Mikhail Gromov (aviator)

Mikhail Mikhailovich Gromov (1899 to 1985) was a Russian and Soviet military aviator, test pilot and Hero of the Soviet Union who also took part in weightlifting. He won the Soviet weightlifting championship in 1923 and headed the Weightlifting Federation of the USSR from 1959 to 1961. His main career was in aviation: from 1925 he tested aircraft at the Air Force Research Institute, in 1934 he flew a record closed-circuit flight of 12,411 kilometres in a Tupolev ANT-25, and in July 1937 he crew-flew the same type on a record non-stop flight of 10,148 kilometres from Moscow to San Jacinto, California, over the North Pole. He was the first director of the Flight Research Institute in Zhukovsky, commanded air armies in the Second World War and is buried at Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow.