Alexei Petrovich Maresyev

Fighter pilot, Hero of the Soviet Union (24 August 1943), Colonel, who returned to front-line flying after both legs were amputated. Born on 20 May 1916 in Kamyshin, Saratov province. He worked on the construction of Komsomolsk-on-Amur, trained at a flying club and graduated from the Bataysk military aviation school in 1940. On 4 April 1942 his aircraft was shot down near the Demyansk salient. Wounded, he made his way back towards Soviet lines over eighteen days, crawling for the last of them, and was found by villagers at Plav in the Valdai district. Gangrene cost him both legs below the knee. Having won permission to fly on prostheses, he returned to service in June 1943 with the 63rd Guards Fighter Aviation Regiment and fought at Kursk and in the Baltic. He shot down eleven enemy aircraft in all: four before his injury and seven after returning to flying. His story became the basis of Boris Polevoy's "Story of a Real Man" (1946). The book changed the surname to "Meresyev", a difference that is still a common source of confusion between the man and the literary character. After the war he worked for the Soviet War Veterans Committee as its executive secretary. He died in Moscow on 18 May 2001 and is buried at Novodevichy Cemetery.