Emil Spiridonov

Emil Nikolayevich Spiridonov (26 September 1925 – 7 February 1981) was an officer of the Soviet Navy. He rose to the rank of admiral and was commander of the Pacific Fleet, before his death in the 1981 Pushkin Tu-104 crash, which also killed many of the Fleet's senior officers.

Born in 1925, Spiridonov's early studies were interrupted by the Second World War, and he joined the navy. His early service was spent in submarines in the Pacific Fleet, where he distinguished himself and advanced through the ranks. Transferred to the Northern Fleet, he took command of his own boat, a Project 629-type ballistic missile submarine, before being advanced to command divisions and squadrons of submarines. Praised for his approach to training, he took courses at the Naval Academy, and was promoted to flag rank. Returning to the Pacific Fleet, he moved up the chain of command, garnering awards and plaudits, and eventually becoming deputy commander of the fleet. After assisting in a difficult rescue operation of a stricken submarine, he was finally appointed commander of the Pacific Fleet.

While returning to the fleet base at Vladivostok, the transport plane he and many other of the fleet's senior officers were travelling in crashed just after takeoff outside Pushkin. There were no survivors. He was buried at the Serafimovskoe Cemetery in then-Leningrad, where a memorial was erected to those killed in the crash. He was honoured after his death with memorial plaques, and a street in Vladivostok and an Udaloy-class destroyer Admiral Spiridonov were named for him.

Early life Emil Spiridonov was born on 26 September 1925 in the town of Makaryev, , Soviet Union. He initially studied at secondary school No. 4 in Frunze, Kyrgyz SSR, graduating in 1940 and attending the Kyrgyz Land Management and Technical College. His studies were interrupted by the German invasion of the Soviet Union. With the college's closure in November 1941, Spiridonov enrolled at Kiev Naval Special School No. 5 that December, and joined the navy after graduating in September 1942. He took the preparatory course at the in Baku, and studied at the M.V. Frunze Naval School in Leningrad between 1943 and 1947. Spiridonov was the highest ranking officer to die, along with 15 other admirals and generals, and 38 lower ranking officers. Also killed along with Spiridonov was his wife Valentina. They were both interred with most of the other victims of the crash in the Serafimovskoe Cemetery in Leningrad, where a memorial to the dead was erected on the orders of the Navy's Commander-in-Chief, Sergey Gorshkov.