a fighter pilots, including Alexander Pokryshkin, Aleksey Alelyukhin, and Vladimir Lavrinenkov encouraged him to become a test pilot at the Flight Research Institute in Zhukovsky, which he did in February 1947. Amet-khan quickly rose through the ranks at the institute, reaching the rank of test pilot first class in 1952. In April 1949 together with Yakov Vernikov, he conducted the first flight of the two-seater Mikoyan-Gurevich I-320 fighter. In June 1949, he and Igor Shelest carried out the first fully automatic mid-air refueling in the Soviet Union; Amet-khan piloted the Yak-15 fighter jet and Shelest flew the Tupolev Tu-2 bomber involved in the procedure. From 1951 to 1953, he along with Sergey Anokhin, Fyodor Burtsev, and Vasily Pavlov flew manned tests of the KS-1 Komet, an anti-ship air-to-surface missile. During the testing process, Amet-khan was the first pilot to make a flight of the Komet from the ground, (doing so on 4 January 1951) as well as the first pilot to start the Komet from an airplane, which he did in May that same year. During one test flight, after uncoupling the KS-1, the engine of did not start, but instead of immediately parachuting out he repeated attempts to restart the engine, finally managing to do so not far from hitting the ground, saving the prototype. For his actions in testing the KS-1 he was awarded the Stalin Prize second class, but several other members of the team were awarded the gold star. When Amet-khan's nomination for a third gold star reached the desk of Stalin, who had approved the deportation of the Crimean Tatar nation, he went into a fit of rage that a Crimean Tatar was allowed to become a test pilot. When it was pointed out that Amet-khan nearly died while testing the KS-1 to save the prototype, it was decided that he would be awarded the Order of the Red Banner and Stalin Prize second class instead, since awarding a Crimean Tatar a third gold star was unthinkable to the internal ranks of the Soviet Union, regardless of merit. Many of the flights Amet-khan carried out in his career were for tests of the bailout systems for military aircraft, a risky procedure. While flying a MiG-15 so the parachuter Valery Golovin could test the ejection seat designed for the Sukhoi Su-7 and Su-9 aircraft on 12 November 1958, the ejection mechanism fired prematurely, resulting in an