An aerial ram is called the infliction of damage to an enemy aircraft directly by the attacking aircraft itself. The history of ram attacks has been going on for nearly a hundred years, during which time pilots from different countries have carried out hundreds of such attacks, including night ones.
Battering ram as a method of air combat has never been and will not be the main one, since a collision with an enemy aircraft very often leads to the destruction and fall of both machines. A ramming strike is permissible only in a situation where the pilot has no other choice. For the first time such an attack was performed in 1912 by the famous Russian pilot Pyotr Nesterov, who shot down an Austrian reconnaissance aircraft. His light Moran was hit from above by a heavy enemy Albatross carrying the pilot and observer. As a result of the attack, both aircraft were damaged and fell, Nesterov and the Austrians were killed. At that time, machine guns were not yet installed on aircraft, so a ram was the only way to shoot down an enemy airplane.
After the death of Nesterov, the tactics of ram attacks were carefully worked out, the pilots began to strive to shoot down the enemy plane, keeping their own. The main method of attack was the impact of the propeller blades on the tail unit of the enemy aircraft. The rapidly spinning propeller damaged the tail of the aircraft, resulting in loss of control and crash. At the same time, the pilots of the attacking vehicles often managed to land their planes safely. After replacing the bent propellers, the machines were ready to fly again. Other options were also used - wing blow, tail keel, fuselage, landing gear.
Night rams were especially difficult, since in poor visibility conditions it is very difficult to correctly execute the strike. For the first time a night air ram was used on October 28, 1937 in the skies of Spain by the Soviet pilot Yevgeny Stepanov. At night over Barcelona on the I-15 plane he managed to destroy the Italian bomber "Savoy-Marchetti" with a ramming strike. Since the Soviet Union did not officially take part in the Spanish Civil War, they preferred not to talk about the pilot's feat for a long time.
During the Great Patriotic War, the first night air ram was carried out by the fighter pilot of the 28th Fighter Aviation Regiment, Pyotr Vasilyevich Eremeev: on July 29, 1941, he destroyed the enemy Junkers-88 bomber with a ram attack on a MiG-3 aircraft. But the night ramming of fighter pilot Viktor Vasilyevich Talalikhin became more famous: on the night of August 7, 1941, he shot down a German Heinkel-111 bomber on an I-16 aircraft near Moscow Podolsk. The battle for Moscow was one of the key moments of the war, so the pilot's feat became widely known. For his courage and heroism, Viktor Talalikhin was awarded the Order of Lenin and the Gold Star of the Hero of the Soviet Union. He died on October 27, 1941 in an air battle, destroying two enemy aircraft and being mortally wounded by a fragment of an exploding shell.
During the battles with Nazi Germany, Soviet pilots performed more than 500 ram attacks, some pilots used this technique several times and remained alive. Ramming strikes were also used later, already on jet machines.
