December 31, 1939. The icy skies over Finland crackled with tension as Finnish pilot Ilmari Juutilainen’s Fokker D.XXI sliced through the air. His plane was a relic—slow, underpowered, and built of wood and steel tubing. They hadn’t bothered to build more than a couple hundred of them.

Ahead of him, a Soviet Polikarpov I16 loomed—faster, more agile, and heavily armed. On paper, the Soviet pilot had every advantage.

As Juutilainen moved into position behind the I16, the Soviet pilot suddenly pulled into a sharp left turn, trying to use the I16’s superior speed to circle around and catch Juutilainen from behind.

But Juutilainen was no ordinary pilot. In a splitsecond decision, he pulled his Fokker sharply into the cloud cover and swiftly yanked his Fokker to the right. It didn’t matter what Juutilainen had to fly; he was a born killer, as the Soviets were about to discover…



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