 In 1940, Smirnov was permanently posted in Indonesia by KLM.At the time of the German invasion of the Netherlands in May 1940, Smirnov and his wife lived in Napels, which since the outbreak of World War II had functioned as the terminal of the KLM route to the East Indies.He moved to Java and continued flying the route, until the Japanese invasion of the Dutch East Indies in December 1941.