Serbian hero pilot, killed during NATO bombing, remembered

20 years ago, he gave his life for his country, making sure that a younger man did not have to do it.

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(Screen capture)

Yugoslav Army Air Force pilot Colonel Milenko Pavlovic - who flew a MiG-29 without a working radar when he was shot down above his hometown of Valjevo in western Serbia by NATO warplanes waging their 78-day war against the country - pulled a younger colleague out of the plane's cockpit and, taking his place, said: "You damn kid, you won't die - I will."

Pavlovic's plane was shot down on May 4, 1999. The pilot left behind a wife and two sons. 

Residents of Valjevo, and nearby Osecina and Gornje Crniljevo, remember their hero each year on the anniversary of his death.