Stepan Mikoyan

Stepan Anastasi Mikoyan (, ; July 12, 1922, Tbilisi, Georgian SSR, TSFSR Ã¢ÂÂ March 24, 2017, Moscow, Russia) was a Soviet Armenian test pilot and the eldest son of the Old Bolshevik and high level Soviet statesman Anastas Mikoyan. His honors included Hero of the Soviet Union (1975), Lieutenant General of Aviation (1980), Honored Test Pilot of the USSR (1963), and Candidate of Technical Sciences (1978).

Biography

Stepan Mikoyan was born on July 12, 1922, in Tbilisi into the family of the Soviet Politburo member and future Socialist Labor Hero and Minister of Foreign Trade Anastas Mikoyan. Stepan's father was a brother of renowned Soviet aircraft designer Artyom Mikoyan. Stepan had four brothers, two of whom also became pilots. He grew up in the Kremlin compound,playing with Stalin's own children, and went to flying school with Stalin's son Vasily.

He and his close friend Timur Frunze entered the Kacha Military Aviation School in August 1940. He graduated on September 3, 1941, in the city of Krasny Kut in the Saratov region, where the school was evacuated after the start of the Great Patriotic War. From December 1941, he fought as a fighter pilot in the Great Patriotic War. in the 8th Reserve Aviation Regiment (stationed at the Bagai-Baranovka airfield), he retrained on the Yak-1 fighter. In 1941Ã¢ÂÂ1942, he served in the 11th Fighter Aviation Regiment of the Moscow Air Defense. On January 16, 1942, he was mistakenly shot down by another Soviet fighter near the city of Istra in the Moscow Region. He managed to land his burning plane, after which he was taken to a medical battalion with third-degree burns to his hands, face, left leg, and right knee. He was treated in a hospital in Moscow. Upon returning from the hospital, he fought in the 32nd Guards Aviation Regiment near Stalingrad and on the Northwestern Front, and then in the 12th Guards Aviation Regiment of the Moscow Air Defense. In November 1942, Mikoyan was awarded the Order of the Red Banner for 14 combat sorties in December 1941, January and September 1942, Mikoyan shot down six enemy aircraft in three air battles. During the war, he mastered the Yak-1, Yak-7 and Yak-9 fighters; Stepan Mikoyan has six group victories to his credit.

From 1945 to 1951, he was a student at the engineering faculty of the Zhukovsky Air Force Engineering Academy. After graduation, he worked at the 929th State Flight Test Centre named for V. P. Chkalov: test pilot, lead engineer, from 1957 - deputy head of the 1st department for flight operations, from 1958 - assistant to the head of the institute for interception systems, from 1959 head of the 1st directorate, from December 1964 - deputy head of the Air Force State Research Institute.

He mastered 102 different types and modifications of aircraft, including the MiG-15, MiG-17, MiG-19, MiG-21, MiG-23, MiG-25, MiG-27, Su-15, Su-24, Mi-8, etc. He had a total flight time of about 3.5 thousand hours.

Stepan Mikoyan died in Moscow, 2017, at the age of 94. Mikoyan was buried in Novodevichy Cemetery.

Family

Spouse; Mikoyan (Lozovskaya) Eleonora Petrovna (1922Ã¢ÂÂ2009), journalist, philologist, daughter of test pilot Pyotr Lozovsky.
Son; Vladimir Stepanovich Mikoyan (born 1946), biophysicist.
Daughter; Ashkhen Stepanovna Mikoyan (born 1949), philologist, candidate of philological sciences, associate professor of the Department of English Linguistics, Faculty of Philology, Moscow State University named after M.V. Lomonosov .
Son; Alexander Stepanovich Mikoyan(born 1952), musician, race car driver.

Filmography

Battle for Moscow (1985), playing his father
The Meaning of Life (1987)
Stalingrad (1989), playing his father
The Old Man and the Sky (2007)

Published works

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Awards

Medal of Zhukov Medal "For the Victory over Germany in the Great Patriotic War" Order of the Red Banner (23 November 1942)