The Allied Prisoner of War that Stole a German Bomber in WWII - A True Story 

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I'm glad this guy ultimately got honored like he deserves.

Awesome. I knew when he got home he would be viewed as a criminal as soon as he managed to pinch the plane, even before you said so. Glad he survived and was recognised.👍

The museum in Dayton is truly fantastic. Been to many museums and this is one of if not the best IMO

That’s incredible. If he was American returning to American lines he would have been hailed a hero straight away

I sold vacuum's door to door in the 80s &90s I have met men that were pilots telling me the stories of being shot down captured by the Germans & held till the end of the war. Also a man who landed at D-day. Many of them had some very good Tales to tell.

Now he needs to do an episode about Bruce Carr, the P-51 pilot who stole an FW-190 from behind enemy lines

there is another story of British pows overpowering the crew of an Italian plane and flying back to Allied lines.. perhaps the first hijacking of an aircraft in history..... The Russian pows helping the pilot escape would have the satisfaction of knowing they were helping one guy why they likely faced severe punishment - prob death. which hardly mattered as Soviet pows were considered "former Soviet citizens" by Stalin and those that survived German captivity often found themselves sent to gulags upon "liberation" later in the war.

Incredible how stubborn the soviet hierarchy was during WW2

His treatment by the Authorities a clear case of systemic idiocy. Reminds me of Bob Hoovers story. At wars end in Barth Stalagluft One camp. Prisoners were told to stay in the camp when the guards left, as the Russians might think escaping prisoners were German. Bob Hoover ignored the warnings. Left the camp. Got to an airfield. Commandeered a fighter plane, might have been a 109, can't remember exactly. And flew to Sweden. Barth is on the Baltic coast of Germany. My Dad was a bomber Pilot in that same Prisoner of War Camp. He waited for the rescuers to arrive.

that was amazing! RIP to the crew who didn't make it :(

Great video! Glad to see that the USSR finally honored him. Have you ever heard of a US airshow performer named Robert Anderson (aka Bob) Hoover? He also was a POW held in Germany and stole an aircraft to escape. He has quite a life story!

Can you do a video on the USS TWIGGS? My uncle died on the ship off Okinawa. Nobody has ever done a video or featured it in anything. Fletcher class destroyer with 4 battle stars. Vincent Grella from Brooklyn was his name.

Don't forget Bob Hoover, that famous acrobatic and fighter test pilot . He was another P.O.W. who escaped by flying a German FW-190 to a safe landing to friendly lines.

At least Klink didn't have a plane Hogan and his guys could, umm, borrow.

You r making very very good content Brother, It's easy to understand the events and conditions,keep making a lot of stuff like this!,keep making,keep Growing ❤️👍🏻

There is a photo of RAF pilot Douglas Bader sitting in a German fighter plane. Also shown in the photo is a German officer holding a Luger pistol in case Bader tried to steal the plane!

Stalin was so paranoid, he doesn't even recognize his own pilot when he escaped German hands. Derp.

The pronunciation of Sachsenhausen was badly wrong although it’s not easy I’ll give you that and the name of the secret missile site is Peenemünde which is easier to pronounce (Pee-ne-mu-nde) but no attempt was made. 5 prisoners were originally planning to escape but in the end apparently another 5 joined them. Devyatayev had three attempts to start the He-111 engines before he was successful using a battery that was brought by another prisoner. After take-off, the plane was heavily reeling because for a while Devyatayev could not manage the steering alone. Only after a detailed study of the instruments of the plane did he find the reason. The wheel of the elevator trimmer was in the position for landing, not flying. After adjusting the trimmer, aircraft control became possible by himself. In the process of gaining altitude, enemy fighter planes were observed taking off to intercept them. However, thanks to dense clouds, the fighters lost sight of the stolen He-111. After leaving the clouds, Devyataev’s group flew eastward, and then to the south, according to their only map. Soviet troops presumably were stationed there. After crossing the Baltic coast, 300-400 kilometers from the takeoff site, the aircraft was subjected to firing. The fire was conducted by Soviet anti-aircraft artillery and the right wing was damaged and two people were injured. Mikhail Devyataev decided to make a hard landing on a snow-covered field. After landing, escaped prisoners were taken by soldiers of the 61st Soviet Army. The escape of Devyataev’s group received a huge response. The abducted aircraft was equipped with special equipment, which guided the course of the V-2 rocket. On February 13th, 1945 Goering arrived on the island of Usedom and ordered the execution of the chief of the airbase and commandant of the camp. According to one version, Hitler overruled this order. According to another version, they avoided the death sentence because they lied that they caught up to and shot down the plane. Devyataev and his team were placed in a camp of the NKVD. There they were repeatedly interrogated. As a result, it was decided to return them to serve in the Red Army. Thanks to the report of Devyataev in March 1945, Soviet troops occupied the island of Usedom. Soviet experts were then sent to study German missile technology. In September 1945, Devyataev assisted the chief Soviet ballistic missile designer, Sergei Korolev. He took part in the creation of the first Soviet R-1 rocket based on V-2. On August 15, 1957, at the request of Sergei Korolev, Mikhail Devyatayev received the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. This information is found in Deyatayev’s book ‘Escape from Hell’. Where did you find your info from?

This is a job for Ron Howard to direct a full blown movie about this wonderful adventure!

I’ve been to the museum in Dayton, but sadly I was too young to appreciate the aircraft or know what I was looking at 😆

TJ, we love your detail presentations on your videos. Could you do one on Al Levy's unit, the 288th Field Artillery Observation Battalion that avoided the massacred at Malmedy on 12-17-44. My father was in the 288, he would never talk about it. After his passing, we found paper works pertaining to his ties to the 288... Family and friends (over 120 folks) are on pins and needles to hear your detail through research account on it. Many thanks!!!

Simply.... EPIC!!! From a U.S. veteran.

Great video. Thanks. That was terrible that they were considered criminals and suspected as spies. I guess the criminal part was considered them not fighting to the death, getting interned in a German prison camp, and escaping. With the valuable information about the V1 and V2 rockets, that would have been serious evidence that they were telling the truth. The Nazies would not have let any of that information get into the hands of any enemy, on pain of death for the one with the information, if caught, much less given any information through one of their spies. Neither circumstance makes good sense.

Great story, if only they could've landed in Allied territory. It would've spared him years of being inprisoned.

This is the 3rd vid of yours I've seen. Excellent work. Smart guy :)

I tried this the other way round a couple years ago with a B-17. Didn’t go well. But it crashed (without me) about 2 years ago so I was sort of lucky.

Excellent content every time, well done. 👏🏻

Awesome individual. Wonder what happened to the Kommandant...

Marvelous, marvelous, marvelous story!

This man should be a hero in any of the countries fighting Hitler. I think we should celebrate him as our hero.

Great story. The only trouble I had with it is the assumption that the pilot struggled with his take off and landing. Given the fact that the pilot was a skilled fighter pilot, I'm pretty certain he had no trouble taking off and landing (I've flown many aircraft myself over the past 40 years. Once you're a skilled pilot, transitioning to other aircraft is fairly easy). Sounds to me that that Russian had enough courage in him to overcome just about anything.

AMAZING STORY, 1 OF THE GREAT ESCAPES OF WW2.

If he was British or American and escaped back to his own side of the lines, they would have hailed him a hero immediately, not thrown him and his colleagues in jail or put them in a cannon fodder fighting unit.

There's nothing I like more than a tale of bloody minded cheek😁,I bet he was grinning like a Cheshire cat as they took off.

Pretty much universal for all pilots, flying east into the USSR was flying into a black hole. You stopped existing.

In 1941, one year after the Surrender of The Netherlands to the nazi's, 2 groups of people from the Dutch resistance stole 2 German planes. One from Schiphol airport and one from a lake, a Fokker water plane with German markings that the Germans stole from the Dutch air force. 2 of the men who took the plane had been soldiers in the Dutch army and were working for the resistance now and brought important information and a microfilm to England with them. It would be great if you could make a video of this event. Lieutenant Jan Beelaerts van Blokland was one of them and on arrival in the UK he worked for the British and had a command over a Dutch division on D-day at Normandy.

You know, it's stories like these that lead me to believe "Hogan's Heroes" is a LOT closer to reality than most people are willing to believe...

Mark Felttons production must see this Actual Real WW2 Movie.

Didn't they come out with a movie about this pilot recently? 🤔

This is something Colonel Hogan would do for sure

This is a really good video great quality good detail, easy to understand

What a Legend

Amazing. Amazing. I have to see the movie.

Good video, and nice cg.

I saw allied and thought good guys.

The choice to die in combat with your own troops or die of starvation or beaten to death by the Germans. The Soviets were very hard on anyone who they thought aided the enemy. Even keeping any dropped German propaganda could get you a court martial.

An idea. LOT - Polish Airlines. Or Landing On Tempelhof. Try in AN-2.

The original Maverick!!

This happened more than tou’d think, a number of continentals reached the UK, or any other allied territory, by stealing an aircraft to the enemy. I know of some Frenchmen and a Belgian but there were others as well. Incredibly bold what all of them did.

Hey bro you have a really good visuals on videos kindly make a video on wing commander Grewal and group captain Dilip parurkar from Indian air force 1971 war escapes itz my request

Keep up the great work

Great presentation and research!

Enjoyed your video and I gave it a Thumbs Up

Comrade you have escaped! That's impossible, strait to jail you go.

Danke!

Great video. Is it made with War Thunder?

I was the German fighter pilot that shot his Airacobra down, I was 14 days old back then... Ahh to be young again.

Excellent video! Some minor points: I haven't found a Mikhail Petrovich Divitaev in the list of the recipients of the "Hero of the Soviet Union" award. Also I haven't found any reference to work done in conjunction with the "V-waffe" programs in Sachsenhausen-Oranienburg during late 44-early 45. It was really miraculous that they found a fully fuelled plane, and the pilot, who didn't have the manual, and never in his his life was in a HE-111 cockpit, could do the startup sequence, complete with winding up the inertia starter (or did they bring the electric starter trolley?), twice, and the prisoners (in their prosoner garb) managed to remove the control locks from the airplane without arousing suspicion. Great story, right up to "Panfilov's 28 guardsmen". I would love to see the original sources!

Meanwhile the Soviets also never figured out why the Germans let him go and what was his plan. Aw just send him to prison. Talking about bad luck.

Divitayev . . . my hero !!!!!!!

NKVD: How you managed to escape? Devyataev: Well comrades… I stole a nazi plane…… NKVD: ? Devyataev: ……and not some regular plane, it's a He-111H-22 Bomber, the test bed for nazi's newest weapon, the air-launching V-1 rocket (FGZ-76). NKVD: ?? Devyataev: I took it off from Peenemünde, the well-defended top secret base for V-series weapon. NKVD: ??? Devyataev: Despite the ground fire and air petrol of nazi and red army, I pilot the plane cross the frontline safely…… NKVD: ???? Devyataev: ……together with other 10 comrades, unscathed. NKVD: ???????? Devyataev: I can bring you valuable information, which gonna end the war faster and give our motherland adventage on……maybe the future space program. NKVD: NO KIDDING.

It's too bad he wasn't able to fly that plane to England.

Can’t wait to see this movie … V2 escape from hell, it’s a new Russian movie about that pilot who pulled of that feat

Typically sovjet. And they still think Stalin was a good leader!. Btw, there is that other story of that pilot escaping from a POW camp by plane: Bob Hoover, who escaped and partially moved around in a FW190 (as I recall) but landed short of the line for fear of being shot down! Happened in the last days of rhe war in Europe.

Amazing.

Mikhail Devyataev. Movie is *V2 - Escape From Hell* (2021) -see the trailer here on YT.

Stalin was an absolute monster even by today's standards

Wow, that was a good one.

Regardless of the outcome the Soviet government should be ashamed of themselves and those involved in vilifying those hero’s should have been jailed at the least. That would not have happened in the US,, they would have been treated as hero’s. Such a brave and courageous group of men to have been treated like criminals makes me sick.

I like good endings.

In Russia they made a movie at this Soviet pilots escape....movie is called "Devetaev"

It must have been nice for the camp commandant to have an HE 111 with waist gunners !!

This parallels in some ways the polish flyers after the war.

When corruption is soaked through your government, you can do no good. You will be punished for any good deeds. Such is the nature of all governments in the world today.

Pro gamer move

Great Video

Was he flying a Bell Airacobra at that stage in the war? I doubt it.

He escapes cause he's a pilot as well so that he can navigate the stolen aircraft and execute the escape plan!

Damn...they should have flown towards the U.S. lined

Hey! I followed you on twitch

i love tj3

Commies being Commies, no matter where they are from.

Watched 7 30 22

hmm ? His 1st Air Victory, was Two Days after the German Invasion of Russia. (Operation Barbarossa) That being said, the Russians were yet to become part of the Allied effort. So Why is this Pilot shown, flying an American Made - P-39 "Airacobra" ???

I doubt that the Russians flew the Bell P-39 Aircobra but that I guess is a minor technicality in the light of the story.

Sounds too good to be true. For one, I don't think the Germans would have parked any aircraft so close to a prison camp, with POW pilots in it, without some security measures like rendering the ignition off. Also, the landing strip would have had machinegun nests at both ends to put off any enemy planes from landing or taking off in a possible commando attack. There would also have been AA guns placed around the perimeter. Then there is the likelyhood of learning the cockpit layout and controls of a totally alien aircraft within minutes, and in cold weather - getting the mixture right and warming up the engines. More like one of many 'War hero' propaganda stories the soviets were known to put out during the war.

We don't mind if you put ads in your videos! Go get that bread soldier!

Also, a Hogans Heros episode

what happened to the plane?

What game is used in video?

Probably Sachsenhausen.

what game was this?

And no fighter try to chase it

He should have headed for US or British lines- it was common knowledge that any escaped or freed prisoners were sent to the gulags because Stalin did not want anyone free who had been in the west for any reason.

He should have flown to England

W...t...f amazing !

That’s a great story with great graphics. Without America the Germans would have been fighting on one Eastern front only I think and the outcome of the war would most probably have been quite different.

How did the pilot know how to hear the instructions in German.

The movie: V2. Escape from Hell