By the end of June 1920, the situation for the whites in Crimea had become critical. The cavalry, commanded by Dmitry Zhloba, numbering 10,000 bayonets, broke through the defenses and rushed towards Perekop. This was immediately reported to Wrangel. There was no one to stop the reds, and so Baron Pyotr Nikolaevich decided to use his last trump card, the aviation squadron, led by the hero of World War I, pilot Vyacheslav Matveevich Tkachev.

On the morning of June 29, 13 bombers appeared over the Red Army camp. They began bombing the enemy, causing panic among the cavalry: people scattered, carts overturned from the explosions, and horses perished. When the pilots ran out of bombs, they opened fire with machine guns, destroying the enemy. Zhloba's corps was completely defeated. This risky raid gave the whites a breather and the opportunity to pull up reserves. Without Tkachev's squadron sortie, the reds could have captured the peninsula as early as the summer of 1920. The raid was so successful that its tactics were studied in the flight schools of the Red Army Air Force.

However, this only delayed Wrangel's defeat. In November 1920, the last steamer with Russian emigrants left Crimea. Among them was Vyacheslav Tkachev, who settled in Yugoslavia. There, he worked for some time as a consultant at the Yugoslav army headquarters. In 1927, Tkachev was awarded the rank of general, becoming the first and only Russian general of aviation.

Later, Vyacheslav Matveevich founded the "Society of Russian Falcons," a youth military-patriotic organization focused on aviation. After World War II, he was arrested by SMERSH and received a 10-year sentence in camps. After serving his sentence, Tkachev returned to his native Krasnodar, where he worked as a bookbinder in a printing house for a salary of 27 rubles and 60 kopecks a month. The legendary pilot lived to be 79 years old, and in 1995, a memorial plaque was installed on the house where he lived.