Early Career and World War II
Pepelyayev was born on 18 March 1918 in Bodaybo, Irkutsk, in Eastern Siberia, the son of a railroad worker. His elder brother Konstantin enlisted in the Soviet air force, and thus with the intention to follow the steps of his brother he worked in Odessa with the city aeroclubs. He graduated in 1938 from the 8th Military Pilots School and was sent to serve in a regiment deployed in the Far East.
With the German invasion of the USSR in June 1941, he was retained in the Far East despite several requests for a combat posting in the West, especially after his brother Konstantin was killed in action. In late 1943 he was still an instructor with the 162nd IAP. In 1945 he was deputy commander of the 300th IAP, and participated in operations against Japan in Manchuria. Pepelyayev flew 20 combat sorties in the Yak-9T, claiming a locomotive and a truck destroyed on the ground before the end of the war in August 1945.
The 300th IAP was then assigned surveillance duties covering the deployment of the US troops in Korea until March 1946, when the unit was sent back to the Soviet Union. In December 1947 he became the Executive officer of the 196th IAP, 324th IAD. This unit was among the first in the VVS to equip with the newest Lavochkin La-15. In July 1949 the regiment began to receive the MiG-15 jet fighter.
Read more about this topic: Yevgeny Pepelyaev
Famous quotes containing the words early, career, world and/or war:
“The girl must early be impressed with the idea that she is to be “a hand, not a mouth”; a worker, and not a drone, in the great hive of human activity. Like the boy, she must be taught to look forward to a life of self-dependence, and early prepare herself for some trade or profession.”
—Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902)
“It is a great many years since at the outset of my career I had to think seriously what life had to offer that was worth having. I came to the conclusion that the chief good for me was freedom to learn, think, and say what I pleased, when I pleased. I have acted on that conviction... and though strongly, and perhaps wisely, warned that I should probably come to grief, I am entirely satisfied with the results of the line of action I have adopted.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)
“Whoso desireth to know what will be hereafter, let him think of what is past, for the world hath ever been in a circular revolution; whatsoever is now, was heretofore; and things past or present, are no other than such as shall be again: Redit orbis in orbem.”
—Sir Walter Raleigh (1552–1618)
“No more shall the war cry sever,
Or the winding rivers be red:
They banish our anger forever
When they laurel the graves of our dead!
Under the sod and the dew,
Waiting the Judgment Day:—
Love and tears for the Blue;
Tears and love for the Gray.”
—Francis Miles Finch (1827–1907)