Suprun, Stepan Pavlovich

Born July 20 (Aug. 2), 1907, in the settlement of Rechki, in what is now Belopol’e Raion, Sumy Oblast; died July 4, 1941, near the village of Monastyri, Tolochin Raion, Vitebsk Oblast; buried at Novodevichii Cemetery in Moscow in 1960. Twice Hero of the Soviet Union (May 5, 1940; July 22, 1941, posthumously). Lieutenant colonel in the air force (1940). Member of the CPSU from 1930.

Suprun, the son of a Ukrainian worker, lived in Canada from 1913 and returned to the USSR in 1924. He was a worker until he joined the Red Army in 1929. He graduated from a junior aviation technicians’ school in 1930 and from a military pilots’ school in 1931. He was a test pilot for about eight years. From July 1939 to January 1940 he was in China, where, as commander of a fighter team, he participated in the struggle against the Japanese invaders. On June 27, 1941, early in the Great Patriotic War (1941–45), he assumed command of the 401st Special Fighter Regiment on the Western Front. He shot down two enemy airplanes and damaged one other. He perished in an air battle with six enemy fighters.

Suprun was a deputy to the first convocation of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. He was awarded two Orders of Lenin and a foreign order. A bust of Suprun has been erected in the city of Sumy.