Childhood and Encounter With Aviation
Sergei Kramarenko was born on 23 April 1923 in the village of Kalinovka in Sumskaya province, Ukraine, the eldest of three sons of Makar Kramarenko and Nadezhda Galkovskaya. His parents were divorced when he and his brothers were still children and he went with his mother and brothers to live first in the Caucasus, and later to a kolkhoz (collective farm) near the Volga river.
During the 1930s the young Kramarenko listened to radio broadcasts about the deeds of Soviet airmen like Valery Chkalov and Georgiy Baidukov, and so decided to become a pilot. In the autumn of 1940 he began a flying course at the Dzerzhinskiy aeroclub, and as one of the 80 who graduated with the highest marks was offered the opportunity to become a military pilot. Kramarenko accepted and began military training on 1 April 1941 at Borisoglevsk aerodrome.
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