Amet-khan Sultan

(1920-1971)

Soviet air force officer

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Amet-khan Sultan (Crimean Tatar: Amethan Sultan, Russian: Амет-Хан Султан; 20 October 1920 – 1 February 1971) was a highly decorated Crimean Tatar flying ace with 30 personal and 19 shared kills who was twice awarded the title Hero of the Soviet Union. Amet-khan was able to avoid deportation to Uzbekistan when the entire Crimean Tatar nation was repressed in 1944 due to his father's Lak ancestry, although he refused to change his passport nationality listing to Lak from Crimean Tatar throughout his entire life despite having personally witnessed the deportation of his nation while on vacation in Alupka. After the end of the war, he worked in Moscow as a test pilot 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. Amet-khan remains memorialized throughout Ukraine and Russia, with streets, schools, and airports named after him as well as a museum dedicated to his memory.