A Dance with Death: Soviet Airwomen in World War II (2 page)

In 1989 1 had written a book, For God, Country, and the Thrill of It:
Women Airforce Service Pilots in World War II, and looked forward to
returning to my love affair with photography as a more personal and
art-oriented medium. Fate, in the form of an article telling of the
Soviet women who flew combat in the war, decided otherwise.

All of us serving as Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASPS) wondered how we would fare if we were called upon to fly combat. We
talked about it in our barracks during our six months of flight training, training conducted in the same aircraft and with the same basic
routine as the male cadets. Our questions and speculations were
purely hypothetical. Now I would see and hear from the Soviet
women who had such experience, who knew the reality of it from
those long years of combat.

I thought then, on my way to their country, that these stories
would cut across all boundaries and that our gender-relatedness was a
key-our sameness as girls and women, past and present, would be
more significant than our differing cultural backgrounds. That proved
to be true. As they told their stories, their voices and gestures spoke
even before the translated words. For a people held mute for almost
all the years of their lives by terror and despotism, the communication of the spirit has never been silenced.

I spent an hour or two, and at times much longer, with each veteran, and as I interviewed I had the extraordinary experience of being
warmly accepted as a fellow pilot who had done my best to help win
the war, known to the Soviets as the Great Patriotic War. Both the
Soviet women pilots and crews and the American women pilots suffered the loss of friends while fulfilling wartime duties in their respective armed forces. This bond made it possible for me to share
their reminiscences, their feelings.

I interviewed sixty-nine women who held various positions, titles,
ranks, and duties in the Soviet Army Air Force. These women are
looking back some fifty years to their own personal remembrances of
that conflict. The recent changes wrought in the Soviet Union itself
have made it possible for its citizens not only to speak to foreigners
but to speak frankly with us.

The Soviet Union and its people have long been a mystery to us in
the West. Although the participation of these airwomen in World War
i i is the central issue, the narrative also presents insights into the
workings of the Soviet mind and the philosophical underpinnings of
their society. But most of what has emerged is not political: it is an
immense pride in their contribution to the defense of their country,
and it avows their single-minded will to defeat the Germans without
regard for their own lives or well-being.

The stories are about young women in combat. They are also stories
of friendship, humor, and courage. These are women that make us take
pride in being a woman. It takes effort not to be awed by them.

This is not a history but an account-personal, and at times emotional-of what it was like to spend nearly four years flying combat,
from the early days of devastation and retreat to the victory paid for
with so many millions of lives. None of the airwomen came out of
the war unscathed. Everyone had lost someone, somewhere, some
way. What saw them through was their unflagging determination,
stoicism, and, dearest of all, their romanticism. Central to their lives
is drama. Acceptance of their fate is rooted in their culture. They say
it all so simply in a few words, words repeated over and over by them
all-life is life.

I wish to thank Ray Graham, Susan Lyon, Sally Scott, Carol Wood
Saas, Browning Coke, Robert Heyman, Kris Jensen, Robin Rule, and
Cidney Payton for their belief and support in this endeavor and without whom this book would never have happened. Special thanks to
Howard Sandum, my literary representative, for his intelligent criticism and patience; Lanny Smith and Bill Colbert, for their aeronautical expertise; Reina Pennington, former airforce intelligence instructor in Soviet fighter tactics, for introducing me to Soviet military
history; Camille North and Texas A&M University Press, for their
most enthusiastic support and guidance; Morgan Kuzio, for his
photographic assistance; my sister, Mary Pease, and my niece, Dale
Pease, for their humor, encouragement, and love.

I am indebted to Wes Kennedy, my assistant in r99o, for his good
and tender care of me when I fell ill with pneumonia in Moscow;
and James Holbrook, my longtime friend and assistant in 1991 and
1992, who traveled with me and had the good fortune of celebrating
his fortieth birthday in a nightclub at the Izmailovo Hotel in
Moscow.

I am especially grateful to my dear friend Margarita Ponomaryova, who translated for me in the Soviet Union and later visited me
in the United States, where she had the time to do a thorough translation.

No one but Christine White could have written this introduction.
Russian history professor at Pennsylvania State University and fellow
pilot, she is currently working on her own manuscript, "Women in
Early Russian Aviation, 1910-1939."

I wish to thank the many Soviet people who have helped me:
photographer Yevgeni Khaldei, for granting me permission to include
his war photographs of the 46th Guards Bomber Regiment; Aleksandr
Kotenkov and Aleksandr Panchenko of the Aeronautical Society of the Soviet Union, who sponsored me; Nadezhda Popova and the Veterans Council; Yekaterina Polunina, archivist for the 586th Fighter
Regiment; Irina Rakoholskaya, chief of commanding staff, 46th Guards
Bomber Regiment; and Galina Chapligina-Nikitina of the 125th
Guards Bomber Regiment. Most of all, I thank the sixty-nine women
veterans who told me their stories.

by Christine A. White

The antiaircraft guns fired at us fiercely from all directions, and
suddenly I felt our aircraft hit. My 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 legI 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.

-Senior Lieutenant Nina Raspopova,
46th Night Guards Regiment

Such is one brief episode in the many experiences recorded in this
volume of the women who served in the Soviet Army Air Force
during the Great Patriotic War-World War ii. Little is known in the
West about the achievements of these Soviet airwomen, who are
credited with being the first of their sex to serve in combat., How did
they come to be trained as combat pilots, mechanics, navigators, and
ground crews? Where and when did the women pilots receive their
flight training? How were they perceived? Was this use of women in
combat a reflection of the desperate state of military affairs in the
USSR in the summer and early autumn of 1941? Or was it merely an
exercise in public relations or, worse, a propaganda ploy by Stalin?
And finally, why is so little known about these women and the contributions they made? The memoirs contained in this volume address
these questions by providing insight into the experiences and the
characters of the women who flew, the training they received, and the friendships that bound them together through one of the greatest
cataclysms the world has known.

Although the Second World War stands as the first instance where
women were officially employed in combat in any large-scale fashion,
it was by no means "the first." Russian women have had a long tradition of serving beside men-and sometimes even leading them. The
legendary Amazons-whose existence and activities were recorded
by the ancient Greeks-were a community of women who dominated
the south of Russia between the Don River and the Caucasus Mountains.2 Much later, during the Napoleonic Wars, Nadezhda Durova
disguised herself as a man and commanded a Russian cavalry to victory against the French revolutionary forces. Though she was ultimately found out, Emperor Alexander I allowed her to continue to
serve and even awarded her the Cross of St. George.3

Although the later revolutionary governments routinely permitted
the participation of women combatants, the Tsarist government had
no consistent policy on this score. Though not officially allowed to
serve, women were listed as new recruits in increasing numbers
throughout the First World War. As early as 1915 there were an estimated four hundred women bearing arms in Russia.4 But it was in the
field of military aviation that Russian women truly stood out as
firsts. Though largely ignored in most historical literature, these
women were most certainly present on the front. Even though a number of accomplished Russian women pilots were refused permission
to fly in the service of their country, at least two women were given
special dispensation by the Tsar to serve as military pilots in the
Imperial Russian Air Service. Where permission was not forthcoming, ingenuity took over. One young woman reportedly "borrowed" a
male friend's military medical certificate and, disguised as a young
man, joined the Imperial Russian Air Service, where she qualified as a
combat pilot. The first woman ever to be wounded in aerial combat,
she received injuries in the spring of 1915. Subsequently, her true sex
was discovered, and she was "grounded." Her services were recognized, however, as she reportedly received the Cross of St. George for
her bravery.s

It was not until the February revolution of 1917 that Russian women
were actively recruited for the armed services. The best known of the
revolutionary all-female regiments was Maria Botchkareva's controversial Women's Battalion of Death. It was only one of a number of such
infantry units that were formed under the Russian provisional government in Petrograd, Moscow, Odessa, Ekaterinodar, and Perm."

Although War Minister Alexander Kerensky clearly sought to utilize
women's patriotism, his call to arms was really nothing more than an
expression of support for what had already been happening for some
time-that is, women actively engaged in combat. Under Kerensky,
women who were previously barred from military flying under the
Imperial government were now allowed to serve.

The Bolshevik Revolution in October, 1917, and the subsequent
Civil War had, in theory at least, opened up new opportunities for
women in areas that had previously been dominated by men. In particular, women were now free to take active service in the military. In
1920, at the height of the Russian Civil War, there were sixty-six
thousand women serving in the Red Army, the majority as volunteers.7 Although the number of female troops engaged in military
aviation by the Bolsheviks is open to speculation, there can he no
doubt that the Red Air Force was desperately in need of trained pilots.
At least one of the prerevolutionary aviatrixes was known to have
served in the training squadron of the Red Air Force and to have flown
several missions for the revolutionary forces during the Civil War."