WWII Soviet Pilot G A Merkviladze

One of my wife's relatives[1] is over here (England) studying for a few
months.

The subject of his great-uncle[2] came up. It seems that he has some
fame in Georgia - with various streets, blocks of flats and even a cargo
ship named after him.

It seems that his claim to fame was that he was a fighter pilot during
WWII. Now I've done a bit of searching the web, but all I've come up
with boils down to this:

Senior Lieutenant Garri Alexandrovich Merkviladze 270 IAP & 152 GvIAP,
15 victories (13 + 2 assists) and a Hero of the Soviet Union.

If anyone has any more information about him, or pointers to more info
that Google and Yahoo don't know about, I'd appreciate it.


TIA
Duncan.

[1] Wife's grandfather's adopted daughter's son - we're talking tenuous
relationships here :-)
[2] Paternal great-uncle, just to muddy the waters