In the 1930s and 1920s, flying was a popular pastime for people all around the world. In fact, the 30s were known as the "Golden Age of Flight". World War I had advanced aviation technology considerably, and planes were beginning to be mass produced, making them more readily available. Air lanes were opening all over the world and people had more access than ever to exotic places, kind of like when the Internet came to be. A significant number of these new pilots were women.
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| Marina Raskova |
One of these pilots was a fiery Soviet woman named Marina Raskova. She became the first female navigator in the Soviet Air Force in 1933 at age 21, but was most known for when she and two other women set the record for nonstop distance flying in 1938. They flew a twin engine plane about 6,000 km from Moscow to Komosomolsk. However, they flew so high that the plane began to ice over and sink. The women tried to throw everything they could out of the plane to lighten the load, but, when nothing seemed to help, Raskova strapped on a parachute and lightened the plane by jumping out. She wandered around for 10 days without an emergency kit before she found the plane again. The three women were celebrated and became the first women to receive the "Hero of the Soviet Union Award". The entire event was heavily covered by the media , even while it was happening and turned Raskova into a superstar. She is now often called the Russian Amelia Earhart.
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| Yuri Gargarin (another interesting Soviet aviator) |
As a result of Raskova's fame and the draw of the newly opened air lanes, there were over 100 paramilitary flying clubs in the Soviet Union in the years leading up to the second World War. The purpose of these was to train citizens to be aviators and about a quarter of the members were women. This meant that when the Germans attacked the Soviet Union in 1941, the Soviets had plenty of experienced pilots to fill their military. A significant number of these pilots (roughly a third) were young women and teenage girls. However, at least at first, the Soviet military rejected all female applicants. However, Raskova, now Major Raskova, would not have any of that and put out a call for female pilots, mechanics, and engineers. All of the applicants were told to write directly to her and she read each application and conducted every interview personally. Volunteers came from all over the Soviet Union and congregated in Moscow, later moving to a training airfield. All of the volunteers brought any belongings that they might need for the next few years, because they knew that, if they got picked, they might not go home again until the war was over. All of the volunteers that were admitted were then separated into three all-female regiments. These were the 586th fighter regiment, the 587th bomber regiment, and (our topic) the 588th night bomber regiment, who later would be called the "Night Witches". Each of these units had about 400 women between the ages 17-26.
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| Nadia Popova (top center) |
As one would expect in the 1940s era Soviet Union, there was a bit of pushback when it came to women being able to serve in the military during wartime, but the biggest problem was the military being unprepared for how to train them. There were no women's barracks, so they lived in a schoolhouse, and there were no women's uniforms, so they wore men's uniforms. The more handy women were able to take the large, ill-fitting men's uniforms and tailor and restructure them to fit. They actually ended up looking quite stylish. However, nothing they did could make the boots fit, so they had to stuff them with paper.
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| Night Witches in their uniforms |
Despite the fact that they were now in the military, they were determined to still remain as feminine as ever so they put on nice dresses on their days off, dyed the sift silk under their helmets in bright colors, decorated their planes with flowers, and called one another by their first names when not around their male officers.
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| Battlefields: The Night Witches by Garth Ennis | Dynamite Comics |
Their training was condensed into a 6 month period, While all of them already knew how to fly, they had no basic military training, so their workdays tended to be longer than the average number of hours. Like, over 14 hours a day. Also, the planes that they flew were rather old and unfamiliar. The 586th fighters actually got to fly new planes that were the best fighter planes the Soviets had, but were almost too big for some of the women to reach the pedals and fly the plane. They were also single seat planes, which differed greatly from their training planes. The 587th bombers flew armored bombers with a machine gun station (not unlike the plane that Indiana Jones fights on in the Ark of the Covenant). If you want the actual names of these planes, leave it in comments. These were also completely unlike their training planes.
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| A plane not unlike what the night witches flew |
The Night Witches, unlike the other regiments, actually did fly training planes, they were not made to be bombers and had been recycled into use because of the war. They were open cockpit, low-flying byplanes made of wood and canvas. They were incredibly slow and so could only be used for close targets or they would run out of fuel. That, or they could ship the planes during the day and fly them at night. They had two seats and the back seat was fitted with a machine gun and bomb racks. They could carry 2-8 bombs at once.
The 588th had a rocky start, though. They were flying to report in for duty and three of the fighters who were there to escort them dove through their formation. The women panicked and scattered, breaking formation. Some of them even thought it was a Nazi ambush. It turned out to have been a test and they had failed, which meant that they had to have another two weeks of training. Eventually, they were declared ready for action and had their first official assignment, in 1942. Six women, piloting three planes were tasked with bombing a nearby German camp. It was during this mission where they would use the tactic that brought about their nickname "the Night Witches". The byplanes that they used, the P.O.2s, had noisy engines that would make popping noises as they flew and also would sometimes spurt little flame bursts. Since the 588th were night bombers, this meant that their enemies on the ground could not only hear them coming, but could see them as well. This made them easier to shoot down. To solve this, the pilots would cut their engines as they approached their targets, and glide on the air currents for a few kilometers while they dropped their bombs. Sometimes another plane would leave their engine on to draw attention as a decoy. According to the Germans, the sound of the wind rushing over the wings of the silent planes made the same sound as a witch on her broomstick.
That first mission was a success, but one of the planes flew over the wrong part of the camp, got shot down, and both of the women inside died. This was very discouraging for the regiment. In order to keep morale up, they were all given another mission immediately. This time, it was a relatively straightforward railway bombing, which went flawlessly.
After that, their confidence, skill, and notoriety grew quickly. They flew multiple missions every night; every couple of minutes. They appeared more and more frequently in the newspapers and were hailed as Soviet heroes. Eventually, they were so respected that they became a Guard's Unit, which is very prestigious, not just for women, but for any regiment. They were the first women's regiment to receive this rank. In total, they flew something like 30,000 missions and dropped about 23,000 bombs. They only lost about 30 women.
However, despite their incredible piloting skills, they were still not especially good soldiers. After a major demanded that their marksmanship skills be tested (and they failed due to lack of use) they were once again assigned 2 more weeks of training.
They also lost eight women on a mission where the Germans used a new tactic. Previously, the Germans had simply tried using search lights and flak to shoot them down, but that night in 1943, they used tracers and sent fighters after them. Since the planes were made of wood and canvas, the tracers set them on fire, and the women on board had no parachutes. In order to evade the fighters, one of the planes flew as low as possible. She was so low to the ground, that she was afraid that the troops on the ground would be able to hear her if she spoke to loud, so only spoke to her navigator in a whisper. They dropped the bombs and were, I believe, the only plane out of that group to survive.
The Night Witches continued to fly until the end of the war, and flew their last mission in May 1945. When they heard that the war was over, they celebrated by shooting off flares and signal rockets. Both the 586th and the 587th regiments became integrated with both males and females during the course of the war, but the Night Witches remained an entirely female regiment over all of the years. 23 of them were named "heroes of the Soviet Union" just like Raskova had been, but five of those awards came after the pilots' deaths. They proved themselves to be not only equal to men, but outstanding.
There are so many other wonderful stories about these unbelievable women, and I would highly encourage you research more about them or leave your questions in comments and let me research for you.
There is a comic book about them called Battlefields:The Night Witches, which I feature above, as well as a Kickstarter funded video game by Bully Pulpit Games which is either out or coming out soon, depending on when you read this. There are countless books and websites and a stunning interview of Nadia Popova if you are interested in finding out more. I believe that "Stuff You Missed in History Class: has also released a podcast on the subject. Stay curious!
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