Soviet Guard Senior Lieutenant Trofimov Nikolai Dmitrievich

[RedMaestro]

Hi All!

This is another recent pickup of mine, a group to Guard Senior Lieutenant Trofimov Nikolai Dmitrievich. He apparently made it from Moscow, through Stalingrad, to Berlin. And he earned a red star (#2,124,058) and OGPW (#659,192) along the way...I think. Those two awards didn't come with an order book, so the only way to know for sure is through research, I guess. If anyone wants better pictures, let me know. Thanks!

-Alex

[RedMaestro]

The backs of the medals:

[RedMaestro]

The back of the RS (shot of the OGPW was blurry, so don't have a picture of that):

[RedMaestro]

Moscow doc.

[RedMaestro]

Stalingrad doc.

[RedMaestro]

Berlin doc.

[Guest Rick Research]

If you were to try research, I don't know WHICH unit would be best to ask for by his name-- might be best to send the researcher the link to this thread so he can read the information himself directly from the Russian rather than English transliteration. I'd advise ONLY asking for the Awards Record Card until you KNOW--from that--that the two Orders actually were his.

Moscow signed 28.9.44 by Guards Lieutenant General Beletsky as commander of 4th Guards Fighter Aviation Division-- here is his data from Steen Ammentorp's excellent WW2 Generals site:

Stalingrad signed 29.9.43 by Lt Col commander of 642nd Fighter Aviation Regiment

Berlin to him as Technical Senior Lieutenant signed 26.10.45 by Colonel commanding 4th Guards Fighter Aviation Division

These are what Trofimov's shoulder boards would have looked like:

[RedMaestro]

I got news back from the researcher that this group is "fake." Apparently, no information could be found when it was searched by name. What does this mean? Shouldn't there be something in the archives about Trofimov? Perhaps there was an issue with the correct spelling of his name?

The Red Star belonged to Fedorov (http://gmic.co.uk/index.php?showtopic=28519), and I don't know about the OGPW 2.

Thanks!

-Alex

Edited June 7, 2008 by RedMaestro

[Alfred]

Hi Alex,

even you have the name sometimes it happens that there are no research results. I also have a whole documented group with all documents and there were no research results.

Maybe the personel file is lost or the reseacher have no access to the documents (e.g. the soldier worked for the NKVD) There are many reasons for no research results.

Dave wrote to this topic:

"There are a multitude of reasons an award might be unresearchable:1. It could be a labor award. Wait, you say, Red Banners aren't labor awards! Well, I had one to a civilian film producer who made military-themed films PLUS his Red Star... both were unresearchable.2. It could be a Navy award. These are STILL finicky, I'm shooting at a 50% research rate still.3. It could be a "state security" award - be that GRU, KGB, etc. NKVD and Smersh awards are normally researchable. GRU and KGB ones aren't.4. The documentation could have been lost or destroyed during the War. Remember, while many of the early awards were being handed out, there units were being destroyed. I'd venture to guess it was the rare administrative officer who would risk his life to break out of an encirclement to deliver award citations to the chain of command! Usually that stuff was either burned/destroyed/captured and no longer exists.5. The citation could be classified and the archivist might not have access to it. 6. If it's a late award, the citation might have stayed with the personnel record of the recipient, and at the end of the USSR, never forwarded to Padolsk for their archives.7. If the award was pre-June 1941, your chances of getting the citation drop dramatically. The award card might be possible, but I have yet to see a pre-June 1941 citation. Thus, if you have an unresearchable award, there are quite a few reasons why the research might not come back. There's no "single" reason for an award to be unresearchable, but really many different possibilities - the 7 I listed above are only the most common.Hope that helpsDave"

regards

Andreas

[Guest Rick Research]

Ah, too bad! Really the only way to be sure a group IS a group is if you have the Orders Book to start with and can verify it hasn't been screwed with.

This is always a gamble with loose awards.

[MoHeezy]

Hey I know this is an old old thread but my girlfriend was adopted from Russia and after researching her biological fathers name and the little we know about him we're pretty positive that these are his service medals