Viktor Talalikhin
Hero of the Soviet Union (1918–1941)
Viktor Vasilevich Talalikhin (Russian: Виктор Васильевич Талалихин; 18 September 1918 – 27 October 1941) was a Soviet lieutenant and aviator during the Winter War and World War II and a Hero of the Soviet Union, among the first to perform aerial ramming at night.
Talalikhin became a fighter pilot in the Soviet Air Forces in the late 1930s, flying the Polikarpov I-153 during the Winter War. He served in the air defense of Moscow during World War II with an aviation regiment of the Soviet Air Defence Forces. He became one of the first Soviet aviation heroes of the war after ramming a German bomber at night with his Polikarpov I-16, but was shot down and killed in late October while flying a Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-3. Talalikhin claimed three victories during the Winter War and four in the air defense of Moscow.
Early life and military career
Talalikhin was born on 18 September 1918 in the village of Teplovka in Saratov Governorate to a peasant family. In 1924, he and his family moved to Volsk, where he studied at its Secondary School No. 1. In the summer of 1933, Talalikhin and his family again moved to Moscow, where he graduated from the factory school of the Moscow Meat Processing Plant in 1934. Talalikhin worked at the plant from 1934 to 1937; he joined a factory gliding group in September 1935 and with a Komsomol direction took flying lessons at the Proletarsky District flying club.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 30, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1667883. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1918, 1941, 1924 and 1933.
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This entry incorporates text from “Viktor Talalikhin” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.