Ivan Dmitriyevich Babanov

Ivan Dmitriyevich Babanov was born on 4 (17) January 1911 in Ivanovo-Voznesensk, now Ivanovo, into a worker's family. He was Russian. He completed junior secondary school and the Ivanovo Soviet party school. He did his national service in the Red Army in 1933-35, graduating in 1934 from the All-Russian Central Executive Committee joint military school and serving about a year as a platoon commander there. He then worked in the NKVD system, and afterwards as a foreman repairing looms at the Ivanovo melange mill. In the summer of 1941 he was called up again and posted to naval aviation. He completed the navy's course for air gunners and bomb-aimers and served with the 1st and 3rd reserve aviation regiments of the naval air force. He reached the front in August 1943 with the 1st Guards Mine-Torpedo Aviation Regiment of the Baltic Fleet Air Force, flying the U-2, R-5, SB, DB-4 and A-20 Boston. His first operations were mine-laying; his first success came on the night of 27 April 1944, when his crew sank a German tanker. His Hero of the Soviet Union was conferred on him as a flight navigator. By September 1944 Guards Lieutenant Babanov had flown 68 combat sorties and taken part in sinking six transports, a tanker and an enemy patrol vessel. On 13 August 1944 the crew of the pilot Mikhail Shishkov and the navigator Babanov sank a patrol vessel on one sortie and a large transport on the next. Soon afterwards an anti-aircraft shell burst in Babanov's navigator's cabin; the pilot managed to land the damaged aircraft at a neighbouring airfield. In hospital sixteen wounds were counted, and it was there that he learned of the award. By decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of 5 November 1944, Guards Lieutenant Ivan Dmitriyevich Babanov was made a Hero of the Soviet Union with the Order of Lenin and Gold Star no. 4335. The same decree conferred the title on his pilot, Shishkov: the crew was recognised together, which matters, because a torpedo navigator's work was judged by what the crew achieved. He was promoted to Guards Senior Lieutenant on 1 November 1944, a few days before the decree that names him as a lieutenant. From November 1944 he served in his own regiment as head of its mine and torpedo section, but his health no longer allowed him to fly operations. From January 1946 he was a squadron adjutant in the 14th Guards Fighter Aviation Regiment of the Baltic Fleet Air Force, and in July 1946 he was discharged to the reserve. He returned to Ivanovo and worked as an assistant foreman at the melange mill, the same works where he had worked before the war. He died on 4 January 1972 and is buried at Balino cemetery in Ivanovo.