A Dance with Death: Soviet Airwomen in World War II Read online

  The story of this flight was widely publicized, and her courage and stamina caught the imagination of the people. When the women returned to Moscow, Stalin bestowed upon them the nation's highest award, the Gold Star of Hero of the Soviet Union. They were among the first women to have ever received that honor. Raskova was not only intelligent and brave, she was a most beautiful young woman.

  Marina Raskova's fame and influence were crucial to the formation and training of women's combat regiments in World War II. When the war began, she joined the People's Defense Committee and was aware that letters were pouring in from women pilots all over the country begging to be taken into the army air regiments. She proposed to the government that female air regiments be formed with volunteer women pilots and that these pilots, along with other volunteers selected by the Komsomol, be trained as mechanics, staff personnel, gunners, and navigators.

  Marina Raskova, 1z5th Guards Bomber Regiment

  Raskova's proposal was approved, and she was appointed commander of the training unit with the rank of major. Everyone in the USSR knew of her, and the women considered it to be the greatest honor to serve under her command. About one thousand women were selected. They gathered in Moscow and were then transported to the training airdrome in Engels, a city on the Volga River. This took place in October, 1941.

  Having been trained as a navigator, Marina Raskova was not a highly experienced pilot. After training, she was given her choice of regimental command, and she chose to lead the 587th Dive Bomber Regiment, later designated the 125th Guards Bomber Regiment. She trained herself in the Pe-2 dive bomber aircraft, considered to be a difficult and unforgiving plane to fly. Only the most experienced women pilots had been assigned to fly it.

  When the regiment was activated, Major Raskova, as commander, led a flight of three aircraft to the front, flying in formation. One of the women pilots in that formation, Galina Tenuyeva-Lomanova, tells the story of this last flight. Marina Raskova and her crew crashed and were killed; thus, she never reached the front to lead her regiment in combat.

  Her death greatly affected the women of the regiments. She was given a hero's funeral, and her remains were interred in the Kremlin Wall, a place of high honor.

  Without Marina Raskova it is doubtful that there would have been any women air regiments in the Soviet Union during World War > > .

  Introduction

  The 588th Air Regiment was activated in the summer of 1942 and was honored in 1943 by being designated a "Guards" regiment, henceforth known officially as the 46th Taman Guards Bomber Regiment. The mission of the night bomber regiment was to destroy tactical targets located close to the front lines, such as fuel depots, ammunition dumps, ground troops, support vehicles, bridges, and enemy headquarters. Members of the regiment were also used on occasion to fly supplies and ammunition to Soviet front-line troops. Initially this regiment comprised two squadrons; later it added a third squadron plus a training squadron.

  Major Yevdokiya Bershanskaya, a civilian pilot before the war, was the regimental commander. She was the only woman to remain in command of a women's regiment throughout the war. The regiment was equipped with the Polikarpov U-2 biplane, later designated the Po-2. The plane was fitted with an five-cylinder radial engine of 100 This open-cockpit aircraft made of fabric and wood cruised at 6o MPH and was originally designed in 1927 as a training plane. Both front and rear cockpits were equipped with controls. The instrument panel held only the most basic instruments, and there was no radio communication.

  The Po-2 was used extensively in the war, and one of its designations was "night bomber." In this capacity it was fitted with bomb racks and a light machine gun in the rear cockpit. Flying over heavily defended targets on or near the front lines, it depended on stealth and the dark of night for protection. It was equipped with a noise and flare muffler to approach the target undetected. The aircraft of the regiment flew to the assigned target at precise intervals, making it possible for the Germans to anticipate when the next plane would be over the target. This made it unusually dangerous for the flight crews, but it was a procedure deliberately practiced by the Soviets to disallow the Germans any peace during the night.

  46th regiment. Foreground, second from right: Yevdokiya Bershanskaya. Photograph by Khaldei

  Important ground targets were guarded not only with antiaircraft guns but with numerous searchlights. If the searchlights could pinpoint and hold the aircraft in their beam, it was quite easy to shoot down this slow-moving plane. The pilot, blinded and disoriented by the powerful lights, would maneuver to sideslip out of the light. The sideslip moved the normal trajectory of the aircraft toward one side, and often it escaped in this manner. But the best defense was to approach from a high elevation, throttle hack the engine to idle, fly in over the target soundlessly, and drop the bombs almost before the enemy was aware of their presence.

  One other particularly dangerous approach was to have two aircraft flying together toward the target. One arrived noisily with the engine powered up to attract the attention of the ground defenses, while the other approached silently and undetected to drop bombs on the target.

  The Po-2 aircraft was easily set on fire by either the antiaircraft or machine-gun tracers, and the plane was almost always doomed. The crew could not escape, because parachutes were not provided until the summer of 1944. The crew positions were tandem with the pilot in the front cockpit and the navigator in the rear. The typical pattern flown on a mission was that of a long, narrow racetrack, with the outgoing aircraft at one altitude and incoming aircraft at another, each spaced about three minutes apart. The returning aircraft landed, refueled, and rearmed, and it immediately took off again to the target. Thus there was a continuous stream of these small planes, one bombing every few minutes. Their missions started at dark and ended at dawn. In the winter, of course, they flew many more missions than on short summer nights.

  Po-a prepares for a night mission, 46th regiment. Photograph by Khaldei

  Flying at such a slow speed required an auxiliary airfield closer to the front lines in order to fly the maximum number of missions. Armament and fuel were transported to the auxiliary field after dark, and the aircraft flew out of this field until their missions ended at dawn and they returned to their home airdrome.

  The 46th was the only all-women regiment in the Red Army during the war, with a total cadre of over two hundred. Thirty air crew members perished during the war in I,IOO nights of combat. The regiment flew a total of 24,000 combat missions. The most decorated of the women's regiments, twenty-three of its members were awarded the Gold Star of Hero of the Soviet Union, their nation's highest award. Five of them were honored posthumously.

  Senior Lieutenant Nina Raspopova, pilot, flight commander

  Hero of the Soviet Union

  I was born on December r, 1913, in a settlement in the Far East. After the introduction of Soviet rule, the local population suffered famine and complete destruction like everywhere else in the country during that period. Whole families died of disease and poor nutrition. My father was an unskilled worker in the gold mines; my mother was a housewife. When I was ten years old my mother died, leaving our family of ten children, and my youngest sister was only nine months old. At the age of thirteen I was accepted as a cook in one of the gold mines. I was not good at cooking and often prepared inedible meals, either oversalted or overfried. To escape dismissal from my position, I buried the spoiled food somewhere in the woods and cooked meals anew. I often recall now how much food I wasted.

  When I was fifteen the Komsomol sent me to the town of Blagoveshchensk to go to the mining technical school. But girls were not accepted into that school; the profession of a mining engineer was not considered women's labor. I had a great desire to learn so I decided not to leave the town, and for two months I sat on the stairs of the technical school in hope that I would be admitted. By that time eight other girls had arrived to enter the same school, so the admissions board permitted us to take the entrance examinat
ions. On the first exam I felt completely miserable and humble; I couldn't make any mathematical calculations, having finished only four grades of primary school. Some other older and cleverer applicants felt sorry for me, alone with my grief, and they solved all the sums for me. In this way I was enrolled. At the end of the academic course I was sent to the gold mines for practical study. We girls proved to he as welltrained and industrious as the boys. I was among the most active Komsomol members of the mining technical school; and I, among other excellent students, was recommended for admission to the Irkutsk Mining-Engineering College without entrance examinations.

  But in 1932 the Soviet government appealed to its youth to join aviation, and in March the Regional Komsomol Committee sent me to the Military Commissariat, where they offered to train me as a pilot in one of the civil pilots' schools. I had never seen an airplane, but I liked the idea immensely from the very start. Two girls and some boys from my region arrived in Khabarovsk to enter the pilots' school. The staff of cadets had already been training there for five months. The cadets were males of twenty-one to twenty-four years, and I was only seventeen, very small and fragile. In my entrance record I had added three years to my age. The commander of the school said he wouldn't admit us because we were girls, but the government said they must admit us, so I was enrolled.

  We had very little theoretical training but soon began flying. By that time I had already fallen in love with the airplane; we flew a U-2 aircraft, and I made my first solo flight in March, 1933. Only a pilot can understand how it feels to be in the air without the instructor; only a pilot knows the whole scope of feelings and sensations you experience when face to face with the sky and aircraft! On my first solo flight I sang, cried, and sobbed with happiness. I couldn't believe I was manning the plane. In 1933 I finished the pilots' school and was assigned to a glider school as a pilot-instructor. It was there that I mastered parachuting; in 1934 I made my first parachute jump.

  The year of 1937 is well-known as the beginning of massive reprisals against the population of the whole country. I, along with fifteen Komsomol members of my glider school, was denounced as an enemy of the republic. We were suspected of being spies. I was fired from my position and from the Komsomol League, and I stayed at home in total isolation from the outer world. Nobody dared even to talk to me or look in my direction. Everybody was scared to death to be thought of as a friend of an enemy of the republic. It was a witch-hunt at that time, and many innocent people perished. The only ones who supported me in that tragic situation were some pilots from the glider school. They helped me with money and food. One of the fifteen was sentenced to death and was killed. This situation lasted for fifteen days. Then they returned my Komsomol membership card, and I came back to the glider school, where I was reenlisted. In 1939 I began the courses of the commanding staff in the Central Air Club in Moscow. On finishing these courses I was appointed a pilot-instructor at that same air club, where I trained future pilots.

  When the war started I voluntarily joined Raskova's regiments on October 7, 1941. I flew in the 46th Guards Bomber Regiment. I made 857 combat missions during the war, and I was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. I left the army in 1946, with a total of about four thousand flying hours.

  Early in the war, when we were retreating, extremely severe battles were waged. We were bombing the enemy, and they were advanc ing very rapidly. In that circumstance we were fearful when landing our aircraft after a mission, because we never knew if the landing strip was German- or Soviet-held. This situation was compounded by the insufficiency, primitiveness, and defenselessness of the U-2 aircraft; no ground communication, no parachutes, and a limited number of primitive instruments in the plane. Although this aircraft was initially designated the U-2, when the designer of the aircraft, Polikarpov, died in an air crash, it was renamed the Po-2. That was in 1943.

  I was shot down twice during the war. One of our most dangerous missions took place in the area of Mozdok, on the Terek River. The enemy was solidly fortified, and they used antiaircraft guns, aviation searchlights, and unceasing fire. On December 9, 1942, our regiment was given an assignment to not let the enemy ferry across the Terek River. My navigator, Larisa Radchikova, and I completed the first mission, but on the second one we were caught by enemy searchlights after we had dropped our bombs.

  The antiaircraft guns fired at us fiercely from all directions, and suddenly I felt our aircraft hit. My left foot slipped down into an empty space below me; the bottom of the cockpit had been shot away. I felt something hot streaming down my left arm and leg-I was wounded. Blinded by the searchlights, I could discern nothing in the cockpit. I could feel moisture spraying inside the cockpit; the fuel tank had been hit. I was completely disoriented; the sky and earth were indistinguishable to my vision. But far in the distance I could see the sparkle of our regimental runway floodlight, and it helped restore my orientation. An air wave lifted us, and I managed to glide back over the river to the neutral zone, where I landed the aircraft in darkness.

  The Germans could see us in that zone and went on firing at us. We got out of the cockpit with difficulty, because both of us were wounded; I was bleeding all over. Large splinters were sticking out of my body. My navigator was wounded in the neck, and even after she was operated on, her head was set onto one side. So with both of us bleeding we walked so very slowly toward the hills where our troops were supposedly located. I gave Larisa my few pilot belongings and had only my pistol with me. Even a map holder made my movements unbearable and impossible. Larisa was wearing army high boots, and they were squeaking and making so much noise that I made her take them off so we would not be detected by the enemy. All the way from the landing place to the Soviet lines she walked through mud and impassable roads with nothing on her feet but her socks. We walked on and on, never having even a short rest. I knew if we sat down for a moment, we would never stand again. Bit by bit we two cripples made our way: I was trying to take care of her, and she was trying to take care of me! We came to a bridge over a small mountainous river. We feared to step on the bridge, thinking there could be an ambush on the other bank. We stood for a few minutes trying to decide what to do when a sentry came out of the darkness and questioned us in Russian with a thick Kazakh accent. "Stop, who is coming?" Larisa replied in shock, "Are you Russian or German?" and they were Russian! We were taken to their dugout. I had a piece of shrapnel sticking out of my arm, and one of the soldiers wanted to help. He tried to pull out the shrapnel with a pair of pliers, but he couldn't get it out.

  It was a number of hours before we arrived at a field hospital where severely wounded soldiers were waiting their turn to be operated on. I had lost much blood and was very weak. We sat on a bench awaiting our turn for surgery. We were opposite a deep pit and watched dead bodies covered with white cotton sheets being thrown into that huge communal grave. This scene shocked me to the bottom of my heart. As long as I live I'll never forget mortally wounded soldiers whispering to us to jump the line and go ahead of them for surgery, because their minutes were numbered. After surgery we were to be transported to the rear, but we managed to return to our regiment where I was bedridden for two months. When I returned to duty and was assigned a mission, it was terribly difficult for me to return to combat.

  Another episode happened in 1942. The Germans were still advancing very quickly, and our regiment was retreating with the army. One of our pilots made a reconnaissance flight with my aircraft, and upon landing she hit the propeller and knocked off part of one blade. The enemy tanks were closing in on our airfield, and the regimental commander ordered us to redeploy to another location. There was no time to replace the propeller, and I had a choice of destroying the aircraft and leaving on a truck or flying it out if possible. I had the mechanic quickly cut off part of the opposite blade of the propeller to reduce the vibration.

  I got the aircraft into the air, and it was shaking so fiercely that only by holding the control stick with a strong grip could I manage to fly
it. On my seat I was like a peanut jumping in boiling oil in a frying pan! I was escorted by the other planes of the regiment, but what was the use of that protection? If I fell down, nobody could save me. It was really moral support. I've been living all my long life with the eerie feeling of that plane trying to shake itself to pieces, and I still don't understand how I survived that flight.

  The second time I was shot down was in 1943 over Kerch in the battle to liberate the Crimean Peninsula. In order to knock out the well-fortified fascist troops from the area, the Soviet marine landing force had to capture the peninsula. To prevent the enemy from detecting the marine force landing, our regiment was given the assignment of creating a noise screen over the strait. But unfortunately the landing force was detected and crushed by the enemy. In the cockpit, I saw the sailors, marine officers, military ships, and boats dying in the cold waters of the strait. It all looked incredible from above, as if millions of worms swarmed in the raw meat of minced human bodies. I prayed to God to stop that slaughter.

  Tatyana Makarova, Hero of the Soviet Union (left), and Vera Belik, Hero of the Soviet Union, 46th regiment

  Suddenly the fuel tank of my aircraft was hit, and the engine choked, coughed, and quit. I just managed to get back over the Kerch Strait and was about to land on a village road when I noticed all the approaches to the sea had been bombed and the roads ruined with trenches. There was no way out; I had to land there. Only God knows how I escaped death and made it down on that destroyed road. At the end of the landing run a metal construction, an antitank device, pierced the cockpit floor. The left wheel stopped over the edge of a deep trench. My friends told me I was born in a lucky undershirt! I also ascribe it to destiny.