By 1943 her husband had been killed at the front, and Antonina had 2,000 flying hours. She was finally sent to join the 587th Regiment. She left her little girl with her husband’s family.
Yekaterina Chujkova joined the 587th in 1943 as a reinforcement for the armament mechanics. She’d been sixteen when war broke out, and living in Leningrad. She went from high school to digging trenches, then escorted other citizens to shelter during Leningrad’s long siege of bombing and starvation.
For the first year of the Leningrad blockade, Yekaterina lived on not much more than a daily ration of soup made with boiled water and four slices of brown bread.
In January 1943, Soviet soldiers managed to get control of the railway in and out of Leningrad, allowing a little relief for the desperate citizens of the city. Yekaterina’s sister worked at a factory that was evacuated from Leningrad to Moscow, and Yekaterina was able to go along.
When Yekaterina joined the 587th, she was so thin and starved that she could hardly move. But somehow, she managed to convince the recruiter that she’d be able to work. She trained on-site at the airfield were the regiment was currently stationed, arming bombs and attaching them to the Pe-2s. Each aircrew usually flew three combat missions in a day, and there was only an hour in between flights for the mechanics to refuel the aircraft and the armorers to reload the bombs and the ammunition in the planes’ machine guns. Like the armorers of the 46th Guards, the armorers of the 587th Regiment handled over three tons of bombs in a day.
At night, the mechanics cleaned machine guns—or they had to take turns guarding the aircraft. Yekaterina didn’t like guard duty. It was lonely and eerie, straining your eyes and ears in the dark as you watched for possible enemies. If Yekaterina heard a noise, she’d call out. Then, if no one answered, she said, “I’m sorry, but I’m going to shoot; excuse me, I’m going to shoot!”
The apology was little more than nerves and politeness, because Yekaterina meant what she said. One night, a figure appeared who didn’t answer her challenge. She fired her gun at the intruder, and the blow knocked him over. It turned out to be another Russian guard—he hadn’t answered because he’d forgotten that night’s password! Fortunately—for both of them—he wasn’t hurt.
The 587th Bomber Aviation Regiment had been flying in combat for only about six months when they suffered their heavy casualties and reinforcements in the summer of 1943. But it doesn’t seem to have damaged their morale. The Battle of Kursk was a huge operation, and they felt that they were making a difference. They were rewarded for it when in September they, too, were ceremoniously awarded the elite title of “Guards.” Now they were officially the 125th M. M. Raskova Guards Bomber Aviation Regiment.
THE 125TH GUARDS WITH A PE-2 DIVE-BOMBER
This must surely have given them new resolve when they may have desperately needed it. Every honor was a cause for celebration.
“When we are awarded orders or medals in our army, we have a tradition: to drop our orders and medals into a crystal glass filled with vodka and to drink that glass of vodka to the bottom,” said Yekaterina. “In the wartime we had to use empty food cans instead of the crystal.”
Even the smallest of ceremonies helped to boost morale, and the honor of becoming Guards was no small achievement.
September 1943 also marked a significant milestone in the war: Germany’s Axis partner Italy surrendered to the Allies.
But the nations of Europe that were occupied by the Germans were still fully under their military control. Millions of civilians were being coldly and methodically slaughtered in the German concentration camps. Now, as the third winter of the Great Patriotic War approached, the Soviet Union began the long and harsh process of pushing Germany’s occupying army westward 2,000 kilometers (over 1,200 miles) back across Russia, Ukraine, and into eastern Europe out of Soviet territory. The Germans had stormed in like lightning in a single month in 1941: it took the Soviet Union three and a half years to push them out again.
For Marina Raskova’s regiments, the next year and a half would keep them on the move as the ground and air forces of the USSR began that push. It was a slow but steady process, and for the airwomen there wouldn’t be much variation in the routine of the next eighteen months—fueling and arming planes, dropping bombs, eating “blondie” porridge and herring, snatching a few hours’ sleep, and starting all over again hour upon hour and day after day—all the way to Berlin, the capital of Germany and the heart of Hitler’s Third Reich government.
And the bright autumn days of 1943 continued to hold tragedy for the 125th Guards, despite their proud new name.
On October 14 they lost three of their Pe-2s in a single battle. Some of the three-person aircrews managed to parachute to safety as the Pe-2s burned and crashed. But pilots Lyuba Gubina and Anya Yazovskaya were both killed, as well as navigator Lena Ponomareva.
The mourning regiment planted a little birch tree for the three young women over their grave. The tree’s autumnal leaves trembled, reminding navigator Valya Kravchenko of “little yellow flames, in the rays of the setting sun.”
The survivors were stunned. Grieving in their dugout that night, someone started to sing a folk song. Others soon joined in:
O black raven! O black raven!
Why do you hover overhead?
Fly away, I’m not your prey,
Black raven, I’m not dead!
32
Over the Black Sea
In October 1943, the 46th Guards received a new award for their many successful missions in their Po-2s. They were now named the 46th Taman Guards in honor of their spring and summer harassing the German troops in the Taman Peninsula.
That same month, Marina Chechneva flew her five hundredth mission in a Po-2—her five hundredth mission in a little more than a year of combat. It was a nerve-racking night of dense cloud and stormy weather, but when Marina got back to her airfield, a surprise was waiting for her. Commander Yevdokia Bershanskaya had planned a party to celebrate. The party food was a huge watermelon with the number 500 carved into the rind!
Marina wasn’t the first in the regiment to have reached this milestone—squadron commander Mariya Smirnova, Natasha Meklin, and Katya Ryabova had also flown five hundred missions. Together, these three veterans lifted up the watermelon and grandly presented it to Marina.
“Take the ‘crown,’” said Mariya. “We wish you still another one before the war ends.”
Then everybody devoured the watermelon, wishing they were able to have parties more often.
The German army’s blockade of the city of Leningrad, which had begun on September 8, 1941, finally ended in its defeat there on January 27, 1944. During those 872 days nearly a million people died in Leningrad—about one-third of the city’s population. Most of them starved to death. Now, at last, the survivors were free.
Of course, hindsight tells us that the war would go on for nearly another year and a half after the end of the Leningrad blockade, but as the Red Army began to win significant victories over the invading Germans, people hoped that the war would soon be over. Some Soviet citizens, thinking positively, even dared to wonder if the NKVD and the Siberian prison camps wouldn’t be needed anymore after the war. Maybe Stalin would give his government and the Motherland a fresh start once all this was over. This, too, helped to increase the morale of the people of the Soviet Union.
In the meantime, they now fought against Nazi fascism with renewed determination.
On March 8, 1944, International Women’s Day and the anniversary of the Russian Revolution, the 46th Taman Guards Night Bomber Aviation Regiment received two important visitors: the commander of the Second Belorussian Front and the commander of the Fourth Air Army. As the regiment lined up to greet the VIPs, one of the visiting men had an idea.
Thinking he could do a good deed for these brave young women who’d been working and fighting so hard for nearly three years without a break, he commented that it might be helpful if ten or twenty men were sent to help load bombs
onto aircraft for them, and assist them with other heavy work.
“We don’t need any helpers, we’re managing just fine on our own!” everyone answered quickly.
Of Marina Raskova’s original three regiments, there were men now flying and working in both the 586th Regiment and the 125th Guards, and those units were now led by men. The 46th Taman Guards was the only Soviet regiment to remain entirely staffed by women throughout the war, and they were proud of it. They worked as hard as their male counterparts, and they were able to outfly all the other Po-2 bomber regiments for sheer numbers in their nightly missions. They didn’t want to be given special treatment.
Olga Yerokhina, an armorer who’d worked in a men’s regiment before Yevdokia Bershanskaya recruited her as a reinforcement for the 46th Guards, said that the physical work was easier when men did the heavy lifting.
“But,” she continued, “from the point of view of human relationships, it was much better in the women’s regiment.”
In the spring of 1944, the 46th Guards helped to drive the Germans out of Crimea. They moved to a base in a resort area near the Kerch Strait, between the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov, with their little Po-2 biplanes lined up in a field along the cliffs above the sea.
Moving to a new airfield was often difficult and dangerous for the Soviet aviators. Once, when the 46th Guards arrived at a new base for the first time, they didn’t immediately cover their Po-2s with the camouflage nets that hid them from enemy spy planes. While the women were eating breakfast, a group of German aircraft descended on the thirty wood-and-canvas Po-2s, firing their machine guns.
All the pilots leaped up from their food and ran to the parked planes. They scrambled into the cockpits, took off, and scattered in every direction in the air—turning the Po-2s into difficult targets. The quick reaction saved the regiment’s planes.
On another occasion, they were not so lucky. Klavdiya Ilushina, the regiment’s chief engineer, was staying with a local family who’d made her a delicious Easter dinner that included eggs and cake. Klavdiya enjoyed this rare treat, and she went to bed hoping for a good night’s sleep, too. Instead, she was shaken awake in the middle of the night by her hostess, who urged her, “You must get up, your airfield is being bombed, your aircraft are burning!”
Klavdiya and her companions threw on their clothes in the dark and ran to the airfield. But in her rush, Klavdiya accidentally put on the high heels she’d worn earlier when she’d dressed up for her host family’s special meal! As she ran, one of her heels came off her shoe. At exactly the same instant, a German aircraft swooped over Klavdiya’s head, so low she could see the pilot’s face as he fired his machine guns at her.
Klavdiya threw herself flat on the ground as the German plane passed over.
He missed her in the dark. Klavdiya wasn’t hurt. After the plane had passed, she got up and hurried on to the airfield in her broken shoes.
Some of the 46th’s aircraft were already destroyed—and some were still on fire. Klavdiya climbed into one of the Po-2s that seemed to be okay, but as she was checking the cockpit for damage, the German fighter planes came back. She leaped out of the plane and lay on the ground under the Po-2’s fabric wing—the regiment had been at this base for such a short time that they hadn’t yet dug trenches to shelter people from air attacks.
Everybody lay on the ground waiting breathlessly for the gunfire to stop. There was nothing else that they could do.
At last the German attack planes flew away again, leaving the women of the 46th to repair the damage and help their friends who had been wounded.
In the Kerch area, the 46th Guards shared the sky with the male pilots of the Soviet Black Sea Fleet. When the women first arrived, the men greeted them with insincere politeness—and some sneering. “A broads’ regiment . . . Well, well . . .”
But the men had set up a snug and spotless dugout for the pilots of the 46th Guards to sleep in. “There were snow-white sheets on the bunk beds and even fresh flowers stood in containers on tables,” said Serafima Amosova. The young women wondered if the attention to detail was a subtle challenge. They’d been given a clean and pretty place to live, but did they deserve it? Could they earn their keep? Were they up to the grueling combat work that lay ahead?
Of course, they were up to the work even without the challenge.
Despite their lukewarm first impression of the Black Sea Fleet pilots, the women of the 46th Guards came to know and like these men, who struck at the German forces during the day while the 46th Guards struck at night. And the men quickly grew to appreciate them in turn. They even surprised navigator Tatyana Sumarokova on the morning of her birthday after her night’s bombing missions, presenting her with a bottle of champagne and singing her a song they’d made up themselves!
One of the jobs that the 46th Guards had here, along with other Po-2 regiments, was to fly emergency supply runs for the Red Army troops. This required a different kind of skill and daring. Instead of dropping bombs from 600 meters (nearly 2,000 feet) above the ground, on a supply run a pilot had to swoop down as low as 50 meters (164 feet) and dump food, ammunition, and medical supplies in a schoolyard or vacant lot marked by the light of a bonfire.
Marina Chechneva would fly her plane so low on these missions that she was able to scream over the side at the waiting troops, “Take your ‘presents,’ brothers!” Her navigator would yell, “Greetings to you from the 46th Guards Women’s Air Regiment!”
From the ground in the dark, they could hear the grateful shouts of thanks in return. Marina said, “The whistling of the wind and the noise of the incoming tide made it impossible to distinguish individual words. All the same, it was good to hear the voices.”
On April 9, 1944, Chief Navigator Zhenya Rudneva decided to fly the night’s mission over Kerch with Polina Prokofyeva. Polina was a new pilot on her very first bombing mission. Zhenya’s friend Nadya Popova took off after them, and there were other Po-2s in the sky as usual. It wasn’t always easy to tell who was who, especially when the guns started firing.
Pilot Kaleriya Rylskaya and navigator Nadya Studilina, also in the sky that night, became aware of another Po-2 flying a little above them. They could see the blue flame of the other aircraft’s exhaust, and it cheered them up to know they weren’t alone in the air.
They had trouble taking aim at their target because the sky was full of scraps of cloud, but they managed it at last. After they’d dropped their bombs, Kaleriya and Nadya headed for the open water of the Black Sea to avoid being shot at from the ground. As they flew back toward their own airfield, Nadya could see a fire blazing back on the land far below.
They landed safely, but their comrades who came to meet them on the ground were anxious. They’d all been able to see a Po-2 come down from the sky in flames, bright against the clouds.
“Who came back?” the ground crew called out as the Po-2 taxied in.
Both young women yelled the pilot’s last name together: “Rylskaya!”
The Po-2 that Kaleriya and Nadya had seen flying above them hadn’t come back. It turned out that the blaze Nadya Studilina had spotted as they’d flown away from their target was the burning wreck of the other Po-2.
Nadya Popova had seen it too. In fact, she’d seen the plane as it got caught in the searchlights and was hit.
It was the plane flown by Polina Prokofyeva and navigated by Zhenya Rudneva, the astronomy student who’d told so many stories and recited poetry to her adored and adoring friends, who’d written such enthusiastic letters home about flying.
This is silly, a complete paradox: after all, the war is going on, there is so much horror and spilled blood all around, yet I am convinced that for me this is the best time of my life.
“I saw their aircraft burning, and the flares they carried began exploding,” said Nadya Popova. “The burning plane crashed while the searchlights continued to hold it in their lights.”
Zhenya and Polina were both killed in the inferno. It had been Zhenya’s 645th c
ombat mission.
Irina Rakobolskaya, in her role as chief of staff, had been on the airfield as she always was, checking each of her aircrews as they took off and landed. She had watched in helpless anguish while the flaming plane slowly glided to earth, knowing that her friend Zhenya was burning to death in the air.
“Grief paralyzed me,” Irina said. “I was blind and deaf. I could hardly pull myself together to keep on handling the combat of the regiment on the ground.”
Zhenya Rudneva, astronomy student and poet and storyteller, was awarded the Gold Star of the Hero of the Soviet Union in December 1944. Many years later, in 1976, an asteroid was named “Rudneva” in her memory. Larisa Rozanova took her place as the chief navigator for the 46th Guards.
CHIEF NAVIGATOR ZHENYA RUDNEVA OF THE 46TH GUARDS
It’s amazing how you can fear for your life, work until you are fainting with exhaustion, and still find joy in simple things: flowers by your bed, a song on your birthday, a watermelon decorated with a significant number. Zhenya Rudneva was so good at this. And she’d shared that joy widely with her comrades.
But they all had that ability to some extent. Flying over the Black Sea at night, even on her way to a combat mission, Serafima Amosova was able to take an astonishing moment to appreciate the majesty of the darkened landscape:
“Below, quite near, the white crests of the waves flashed. After circling once above the airfield and gaining the necessary altitude, we headed in the assigned direction. We looked around. Everything was amazingly beautiful: to the right, the white ‘battlements’ of the mountains; beyond them the dark silhouette of the Caucasus Range, with its snow-covered peaks, made pinkish by the disappearing sun; below, the sparkling sea, black and with a bluish tint; and above, the dark sky, sprinkled with many stars.”
33
Crossing the Line
A Thousand Sisters Page 20