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Moscow—Poznan—Berlin
close to Stalin,Yakovlev wanted this article to answer the question,“Why don’t we
have such engines and aircraft?,” especially since he was clearly hostile toward both
our work on the BI and Arkhip Mikhaylovich Lyulka’s work on the first domestic
version of the turbojet engine.
We needed to quickly find a roundabout way to get to the front and be the first
to seize the intellectual war spoils of rocket technology. We understood that the
future of our program depended on what we would see, find, and then be able to
test back home. Using our connections at the “friendly” institutes of our aircraft
agency, I decided to act without waiting for a resolution on the matter of the affiliation
and departmental jurisdiction of the “guided projectiles.” 3
I had close ties with the Scientific Institute of Aircraft Equipment (NISO) from
my work during the previous war years. My old school chum Sergey Nikolayevich
Losyakov, future professor and prominent radio receiver specialist, worked there. I
was closely acquainted with the leading engineers—all talented and extremely
likeable—in the new fields of aviation radar, radio communications, remote measurements,
and avionics: Veniamin Ivanovich Smirnov, Nikolay Iosifovich
Chistyakov, Viktor Naumovich Milshteyn, and Yuriy Sergeyevich Bykov. They
would all become professors in charge of departments.Alas, many of them are no
longer with us. During those war years I was very indebted to them for fresh technical
ideas, engineering optimism, and moral support in the face of the many difficult
technical problems.
In 1944, the NISO director was Gerts Aronovich Levin, one of the country’s
leading radio specialists and a pioneer of radio communications theory. His
scientific authority was indisputable. But his ethnicity clearly did not suit one of
the high-ranking directors, and he was therefore replaced by Air Force General
Nikolay Ivanovich Petrov. 4 The general was well received both by People’s
Commissar of the Aircraft Industry Shakhurin and by Air Force Directorate
Chief Novikov.
With the help of my friends, it was not particularly difficult to explain to
General Petrov how important it was to be the first to seize the captured materials,
to prevent them from being trampled by the advancing armies or split up and
hauled away to the quarters of various agencies. Experienced with such problems,
he immediately grasped how vital it was not to pass up this chance, even at the
price of a certain risk.
And so, on 16 or 17 April, Bibikov and Bolkhovitinov summoned me and
announced that I would be part of NISO chief General Petrov’s group that by
GKO decision was being granted authority to inspect, study, and when necessary
seize German aircraft radar and instrument prototypes and materials.
3. The Soviet government was in the midst of a debate over assigning the development of long-range guided
missiles to one among several competing ministries (or people’s commissariats).
4. Levin was Jewish.
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