Ukraine’s National Bank said it would release a memorial hryvnya coin commemorating Amet-Khan Sultan, World War II fighter ace of Crimean Tatar ancestry.
Approximately 30,000 two-hryvnia coins are expected to be put in circulation starting from Oct. 7, according to the statement.
The collectibles would be dedicated to the 100th anniversary of the pilot, who was born on Oct. 25, 1920, in the city of Alupka in southern Crimea.
Sultan joined the fighting on the very first day of Nazi Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941 as a young fighter. He scored a grand share of his air victories during the Battle of Stalingrad in 1942-1943.
Sultan particularly flew British and American fighters handed over to the Soviet forces as part of the famous land-lease program, particularly the Hawker Hurricane and the Bell P-39 Airacobra.
It was a Hawker Hurricane that Sultan scored his first air combat kill by ramming the Luftwaffe’s Junkers Ju-88 aircraft.
In general, the pilot had 30 personal and 19 shared air victories after 150 air missions throughout the war.
He was among the Soviet Union’s most-distinguished flying aces, having been awarded the Hero of Soviet Union title twice.
Sultan openly protested against the 1944 Soviet deportation of Crimean Tatars from their homeland, although his family was not exiled. The Soviet authorities led by Joseph Stalin accused the whole ethnic group of collaborating with Nazis, despite the fact that numerous Crimean Tatars were highly-distinguished Red Army combatants.
He remains a national hero not only to Crimean Tatars but also in Russia’s Dagestan, where his father was born.
After the war, Sultan left the military due to his reluctance toward studying in high military academies, which he considered extremely boring.
But with the help of his friends, he was hired as a test pilot at the Gromov Flight Research Institute near Moscow.
As the institute’s tester, Sultan took part in numerous groundbreaking aviation operations, such as the fully-automatic aerial fueling.
Having tested over 100 various aircraft types, he was killed in 1971 during a crash of Tupolev Tu-16 research aircraft.
In 2015, Ukraine renamed the international airport in the city of Simferopol in the name of Amet-khan Sultan.
However, Russia, which occupies the peninsula since early 2014, ignored the decision.
