Sergei Gritsevets

Born July 6, 1909; died Sept. 16, 1939. Pilot, twice Hero of the Soviet Union (Feb. 22, 1939, and Aug. 29, 1939); major (1938). Member of the CPSU from 1931. Born into the family of a Byelorussian peasant in the village of Borovtsy in Grodno Oblast.

Grisevets entered the Soviet Army in 1931 and completed the Orenburg Military School for Pilot’s (1932) and an aerial combat school (1936). He served in fighter aviation as a pilot, commander of a flight and a detachment, and a pilot instructor. He took part as a volunteer in the Spanish Civil War from 1936 to 1938 and in battles against the Japanese interventionists on the Khalkin-Gol River in 1939. He personally shot down more than 40 enemy airplanes. He was awarded the Order of Lenin. He perished in the performance of his military duties in the region of the settlement of Bol-basovo, Vitebsk Oblast, Byelorussian SSR.