4 December] 1917 – 6 August 1967) was a famous Soviet test pilot of the Gromov Flight Research Institute who died in a helicopter crash while combating wildfires in France.

Having moved to the village of Lopasnya (located within present-day Chekhov) in 1934, he went on to complete his third semester at the Podolsk Industrial Technical School in the Moscow oblast before quitting in 1936 due to financial difficulties.

He then got a job in 1949 as a technician at the Gromov Flight Research Institute, where he participated in the development of a mid-air refueling system before he was fired in 1950 because of his past conviction.

In 1957 he became the first person the fly the Rafaelyants Turbolet, and as part of the training of cosmonauts to handle zero-gravity environments in 1960 he flew a modified Tu-104 with Amet-khan Sultan.

His life was cut short on 6 August 1967; he was killed in the line of duty when piloting an Mi-6PZh helicopter (registration number СССР-06174) over France to fight forest fires.