Military Service
Vasily started his active military service in the 16th Aviation Division in Moscow. Here he met Galina Burdonskaia, his future wife. They married when Vasily was 19.
As an officer of the Red Air Force, Vasily received rapid promotion. At the beginning of World War II, he was Inspector of Air Forces in the General Staff. In December 1941, he was a Major and after a couple of months was promoted Colonel. In January 1943, Colonel Vasily Stalin was designated commander of the 32nd Guards Air Regiment. During February and March 1943 he carried out 26 armed sorties. On 5 March he shot down an FW-190. He claimed another German aircraft soon after.
He was promoted to Major-General in 1946, to Lieutenant-General in 1947, and to Commander of the Air Force in the Moscow Military District in 1948. However, he was dismissed as a result of an aviation incident during a military parade on July 27, 1952 (Vasily insisted on letting the planes fly in bad weather, leading to one Tupolev-4 bomber crashing).
Vasily Stalin was also the manager of the national ice hockey team. In 1950, most of its members died when its plane went down in a snowstorm as it approached the Sverdlovsk airport. The crash was covered up by Vasily Stalin, who feared his father’s reaction. The younger Stalin immediately recruited a new team, and his father apparently never knew the difference.
Read more about this topic: Vasily Dzhugashvili
Famous quotes containing the words military and/or service:
“Who are we? And for what are we going to fight? Are we the titled slaves of George the Third? The military conscripts of Napoleon the Great? Or the frozen peasants of the Russian Czar? No—we are the free born sons of America; the citizens of the only republic now existing in the world; and the only people on earth who possess rights, liberties, and property which they dare call their own.”
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