Yekaterina Zelenko

Who was Yekaterina Zelenko?

Yekaterina Ivanovna Zelenko was a Soviet war pilot. She is the only woman ever known to have performed an aerial ramming.

Zelenko attended seven school classes in Kursk. With her mother's move to Voronezh, Yekaterina entered the Voronezh Secondary Flying School. In October 1933 she passed through Voronezh Flying Club and was sent to the 3rd Orenburg Military Flying Academy named after Kliment Voroshilov. Later she found herself in Kharkiv, assigned to the 19th Light Bomber Brigade. In the Winter War Zelenko was the only female pilot.

On the eve of the German invasion of the Soviet Union Zelenko was taking part in the retraining of the leading personnel of seven flying regiments in use of the Sukhoi Su-2. Following the German invasion, Zelenko made forty flights and participated in twelve air combats with enemy fighters. On September 12, 1941, Zelenko's Su-2 was attacked by seven Me-109s. After Zelenko ran out of ammunition, she launched a top-down air ramming which tore an Me-109 into two as the propeller hit the German aircraft's tail. The Su-2 she was piloting exploded though, and Zelenko was pulled out of cockpit. The air combat was observed by local residents who identified her body. On May 5, 1990 Zelenko was awarded the title of the Hero of the Soviet Union posthumously. A minor planet, 1900 Katyusha was named after her. Zelenko's husband Pavel Ignatenko also died in air combat in 1943.