A seventh grader from the Leningrad Region, Sergey Bozhenov, is seeking a posthumous rewarding with the Order of Courage by pilot Alexander Borisovich Mochalov, who died in the Second World War near the village of Auckland in Moldova.

The boy learned about the heroic deed of a pilot from his grandfather, historian and local historian Alexander Kozyrev. For several decades now, a man has been collecting information about his fellow countrymen - natives of the Kirov region who died during the Great Patriotic War. 

Kozyrev told his grandson about the Soviet pilot Mochalov, who is reported missing in Russia, and an obelisk has been installed in Moldova.

Feat of the pilot

According to archival data, Alexander Borisovich Mochalov was born in 1917. At the same time, there are different data on his place of birth - some documents indicate that he was born in Novosibirsk, while others claim that he was in the village of Bolshoi Odintsi in the Chernovsky district in the territory of modern Kirov region. Now neither this village, nor the district already exists. Mochalov entered the service in 1938 from the Kirovograd region, where he still had a wife. When the war began, he was a flight commander in the 55th Fighter Aviation Regiment (later became the 16th Guards Fighter Aviation Regiment) of the 20th mixed air division. 

The future pilot ace Alexander Ivanovich Pokryshkin served in the same regiment, and Mochalov was his wingman.

After the war, in his memoirs “Sky of War” Pokryshkin recalled Mochalov’s exploit: 

“... When I look at the strong-haired fair-haired Sasha Mochalov, I recall his namesake, who was missing at the beginning of the war. I well remember this last flight for him on a combat mission. Together we went to attack the Dniester. Enemy anti-aircraft guns hit his plane over the target. He turned back. But a few kilometers from the river, already above the location of our troops, the engine of his car passed, and he made an emergency landing in the field. I saw him, looking up, walked around his plane. I decided to sit somewhere near him, pick him up and fly away. But where to land? It’s dangerous right on the wheat field: ears can clog the radiator, the motor will overheat and fail. You can get into the pit. I did a few laps, looking for a suitable clearing. Mochalov, meanwhile, got out onto the road that led to the village. As soon as I started to decline, with a wave of his hands he signaled to me not to sit here and fly east. Having made sure once again that in the village where the pilot was walking, ours were standing, I flew home. But Mochalov did not return to the unit. What happened to him, where he is now - I don’t know. I still cannot forgive myself for not sitting down and taking him out ... "

On the website of the Russian Ministry of Defense "Memory of the People", which contains archival information about WWII soldiers, there is information about Mochalov.

So, according to the 1941 report of the irretrievable losses, it is written that Lieutenant Alexander Borisovich Mochalov was captured on July 14, 1941 in the vicinity of the village of Kremenchug, Beltsky district of the Moldavian SSR.

Now there is no Balti district. Kremenchug, like the village of Auckland, are included in the Soroksky district in Moldova. The distance between these settlements is just over three kilometers.  

Meanwhile, in later entries about the irreparable loss posted on the site "Memory of the People" pilot Alexander Mochalov appears not to be captured, but missing. 

The head of the Russian-Slavic community of the Soroksky district of Moldova, Lyudmila Vitkovskaya, told RT that immediately after the war, the inhabitants of the village of Auckland provided another version of the death of the pilot. All of their testimony, she said, was documented. 

According to Vitkovskaya, eyewitnesses testified that the pilot was allegedly shot down not by anti-aircraft artillery, but during an air battle, when several aircraft attacked him at once. At the same time, Mochalov himself destroyed two enemy aircraft, and then managed to land his damaged car in the field. 

“Pokryshkin made sure that Mochalov successfully landed the plane and did not land, thinking that the pilot himself would get to command. However, he did not know that there were Romanian soldiers in the village, with whom Mochalov had to engage alone, ”says the interlocutor of RT.

Then, according to Vitkovskaya, the pilot committed suicide, so as not to surrender. Later, locals secretly buried him from Romanians. 

Monument to the hero

Lyudmila Vitkovskaya says that after the war the hero was not forgotten. In 1983, local residents achieved the reburial of Mochalov at the school; on his grave, schoolchildren were accepted into pioneers and the Komsomol.

  • © Photo from the personal archive

In addition, according to Vitkovskaya, his mother and wife repeatedly came to the grave of the pilot. At the moment, communication with them has been lost. The interlocutor of RT suggests that they are no longer alive, since both women were old.

In 2005, local residents, at their own expense, erected a monument to Mochalov in the center of the village.

In 2010, they sent a collective appeal to the President of the Russian Federation Dmitry Medvedev with a request to posthumously award a pilot in Russia, but were refused. 

RT tried to track down Mochalov’s relatives. However, in the Shabalinsky district they said that they did not have data on the relatives of Alexander Mochalov. RT managed to find out that the pilot could have a sister who lived in Ukraine. However, her traces were also lost. 

Could not find relatives and the place of residence of the mother of the pilot in Novosibirsk.

Addresses to officials

Seryozha Bozhenov says that he was very surprised when he found out that virtually nothing was known about the exploit of the pilot Mochalov at home, and decided to help his grandfather restore justice.  

In January 2020, the student wrote an appeal to the Russian Foreign Ministry and attached all the documents that the Moldovan side sent him. The teenager replied that after his appeal, work was organized to certify the burial in the village of Okland and enter biographical data of Lieutenant Mochalov into the burial card.

This means that the pilot Mochalov will cease to be missing.

But the boy has not yet been able to achieve the rewarding of the hero. He shows a stack of answers from officials. 

“I am grateful for the love of the Motherland and for my active position, but in the end they report that“ there are no award sheets that have not been realized during the war years and there is no chance of posthumously assigning Mochalov the Order of Courage. However, other heroes are awarded. For example, Alexander Pechersky, the organizer of the uprising in the Sobibor death camp, was awarded the Order of Courage in 2016. I believe that Mochalov is also worthy of an award, ”says Bozhenov. 

Recently, the student received a response to his appeal to the Federation Council. As follows from the letter, the senators asked the National Pobeda Coordination Committee of the Republic of Moldova to contact the country's President Igor Dodon, who in turn asked the Russian leader Vladimir Putin to reward the pilot Mochalov. Why should one act according to such a long scheme, the teenager does not understand.

In the Shabalinsky district of the Kirov region they did not apply for the award of the fellow countryman, although they decided to perpetuate the memory of the hero after the schoolboy’s appeal. 

“We could not apply for a state award - this is beyond our authority,” says German Goncharov, deputy chairman of the Legislative Assembly of the Kirov Region, RT. - But, since the issue is not ordinary, the chairman of the Legislative Assembly Vladimir Bakin instructed to work out the issue of perpetuating the memory of Alexander Mochalov in the territory of the Kirov region. At present, together with the administration of the Shabalinsky district, the issue is being worked out so that the street in the district center or in one of the settlements of the Shabalinsky district is named after Mochalov. ”

The schoolboy’s grandfather, Alexander Kozyrev, does not understand why the official authorities do not go to meet them with his grandson.

“I saw with what respect my fellow countryman is treated in Moldova. And from the Russian side there is a blank impenetrable wall, ”Kozyrev sighs. - And in fact, Seryozha is already a little desperate, receiving rejections everywhere. But until he gives up and says that he will write until he receives a clear answer, why some heroes are awarded, while others seem to be not worthy. ”

Colonel Miroslav Morozov, chief researcher at the Institute of Military History of the Military Academy of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces, explained that it is impossible to award Mochalov under current law.

“There is a provision according to which only those who were written during the war were presented with awards for the war. This was done so that there would be no cases that retroactively awarded those who during the war were not considered heroes. After the war, only those who have unrealized award sheets are awarded. A person, for example, was presented for a reward, but at headquarters someone wrote that he was not worthy. This will be considered an unrealized award sheet. Accordingly, during the war years, no one wrote a presentation about Mochalov, ”RT told Morozov.

RT sent a request to the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, but has not yet received a response.