Sergey Gritsevets

Gritsevets was born on 19 July [O.S. 6 July] 1909 Barautsy, Minsk Governorate (in present-day Brest Region, Belarus) to a Belarusian peasant family before the formation of the Soviet Union. His family relocated to the village of Shumikha in the Kurgan Oblast in 1914 due to the start of the First World War. There, after completing his seventh grade of school in 1927, he began working at a railway station; but he soon moved to Zlatoust in Chelyabinsk to attend law school and work as a mechanic. He entered the military in 1931, and joined the communist party that year.[1][2]

After graduating from the Orenburg Military Aviation School of Pilots in September 1932 he was assigned to the 3rd Squadron of the 5th Aviation Brigade. In December 1933 he was promoted to the flight commander of the 1st Red Banner Fighter Aviation Squadron named after V.I.Lenin; the squadron was originally based in Krasnogvardeysky, but was transferred to Bochkarevo in 1934. The next year in led a flight of six I-16's on the Bochkarevo - Khabarobsk - Spassk-Dalny route, and achieved a new time record for the route by flying it in three hours and ten minutes. In July 1936 he was sent to the Odessa Military Aviation School of Pilots to attend combat courses, and after completing them he worked as a flight instructor for pilots who were going to be deployed to Spain.[2]

On 11 September 1939 Gritsevets and other pilots who were awarded the title Hero of the Soviet Union for actions in the battle of Khalkhin Gol took off from Mongolia to Moscow. En route they stopped by Ulaanbaator, where they were greeted by Khorloogiin Choibalsan. Upon arrival in Moscow he was placed in command of the 58th Fighter Aviation Brigade, so on 16 September 1939 he flew out to Bolbasovo airfield, where the unit was located in preparation for the invasion of Poland. That night he died in a runway collision while landing an I-16 in poor visibility conditions. The pilot of the plane he collided into survived, but was badly injured.[8]

There is no consensus among historians about the exact number of aerial victories scored by Gritsevets. Many Soviet and Russian sources credit him with having over 40 victories, although most modern historians doubt that figure and consider it much more likely to be the number of victories for his entire unit. Mikhail Maslov credits him at total of 20 solo victories - one in China, seven in Spain and the rest in Khalkhin Gol; however, no other sources indicate that Gritsevets was in China before going to Spain.[4] Russian historians Andrey Simonov and Nikolai Bodrikhin tried to find official documents to confirm his aerial victories, but discovered that there were none confirming his individual victories in Spain, since only collective victories of his squadron were recorded; so they estimated that he had either four solo and 13 group victories total, or a total 30 total victories including six solo and eleven group victories from Spain.[9][10][11]

• Twice Hero of the Soviet Union (22 February 1939 and 29 August 1939)
• Order of Lenin (22 February 1939)
• Order of the Red Banner of Mongolia (10 August 1939)

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