Viktor Vasilyevich Talalikhin

Fighter pilot of the 177th Fighter Aviation Regiment of the air defence forces, Hero of the Soviet Union (8 August 1941), Junior Lieutenant. Born on 18 September 1918 in the village of Teplovka, Saratov province. He worked at a Moscow meat processing plant and trained at a flying club, then took part in the Soviet-Finnish war of 1939-40, flying 47 combat sorties. On the night of 7 August 1941, covering the approaches to Moscow in the sky over Podolsk, he attacked a German He 111 bomber in an I-16. Having used up his ammunition, he rammed and destroyed it, bailing out and coming down in a river. The action was one of the first night rammings in aviation history and was widely publicised; in the autumn of 1941 its significance reached well beyond the single episode. He was made Hero of the Soviet Union the day after the action. He was killed in air combat near Podolsk on 27 October 1941 while covering ground forces. He is buried at Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow and was enrolled in perpetuity on his unit's roll.