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Shocking Successes that Came from Stressful Situations in History

Khalid Elhassan April 30, 2021 37 min

German troops crossing a bridge into the Rhineland on March 7th, 1936. The Article

25. The Aeronautical Engineer Who Withstood the Pressure of Imprisonment to Design One of WWII’s Most Successful Airplanes

Like Curt Herzstark, above, Soviet aeronautical engineer and aircraft designer Vladimir Petlyakov displayed extraordinary poise under pressure to get creative and industrious while imprisoned. Herzstark had turned to creativity to save his neck by inventing a mathematical aid in Hitler’s concentration camps. Petlyakov drew on his fount of creativity to design a successful airplane, the Petlyakov Pe-2, while locked up in Stalin’s gulags. Unlike Herztark, whose calculator did not help the German war effort, Petlyakov’s plane helped the Soviets win WWII.

The Pe-2 was the USSR’s most-produced twin-engine aircraft of WWII, with 11,427 built. Fast, maneuverable, and resilient, the Pe-2 proved to be one of the conflict’s outstanding tactical attack airplanes. On the Eastern Front, it performed functions similar to those carried out by the better-known British de Haviland Mosquito. Versatile, the Pe-2 proved itself in a variety of tasks: in addition to its main role as a light bomber, it was also successful in reconnaissance, plus heavy fighter and night fighter assignments.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.