A cold parting between a king and a dictator, and the birth of a man who would spend his life in the air: August 14 threads two very different aviation-adjacent stories through Bulgaria’s history.
August 14, 1943 — Tsar Boris III’s Final Meeting with Hitler
Summoned to the Wolf’s Lair, Hitler’s Eastern Front headquarters in East Prussia, Tsar Boris III flew out on a plane the Führer had sent for him to discuss sending Bulgarian divisions to occupy Albania and Greece in place of Italian troops, whose government had just collapsed. The meeting turned tense — one of the few times Hitler grew visibly angry with a monarch he otherwise respected — and the two parted coldly.
When Boris returned to Sofia the next day, aides noticed he looked pale and exhausted, and he complained of chest pains almost immediately. Two weeks later, on August 28, he was dead — a sudden and still-debated end that has fuelled decades of speculation.
August 14, 1905 — Birth of a Bulgarian Aviation Pioneer
Dobri Bochev Donevski was born in the village of Chiflik, near Troyan. He joined the aviation school at Bozhurishte airfield in 1926, passed his first pilot’s examination the following year, and went on to spend more than two decades in Bulgaria’s air force, training pilots at Kazanlak and commanding a fighter school equipped with Messerschmitt Bf 109s during the Second World War.
Over his flying career he piloted 35 types of powered aircraft and 9 types of gliders, later teaching tactics and aviation history to a new generation at Bulgaria’s military academy.
Continue through the series with August 13 and August 15. For more of the country beyond its history, explore our guides to the best of Bulgaria.
