, and arranged for wages to be flown in. Only on 20 December, after reporting to Stalin that the Moscow evacuation was complete, did he board a plane with Molotov for Kuibyshev.

The evacuation did not mean a collapse in production, quite the opposite. Average daily output rose from 27 aircraft in the second quarter of 1941 to 61 in the third quarter, and to 100 by late September. When the first evacuated engine plant in Siberia completed its first unit, the report came in: "Motherland, receive the first Zaporozhye engine on Siberian soil!" And Shakhurin, not a sentimental man, felt his throat tighten. Annual combat-aircraft output climbed from 8,200 in the second half of 1941 to 21,700 in 1942, 29,900 in 1943, and 33,200 in 1944, for a wartime total of 112,100. The Soviet Union had out-produced the Luftwaffe, and Shakhurin received the Hero of Socialist Labor (medal No. 14) in September 1941.

The achievement was not merely quantitative. Over the course of the war the entire aircraft lineup was replaced with new models, some repeatedly upgraded. At one Siberian plant, rationalizer Ivan Monakov invented a 'legendary cutter' that did the work of 15 millers, 55 fitters, 63 planers, and 15 markers. Workers organized 'front brigades' achieving 500% productivity and more. And in June 1944, Shakhurin, Air Force Commander Novikov, and designer Vladimir Chelomey were summoned to the State Defense Committee and tasked with building the world's first cruise missiles, tested successfully by that December.