A Dance with Death: Soviet Airwomen in World War II (5 page)

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 examinations. 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.