Alexander Yevgeniyevich Golovanov

Golovanov's relationship with Stalin was among the most extraordinary commander–supreme-commander bonds in Soviet military history. In January 1941, Golovanov, then Aeroflot's chief pilot, wrote directly to Stalin arguing the need for specialised foul-weather and night long-range flight training. Stalin summoned him to the Kremlin and, after the meeting, reportedly asked why such talent was in civil aviation, immediately granting him the rank of lieutenant colonel and command of the 212th Long-Range Bomber Regiment. This began a relationship of direct, personal trust that endured through the war.

When the Long-Range Aviation (ADD) was created in February 1942, Stalin detached it from the main air force, placed it under Stavka's direct authority, and handed it to Golovanov, an arrangement without precedent in the Soviet aviation command structure. Stalin, who addressed even his most senior generals by surname alone, called Golovanov by his first name and patronymic, 'Alexander Yevgeniyevich'. German intelligence noted that Golovanov was one of the few with 'free access to Stalin'. Stalin personally congratulated Golovanov on the birth of his daughter Veronika, delaying a Stavka summons, and on one occasion helped the embarrassed marshal into his overcoat, saying 'You are my guest', an intimacy he showed almost no other commander.

The favour was institutionalised at record speed. A lieutenant colonel in February 1941, Golovanov became a Marshal of Aviation in August 1943 and Chief Marshal of Aviation in August 1944. The rise from lieutenant colonel to Chief Marshal in three and a half years is unique in the history of the Soviet armed forces. Even Georgy Zhukov is said to have resented the meteoric ascent.

Yet in May 1948 Golovanov was abruptly removed from command and sent to the Voroshilov Higher Military Academy. The reason for his dismissal remains unclear to this day. Although he graduated with a gold medal, he received no substantive posting, and in 1952 he was subjected to a humiliating appointment as commander of the 37th Guards Airborne Corps, a corps. No Chief Marshal had ever commanded a mere corps, and none has since. The authorities pressed him to petition for a voluntary reduction in rank from Chief Marshal to colonel general; he refused. After Stalin's death in 1953 he was retired 'for reasons of health'.

Ironically, Golovanov remained a committed Stalinist to the end despite this treatment. His memoirs, Long-Range Bomber…, are an eloquent apologia that describes Stalin as 'a military genius incomparable with anyone, not only among our military figures but among any military or state figure of the capitalist countries'. His daughter Olga recalled: 'Father took Stalin's death hard and remained a Stalinist until the end of his days.'

On 17 August 1941 Golovanov was appointed commander of the 81st Long-Range Aviation Division, replacing M. V. Vodopyanov, and was promoted to colonel the same day. From the first days of the war the regiment he commanded flew combat sorties against the enemy's deep rear. Konstantin Simonov's wartime diary records that in the fighting of 30 June 1941 the regiment lost 11 aircraft while striking German crossings near Bobruisk, flying into action led by its commander Golovanov.

In August–September 1941 the 81st division bombed deep German rear targets such as Berlin, Königsberg, Danzig and Ploiești, with Golovanov taking part personally; the English-language account specifies Königsberg on 1 September 1941 and Berlin in August–September 1941. During the Battle of Moscow (October 1941 – January 1942) the division was tasked with impeding the German advance on Moscow, attacking troop concentrations, crossings, bridges and railway junctions in the Moscow region, at Roslavl and near Novgorod-Seversky, and enemy airfields in the Smolensk, Bobruisk and Mogilev areas. In December 1941, by a State Defence Committee resolution, he was appointed commander of the 3rd Long-Range Aviation Division of the Stavka, which operated against German rear areas from the Monino airfield.

On 24 February 1942 Golovanov was appointed commander of Long-Range Aviation (ADD) of the Stavka of the Supreme High Command, and from that point until the end of the war he directed Soviet long-range aviation, an assignment subordinated directly to the Stavka in which his qualities as an aviation commander were especially evident. From December 1944 he commanded the 18th Air Army, into which ADD was reorganised and which gathered all long-range bomber aviation. ADD corps formed the strike force of the Stavka of the Supreme High Command, and their aircraft were used exclusively in the interests of strategically important fronts.

Under his command ADD struck the enemy's deep rear and supported ground forces in the East Prussian, Vienna and Berlin operations, and also carried out tasks assisting the People's Liberation Army of Yugoslavia and partisan formations in Crimea, Belarus and the Baltics. Operations included night raids on Königsberg, Danzig and Berlin in 1941–1942, strikes on railway junctions and enemy reserves, the transport of wounded partisans from the battlefield, and the flight carrying V. M. Molotov to negotiations in Britain and the United States over occupied Europe and across the Atlantic. Golovanov himself took part in long-range raids as an aircraft commander, and German intelligence assessed him as a man with free access to Stalin.

On scale, Rodina-family outlets state that whereas he commanded only about 350 bombers at the start of the war, by its end this had grown to an air armada of more than 2,000 combat aircraft; the figure does not appear in TASS or Russian Wikipedia and is therefore attributed to those outlets. German Luftwaffe experts gave a high assessment of Golovanov and his airmen, remarking that under his leadership ADD had become the most authoritative branch of Soviet aviation with a notably large number of Guards formations. According to war veterans, ordinary pilots respected and followed him, and his noted style was to assemble the personnel of a regiment on the airfield to settle everyday, rank and award questions on the spot.

One conflicting account must be recorded alongside these. English Wikipedia states that as ADD commander Golovanov received orders in early 1944 to destroy Helsinki in order to force Finland to accept Soviet-dictated peace terms, that Finnish anti-aircraft artillery saved the city in February 1944 through deception and skilled use of radar, and that when Stalin learned in 1944 that the bombing results had been misreported, ADD was dissolved on 6 December 1944 as a punishment, which hampered Golovanov's career; the passage is marked as needing citation. This clashes with the Russian Wikipedia and TASS framing of the same date as an organisational reorganisation into the 18th Air Army. Both are presented here, and the entry does not settle which is correct on the evidence available to it.