Universally credited with over 60 solo victories, he is considered to be the highest scoring Soviet and Allied fighter pilot of World War II.

Kozhedub was born on 8 June 1920 to a Ukrainian family in the village of Obrazhiivka, in Chernihiv Governorate, located within what is now Shostka Raion of Ukraine's Sumy Oblast.

There he initially worked as a librarian until completing his ninth grade of school in 1936, and from that year to 1940 he attended the Shostka Chemical Technology College.

He subsequently joined the Red Army in February 1940, and in January 1941 he graduated from training at the Chuhuiv Military Aviation School of Pilots, where he initially learned to fly the UT-2, UTI-4, and I-16.

[3][4] Over the next few months Kozhedub steadily gained more aerial victories and a promotion to squadron commander, but in the first half of October he rapidly increased his tally with 14 shootdowns.

There, he was rarely assigned such specific missions as escorting other aircraft or providing air support for troops, enabling him and his subordinates to tally more aerial victories.

In mid-February 1945, during a free-hunting mission in an area south of Frankfurt with his wingman Dmitry Titarenko, Kozhedub shot down an Me 262 jet, thereby becoming the first Soviet pilot to do so.

Having been nominated for a third gold star in May 1945, he became thrice a Hero of the Soviet Union on 18 August 1945, and remained deputy commander of the 176th Guards Fighter Aviation Regiment based in Schönwalde until September that year.

[13] Preferring short, intense attacks to stun and bring down enemy aircraft, one favorite technique he developed and used in the war involved darting at a target from below and subsequently opening fire only when extremely close.

Kozhedub used this tactic very successfully against the Ju 87 dive bomber, gaining him an unsurpassed 18 shootdowns of the type (equal with Arseny Vorozheykin).

Kozhedub, despite being one of the first pilots to master the MiG-15 fighter jet back in 1949, was strictly forbidden from participating in combat sorties by order of his commanding officers.

From 1971 to 1978 he served as deputy chief of combat training of the air force, and subsequently became a military advisor in the Ministry of Defense; in 1985 he was promoted to the rank of Marshal of Aviation.

Ivan Kozhedub Street in the cities of Bila Tserkva, Bucha, Vinnytsia, Dnipro, Zaporizhzhia, Kyiv, Lutsk, Cherkasy, Chuhuiv, Shpola.