Marquo
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Off topic, but I found this (Wikipedia) while searching for the above information:
Red Star: the Régiment Normandie-Niemen fighting for the Soviet Union (1942–1945)
Main article: Normandie-Niemen Six months after the Germans invaded the USSR, talks aimed at closer co-operation between Free France and the Soviet Union resulted in a squadron being especially created with an initial core of twelve fighter pilots being sent east. The Groupe de Chasse GC 3 Normandie was officially promulgated by de Gaulle on 1 September 1942, with Commandant Pouliquen in command. Mechanics, pilots and hardware were transported by rail and air via Tehran (Iran) to Baku (now the capital of Azerbaijan). A period of training on the Yakovlev Yak-7 was completed by mid-February 1943 when Commandant Jean Tulasne took command of the groupe, which finally headed for the front on 22 March 1943.
The first campaign of GC 3, equipped with the Yakovlev Yak-1 fighter plane, lasted until 5 October, and encompassed the area of Russia between Polotniani-Zavod and Sloboda/Monostirtchina. From an initial aerial victory over an Fw 190 on 5 April the tally rose dramatically and the squadron became the focus of much Soviet propaganda, so much so that Generalfeldmarschall Wilhelm Keitel (who was executed in 1946 after the Nuremberg trials) decreed that any French pilot captured would be executed.
Tragedy struck the squadron when the much-decorated Tulasne was reported missing in action after combat on 17 July requiring Commandant Pierre Pouyade to take command. In spite of the loss, GC 3 started to receive many Soviet unit citations and decorations as well as French ones. On October 11, de Gaulle accorded the groupe the title of Compagnon de la Libération. By the time GC 3 relocated to Toula on 6 November 1943, there were only six surviving pilots from the groupe, which had accumulated 72 aerial victories since joining the fighting.
1944 witnessed the expansion of the groupe to become a régiment, with a fourth escadrille joining its ranks. After training at Toula was completed on more advanced Yak-9D fighter planes, the new regiment rejoined the front line for its second campaign. This lasted until November 27 and took in the area between Doubrovka (in Russia) and Gross-Kalweitchen (in East Prussia, Germany). It was during this campaign that Joseph Stalin allowed the regiment to style itself Normandie-Niemen in recognition of its participation in the battles to liberate the river of that name. On October 16, the first day of a new offensive against East Prussia, the easternmost part of the Reich home territory, the regiment’s pilots destroyed 29 enemy aircraft without loss. By the following month, the regiment was itself based in Reich territory. By the end of the year, Pouyade had been released from his command of the regiment and he, along with other veteran pilots, returned to France.
14 January 1945, saw the Normandie-Niemen regiment start its third campaign (from Dopenen to Heiligenbeil), concentrating in the East Prussian part of the German Reich, until victory in the east was formally announced on May 9, the day after VE Day in western Europe. By that day, the regiment had shot down 273 enemy aircraft and had received many citations and decorations. Stalin expressed his gratitude to the regiment by offering the unit’s Yak-3s to France, to which the pilots returned to a hero’s welcome in Paris on 20 June 1945.
Thus, the regiment became the only air combat group from a western European country (apart from the brief intervention by No. 151 Wing RAF when introducing Hawker Hurricanes to Russia) to participate in the war on the Eastern Front. Its flag bore the testimony of its battle experience with names such as Bryansk, Orel, Ielnia, Smolensk, Koenigsberg (later renamed Kaliningrad by the Soviets), and Pillau. It received the following decorations: from France, the Companion of the Légion d'Honneur, the Croix de la Libération, the Médaille militaire, the Croix de Guerre with six palmes; from the USSR, it received the Order of the Red Banner and the Order of Alexander Nevsky, with eleven citations between the two orders.
Marquo
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