Falaleev, Fedor Iakovlevich

Falaleev, Fedor Iakovlevich 

Born May 19 (31), 1899, in the village of Polianskaia, in what is now Mozhga Raion, Udmurt ASSR; died Aug. 12, 1955, in Moscow. Soviet military commander. Marshal of aviation (1944). Member of the CPSU from 1918.

The son of a peasant, Falaleev became a member of the Mozhga revolutionary committee after the October Revolution of 1917. In 1919 he enlisted in the Soviet Army. During the Civil War he fought on the Eastern Front and helped combat banditry in the Ukraine. He also conducted political work among the soldiers. After the war he became a regimental commissar.

Falaleev graduated from Vystrel in 1928, from a military school for pilots in 1933, and from the N. E. Zhukovskii Air Force Academy in 1934. In 1940 he became deputy commander of the air forces of the First Separate Army of the Far East. In 1941 he served first as inspector general of aviation and then as first deputy chief of the Main Directorate of the air forces of the Red Army. During the Great Patriotic War of 1941–45, he commanded the air forces of the Sixth Army, the Southwestern Front, and the Southwestern Axis. From October 1942 through April 1946 he was chief of staff and deputy commander of the air forces of the Red Army, serving as second deputy commander from 1943 to 1945. He was a representative of the General Headquarters of the Supreme Command at the battle of Stalingrad and in the Crimean, Byelorussian, Baltic, and East Prussian operations.

From 1946 to 1950, Falaleev was head of the Air Force Academy. He retired in 1950 because of illness. Falaleev was awarded the Order of Lenin, three Orders of the Red Banner of Labor, two Orders of Suvorov First Class, the Order of Kutuzov First Class, the Order of Suvorov Second Class, the Order of the Red Star, the Order of the Badge of Honor, various medals, and a number of foreign decorations.