A Dance with Death: Soviet Airwomen in World War II (6 page)

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.

At the end of my story I want to tell everybody who is going to read
this: don't believe those who say they had no fear in the war. I did fear
the war, and death-I feared each combat mission. After bombing and
having escaped the enemy's fire, I couldn't pull myself together for
ten or fifteen minutes. I was shivering, my teeth were chattering, my
feet and hands were shaking, and I always felt an overwhelming
striving for life. I didn't want to die. I dreamed of a small village
house, a piece of rye bread, and a glass of clear river water. And never
again a war! That is why today's hardships seem to me a trifle in comparison to what we had to go through in the war. I am grateful to each
passing day for the life it gives me.

After the war I married, had two sons, and did not fly anymore.
One of my sons is a helicopter navigator; the other is an engineer of
the air defense aviation.

Major Irina Rakobolskaya,

navigator, chief of the commanding staff, deputy commander of the
regiment

Irina Rakobolskaya,
46th regiment

I come from a family of teachers. My father was a physicist,
and my mother taught Russian.
I was born in a very small settlement called Dankov, 30o kilometers from Moscow, in the
Lipetsk region. My father died
when I was only eleven, and
my mother raised my sister and
me. Before his death we moved
to Moscow, and I finished secondary school here. In 1938 I
entered Moscow University
Physics Department and was a
third-year student when the
war started. Earlier I wasn't interested in aviation, but I attended a parachute school and
jumped several times just out of
curiosity. I was mostly interested in poetry and theater.

When the war broke out we
realized that our country needed soldiers, not physicists, and our one aim was to defend our country.
Marina Raskova was forming the women's air regiments, and I was
drafted as a volunteer into the regiment. I was then twenty years old.

We were piled into trucks in Moscow and taken to the train where
we departed for Engels. At that time the country had a lot of female
pilots, but unfortunately there were very few women navigators, gunners, or mechanics. Those of us who were to train in these fields were
taken from civilian colleges. I was immediately assigned to the group
training as navigators.

Our regiment, the 46th, was formed in December, 1941. At that
time a commanding staff of the regiment was appointed, and that
staff comprised mainly navigators. I was appointed chief of the commanding staff. I cried because I wanted to fly. Raskova told me that
she didn't want to hear civilian talk, only military, and that I must
abide by army regulations. If I was appointed chief of the commanding staff, then I was to obey orders and do my duty!

We did not fly in formations with a leader but instead flew one
after another in a line toward the target. We then looped back to the
field to rearm, took off again, and flew another mission with the
same pattern. There were no radios in the aircraft and thus no communication while the planes were in the air. That was the pattern of
our particular night missions. The commander's duty was to coordinate the whole effort, and so she flew very few missions. She could
not be in command if she flew a mission.

Until 1944 our regiment flew without parachutes. Our pilots
thought the plane itself to be like a parachute and felt they did not
need them. Over our own territory we could get down quite easily,
and over the German lines we felt that it was much better to burn up
than to be captured by the Germans. But then one of our outstanding
crews was shot down over Soviet territory by a German fighter and
burned to death, and only then was it ordered that all Po-2 crews
must wear parachutes.

In 1945 the lives of Rufina Gasheva and Olga Sanfirova were saved
by parachutes. Rufina was the navigator and Olga her pilot, and commander of the squadron, when they were shot down over Polish territory. The plane was set on fire, and they both jumped. They landed on
neutral territory between the Germans and the Soviets, and Olga
stepped on a mine and was killed. A Soviet soldier saw that happen,
and he went out and took Rufina in his arms and carried her from the
mine field.

For our regiment, airdromes were not constructed at all: we used just fields. When we advanced into Poland it became extremely difficult, because the fields were so muddy our aircraft, the Po-2, could
not take off-the wheels stuck in the mud. The fuel trucks could not
move in the mud, either. We took apart log fences and laid them
down to make runways. The crews would seize the wings of the plane
and hold on while the pilot revved up the engine; then, when she
signaled, they would let go, and the plane took off. When they landed,
it was in the mud where the crews again seized the wings and pushed
the plane back to the log runway. It was then refueled by carrying the
fuel in jerry cans to the plane. The bombs had to be carried by hand to
the planes also. Trucks couldn't come to the aircraft, so everything
had to be carried to it. Each night the ground crews hand-carried
three tons of bombs to the planes. The lower wing panel was quite
close to the ground, which made it especially hard for the girls to
carry them under the wing and fix them to the plane. They crawled
on their knees with the bombs in their arms.