Aleksey Dmitriyevich Bukhanov

Aleksey Dmitriyevich Bukhanov was born on 8 March 1923 in the village of Astashikha, now in Voskresenskoye district of Nizhny Novgorod region, into a peasant family. After seven classes of school he ran the village reading room, then completed the factory apprentice school at the Krasnaya Etna works in Gorky, now Nizhny Novgorod, and worked there as a heat-treatment operator while training at the local aeroclub. He entered the Red Army in March 1941 and in April 1942 completed the Engels military aviation school, then served as a pilot in the 18th Reserve Aviation Regiment, where he learned to fly the Pe-2 dive bomber. From November 1942 he was in the field army as a senior pilot of the 36th Guards Bomber Aviation Regiment, and from April 1944 a flight commander. He was wounded three times. He fought on the South-Western, Voronezh and 1st Ukrainian Fronts: over Voroshilovgrad and Kharkiv regions and the Dnieper bridgeheads near Kyiv in 1943; in the Zhitomir–Berdichev, Proskurov–Chernovtsy and Lvov–Sandomierz operations in 1944; and in the Vistula–Oder, Berlin and Prague operations in 1945. Early in 1943, wounded over Kramatorsk, he brought his damaged aircraft back to his airfield. By the end of the war, as a flight commander of the 36th Guards Bomber Aviation Regiment, 202nd Bomber Aviation Division, 4th Bomber Aviation Corps, 2nd Air Army, 1st Ukrainian Front, he had flown 168 combat sorties on reconnaissance and bombing of railway junctions, airfields and concentrations of troops and equipment. By decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of 27 June 1945, Guards Lieutenant Aleksey Dmitriyevich Bukhanov was made a Hero of the Soviet Union with the Order of Lenin and Gold Star no. 7869. He also held two Orders of the Red Banner (1944, 1945), two Orders of the Patriotic War 1st class (1944, 1985) and the Order of the Red Star (1943). He was transferred to the reserve on 25 September 1946 and for eleven years flew light aircraft in the Civil Air Fleet. He joined the Communist Party in 1953. He lived in Gorky and worked at the locomotive depot of Gorky-Sortirovochny station. He died on 2 November 1995 and is buried in the Old Avtozavodskoye Cemetery in Nizhny Novgorod. Memorial plaques are on the house where he lived and on the Krasnaya Etna works.