Nikolai Moskvitelev

Nikolai Ivanovich Moskvitelev (; 27 July 1926 – 12 February 2020) was an officer of the Soviet Armed Forces, having served in Soviet Naval Aviation and the Soviet Air Defence Forces, rising to the rank of Colonel General and the position of commander of the Air Defence Forces' aviation component.

Born into a working-class family which suffered hardships during the 1930s, Moskvitelev volunteered for service at the front during the Second World War, but was instead posted to pilot training. The war ended before he could see combat, but he remained in the armed forces, being assigned to Soviet Naval Aviation with the Baltic Fleet. He trained on new types of aircraft, including the jet fighter aircraft which began to enter service in the 1950s, such as the Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-15. After two and half years with the fleet, Moskvitelev was assigned to a role retraining naval aviators on new models of jet fighters, and in 1958 took up an active service role with the Black Sea Fleet's naval aviation. This post was short-lived. By 1960 naval aviation units were being phased into the Air Defence Armies, and Moskvitelev's regiment was assessed by three times Hero of the Soviet Union Alexander Pokryshkin prior to being transferred. This was the start of an enduring relationship between the two, with Pokryshkin acting as Moskvitelev's patron and commander in a number of positions.

By now part of the Soviet Air Defence Forces, Moskvitelev studied in absentia at the Air Defence Military Command Academy, and in 1967 became deputy chief of aviation of the 8th Air Defence Army. He took part in the military intervention in Czechoslovakia during the Prague Spring in 1968, and later became deputy commander and then commander of the aviation component of the Moscow Air Defence District. In April 1977 he became commander of the aviation component of the entire Soviet Air Defence Forces, and over the next decade oversaw the integration of new technologies and types of aircraft into the Air Defence Forces. In 1987 he was appointed representative to the Headquarters of the Allied Forces of the Warsaw Pact countries, until his retirement in 1990.

In retirement Moskvitelev worked as assistant to the general designer of the Mikoyan Design Bureau, and as chief adviser at the Gromov Flight Research Institute. He remained active in air force matters, and in 2007 formed the Honoured Military Pilots, Test Pilots and Navigators Club. Over his career he had received a number of awards and honours, wrote his memoirs, and continued to fly in old age. He died in 2020 at the age of 93.

Family and early life

Moskvitelev was born into a working-class family on 27 July 1926 in Vyazovy Gai, then part of Nikolayevsky Uyezd, Samara Governorate, in the Russian SFSR, USSR. His family was affected by the famines in the early 1930s which caused considerable hardship in the Volga region in which they lived. Moskvitelev's mother died in 1938, while his father took employment as a mechanic at a machine tractor station, but still struggled to make a living wage. After the Axis invasion of the Soviet Union, embroiling the USSR in the Second World War, and reaching the age for service in 1943, Moskvitelev appeared before the authorities and requested a posting to the front. He was initially trained on the U-2 and UT-2 aircraft, and in late 1944 was transferred to the . He maintained an interest in technical developments, becoming a candidate of Sciences in 1984, and had also co-authored the university textbook ""Applied Methods of Comparative Assessment and Combat Potential of Aviation Military Equipment".

Moskvitelev died on 12 February 2020, at the age of 93, after a "serious and prolonged illness". He was married, with two daughters.