Ivan Vasilyevich Smirnov
Capt. Ivan Vasilyevich Smirnov (also seen as Iwan Smirnoff) was born in 1895 and enrolled in the 96th Omsk Regiment as a private in 1914, earning a St. George’s Cross at Lodz and a near-crippling leg wound before the end of the year. While in hospital, he asked for a transfer to the Imperial Air Service and, after a couple hours of training, he found himself as a young corporal assigned to the 19th Corps Aviation Detachment at Lutsk. Flying a two-seat Nieuport 10, he racked up 11 air-to-air victories in as many months, rising to the rank of ensign only after becoming an ace. After the IRAS was grounded by the Bolsheviks in December 1917, Smirnov and another officer made it to Vladivostok on their own recognizance and joined the Royal Flying Corps in Egypt for the rest of the war. After flying for the Whites in the Civil War, by 1922 he was in the Netherlands flying for KLM, a job he would hold until 1949– with a short break to fly for the USAAF 317th Troop Carrier Group during WWII from New Guinea to Tokyo. With some 30,000 flying hours logged across two world wars and decades of airline service, Smirnov carried decorations from a dozen countries. He passed in Majorca, aged 61.