Ivan Nikitovich Kozhedub

Fighter pilot, three times Hero of the Soviet Union, Marshal of Aviation (1985), and the highest-scoring Soviet fighter pilot of the Great Patriotic War. Born on 8 June 1920 in the village of Obrazhiivka, Chernigov province (now Sumy region). He trained at a flying club before the war, graduated from the Chuguyev military aviation school and stayed on there as an instructor. He reached the front in March 1943 with the 240th Fighter Aviation Regiment and fought at Kursk, on the Dnieper and in Moldavia. From August 1944 he was deputy commander of the 176th Guards Fighter Aviation Regiment. He flew the La-5, La-5FN and La-7, completing 330 combat sorties and 120 air battles. On 19 February 1945 he shot down an Me 262 jet, one of the few confirmed cases of such an aircraft being destroyed by a piston-engined fighter. His personal victory total is given differently by different sources. The award documents record 62 aircraft shot down; later archival work adds two more, and a number of publications give 64. Both figures are set out here deliberately: the discrepancy concerns how victories were recorded, not the substance of his combat record. He was made Hero of the Soviet Union three times — on 4 February 1944, 19 August 1944 and 18 August 1945. After the war he commanded the 324th Fighter Aviation Division in Korea. He died on 8 August 1991 and is buried at Novodevichy Cemetery.