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Amet-khan Sultan (Crimean Tatar: Amet-Han Sultan, Амет-Хан Султан, احمدخان سلطان; Ukrainian/Russian language: Амет-Хан Султан; 20 October 1920 – 1 February 1971) was a highly decorated Crimean Tatars flying ace in the Soviet Air Force with 30 personal and 19 shared kills who was twice awarded the title Hero of the Soviet Union. Despite having been able to avoid deportation to Uzbekistan when the entire Crimean Tatar nation was repressed in 1944 due to his father's Lak background, he refused to change his passport nationality listing to Lak or identify as one throughout his entire life despite pressure from government organs. After the end of the war, he worked as a test pilot at the Flight Research Institute in Zhukovsky and mastered piloting 96 different aircraft types before he was killed in a crash while testing a new engine on a modified Tupolev Tu-16 bomber. He remains memorialized throughout Ukraine and Russia, with streets, schools, and airports named after him as well as a museum dedicated to his memory.
In the summer of 1942, Amet-khan scored nine more aerial victories, most of them while flying in groups over Voronezh in a Hawker Hurricane before he was reassigned in August to Stalingrad, where he piloted a Yak-7B and was praised by his commanders for being one of the first in the regiment to engage an enemy fighter at night. He briefly piloted a Yak-1 over Voronezh that summer and did not score any aerial victories during that time, but later in the war he scored several victories while flying one. In the Battle of Stalingrad he quickly increased his tally and was reassigned in October to the prestigious 9th Guards Fighter Aviation Regiment, which had been reorganized to be composed entirely of flying aces to counter German air offensives in the area. The regiment included Mikhail Baranov, the most successful Soviet ace at the time, and Lydia Litvyak, the first female flying ace. Over Stalingrad in August 1942 Amet-khan had to parachute out of his plane for a second time after his Yak-7B was shot down. From November 1942 until the end of the war he remained the commander of the third squadron of the 9th Guards Fighter Aviation Regiment.
After retraining to fly a Bell P-39 Airacobra in 1943 he fought over Rostov-on-Don and saw heavy combat over the Kuban area as part of the campaign to retake control of Taganrog, Melitopol, and the Crimea. On 24 August 1943, he was awarded the title Hero of the Soviet Union for his success in contributing to the aerial defense on the Southern, Bryansk Front, and Stalingrad Front fronts, as well as over Moldova, southern Ukraine, and Yaroslavl. Although not recorded in official Soviet documents, British historians Thomas Polak and Christopher Shores attributed a second aerial ramming of a Ju 88 to Amet-khan, (1999). 9781902304014, Grub Street. ISBN 9781902304014 taking place over the Battle of Stalingrad in winter of 1943. Only seventeen Soviet pilots are known to have executed two aerial rammings; two Soviet pilots executed three rammings, and one pilot, Boris Kovzan, who committed four, holds the record for most aerial rammings.
From 18 to 20 May 1944, he was permitted to take a three-day vacation from combat to visit his family in Alupka, not long after the Soviets retook control of Crimea, bringing several of his friends, including fellow Hero of the Soviet Union Pavel Golovachev. One morning, an NKVD officer barged into Amet-khan's house and attempted to force Amet-khan and his parents to leave Crimea, but they initially refused to leave and a struggle ensued until Amet-khan identified himself as a Hero of the Soviet Union to the NKVD officer who had attacked him and his status as a war hero was confirmed by Pavel Golovachev who was present at the scene. The NKVD officer then began questioning him about his ethnic background, decided that Amet-khan was technically Dagestani, and explained that there was an order to deport the entire Crimean Tatar people and that his brother Imran was wanted for collaborating with the Germans. Throughout the day the NKVD continued to deport the Crimean Tatar people, and his mother, who was a Crimean Tatar, was sent to a transportation point, but after other members of the Air Force who were friends of Amet-khan made it clear to the NKVD that she and the rest of her immediate family were exempt from deportation because she was married to a Lak and hence no longer considered a Crimean Tatar in the eyes of the law, she and her husband were spared deportation; however, they were advised to temporarily relocate to Dagestan, for the time being. Eventually Imran was sentenced in 1946, but Amet-khan's parents still were allowed to live in Crimea.
After witnessing the violent deportation, Amet-khan returned to his regiment and continued to distinguish himself in battle, but suffered from severe depression. He flew a Lavochkin La-7 in the later parts of the war in campaigns over Königsberg, Berlin, and East Prussia. In the Battle of Königsberg he and his regiment flew with a group of French pilots from the Normandie-Niemen. Amet-khan saved the life of one of his comrades over Königsberg; after Chubukov and Khvostov engaged with a group of originally six fighters; two German fighters went down while taking out Khvostov, and Chubukov was surrounded by the remaining four when Amet-khan rushed toward the fighters and saved Chubukov from being shot down. His thirtieth solo and last aerial victory occurred near Berlin Tempelhof Airport when he took out a Focke-Wulf Fw 190 on 29 April 1945. For his excellence shown after his first Hero of the Soviet Union award in 1943 over various campaigns, he was awarded a second one on 29 June 1945. In total he scored 30 solo victories, 19 shared victories, flew 603 combat sorties and engaged in 150 Dogfight during the war.
In April 1949 together with Yakov Vernikov, he conducted the first flight of the two-seater Mikoyan-Gurevich I-320 fighter. In June 1949, he and Igor Shelest carried out the first fully automatic mid-air refueling in the Soviet Union; Amet-khan piloted the Yak-15 fighter jet and Shelest flew the Tupolev Tu-2 bomber involved in the procedure. From 1951 to 1953, he along with Sergey Anokhin, Fyodor Burtsev, and Vasily Pavlov flew manned tests of the KS-1 Komet, an anti-ship air-to-surface missile. During the testing process, Amet-khan was the first pilot to make a flight of the Komet from the ground, (doing so on 4 January 1951) as well as the first pilot to start the Komet from an airplane, which he did in May that same year. During one test flight, after uncoupling the KS-1, the engine did not start, but instead of immediately parachuting out he repeated attempts to restart the engine, finally managing to do so not far from hitting the ground, saving the prototype. For his actions in testing the KS-1 he was awarded the Stalin Prize second class, but several other members of the team were awarded the gold star. When Amet-khan's nomination for a third gold star reached the desk of Stalin, who had approved the deportation of the Crimean Tatar nation, he went into a fit of rage that a Crimean Tatar was allowed to become a test pilot. When it was pointed out that Amet-khan nearly died while testing the KS-1 to save the prototype, it was decided that he would be awarded the Order of the Red Banner and Stalin Prize second class instead, since awarding a Crimean Tatar a third gold star was unthinkable to the internal ranks of the Soviet Union, regardless of merit.
Many of the flights Amet-khan carried out in his career were for tests of the bailout systems for military aircraft, a risky procedure. While flying a MiG-15 so the parachuter Valery Golovin could test the ejection seat designed for the Sukhoi Su-7 and Su-9 aircraft on 12 November 1958, the ejection mechanism fired prematurely, resulting in an explosion that ruptured the fuel tank. The explosion resulted in the ejection seat clamping down on Golovin. The cockpit filled with smoke and gas, limiting his sight while kerosene began filling the cockpit. With the threat of an uncontrollable fire imminent and Golovin unable to parachute out, he managed to make an emergency landing of the stricken fighter, refusing to abandon his comrade even after Golovin and their commander ordered him to evacuate the aircraft and save himself.
From 1958 to 1960, he flew cosmonauts-in-training including Yuri Gagarin on a modified Tu-104 for practicing tasks in weightlessness, starting off as a co-pilot for Yuri Garnaev in the procedure. His other work included testing the Tsybin RSR, which he made the first flight in on 7 April 1959, but later tests of the aircraft eventually went to Rady Zakharov after Amet-khan was briefly hospitalized and temporarily grounded from flying due to health complications of long flight work, although he was eventually barred from flying high-speed aircraft altogether. For his work as a test pilot he was awarded the prestigious title "Honoured Test Pilot of the USSR" on 23 September 1961. In his career he mastered 96 aircraft types and accumulated an excess of 4,237 flight hours.
Amet-khan died on 1 February 1971 at the age of 50 while piloting a modified Tu-16. The interior of the cabin was modified to function as a flying laboratory and the flight was conducted to test a new jet engine. All five airmen aboard the plane were killed in the crash. The cause of the crash remained classified for a long time, leading to speculation about the causes of it, and suggestions it was caused by uncontained engine failure from the new engine being tested, but the official conclusion released to the public states that is crash was caused by breakage of the outer flaps, which were in landing position when the plane was accelerating to an instrument speed of over 500 km/h, leading to the aircraft flipping and breaking up mid-air; however, the exact reason for why or how the flaps were positioned that way have not been determined, since the fire from the ensuing disaster damaged the fuselage. A memorial to the pilots killed in the crash was constructed and Amet-khan was buried in the Novodevichy Cemetery with full honours. His funeral was attended by a variety of famous people from the Soviet Union, ranging from members of the Crimean Tatar civil rights movement, veterans of the war, generals, and test pilots, including Vladimir Ilyushin, Aleksey Ryazanov, and Abdraim Reshidov.Газета «Арекет» № 1 (48) от 26 января 1996 года
In 2010 a monument to Amet-khan's aerial ramming over Yaroslavl was installed on the ground below the site where he rammed the Ju 88. That same year, a bust in his likeness was added to the Walk of Glory in Kiev. Statues in his likeness are present throughout Ukraine and Russia in towns including Alupka, Makhachkala, and the small village of Tsovkra in Dagestan. The city square of Simferopol bears his name in addition to streets in Alupka, Sudak, Volgograd, Zhukovsky, Kaspiysk, Sakah, and Makhachkala. The aeroclub where he studied, a minor planet, Uytash Airport, several schools, and a peak in Dagestan were all named in his honour.Dina Khisamova (2025). 9785939627047, Материалы Всероссийской научно-практической конференции. . ISBN 9785939627047 In 2015 the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine voted to rename Simferopol Airport in his honor, however, due to the Russian occupation of Crimea, this vote had more symbolic character.
Amet-khan was the main protagonist in the 2013 Crimean-Tatar movie Haytarma.
On October 26, 2020, a monument Amet-Khan Sultan was unveiled in the center of Aqmescit (Simferopol).
On December 22, 2022, in the city of Cherkasy, Komunalnyi Lane was renamed Amet Khan Sultana Lane.
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