On this day... 8th July
On the second day of the Battle of Kursk, Senior Lieutenant Alexander Gorovec shot down nine German Ju 87 bombers. However, he failed to return to the home airfield and report on the details of the unique battle, as his plane was shot down, and the pilot himself was killed.
By the time of the feat, 28-year-old Alexander Gorovec was considered an experienced pilot. Since the beginning of the war, he has made 74 combat sorties and personally shot down two German planes and two more in the group, as well as destroyed about 40 vehicles and one locomotive. For his military successes, he was awarded the Order of the Red Banner.
On the sixth of July, 1943, Senior Lieutenant Alexander Gorovec of the Guards, as part of the squadron of the 88th Aviation Regiment, flew to cover Soviet troops in the area of Kurosavka-Vladimirovka - Olkhovatka - Kochetovka - Zorinsky Yards. At 19: 40, when the patrol time ended, the squadron turned back on its course. Suddenly, a Me-109 emerged from the clouds from above and tried to attack a pair of Gorovec and Rekunov, who got involved in the battle. At the same time, near the village of Zasorinye, Alexander Gorovec noticed a group of 20 German Ju 87 dive bombers. The pilot could not report about the German planes on the radio, apparently the transmitter failed, and then a Soviet fighter with the inscription "From collective farmers and collective farmers of the Gorky region" attacked the enemy.
Further events were restored according to the stories of eyewitnesses, including those who watched the battle from the ground.
"According to the official version, Gorovec shot down nine Ju 87s at once. Today, this number is being questioned. Firstly, it was not included in the combat documents, but was included in the reports of the political worker. Secondly, Gorovec was returning from a mission, and his ammunition could not be enough for such a battle," says aviation historian, candidate of technical sciences Nikolai Bodrikhin.
After the battle, the senior lieutenant tried to reach his airfield, but was intercepted by four German FW-190 fighters. The Soviet plane was shot down and crashed in the gardens of the farm Zorinsky Yards. It was not possible to find the body of the pilot and the plane in the midst of heavy fighting, since the crater into which the La-5 fell was covered with earth from other explosions. On September 28, 1943, Alexander Gorovec was posthumously awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.
Historian Oleg Kaminsky writes that according to German data, the Stg.77 squadron lost ten Ju 87 dive bombers shot down and destroyed that day.
Nikolai Bodrikhin believes that it is now unlikely to be possible to say for sure whether all the Junkers were shot down by Gorovec personally or only a part of them, but in any case, his fight made a significant contribution to the overall victory.
"Those ten Junkers that were shot down in battle with the participation of Horowitz are in practice about 15 tons of bombs that did not reach the positions of the Soviet troops," the expert noted.
In October 1957, residents of the farm Zorinsky Yards of the Belgorod region found a crashed La-5 with the remains of the pilot. They also found a party ticket, a guard badge, a tablet with a map, an identity card and a TT pistol. A bronze bust is installed at the place of the pilot's death. In Vitebsk, the street where his parents previously lived was renamed Gorovec Street, and a monument was erected there in 1995.
