Amet-khan Sultan

Amet-khan Sultan
Amet-khan in 1945
Native name	Amethan Sultan
Nickname(s)	"The Eagle" "King of the taran"[1]
Born	20 October 1920 Alupka, Crimea, South Russia (now Ukraine)
Died	1 February 1971 (aged 50) Moscow Oblast, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union
Place of Burial	Novodevichy Cemetery
Allegiance	Soviet Union
Service/branch	Soviet Air Force
Rank	Lieutenant colonel
Unit	9th Guards Fighter Aviation Regiment
Battles/wars	World War II
Awards	Hero of the Soviet Union (twice) Order of Lenin (three times) Order of the Red Banner (four times) Honoured Test Pilot of the USSR Stalin prize
Spouse(s)	Faina Maksimova Danilchenko[2]
Relations	Stanislav Amet-khan (eldest son) Arslan Amet-khan (youngest son) Veronika Amet-khan (granddaughter) Margarita Amet-khan (granddaughter)[2]

Amet-khan Sultan (Crimean Tatar: Amet-Han Sultan, Амет-Хан Султан, احمدخان سلطان; Ukrainian/Russian: Амет-Хан Султан; 20 October 1920 – 1 February 1971) was a highly decorated Crimean Tatar flying ace in the Soviet Air Force with 30 personal and 19 shared kills who was twice awarded the title Hero of the Soviet Union. Despite having been able to avoid deportation to Uzbekistan when the entire Crimean Tatar nation was repressed in 1944 due to his father's Lak background, he refused to change his passport nationality listing to Lak or identify as one throughout his entire life despite pressure from government organs. After the end of the war, he worked as a test pilot at the Flight Research Institute in Zhukovsky and mastered piloting 96 different aircraft types before he was killed in a crash while testing a new engine on a modified Tupolev Tu-16 bomber. He remains memorialized throughout Ukraine and Russia, with streets, schools, and airports named after him as well as a museum dedicated to his memory.