A Dance with Death: Soviet Airwomen in World War II (10 page)

At the training base in Engels, I was taught to bomb targets in the
Po-2 aircraft. I was appointed squadron commander in the 588th Air
Regiment of night bombers. We trained for six months, eighteen
hours a day. We were sent to the front in the Donetsk region in the
Ukraine. Our objectives were to bomb front-line German depots,
headquarters, ammunition supplies, troops, and other targets. We
flew at night at a maximum altitude of 1,2oo meters or, in cloudy weather, at 6oo meters minimum. The planes were fabric and plywood, and that, coupled with their slow speed, made them dangerously easy targets-a bullet could explode them.

When we arrived at the front, the first combat mission was made
by the regimental commander and the squadron commanders and
their navigators in crews of two. When we took off there were coal
deposits on fire, and coal burns constantly for years. On the way to
the target, no one fired at us. I recognized the landscape, and we had
no trouble. We flew back to the reference point, a torch that was
illuminated for us, and decided to make a second pass over the target.
When we flew over the target the second time, still no one fired at us.
We decided to release our bombs over the forest where the German
troops were concentrated, and when the bombs exploded, searchlights rocketed into the air, and antiaircraft guns began firing at us.
Going back, we had difficulty finding the airdrome because the area
was covered with smoke, and there were only three small sources of
light at the airfield. When we landed, our fellow pilots began hugging
and kissing us. We waited for the third crew to return, but it had been
shot down over the target-it was the commander of the second
squadron. We didn't give way to our grief, but we painted on the
fuselage of our planes: Revenge to the Enemy for the Death of our
Friends.

We were retreating to the east with furious battles. In the northern
Caucasus we bombed ferries crossing the Don River, and afterward
we had to land on another airdrome in the mountains because the
Germans were rapidly approaching. It was difficult to land in the
mountains at night because our airfield was near sea level, and we had
to descend in circles. I flew 555 combat missions.

When I became the deputy commander of the regiment in flying,
my main mission was to find airfields that we could use. The front
was fluid, and we were constantly moving from one airfield to another. Normally, we used two fields for our regiment: one, the home
airdrome; and the other, an auxiliary field about fifteen kilometers
closer to the front lines. We only landed there to rearm and refuel
during the night and then returned to our home airdrome before
daylight. The Germans couldn't find these bases close to the front
lines, because we left them before daylight when their reconnaissance planes came over our lines.

My other mission was to train new pilots. No reinforcements
came from the rear, and we had to retrain there at the front: navigators as pilots, and mechanics as navigators. I ran a flying school, so to speak. We lost thirty pilots and navigators in our regiment during
the war.

One night, as our aircraft passed over the target, the searchlights
came on, the antiaircraft guns were firing, and then a green rocket
was fired from the ground. The antiaircraft guns stopped, and a
German fighter plane came and shot down four of our aircraft as
each one came over the target. Our planes were burning like candles. We all witnessed this scene. When we landed and reported that
we were being attacked by German fighters, they would not let us
fly again that night. We lived in a school building with folding
wooden beds. You can imagine our feelings when we returned to our
quarters and saw eight beds folded, and we knew they were the beds
of our friends who perished a few hours ago. It was impossible not to
cry. It was a great loss and pain but none of us surrendered, and we
were full of anger and decided to pay the enemy back for the loss of
our friends.

On one airfield where we were stationed there were two regiments,
one female and one male. We had the same missions, the same aircraft, and the same targets, so we worked together. The female regiment performed better and made more combat flights each night than
the male regiment. The male pilots before a flight started smoking
and talking, but the women even had supper in the cockpit of their
aircraft. Once one of the German prisoners said, "When the women
started bombing our trenches we (Germans) had a number of radio
nets, and the radio stations on this line warned all their troops, Attention, attention, the ladies are in the air, stay at your shelter."'

Nobody knows the exact date when they started calling us night
witches. We were fighting in the Caucasus near the city of Mozdok;
on one side of this city were Soviet troops and on the other, German.
We were bombing the German positions nearly every night, and none
of us was ever shot down, so the Germans began saying these are
night witches, because it seemed impossible to kill us or shoot us
down.

Once when I was looking for an auxiliary airstrip for a night landing, I couldn't know from the air that there were a lot of mines on this
field. I landed, and an officer, calling to me and waving his hands,
approached my aircraft and said, "Can't you see this field is mined!"
Then I saw there were mines, but fortunately I landed between the
rows of them. When I chose a field, it had to be convenient for landing
and taking off at night. It also needed some space for about two
hundred ground personnel and the maintenance battalion with its fuel, bombs, and ammunition. I had to take care that there was camouflage at night and to foresee all those things. And you are landing
on this field with fear, but it is your duty.

The women in the regiment were very friendly and caring with
each other, and it helped us to stand our situation. When I would see
that one crew was caught by artillery fire and spotlights and I was
flying behind them, I would start bombing these projectors and positions and help them to escape death. So friendship, mutual support,
and love of our motherland helped us to endure and to await the
victory. It is a surprise that during the war none of us had ever asked
for a rest at the hospital for some illness. They paid attention to the
women's situation in our regiment, and the girls had the right not to
fly. But the women didn't report to the regimental doctor or tell
anybody about their problems-they kept on flying. After the war we
had a lot of headaches, could not relax, and had very hard problems
with our sleeping, because for nearly three years we turned over the
day and night. During daytime we could sleep for only about four
hours, and that is not enough. Then, with training and briefing, there
were a lot of sleepless nights. For the first year after the war everyone
had problems with sleeping, and I know there were no sleeping pills. I
couldn't sleep for at least three months.

I could go on talking about it because we had been fighting for one
thousand nights-one thousand nights in combat. Every day the girls
became more courageous. To fly a combat mission is not a trip under
the moon. Every attack, every bombing is a dance with death. In spite
of this, every girl knew the danger, and none ever refused to fly her
mission or used a pretext to avoid participating in the bombing. Our
feelings were that we were doing a simple job, just a job to save our
country, to liberate it from the enemy. I don't know what was in the
hearts of these girls when they were climbing into and sitting in the
cockpit before their flight. I don't know, but you could not read on
their faces any fear or feeling of danger, and they performed their duty
with an open heart and very honestly and bravely.

After the war, I continued to fly for two years; then, because of the
condition of my health, I retired. In 1947 I married a military man and
had to change my domicile from Rostov to the Ashkhabad town area.
There was an earthquake in Ashkhabad in 1948 when Stalin was in
power, and he ordered us not to tell anybody. Even in our own country
nobody knew the situation! They announced there was an earthquake and there were no victims, as usual. In the U.S., Canada, and
Mexico there would be lots of victims, lots of damage; and in this country there was no information, no damage, no victims at all. So no
help was sent.

After the war our country was destroyed, and we didn't have any
help from anyone. Ashkhabad was completely destroyed. Only the
mosques, the building of the party organization, and some other
buildings built before the war survived the earthquake. I saw Kerch
city in the Crimea when the city was destroyed during the war, but
the picture in Ashkhabad was completely the same. It was destroyed.
My daughter was born in August, and she died in this earthquake. It
took place late at night. There are a lot of mosquitoes in that area, and
when they bite you they leave scars and wounds on your body. So I
decided to put her near the wall, and during the earthquake the building crashed completely.

Forty-five years have passed since the war, and the women that
took part in it are still friends. We are very happy when we come
together, and we get together often to celebrate some occasion. We
help each other financially and in morale, and we write a lot of letters
to each other. We send postcards to each other on VE Day with
poems, pictures, or drawings.

NOTE: Serafima Amosova-Taranenko died in 1992.

Captain Klavdiya Ilushina,
engineer of the regiment

I was born in 1916 in Moscow in the family of a worker. I finished
secondary school in Moscow and entered a technical college, studying engineering and electronics. After my third year I was sent to
Gorky to help build an automobile manufacturing plant. This was
my practical training, to work in actual construction. This period
just before the war was one of developing heavy industry in our country, and there was much construction of industrial plants.

After graduation I was sent to the region of Noginsk to work in an
electrical station. I realized that I lacked knowledge, so I wanted to
learn more in my field and decided to go on with my studies. I submitted my documents to the aviation department of a military
engineering academy. I chose that particular department, because
since my childhood I had been dreaming of connecting my life with
aviation. The competition was severe. There were forty-seven men
and women who submitted their documents to study there, and only
three were to be admitted to the academy. And I was one of them!

These were the most magnificent, most wonderful years of my
youth. I lived the very process of acquiring knowledge; it brought me mental satisfaction. The staff of the department were very friendly to
me because there were only two women in the department. Women
then, as women today, had absolute equal opportunity with men. The
faculty found me to he one of the brightest cadets, and I graduated
with flying colors.

When I entered the academy my health was very poor, caused by the
poverty of our country, because I had starved a lot in my youth. The
academy treated this problem with sympathy and understanding and
sent me to a sanatorium several times. They also gave me breaks at the
third, fourth, and fifth courses just to give me a time to relax. I graduated from the academy in May, 1941, and I was twenty-five years old.

When the war broke out I was drafted to an aircraft plant. I was on
the board that tested the aircraft and examined the planes and the
equipment. But I didn't want to be in the rear; I wanted to be in active
army service, and I requested that I be drafted to the front. I was given
an option to either stay at the aviation plant or to go with the regiments then being formed by Marina Raskova. I chose the regiments.

I was immediately drafted as the engineer of the regiment. Then I
found myself in the 46th Guards Bomber Regiment. I was in that
regiment from its origin until the last day of the war. In August, 1946,
when the regiment was released, I returned to Moscow with the rank
of captain.

My duty during the war was as engineer of the equipment installed
in the aircraft, and I was responsible for its maintenance and proper
operation. The equipment in the Po-2 was quite simple, but I had a
heavy work load because the regiment had many planes, and each
night I had to see to each one.

When I first came to the regiment, I was not pleased. I wasn't used
to working with girls, for I had always worked with men. The girls
seemed noisy, and some of them were naughty. The ground personnel, I mean the mechanics, were from a very common strata of society: from factories, from working families. The pilots and navigators
and technical staff all came from universities and colleges, and they
were not homogeneous. It irritated me in the first period of my service, but later on, after I was in closer contact with the girls, we all
became like sisters. Up to the present day we call all members of our
regiment sisters.

Every day held anxiety and concern, for we lost one-third of the
regiment in a very short period, and among them were my closest
friends. Each night was a kind of torture. We prepared the aircraft for
combat missions, and at times they flew ten or more missions in a night. That was twenty or thirty aircraft to be refueled and rearmed
ten times a night. Each night I moved to the auxiliary field in one of
the regimental vehicles, where I oversaw the preparation of the aircraft during the night. We never had enough sleep; not for the whole
war did we have sufficient sleep. The mechanics prepared the aircraft
for combat all during the night, and they repaired and tested them in
the daytime. We averaged two hours of sleep at the end of the night's
bombing missions. It would have been impossible to carry out that
schedule if we had not had some breaks. When the weather was very
had the planes didn't fly, and on a few occasions we had a holiday.