Hero of the Soviet Union diplomas and solid gold badge, awarded posthumously by Gorbachev, to Ekaterina Zelenko for her successful ramming of a Nazi ME-109 fighter plane in September 1941, just before her fatal crash due to her bomber being attacked by five ME-109s, two (or three, according to one account) of which she destroyed before her death. She is the only woman ever to successfully bring down an enemy aircraft by ramming, which the Soviets called "taran"; hundreds of Soviet men had occasion to use this technique. She appears to have been the first woman to command men in mortal combat in WWII; she commanded a flight (three craft) of bombers from the start of Hitler's invasion of the Soviet Union. Previously, she was the first woman to fly in combat in WWII, in the war against Finland in 1939-1940.

group of German badges and certificates, 1928-1945, mostly athletic, to Erna John, schoolteacher and

x Chadwick's Significance Summarized by Dr. Burton Feldman _______________________________________ author of The Nobel Prize ( Arcade, 2000)