Timofei Khriukin

Born June 8 (21), 1910, in Eisk, Krasnodar Krai; died July 19, 1953, in Moscow. Soviet military leader. Colonel general of aviation (1944); twice Hero of the Soviet Union (Feb. 22, 1939; Apr. 19, 1945). Member of the CPSU from 1929.

Khriukin, the son of workers, entered the Red Army in 1932. He graduated from the Lugansk Military School for Pilots in 1933 and the advanced courses for higher command personnel at the Academy of the General Staff in 1941. During the years 1936–37 he was a volunteer in the Spanish Civil War, commanding an air detachment. From April to June 1938 he commanded a squadron and then a bomber group in battles against the Japanese militarists in China. During the Soviet-Finnish War of 1939–40 he was air force commander of the Fourteenth Army.

During the Great Patriotic War (1941–45), Khriukin was air force commander of the Twelfth Army (1941) and the Karelian and Southwestern fronts (1941–42) and commander of the Eighth Air Army (1942–44) and the First Air Army (from July 1944). He served in the battle of Stalingrad and took part in the liberation of the Donets Basin, the Right-bank Ukraine, the Crimea, Byelorussia, and the Baltic region, as well as in the East Prussian Operation of 1945 and other operations. During the years 1946–47 and 1950–53, Khriukin was deputy chief commander of the air force.

Khriukin was awarded the Order of Lenin, three Orders of the Red Banner, the Order of Suvorov First and Second Class, two Orders of Kutuzov First Class, the Order of Bogdan Khmel’nitskii First Class, the Order of the Patriotic War Second Class, and the Order of the Red Star, as well as various medals and foreign orders.