The biography of Amet-Khan of the Sultan is well known to all historians studying the heroes of the war against the fascist invaders. It was an outstanding domestic ace. During the years of confrontation, the fascist invaders were twice awarded the title Hero of the Soviet Union.
Childhood and youth
The biography of Amet Khan Sultan has many bright pages. He was born in 1920 in the small town of Alupka in the Crimea. At that time it was the territory of the Tauride province.
The family of Amet-Khan Sultan belonged to different nationalities. His father was a native of Dagestan. He belonged to one of the indigenous peoples of the North Caucasus - Laks. Amet Khan's mother was a Crimean Tatar. Today, the pilot is considered a national hero in Dagestan and the Crimea.
At the same time, the nationality "Tatar" was indicated in his passport. The child was named after his grandfather. In 1937, the hero of our article received primary education, having graduated from seven classes, after that he went to a railway school located in Simferopol, at the same time he began to attend classes at the flying club, he graduated from it in 1938.
The first important event in the biography of Amet-Khan Sultan - admission to the flight school. When filling out documents, a curious thing arose, it was recorded according to the custom of the Crimean Tatars, that is, first its own name, and only then the name of the father. Because of this, there was confusion: initially, it was the father who many considered the Hero of the Soviet Union. Then the annoying oversight was corrected.
Military service
In 1939, the Sultan joined the service of the Red Army. The next year, he graduated from the Myasnikov Aviation School, receiving the rank of junior lieutenant, he was assigned to the aviation regiment, located in the Odessa Military District. The regiment itself was stationed directly near Chisinau.
At the very beginning of his flight biography, Amet-Khan Sultan mastered the I-15 and I-153 aircraft. When the war began, he was in the territory of modern Moldova.
On the fronts of war
The hero of our article made the first combat sorties in his career on June 22. The junior lieutenant in the I-153 fighter set off for reconnaissance, and then attack the advancing army. In the fall, he fought mainly in the skies over Rostov-on-Don, and in the winter of 1942 he began retraining for the British single-seat fighter Hurricanes.
In March 1942, the Sultan aviation regiment was transferred to Yaroslavl, where he became part of the local air defense forces. Here his first military victory took place.
On May 31, military pilot ace Sultan spent the entire combat reserve on the Hurricane. Then he went on the attack on the fascist Junkers 88 fighter. I hit him from below with the left plane. As a result of the strike, the Sultan’s plane was stuck in a burning enemy fighter, but the pilot managed to get out of the cockpit in time and eject. After a short time, the pilot was summoned to Yaroslavl to the local defense committee. There they appreciated the deed of Amet Khan Sultan, having awarded with an honorary diploma and a nominal watch. The ceremony took place on Sovetskaya Square with a huge gathering of people, the crashed "Junkers" was put on display for all to see.
A little later, for this feat in the airspace above Yaroslavl, the pilot-hero Amet-Khan Sultan received the Order of Lenin. This is one of the highest honor combat awards. A few years ago, in the center of the city, the grand opening of the monument dedicated to this outstanding air victory of the Soviet ace took place.
It is interesting that the Sultan himself was convinced that he had made a piloting error during the attack of a German bomber. He worried that he had lost the plane, while many pilots destroyed enemy cars, landing on top of the enemy, causing irreparable damage with the chassis. He argued that it was a mistake if he landed his plane on top of the Junkers, he would probably have managed to land in the whole car.
Participation in the Battle of Stalingrad
In the summer, Amet Khan relocated to Voronezh. First, he flew on a Yak-1, and then moved to the Yak-7B, on which he took part in the Battle of Stalingrad. By that time, the pilot had already established himself as a recognized ace, he was included in the ninth fighter aviation regiment, which by that time had already received the right to be officially called the guard. It was a kind of elite of Soviet pilots, which was specially created to counter the German aces.
In addition to the Sultan, the division included the best pilots of its time - Vladimir Lavrinenkov, Ivan Stepanenko, Alexei Ryazanov, who in the future became twice Heroes of the Soviet Union, as well as Boris Eremin and Ivan Borisov, who received this title once in the future.
During the Battle of Stalingrad, the Amet Khan plane was shot down, he had to escape for the second time in his life with a parachute.
Squadron commander
In October 1942, Amet-Khan was appointed commander of the third squadron in the ninth Guards Fighter Aviation Regiment. In its composition, he fights until the very end of the war. The Sultan had a special tactic for attacking the enemy from above. The command appreciated this so much that the hero of our article was even allowed to depict an eagle on a plane.
After retraining to fly on the "Aerocobra", the Sultan took part in the liberation of Rostov-on-Don, led deadly air battles in the Kuban, liberated Melitopol, Taganrog, Crimea. At the very beginning of 1944, in a duet with Ivan Borisov, he forced the fascist liaison aircraft of the Storch brand to land. The Sultan had only a few minutes to get acquainted with the car, which he saw for the first time, to go on his first independent flight on the Storch.
Deportation of Tatars from Crimea
In 1944, the Sultan received a vacation, leaving on which he witnessed one of the most tragic events in the life of his mother’s people. Arriving in Alupka, he found the deportation of the Crimean Tatars, which took place in May 1944. The younger brother of the hero of our article was arrested by employees of the NKVD, he was convicted by a military tribunal, as he was a member of the auxiliary German security police "Noise", was a participant in war crimes in the concentration camp "Red".
The commander of the detachment of the Crimean partisans named Nikolai Dementyev passed on another story about the Sultan's family. It was he who was to evacuate the native pilot. But the family refused to leave the Crimea, and after that the partisan detachment ambushed the Germans.
The dramatic meeting of Amet-Khan with his family is described in the book of Buta Butaev, compiled on the basis of a record of conversations with the Sultan himself. It was this literary version that became the basis for the allegations that the air ace was able to free parents from deportation. There is no official confirmation of this, no documents. In fact, a certain role in the deportation of Crimean Tatars was played by the fact that the woman was married to a man of a different nationality, as was the case in the Sultan's family. Such families were not subject to deportation. Only the younger brother of the hero of our article named Imran answered for his actions.
End of war
Returning from vacation, the Sultan moved to the modern-day La-7 fighter. On it, he took part in the battles in East Prussia and during the bombing of Berlin.
He spent his last air battle on April 29th. Amet-Khan shot down the German Focke-Wulf 190 right above the Templehof Airfield in Berlin.
In total, during the war, the ace pilot completed 603 sorties. 70 of them were aimed at attacking enemy equipment and manpower. Participated in 150 battles in the air, destroying 30 fascist aircraft, another 19 he managed to bring down as part of the group.
In 1943 he received the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. At that time he had the rank of captain. He received another medal (Golden Star) after signing the surrender of Germany, being already a major of the guard, he served as an assistant commander in the same regiment.
Career after the war
After the war, the Sultan, like all aces pilots, went to study at the Academy in Monino. Classes were hard for him; lack of education played a role. As a result, he turned to the command with a request to expel him from the academy, since he still did not keep up with the curriculum. The report was satisfied; in April, the Sultan was fired into the reserve.
But he could not imagine life without heaven; he was trying with all his might to return to this profession. He did not succeed in this, so the hero of our article became depressed, began to abuse alcohol. Only the help and support of fighting friends helped him to get out, at the beginning of 1947 he was accepted to the Flight Research Institute in Zhukovsky as a test pilot.
In a short time, the Sultan became one of the best testers. Already in 1952 he received a first-class specialty. In 1949, it was the Sultan, together with Igor Shelest, who carried out the first automatic refueling of an aircraft in the air in the Union. Since 1951, he began to test the Comet airborne anti-ship missiles. During the tests, the projectile could not immediately start, but Amet-Khan did not catapult. He successfully started the engine, already at the very ground, and saved the experimental car. For the successful conduct of these tests, he was awarded the Stalin Prize of 2 degrees.
Air incident
The hero of our article completed a large number of flights in order to work out bailouts from various types of aircraft. In 1958, during another such flight on a Mig-15 aircraft, a powder cartridge exploded in a catapult. Because of this, a fuel tank broke through, both cabs were flooded with fuel, and a real fire threat appeared.
Test pilot Golovin did not have time to leave the plane due to damage to the ejection seat. In a critical situation, the Sultan decided to land the plane, he performed the maneuver flawlessly and saved the life of a friend.
Social work
The Sultan always worried about the people of his mother. In 1956, he, among the former Soviet and party employees of the Crimean Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, signed an appeal addressing the rehabilitation of Crimean Tatars. It was sent to the Central Committee of the Communist Party. But then it did not lead to any results.
In 1961, Amet-Khan received the title of Honored Test Pilot. In total, while working at the institute, he mastered more than a hundred different aircraft, spent more than four thousand hours in the air. All this time he lived in Zhukovsky.
In 1971, he died while performing another test flight on the Tu-16, which was used to test the latest jet engine. He was 50 years old.
Memory of the hero
The memory of the hero is kept in many cities of Russia and the former USSR. In Makhachkala, on Amet-Khan Sultan Avenue, his bronze bust is installed. A similar can be seen in Alupka. Monument to the ace pilot was installed in the Dagestan village of Vachi.
There is a museum of Amet Khan Sultan in Alupka. It was opened in 1993. It has a permanent exhibition dedicated to his biography. There are many memoirs of war heroes, archival documents, among the exhibits are mock-ups of aircraft of the Great Patriotic War, in particular, La-5, on which he fought. This plane was donated to the museum after the filming of the painting “Haytarma” was completed. "La-5" is the pride of the museum.
There was a trace in the cinema. The film about Amet-Khan Sultan directed by Akhtem Seytablaev was released in 2013. It is dedicated to the fate of the pilot.