Alexander Golovanov
Soviet air marshal (1904-1975)
Alexander Yevgeniyevich Golovanov (Russian: Алекса́ндр Евге́ньевич Голова́нов; 7 August 1904 – 22 September 1975) was a Soviet pilot. On 3 August 1943, he became a Marshal of Aviation (the youngest person in the history of the USSR to hold that rank) and on 19 August 1944 he was promoted to the rank of Chief marshal of the aviation (the second after Alexander Novikov).
World War II
At the start of the German-Soviet War (June 1941), Golovanov commanded the 212th Heavy Bomber Regiment; then he became commander (in office: August to December 1941) of the 81st Long Range Bomber Division, subordinated to the Supreme Command Headquarters. The division led by him bombed, with his personal participation, enemy military facilities in Berlin (August to September 1941), Königsberg (1 September 1941), Gdańsk (Danzig), Ploieşti and other cities.
During the Battle of Moscow (October 1941 to January 1942) his "long-range aviation hit powerful blows on artillery positions, tank formations and command posts."
From February 1942 he commanded the Red Army Air Force's long-range bomber force (ADD; Russian: Авиация дальнего действия (АДД)), which transformed into the 18th Air Army on 6 December 1944. The 18th Air Army's units delivered air strikes against the Axis' deep rear, supported ground forces during the East Prussian, Vienna and Berlin operations and fulfilled tasks to help the Partisans of Yugoslavia.
As commander of the Soviet Long Range Aviation (ADD), Golovanov received orders to destroy Helsinki in early 1944, in order to force Finland to accept Soviet-dictated terms of peace. Due to deception and skilled use of radar, Finnish anti-aircraft artillery succeeded in saving the city (February 1944). When Stalin later in 1944 found out that he had been mis-informed of the bombing results, ADD was dissolved (6 December 1944) as a punishment. This failure hampered Golovanov's career.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Alexander Golovanov” is soviet air marshal (1904-1975). The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Alexander, Golovanov and Soviet, not as a finished interpretation.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 30, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1969846. VIAF identifies the subject as 1169977. The Library of Congress control number is n85364936. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1904, 1975, 1943 and 1944.
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This entry incorporates text from “Alexander Golovanov” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.