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Ovchinnikov Ivan Gavrilovich
(11.01.1910-august 1942)
 Soviet
arctic hydrologist. Born
in Ramenskoye, Moscow Region, in the family of a working weaver. His
father was an active Bolshevik, subjected to repression,
participated in the February and October coups. Interestingly,
in his son’s autobiography, written in 1939, it is precisely the
word “coup”, and not “revolution”.
In 1925 Ovchinnikov graduated from the seven-year school at the
Red Banner factory. Then
followed
factory apprenticeship school at the same factory, then the Moscow Textile College
and distribution in 1930 in the Alexander Cotton Trust. Until
1933 he worked in various factories of this trust, occupying posts
from a technician to the head of a department. He
was an active member of the Komsomol, but in 1931 he retired from
Komsomol work "for passivity and non-payment of membership dues".
In 1933 Ovchinnikov "was released from work in the textile
industry for health reasons" and entered the Moscow
Hydrometeorological Institute. It is a little strange, because it is
for a specialty hydrometeorologist that you need excellent health.
After graduating from the institute in 1938
Ovchinnikov as a
meteorological engineer in Moscow at the Central Institute of
Weather, and a year later, by order of the heads of the
General Directorate of
Hydrometeorological Service and
the Main Directorate of the Northern Sea Route, was transferred to
Arctic Research Institute to the position of senior ice service
hydrologist. He
quickly became one of the leading experts on the ice regime of the
Barents and Kara Seas, a great connoisseur of drifting ice, an
excellent forecaster and ice scout. He
was waiting for a great scientific future, but the war decided very
differently.
In November 1941 the senior hydrologist of the ice and weather
service department of the ANII Ovchinnikov, together with the
institute, moved to Krasnoyarsk. With
the start of navigation in 1942 he participated in aviation ice
reconnaissance along the Northern Sea Route and died one of the
first among ice reconnaissance aircraft. This is how it is described
in the book by Z.M. Kanevsky
"Price forecast":
“At the end of August 1942 I.G. Ovchinnikov
flew into the next reconnaissance. At
one of the intermediate bases, the aircraft preparing for takeoff
was damaged by a sudden gust of wind. Ovchinnikov
immediately transferred to another car: it was necessary to fly to
the aid of a caravan stuck in ice. Pilot I.D. Cherepkov rose
into the air, but never arrived at their destination. It
was the end of August, in the Kara Sea
"Admiral
Sheer" robbed, submarines
scoured. What
kind of tragedy happened, they never learned about it: during the
flight the aircraft’s radio was silent. It
was only after the disappearance of the Cherepkov machine that the
polar pilots were ordered to report their coordinates regularly. (It
must also be added that, with rare exceptions, ice reconnaissance
aircraft did not have armaments.)”.
It was only on April 27, 1943 that the order of the director of
the
Arctic Research Institute V.Kh. Buynitsky
No. 63: OVCHINNIKOVA I.G. -
Hydrologist of the service of ice and weather from IV. 1.
this year to
consider expelled from the
Arctic Research Institute as missing.
Ovchinnikov's name is immortalized in St. Petersburg on a
memorial plaque on the building of the
Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute Bering Street, 3
Cape in
the south of
the Greely
Island
of
the Archipelago Franz-Josef Land. Named
by Soviet hydrographs in the 1950s. |
