was posthumously awarded the Gold Star medal, Hero of the Soviet Union. Yekaterina Zelenko on 12 September 1941 supposedly performed a diving ramming attack in her Su-2, which tore a Messerschmitt Bf 109 in two as the propeller of her plane hit the German aircraft's tail. She remains the only woman ever alleged to have performed an aerial ramming. After 1943 more Soviet fighters had radios installed, and Chief Marshall Alexander Novikov developed air-control techniques to coordinate attacks. The fighters had more powerful engines, and in the last year of battle they carried sufficiently heavy armament. As Soviet air-attack options improved, ramming became a rare occurrence. In 1944, future Air Marshall Alexander Pokryshkin officially discouraged the taran, limiting it to "exceptional instances and as an extreme measure". Lieutenant Boris Kovzan supposedly survived a record four ramming attacks in the war. Aleksei Khlobystov supposedly made three. Seventeen other Soviet pilots were credited with two successful ramming attacks. According to new research, at least 636 successful taran attacks were made by Soviets between the beginning of Operation Barbarossa and the end of the war. Of these, 227 pilots were killed during the attack or afterwards (35.7%), 233 landed safely, and the rest bailed out. As new Soviet fighter designs went into service, ramming was discouraged. The economics had shifted; now the Soviet fighter was roughly equivalent to the German one. By September 1944, orders describing how and when to initiate the ramming attack were removed from training materials. United Kingdom and Commonwealth On 18 August 1940, Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve Sergeant Bruce Hancock of No.6 SFTS from RAF Windrush used his Avro Anson aircraft to ram a Heinkel He 111P; there were no survivors. On the same day Flight Lieutenant James Eglington Marshall of No. 85 Squadron RAF used his Hawker Hurricane to ram the tail unit of a Heinkel He 111 after he had expended the last of his ammunition on it. The Hurricane's starboard wing tip broke off in the attack and the Heinkel was assessed as "probably destroyed". A significant event took place on 15 September 1940, now known as "Battle of Britain Day". Flight Sergeant Ray Holmes of No. 504 Squadron RAF used his Hawker Hurricane to destroy a Dornier Do 17 bomber over London by ramming but at the loss of his own aircraft (and almost his own life) in one of the defining moments of