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The story
Soviet era
KNAFU is a descendant of two military academies and other nine military higher schools:
Kharkiv
Gritsevets Military Aviation Higher School of Pilots (1930–1993)
Lenin Komsomol Military Aviation Radioelectrionical Higher School (1937–1993)
Govorov Military Engineer Radiotechnical Air Defense Academy (1941–1993)
Krylov Military Command-Engineer Higher School of the Strategic Missile Forces (1941–1993)
Kharkiv Military Aviation Engineer Superior School (1941–1993)
Poltava
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Vatutin Military Air Defense Missile Command Superior School (1941–1995)
Chernihiv
Leninsky Komsomol Military Aviation Pilots Superior School (1941–1995)
Kyiv
Vasilevsky Military Academy of the Army Air Defense Corps (1947–1994, see Ivan Chernyakhovsky National Defense University of Ukraine)
Kirov Military Air Defense Missile Engineering Higher School (1937–1994)
Kyiv Air Force Institute (1951–2000)
Luhansk
Donbas Proletariat Military Aviation Navigators Higher School (1966–1994)
Namesake
After graduating from the Chuguiv Military Aviation Pilots School in 1941, Kozhedub was appointed a pilot instructor. From March 1943 Kozhedub served as an air force fighter pilot with the Soviet Air Forces. During the war, he made 330 sorties, led 120 air battles as a unit commander, and personally shot down 62 enemy aircraft. According to the ratio of air battles and enemy planes shot down in them, he was recognized as the most effective pilot of the Second World War's Eastern Front, winning three Gold Medals as a Hero of the Soviet Union. After the war, Kozhedub held a number of senior positions in the Soviet Armed Forces.
In different years the military institutions which became part of the KNUAF were named after prominent commanders LO Govorov, MI Krylov, OM Vasilevsky and SI Gritsevets.
Contribution to outer space
Within the walls of the university mastered the basics of flying and received a ticket to the sky 27 astronauts. The first detachment of astronauts included graduate A.A.Leonov – achieved the Hero of the Soviet Union twice, the first person to go into outer space. P.I.Klimuk, a graduate of the university, headed the astronaut training center for a long time. Awarded the Star of the Hero of Ukraine – the first cosmonaut of independent Ukraine – Major General L.K.Kadenyuk and Test Pilot Colonel O.V.Galunenko.
Post-independence
KNAFU was created on 10 September 2003 on the basis of both the Kharkiv National Air Force Institute and Kharkiv Military University.
In 2020 KNAFU was recognized by the NATO DEEP programme as one of 12 educational establishments participants in Ukraine.
On 20 January 2020, on the 5th anniversary of the Second Battle of Donetsk Airport, a combined military band including the university band performed at Kharkiv International Airport in honor of the forces that took part in the battle. It is led by Major Konstantin Streletsky.
On 25 September 2020, an An-26 military plane with 20 cadets and 7 officers of KNAFU crashed and immediately caught fire in Chuhuiv, Ukraine in Kharkiv Oblast. 26 people were killed and one seriously injured.
On 1 March 2022 the KNAFU building was destroyed by the Russians, on Day seven of the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. They killed 14 military cadets and seven civilians, including two young children. The building appears to have been shelled, not bombed.
From Wikipedia’s article on Ivan Kozhedub National University of the Air Force, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.4