Life and Career
Kokkinaki was born in Novorossiysk on 12 June 1904 (O.S.) to a family of Greek descent. His younger brother, Konstantin Kokkinaki (1910–1990), was also a distinguished test pilot. In 1921 he finished elementary school, and worked on grape plantations and in the Novorossiysk port.
He entered the Red Army in 1925, and served in the infantry until July 1927. He then entered the Leningrad Military-Theoretical School of the Red Air Force, from where he graduated in 1928. He subsequently entered the Borisoglebsk pilot school, from where he graduated in 1930. In April 1931, after a period of service in the 11th Fighter Squadron in the Moscow military district, he was transferred back to the Leningrad Military-Theoretical School as an instructor because of his pilot skills.
In the period 1932-1935 he served as test pilot for the Air Force, testing a series of aircraft. The first aircraft he tested was the attack aircraft Kocherigin-Gurevich TSh-3. Subsequently he entered the Ilyushin Design Bureau (OKB) as its chief test pilot, where he remained until 1964. Throughout that period, he was the first to test fly all the aircraft of the OKB, including the prototypes of the Ilyushin Il-4 medium bomber, the Ilyushin Il-2 Shturmovik attack aircraft, the Ilyushin Il-28 jet bomber, and the Ilyushin Il-14 transport aircraft. He became a member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1938. Promoted to Major General of Aviation in 1943, during the Second World War Kokkinaki served as head of the Main Inspectorate of the People's Commissariat for the Aircraft Industry and as head of its flight-test service between the years 1943-1947. He retired from the Air Force in January 1966, but continued working for OKB Ilyushin in a supervisory capacity with overall responsibility for flight testing, with his last project being the Ilyushin Il-62.
He became the vice chairman of Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI) in 1961 and assumed the position of chairman in 1966, a position he held until 1967, after which he was appointed to the honorary chairmanship. In the 1960s, he also served as chairman of the USSR Aviation Sport Federation. Kokkinakis lived in Moscow, where he died on 7 January 1985. He is buried in the Novodevichy cemetery in Moscow, along with his wife, Valentina.
Read more about this topic: Vladimir Kokkinaki
Famous quotes containing the words life and/or career:
“And we can get back to that raw state
Of feeling, so long deemed
Inconsequential and therefore appropriate to our later musings
About religion, about migrations. What is restored
Becomes stronger than the loss as it is remembered;
Is a new, separate life of its own.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)
“In time your relatives will come to accept the idea that a career is as important to you as your family. Of course, in time the polar ice cap will melt.”
—Barbara Dale (b. 1940)