Orenburg Military Aviation Piloting High School

The I. S. Polbin Orenburg Red Banner Higher Military Aviation School for Pilots (, OVVAKUL) was a flight training school of the Soviet Air Force, located in the city of Orenburg. One of the oldest flight schools in the air force, the school was established in Moscow in 1921, and moved to Orenburg in 1927. The school was disbanded in 1993. History The Orenburg Higher Military Aviation School for Pilots began as the Moscow School for Air Combat and Bombing, which began forming in accordance with a decree dated 10 August 1921. The school was moved to the nearby city of Serpukhov on 9 August 1922. In October 1923 the Serpukhov school was renamed the Higher Military Aviation School for Air Gunnery and Bombing. In 1923 V. I. Chekalov was appointed head of the school. Three departments were created in the school: training, flying, and maintenance. Two aviation detachments, one fighter and one reconnaissance, became part of the school. The school, led by Fyodor Astakhov, relocated to Orenburg in October 1927, and on 1 October 1928 was merged with the Orenburg Military School for Air Combat and the Leningrad Higher School for Observers. The combined school was designated as the K. E. Voroshilov 3rd Military School for Pilots and Observers. By 1930, the school had trained 459 pilots, 2,078 observers, twenty aeronauts, 53 instructors, 956 air gunners, and more than 100 instructor pilots, and a large group of junior aviation specialists. In May 1938 the school was renamed the K. E. Voroshilov Orenburg Military Aviation School for Pilots, and in February 1939 was divided into two separate schools: the K. E. Voroshilov 1st Chkalov Military Aviation School for Pilots (VAUL) (on Sovetskaya street) and the 2nd Chkalov Military Aviation School for Navigators (on Chelyuskintsev street) in order to improve the training conditions of pilots and navigators. In the late 1940s training at the school was carried out on the Ilyushin Il-10 ground attack aircraft, and in the first half of the 1950s Ilyushin Il-28 and Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-15 jet aircraft arrived at the school. In 1960, the school received the status of a higher training institution: the personnel and equipment of the Orenburg School for Navigators and Kirovobad School for Pilots (earlier relocated to Orsk) were merged into it. On 23 December 1963, at the initiative of the Orenburg Oblast Komsomol Committee and the flight school, the first school for young kosmonauts in the Soviet Union was created.