Training of aircrews for night flights in the Southern Urals during the Great Patriotic War

The author examines the problem of pilot training for the long-range aviation. The creation of long-range aviation in 1942 caused an acute requirement for personnel. Taking into account the misses, failures, losses, and bitter experience of the first months of the Great Patriotic War, the military command paid sufficient attention to raising the level of training of airmen. First of all, the command of long-range aviation borrowed longtime training experience of the educational institutions of the Air Forces. The author used the documents from the Central Archive of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, which previously were not available to researchers. She examines the history of the 27th reserve aviation brigade which was based in town Buzuluk in Chkalovsk (Orenburg) region. In the March of 1944 the brigade was transformed into an officer training aviation division of the night crews of the Air Forces of the Red Army. The paper contains the analysis of training of night crews on the aircrafts DB-3 and IL-4. The author succeeded in determining the contribution of the 27th training aviation division to the Victory in the Great Patriotic War.