Drozd, Valentin

Drozd, Valentin Petrovich

 

Born Sept. 3 (16), 1906, in Buda-Koshelevskaia Station, in present-day Gomel’ Ob-last, Byelorussian SSR; died Jan. 29, 1943. Soviet vice admiral (1941). Became a member of the CPSU in 1930.

Drozd joined the navy in 1925, graduated from the Frunze Naval School in 1928, and served in the Baltic Fleet. He commanded a destroyer subdivision of the Baltic Fleet in 1937 and 1938 and commanded the Northern Fleet from May 1938 to August 1940. Drozd was commander of the Light Forces Detachment of the Baltic Fleet from February to September 1941 and of the ship squadron of the Baltic Fleet from September 1941 to January 1943 and was prominent in the defense of Leningrad. He died in an artillery bombardment at Kronstadt. Drozd was awarded the Order of Lenin and two Orders of the Red Banner. The warship Vice Admiral Drozd is named in his honor.