Dmitry Fyodorovich Lavrinenko

Tank platoon commander of the 1st Guards Tank Brigade, Hero of the Soviet Union (posthumously, 5 May 1990), Senior Lieutenant, and the highest-scoring Soviet tank commander of the Great Patriotic War. Born on 14 October 1914 in the village of Besstrashnaya, Kuban region. He worked as a teacher before the army and graduated from the Ulyanovsk armoured school. From October 1941 he fought on the approaches to Moscow with the 4th Tank Brigade (from November the 1st Guards) in a T-34. In two and a half months of fighting he fought 28 actions and destroyed 52 enemy tanks — a figure no Soviet tank commander surpassed during the whole war. He worked mainly from ambush, choosing positions with a short field of fire, hitting the leading and rear vehicles of a column and then shifting position rather than accepting a meeting engagement in the open. He was killed on 18 December 1941 near the village of Goryuny outside Volokolamsk, struck by a mortar fragment after leaving his tank. His Hero of the Soviet Union title came only in 1990, almost half a century later; the wartime recommendations were never acted on. That gap between what he did and when it was recognised is part of his record and is stated here plainly.