given permission for "solo hunting", an honor given to aggressive and successful pilots. On 10 February 1943, near Rostov on Don, she shot down a Focke-Wulf Fw 190 along with Senior Lieutenant Nikolay Demkin and the wingman, Lieutenant Boris Gorkhiver. On 23 February she was awarded with an Order of the Red Star. On 9 March 1943 between 17.30 and 18.30 she claimed a Bf 109 along with Lieutenant Oleg Filipchenko. On 20 April 1943 Ogonek, a political-literary weekly publication intended for young adults, featured a cover photo of Budanova and Litvyak. An article detailed their accomplishments, honoring their collective, rather than individual, achievements. The magazine gave a combined number of combat missions and kills to date for the two pilots. On 30 May under command of Soshnikov, Budanova shared in the destruction of another Bf 109. Last mission On 19 July 1943 she flew her last mission, near Novokrasnovka. That morning she took off for an escort mission and near Antratsit in Luhansk Oblast she was involved in a dogfight with Bf 109s. Inna Pasportnikova later recalled: "She spotted three Messerschmitt going on the attack against a group of bombers. Katya attacked and diverted the enemy. A desperate fight developed in the air. Katia managed to pick up an enemy aircraft in her sight and riddle him with bullets. This was the fifth aircraft she killed personally. Katia's fighter rapidly soared upward and swooped down on a second enemy aircraft. She "stitched" it with bullets, and the second Messer, streaming black smoke, escaped to the west. But Katia's red starred fighter had been hit; tongues of flame were already licking at the wings." Budanova managed to put out the fire and force landed in no-man's land. By the time local farmers came to pull her from the aircraft, she was already dead. They buried her on the outskirts of the village of Novokrasnovka. The pilot who shot her down was either Georg Schwientek of JG 52 or Emil Bitsch, of 8./JG 3, the only two pilots that claimed a Yak-1 in the Novokrasnovka area on 19 July 1943. Controversies about number of victories There have been several different versions of Budanova's aerial victory score published, with no widely held consensus about her tally. The most common quoted is for 11 kills (6 individual and 5 shared). Some historians even claim she achieved 11 individual air victories. Pasportnikova has stated