Captain of the 2nd rank Victor Vladimirovich Dibovsky
Captain of the 2nd rank Victor Vladimirovich Dibovsky was born in 1884. Joining the Imperial Russian Navy as a midshipman at age 16, he took part in the 1905 Battle of Tsushima as a warrant officer on the squadron battleship Nikolai I, spending the rest of the year in Japanese captivity. After interbellum service on minesweepers and destroyers as a junior officer, he volunteered for the fleet’s aviation program in 1910 and two years later became a national hero when he flew 1,235 miles from Sevastopol-Kharkov-Oryol-Tula-Moscow-St. Petersburg in the Nieuport N.IV aircraft in 25 flight hours– unprecedented at the time. In 1911, he became the first aviator on record to track a submerged submarine from the air. Designing one of the first synchronizers for firing through an airplane propeller, he earned a series of St. Vladimirs and St. Georges for aerial reconnaissance over enemy lines in 1915. In England as an adviser/observer with the British– his interruptor gear was modified and installed on Sopwith 1½ Strutters built to RNAS orders in 1916– he remained in exile once the Whites were defeated. The hero, penniless and forgotton, died a pauper in London in 1953, although the Russian government later erected a marker on his grave in 2019.