Grigorii Iakovlevich Bakhchivandzhi

Born Feb. 7 (20), 1909, in the stanitsa (large cossack village) of Bryn’kovskaia, in present-day Krasnodar Krai; died Mar. 27, 1943, near Sverdlovsk. Soviet test pilot, captain. CPSU member after 1932. In the Soviet army after 1931.

Bakhchivandzhi graduated from a military technical school in 1933 and from a flight school in 1934. He worked as a test pilot at the Air Force Scientific Research Institute. In the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, during the defense of Moscow, he made 65 sorties and shot down five airplanes; during his period of service at the front he destroyed ten enemy airplanes in the air. In 1942 he was recalled from the front for tests of the jet plane designed under the direction of V. F. Bolkhovitinov. On May 15, 1942, Bakhchivandzhi made the first successful flight on the BI-1 jet plane. He was killed during one of the test flights. He was awarded the Order of Lenin.