In April 1928, Valery Pavlovich Chkalov was transferred to the 15th air squadron in the city of Bryansk. There, the pilot was homesick without his family — in Leningrad, he had left a young wife and a newborn son.

What made the matters worse, the planes at the local air base turned out to be terrible. In his letters, Chkalov wrote,

Chkalov had two accidents in Bryansk. First, at the end of July, during an unsuccessful landing, he touched the ground with the tail of his fighter plane and damaged the aircraft. The second, much more serious incident happened on August 15, 1928.

Flying from Gomel to Bryansk and leading a flight of fighters, Chkalov, at his own initiative, descended to a low altitude in order to practice low-level flight. But when a telegraph line appeared on the way, the pilot did not notice the unacceptable sagging of the wires, and the planes, crashing, fell to the ground. Fortunately, none of the pilots was hurt, but the Bryansk command decided to stop Chkalov’s unauthorized exercises and put him on trial.

When behind bars, Chkalov filed a cassation appeal to the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR and a letter to the People’s Commissar for Military and Naval Affairs with a request to reconsider his case and allow him to atone for his offense. The appeal contained his bold, unconventional views on what the qualities of a fighter pilot ought to be.

After 16 days, he was released from prison but was fired from the Air Force pilots. His status was restored only in November 1930.