Branch of troops: Aviation. _x000D_ _x000D_ My grandfather Victor Alexandrovich Sidorochev, born in 1922, always dreamed of being a pilot, studied well at school, went in for sports, played musical instruments domra and balalaika. He was very tall (over 180 cm) and for this they did not want to take him to the flight school, as they were afraid that he would not fit into the aircraft. However, the desire and persistence of his grandfather helped him to enter the flight school on June 9, 1941, as he studied well. And on June 22, 1941, the war began. I know that my grandfather was a radio operator in 6th Guards Long-range Aviation Division, consisting of the 17th Guards Long-range Air Regiment under the command of Lieutenant Colonel A.E. Matrosov. He was armed with Il-4 aircraft. The regiment began its combat activities from the Monino airfield on 05/27/43, making its first sortie to bomb the Mogilev railway junction. This was followed by successful combat missions of the regiment to bombard enemy manpower and equipment at railway junctions and airfields in the area of cities: Mogilev, Vitebsk, Kiev, Orel, Belgorod, Bryansk, Pskov, Orsha, Unecha, Smolensk, Bobruisk, Roslavl, Nizhin, Bakhmach, Kremenchug, Poltava, Ponyri and others. _x000D_ Since the beginning of July 1943, the Regiment of 6 GAP DD received a combat mission to act in the interests of the troops of the fronts located on the northern and southern faces of the Kursk Bulge. At Kursk, the Regiment made 263 flights, dropping 383 tons of bombs on the enemy. _x000D_ After the combat of Kursk, operating from the "jump" airfields during a short summer night, the Regiment's crews made 2-3 flights to defeat the Nazi troops in the area of the cities of Smolensk and Roslavl. _x000D_ Being on a combat mission on 08.24.1943, my grandfather with all his crew did not return, they were shot down by German invaders in the Diminichsky district of the Kaluga region, where the entire crew V.M. Deulin, V.A. is buried in a mass grave in the village of Vysokoe.