About the book: year / Abstract from the publisher: Hero of the Soviet Union N. A. Shmelev is already speaking with his second book of memoirs. The theme is the same - the difficult but glorious path of a front-line pilot. The first half of the book resurrects in the readers' memory those years when the front of the Great Patriotic War passed near the very heart of our Motherland. The author and his comrades then flew low-speed Po-2 aircraft. But even on these seemingly defenseless vehicles they worked wonders, forcing the enemy to respect and even fear the little “front sergeant major.” The second half of the memoirs is devoted to the final period of the war. Now we see heroes already familiar to us in the cabins of the famous “silts.” The author convincingly shows how, along with the progress of domestic technology, people matured and grew.