A Thousand Sisters

by Elizabeth Wein

  The order had chilling consequences. Prisoners of war faced instant execution the second they were freed. If there was no hard evidence that a soldier had been killed rather than captured—for instance, if a pilot’s body was charred to cinders in a shot-down plane, or if her plane crashed and was never found—that pilot couldn’t receive military honors and her family would receive no compensation for their loss.

  Lilya Litvyak’s greatest fear as a fighter pilot was that her Yak would be shot down over enemy territory and that she’d die there, or that her body wouldn’t be found. Her own father had vanished in the Great Terror, and Lilya knew all too well how hard life was for the family of a “traitor.” She dreaded this happening again to her mother and young brother, because of her this time.

  And yet the Soviet forces were taking such a beating that it was impossible not to retreat. Colonel Dmitry Popov, the commander for the military division that the 588th Night Bomber Aviation Regiment was part of, wisely and desperately drew his forces back after the 588th had been at war for only a few weeks.

  “I remember a night when I flew with tears on my face,” said navigator Polina Gelman. “[The Germans] were advancing so fast that we had not time to change bases. We didn’t even have maps. It was August and September, we could not harvest grain, so they burned it. And so I was crying. Because it was my country and it was burning.”

  From August to December 1942, just after the issue of Stalin’s Order 227, the 588th Night Bomber Aviation Regiment was based in the Caucasus Mountains, for their harassment missions in their open-cockpit Po-2 planes. They were part of the effort to keep the Germans away from the Soviet oil fields, which were so necessary to keep the gears of industry moving.

  It’s hard to fly in a mountainous area. Wind blows in unexpected downdrafts and updrafts as it moves over mountain peaks, and this can slam a small plane into the ground. The mountains also create wind shear, which is when the wind suddenly changes direction, another deadly hazard to flight.

  The still, quiet hazards of fog and mist can also be deadly. Some nights in the Caucasus were so foggy that the 588th’s ground crew had to fire flares to show the pilots where to land when they came back from their missions. The mechanics on the ground would listen for the noise of a Po-2’s engine as it flew closer, and then send up a red flare to show where the runway began, or a green flare if they thought the pilot wasn’t in the right place for a safe landing.

  It’s incredible that these young pilots coped with such extreme conditions and survived. Landing at night is hard, but if there is a light on the ground, at least you can see the ground. In fog, you have no idea where the ground is. Darkness and fog are a deadly combination. On a foggy night in England in February 1941, twenty-two British bomber aircraft crashed after returning from a combat mission. More than thirty British bombers were lost and crashed in fog after a single mission in December 1943, an event known as “Black Thursday.” Even with modern instruments, pilots of commercial aircraft today need to be able to see the runway before they can land, even if they’ve been flying in cloud nearly to the ground.

  But fog didn’t stop the pilots of the 588th. Not one step back, right? Experience made them bold. “Landing in thick fog, I would enter that milky sheet and when the cockpit began to darken, it was a sign that the land was close,” said squadron commander Mariya Smirnova. “Then I would pull the nose up and sink to the ground for a landing.”

  Not every landing ended safely. One night, returning from a mission in thick fog, two Po-2s collided in midair. Both crews were killed. In an even more terrible incident, four aircraft collided, two landing and two taking off. Seven of the eight pilots and navigators in those planes were killed.

  “When they hit the ground some of them were still alive and were crying out for someone to save them because their aircraft were on fire,” said armorer Olga Yerokhina. “No one could help them. They couldn’t escape from the cockpits, and nobody could come close to the planes because of the fires. They exploded, one after another.”

  The horror of that night was unforgettable.

  Far more horrific was the German army’s assault on Stalingrad, which began in August 1942. The Germans destroyed most of the city’s antiaircraft defenses in a single day, their bombs setting fire to oil storage tanks and demolishing buildings. It was the beginning of a ferocious and bloody battle that would last nearly six months and cost two million people their lives. In addition to being one of the most significant battles of World War II, it was probably the biggest battle in history.

  THE BATTLE OF STALINGRAD

  The journalist Vasily Grossman groped for words to describe the horror he saw in Stalingrad as the assault began. “Stalingrad is in ashes. It is dead. People are in basements. Everything is burned out. The hot walls of the buildings are like the bodies of people who have died in the terrible heat and haven’t gone cold yet. . . . Bombing again, bombing of the dead city.”

  The 586th Fighter Aviation Regiment was still based at Saratov, using their fast and dangerous solo Yak fighters to defend and protect supplies and transport on the Volga River north of Stalingrad. Up till now, most of their flying had been by day, and unlike the women of the 588th Night Bomber Aviation Regiment, they’d had no training to fly at night. They ended up learning the hard way.

  In August 1942, squadron commander Tamara Pamyatnykh was assigned to lead two other pilots on a long flight to deliver a message to the Stalingrad Front. But it grew dark while they were in the air—and none of the three pilots in Tamara’s squadron had done any night flying in fighter aircraft at all, not even in training. By the time they got to their destination, it was so dark they couldn’t see the front lines or even the airfield itself. All they could see ahead of them were the flames and smoke of the burning city of Stalingrad, red against the night sky.

  The pilots hadn’t even turned on the lights on their planes, for fear of attracting enemy gunfire. But the ground crew below must have heard their engines, because suddenly a firework flare from the airfield burned brightly for a moment to give them an idea where they should land.

  “I was afraid that one of the other two planes would land on top of mine, so I turned on my lights for just a minute, even though I had no permission to do it,” Tamara said. “Galina Burdina told me that if I hadn’t done that she would have landed on top of me! We all landed safely—our first night landings.”

  Should they have turned back while it was still light, when they realized they were going to have to land in the dark?

  Physically, it would have been the safest thing to do.

  But Stalin’s Order 227 didn’t take darkness into account. So Tamara and Galina couldn’t, either. They didn’t dare fail at what they’d been sent to do.

  Not one step back: in a world at war, the fear of Stalin’s directives was a threat more terrifying than dying in battle.

  18

  Battle of the Sexes

  Beyond the borders of the USSR, western Europe had now been at war for three years. Far to the west of Saratov and Stalingrad, across the English Channel, British women—and a few from other Allied nations as well—were also flying planes to support the war effort.

  By the middle of 1942, the Air Transport Auxiliary in the United Kingdom let women ferry every single type of aircraft that the men of the Royal Air Force flew. That included their fighter planes and heavy bombers. Most of the ATA women were in units made up of both men and women at a dozen different airfields, although there was one completely female unit. Even though they weren’t flying combat missions, the air work that British women were doing was so impressive that the Americans decided they needed to check it out.

  American women still didn’t have any way to serve their country in the air. Two remarkable pilots, Jacqueline “Jackie” Cochran and Nancy Harkness Love, were working on separate plans to change that. Nancy was organizing a squadron of women who could fly aircraft to the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union through the Lend-Lease program. Jack
ie Cochran had another idea.

  PILOTS OF THE BRITISH AIR TRANSPORT AUXILIARY (ATA) WITH AMERICAN VISITOR JACKIE COCHRAN, CENTER. NEXT TO HER, FOURTH FROM LEFT, IS PAULINE GOWER, HEAD OF THE WOMEN’S SECTION OF THE ATA.

  Jackie was an ambitious and accomplished pilot. She’d won the 1938 Bendix Air Race flying a fighter plane from Los Angeles to Cleveland, and later in life she would become the first woman to break the sound barrier. When World War II started in 1939, looking ahead, Jackie had asked Eleanor Roosevelt, the president’s wife, for help to create a program to train American women pilots for ferry flights. That way, American men could be freed up for combat work.

  In the spring of 1942, Jackie brought a group of twenty-five American women, all with years of flight experience, across the Atlantic to join the British ATA. Jackie herself had no intention of staying with them, though. She was on a research trip. She wanted to study what the ATA was getting right, so she could go back to the United States and set up a similar program for women pilots in her own country.

  It must have been incredibly frustrating to know that you had such a valuable skill to share in wartime, and not to be able to share it. Even after nearly three years of conflict, most women aviators were struggling to make use of their talents, all across the world.

  In the Soviet Union, where women were lucky enough to have Marina Raskova’s regiments to fly for, after all their training they now had to prove that in the air they were just as good as men.

  Tamara Kazarinova, the commander of the 586th, still struggled to get along with the most talented pilots in her defensive regiment. People found it hard to take commands from someone who seemed inexperienced at flying the Yak fighters. Early on, Tamara transferred eight of the 586th’s finest pilots to other regiments to try to ease the friction. She might even have been told to do it by a superior commander.

  Lilya Litvyak and her friend Katya Budanova were two of the women Tamara had trouble with—they didn’t like taking orders from someone “who didn’t know how to fly a fighter.” In September 1942, Lilya and Katya, along with Raisa Belyaeva and Mariya Kuznetsova, moved to the men’s 437th Fighter Aviation Regiment. The 437th was based on the Stalingrad Front and had already lost several pilots and even more planes in the now furious battle. Marina Raskova flew over to Anisovka so she could talk to the 586th Regiment herself and let them know how important it was to help the pilots at Stalingrad.

  Lilya, Katya, Raisa, and Mariya would now be the only women in a regiment made up entirely of men.

  The women who didn’t get to go were envious. Anya Demchenko, the pilot who’d been in trouble for showing off and flying six loops and who was Mariya’s good friend, took off and flew to Stalingrad on her own after the others. She wasn’t allowed to stay.

  When the pilots flew to the new airfield in their single-seat Yak-1s, their ground crew had to be transported together in a larger aircraft meant for heavy bombing. It wasn’t equipped for passengers—the young women had to ride in the bomb bays in total darkness. Most of them weren’t used to flying, and almost all of them got airsick. When the technicians got to their new base, the bomb bay doors opened and they tumbled to the ground—some of them were so stunned by the experience that they couldn’t even get up.

  But they didn’t get a moment to recover. The airfield was in the middle of an enemy attack. Gunfire and shells were going off around them, and the airfield was peppered with ugly little antipersonnel mines people called “frogs,” which would explode if you stepped on them. The technicians from the 586th hadn’t ever been under fire before. They were terrified. They had no idea where to go or what to do.

  The men who were already stationed on the airfield ran to push the newcomers into the defensive trenches, protecting them with their own bodies. No one was hurt; but the terrible reality of Stalingrad was a shock after looking forward to this moment for so long.

  Arkady Kovacevich, a squadron commander for the 437th Regiment, was not happy when he was told he had to include four young women in his group of elite combat fighters.

  “Whyever me? Why me?” he complained.

  The division commander told him, “Understand this very clearly: you will lay your head on the block for the safety of these girls.”

  Arkady answered, “Cut my head off right now—just take the girls away from me!”

  The 437th Regiment was stationed near Stalingrad in a plain surrounded by watermelon fields. A camel named Pashka carried water to the base from the Volga River. Lilya, Katya, Raisa, and Mariya had to adapt quickly to their new surroundings, and they also had to prove that they were capable of flying with the men of the 437th.

  The regimental commander arranged a mock dogfight, an air battle that would take place between the new pilots and the veterans—two men against two women. The men were flying complicated Lavochkin-5 (La-5) fighter aircraft, and they thought the Yak-1s that the young women had arrived in were inferior and underpowered. They expected it would be an easy win.

  Katya and Raisa took off determined to prove that, in the air at least, they were as good as any man.

  Speeding after the other planes in the air, Raisa managed to chase close behind one of the men’s La-5s, a successful attack position, even though she wasn’t going to shoot at him. It was the first “victory” score of the contest, and the women had already pulled ahead.

  But Raisa’s triumph didn’t last long, because at that moment actual Luftwaffe enemy fighter planes appeared in the air above the competition. Suddenly the danger became very real. The Germans had the advantage of height, and the four competing Soviet aircraft weren’t prepared for battle. They had to fly away and land somewhere else—Raisa, Katya, and the others couldn’t get past the Germans to land safely on their own field!

  Mariya and Lilya watched it all from the ground. “These two girls proved that in their Yaks they could fight the men in the more sophisticated aircraft,” Mariya said. “Everything depended on skill.”

  If everything depended on skill, Lilya Litvyak was as skilled a pilot as any man.

  In September 1942, Lilya flew into battle for the first time as the wingman16 for the commander of the 437th Regiment, supporting her leader in the air. When they spotted a group of German bombers, Lilya followed her leader straight into such a forceful attack that the Luftwaffe aircraft scattered. In the mayhem that followed, Lilya and the commander each blasted a German bomber out of the sky.

  Before they’d even had a chance to return to the airfield, Lilya saw that Raisa Belyaeva was dogfighting with a Luftwaffe fighter plane. Raisa had run out of ammunition. Lilya flew to her rescue and damaged the enemy fighter so badly that the pilot had to abandon his plane in the air and take to his parachute.

  * * *

  A HEROINE OUT OF THE SPOTLIGHT

  A few female pilots were transferred into Marina Raskova’s unit against their will. For example, Kseniia Sanchuk had been flying supply and medical missions on the front lines since the beginning of the war; she was insulted to be sent to Marina’s new group for “training” purposes.

  Some people, some women included, felt that women should not be segregated into separate regiments from the men. Valentina Grizodubova, who’d piloted the Rodina on its record-breaking flight, was one of these.

  When the Great Patriotic War broke out in 1941, Valentina immediately found air work as a captain with the Moscow Special-Purpose Air Group. Through her connections in the Soviet government, she managed to get Stalin to approve her position as the commander of a new long-distance bombing regiment. In doing so, she became the only woman to lead an entirely male regiment for the USSR during the entire war.

  The 101st Long Range Air Regiment, as well as bombing, helped bring supplies by air to the blockaded and starving city of Leningrad. Eventually they also made hazardous supply flights to the partisans, the guerrilla groups who were fighting against the Germans in the Bryansk Forest near the Russian border with Ukraine.

  Valentina flew more than 1,850 of these missi
ons, and evacuated around 2,500 orphaned children and wounded partisan fighters. She flew more missions during the war than most male commanders.

  * * *

  Three days after her arrival at Stalingrad, Lilya Litvyak had become the first woman in the world to shoot down enemy combat aircraft on her own—not one, but two in the same flight.

  The story goes that the German fighter pilot she’d shot down was captured on the ground. He turned out to be one of the Luftwaffe’s most celebrated and deadly flying aces, and he wanted to meet the pilot who’d shot him down.

  Lilya Litvyak was only too happy to oblige. When she stood before him, small and blond and pretty, less than a month past her twenty-first birthday, the German ace thought his Soviet captors must be making fun of him.

  But using her hands as planes, Lilya was able to describe the maneuvering of their aerial dogfight blow by blow, and the German pilot had to admit that this novice fighter had defeated him. He was so impressed that he tried to give her his wristwatch, but she disdainfully refused it!

  Confident and cocky as always, Lilya wrote to her mother: “The Germans don’t fly here. The girls say, ‘they are afraid of us.’”

  At last Lilya was getting a chance to quench her thirst for battle.

  19

  Trouble in the 586th

  Back in Anisovka, the fighters of the 586th weren’t feeling as satisfied as Lilya about their combat flights. They wanted to use their dangerous solo Yak fighters for something more obviously heroic than defense.

  The male pilots fighting on the Stalingrad Front were exhausted and were running out of planes—but of course the Soviet newspapers reported thrilling patriotic stories about the glamorous and deadly air battles of “Stalin’s Falcons,” and the women of the 586th felt that they were really missing out. While Stalingrad was burning, they were cooling their heels in the fragrant fields of the Russian steppes, surrounded by sagebrush and birdsong. It made the whole regiment cranky and frustrated.