Amet-Khan Sultan

AMET-KHAN Sultan was a Soviet fighter ace and test pilot, a participant in the Great Patriotic War, twice Hero of the Soviet Union (1943, 1945), Honoured Test Pilot of the USSR (1961), and recipient of the Stalin Prize, Second Class (1953). He was born in Alupka and graduated from the 1st Kachin Military Aviation School in 1940. During the war he rose from pilot to squadron commander; he completed 603 combat sorties, fought about 150 air battles, and was credited with 30 individual and 19 shared aerial victories. From 1947 he worked as a test pilot at the Flight Research Institute in Zhukovsky, taking part in major flight-test programmes and mastering about 100 types of aircraft. He died on 1 February 1971 during a test flight aboard a Tu-16LL flying laboratory in Moscow Oblast. His decorations included three Orders of Lenin, four Orders of the Red Banner, the Orders of Alexander Nevsky, the Patriotic War 1st Class, the Red Star, and the Badge of Honour. In 2022 the Bank of Russia issued a 2-rouble silver commemorative coin dedicated to Amet-Khan Sultan in the series "Heroes of the Great Patriotic War of 1941–1945".