Documents on the History of Maintenance in the Russian Air Force Fleet of 1910–17 in the Fonds of the Russian State Military History Archive

Print PDF

УДК 930.2+94(47)«1910/1917»

DOI 10.28995/2073-0101-2020-4-1156-1167

Sergey V. Averchenko

Military Training and Research Center of the Air Force of the Professor N. E. Zhukovsky and Yu. A. Gagarin Air Force Academy, Voronezh, Russian Federation

Documents on the History of Maintenance in the Russian Air Force Fleet of 1910–17 in the Fonds of the Russian State Military History Archive

Abstract

The article describes the part of the Russian State Military History Archive (RGVIA) fonds, which contains documents related to the maintenance of aircrafts, engines, aircraft weapons, apparatus, radio stations, and photographic equipment of the Russian Air Force Fleet (VVF) in 1910-17; they testify of the emergence of the maintenance department. As the forming department had no management bodies, its documents deposited in the RGVIA do not form a compact fond, they are found in a large array of fonds, some of which have no relation to aviation. In the modern scholarship on the history of Russian military aviation, there is a lack of the RGVIA reference materials on location of documents on the history of maintenance of the Russian Air Force Fleet. The article is to provide researchers with a detailed tool for searching documents on the history of maintenance in the archival fonds. The author relies on his knowledge of historical development of the Russian Air Force Fleet, his long-term research experience in the RGVIA, and on reference publications on the archive fonds. Having analyzed the RGVIA fonds, he shows what kind of documents on the history of the VVF maintenance can be found there. Features of various fonds and volume of documents on the history of maintenance in them are being described. It has been identified in which fonds the guidelines and instructions for the aircrafts maintenance are stored, as well as reports on technical condition of aircrafts, armament, and equipment in the squadrons, materials on aircraft radio equipment usage, reports on inspection of technical condition of aircrafts in the units, documents on accidents and disasters. The article reviews fonds of various organizations engaged in operation and repair of the aviation equipment, of management bodies of the armed forces, of integrated combined arms force, and of military aviation. The analysis will help the historians of the Russian Air Force to navigate numerous RGVIA fonds and to speed up their search of documents.

Keywords

Review of historical sources, maintenance, operation and upkeep, Air Force aviation, Military air fleet of the Russian Empire, aviation equipment, aircraft, airplane, archival documents, archival fonds, sources, World War I, technician, motorist.

Download the article: averchenko_doi

References

AVERCHENKO, S. V. Zarozhdenie i razvitie Ekspluatatsionno-tekhnicheskoi sluzhby Voenno-vozdushnykh sil RKKA v mezhvoennyi period (1921–1941 gg.). Dis. ... kand. ist. nauk [The origin and development of the maintenance of the Red Army Air Force in the interwar period (1921–1941): Cand. hist. sci. diss. In Russ.]. Monino, 2006, 318 p.

AVERCHENKO, S. V. Zarozhdenie i razvitie Ekspluatatsionno-tekhnicheskoi sluzhby Voenno-vozdushnykh sil RKKA v mezhvoennyi period (1921–1941 gg.): monografiya [The origin and development of the maintenance of the Red Army Air Forces in the interwar period (1921–1941): A monograph. In Russ.]. Moscow, Russkie vityazi publ., 2006, 240 p.

ELISEEV, S. P. Razvitie organizatsionnoi struktury i sistemy upravleniya russkoi voennoi aviatsii (1910–1917 gg.). Dis. ... kand. ist. nauk [Development of organizational structure and management system of the Russian Air Force aviation (1910–1917): Cand. hist. sci. dis. In Russ.]. Moscow, 1999,279 p.

ZARETSKII, V. M. Voennyi vozdushnyi flot Rossii v Pervoi mirovoi voine: stroitel'stvo i boevoe primenenie. Dis. … d-ra ist. nauk [Russian Air Fleet in the First World War: Construction and Combat Use: Dr. hist. sci. diss. In Russ.]. Monino, 1996, 643 p.

About the authors

Sergey Viktorovich Averchenko, PhD in History, Military Training and Research Center of the Air Force of the Professor N. E. Zhukovsky and Yu. A. Gagarin Air Force Academy, department of history of wars and military art, lecturer, Voronezh, Russian Federation, +7-916-221-92-69, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Submitted 9.07.2020, published (for citation):

AVERCHENKO, S. V. Dokumenty po istorii ekspluatatsionno-tekhnicheskoi sluzhby rossiiskogo Voennogo vozdushnogo flota 1910–1917 gg. v fondakh Rossiiskogo gosudarstvennogo voenno-istoricheskogo arkhiva [Documents on the History of Maintenance in the Russian Air Force Fleet of 1910–17 in the Fonds of the Russian State Military History Archive. In Russ.]. IN: Vestnik arhivista / Herald of an Archivist, 2020, no. 4, pp. 1156-1167. doi 10.28995/2073-0101-2020-4-1156-1167

You can read completely article in the russian historic-archival magazine “The Herald of an Archivist”. Read more about terms of subscription here.

Полностью материал публикуется в российском историко-архивоведческом журнале ВЕСТНИК АРХИВИСТА. Ознакомьтесь с условиями подписки здесь.