Pyotr Timofeyevich Kharitonov

Fighter pilot of the 158th Fighter Aviation Regiment and one of the first Heroes of the Soviet Union of the Great Patriotic War (8 July 1941), Colonel. Born on 16 December 1916 in the village of Knyazhevo, Tambov province. He graduated from the Bataysk military aviation school. On 28 June 1941, in an action near Ostrov flying an I-16, he exhausted his ammunition and rammed a German Ju 88 bomber, cutting away its tail surfaces with his propeller. The German aircraft went down and Kharitonov managed to land his damaged fighter. It was one of the first rammings of the war. By a decree of 8 July 1941 he was made Hero of the Soviet Union together with his fellow pilots Mikhail Zhukov and Stepan Zdorovtsev — the first such awards of the Great Patriotic War. On 25 August 1941 he carried out a second ramming. Severely wounded, he spent a long period in hospital and returned to flying only in 1944, finishing the war with air defence units. He remained in the service after the war and graduated from the Air Force Academy in 1955. He died in Donetsk on 1 February 1987.