by Anne Noggle
When we completed the mission and returned to our airdrome, the commander was very curious about what we were doing all this time. The overcast was below our limits, and all the other planes had turned back. The reason we were not to fly at lower altitudes than those specified was that dropping the bombs from any lower altitude would endanger our plane, because the explosion would blow upward and hit us. Upon inspection, our plane had been hit. There were two large holes that proved to our commander that we had really completed our mission and at a lower altitude than allowed.
We were in Germany in May, 1945, and everybody knew that the end of the war was near, and no one wanted to die. We were assigned to a mission within the range of loo kilometers. Normally our missions were not to be more than 5o kilometers, but our commanders were impatient to finish the war as soon as possible. On this mission our engine overheated, and two of our engine cylinders lost their heads. According to regulations, we were supposed to find an unpopulated place to just drop our bombs and return to our airdrome. The visibility was zero, we could see nothing on the ground because of the fog, and we couldn't see where to drop the bombs. It could be on our own troops, on civilians, or on anyone. So we decided to land with the bombs still attached. We did not want to die, to risk our lives, but we had to do it even though we couldn't see the landmarks at the airdrome, only the red spots of the lights. The airdrome was near an old church, and it was the church spire that gave us our orientation. When we landed, we were not near the runway but on the edge of the forest. We stopped just one meter from the start of the forest. Out of joy that we were safe and alive, we jumped out of the cockpit and started an Indian dance.
There were other narrow escapes. Once when we were fulfilling a mission, a shell hit below my cockpit, and it stopped inside the parachute I was sitting on! God saved me. Another time a shell came through my high boot, but it did not even hit my foot or leg.
We were assigned a combat mission on May 8, one day before the victory. Everything was ready, the bombs loaded and the crews on their way to the aircraft, when suddenly we saw the mechanics run up to our aircraft and do something. What they were doing was deactivating the bombs. The Germans had surrendered; the war was over. I burst out crying. Everybody cried that day.
After the war I returned to Moscow University and received my degree in history and simultaneously graduated from the Academy of Military Interpreters. I worked as an interpreter and didn't like it. I studied economics and received a Ph.D. in economics. Then I was sent to Cuba to study the Cuban economy. I was there one year right after their revolution. The Cubans were very polite and nice to me. They would ask if I was a labor hero or a war hero, and when I said a war hero, they were fascinated.
Senior Lieutenant Serafima Amosova-Taranenko, pilot, deputy commander of the regiment in flying
Serafima Amosova-Taranenko, 46th regiment
I was born in Siberia. An airplane once made a forced landing at our village, in a very distant rural area far from any city, and that was the first airplane I had ever seen. We were so excited, we ran around it, touching it; we were village children and didn't know anything about civilization. I couldn't even dream of becoming a pilot. After I finished seven grades in school I was sent to the city to study technical courses, and I was made a leader of small children. I was leading them down a street, teaching them about street signs, when I saw a model of an airplane on a sign hanging on a building. I went closer and saw that it was a flying club. Young volunteers could train in aviation before the war.
I entered the flying school at age eighteen, and I flew well and got excellent marks in glider school. Because I was an excellent pilot, I was allowed to open the air show there at our airdrome. We had no catapult, but the soldiers, who had been invited to stretch the elasticized rubber, stretched it very tight, and the glider took off much sooner than I expected. The plane pulled up into a vertical position and stalled over onto its back; then entered into a spin so the controls didn't respond, and it dove into the ground. People ran to get out of the way. I was injured and was taken to the hospital. At the hospital the medical staff ridiculed me and said I shouldn't have stuck my nose into male business anyway. Lying in bed, I secretly cried all night. I was very sorry for myself and my glider. This was in June, 1933.
In August, the government appealed to the young people to join a civil aviation school. I was then working as a Young Communist League leader in the regional Komsomol Committee, and I was appointed chief of the board selecting students for civil aviation school. I secretly put my name on the list to he admitted to the program. When the committee saw my name they refused to let me go, because they wanted me to perform Komsomol activities there. So I went to a higher level of the party, and they let me do it. I was the only woman in the class, and there were ten men. I was the only woman in the whole school! The boys there respected me, they worshiped me, and even loved me. They didn't even dare to touch me. I studied there for three years with excellent marks, and they said I could choose where I worked. I chose the western Siberian area so I could fly over my father's house; I wanted him to see me flying the plane. I went home when I graduated, and to my grief I learned my father had died in May. It was August, and no one had told me of his death!
In August, 1936, I began flying on the longest route in civil aviation, from Irkutsk, Siberia, to Moscow. I flew the aircraft that carried mail, a Pe-5. Then I flew as an airline pilot in a single-engine aircraft that carried nine passengers and a crew of two. In 1941, before the war, when I had been flying for five years as a civil pilot, I was drafted into a pilot training school to teach young men to fly. We trained boys whose knowledge was very limited and who had not even seen a steam engine before! It was during graduation exercises that we heard that war had broken out. Before the war, people would say the smell of powder was in the air, for war had already started in Europe. When the war began, I decided to join the army voluntarily. I was a pilot, second class. The army told me that no women were to fly in combat. In November, 1941, I received a cable saying that I should he released from my duties and report to the regiments being formed by Marina Raskova.
At the training base in Engels, I was taught to bomb targets in the Po-2 aircraft. I was appointed squadron commander in the 588th Air Regiment of night bombers. We trained for six months, eighteen hours a day. We were sent to the front in the Donetsk region in the Ukraine. Our objectives were to bomb front-line German depots, headquarters, ammunition supplies, troops, and other targets. We flew at night at a maximum altitude of 1,2oo meters or, in cloudy weather, at 6oo meters minimum. The planes were fabric and plywood, and that, coupled with their slow speed, made them dangerously easy targets-a bullet could explode them.
When we arrived at the front, the first combat mission was made by the regimental commander and the squadron commanders and their navigators in crews of two. When we took off there were coal deposits on fire, and coal burns constantly for years. On the way to the target, no one fired at us. I recognized the landscape, and we had no trouble. We flew back to the reference point, a torch that was illuminated for us, and decided to make a second pass over the target. When we flew over the target the second time, still no one fired at us. We decided to release our bombs over the forest where the German troops were concentrated, and when the bombs exploded, searchlights rocketed into the air, and antiaircraft guns began firing at us. Going back, we had difficulty finding the airdrome because the area was covered with smoke, and there were only three small sources of light at the airfield. When we landed, our fellow pilots began hugging and kissing us. We waited for the third crew to return, but it had been shot down over the target-it was the commander of the second squadron. We didn't give way to our grief, but we painted on the fuselage of our planes: Revenge to the Enemy for the Death of our Friends.
We were retreating to the east with furious battles. In the northern Caucasus we bombed ferries crossing the Don River, and afterward we had to land on another airdrome in the mountains because
the Germans were rapidly approaching. It was difficult to land in the mountains at night because our airfield was near sea level, and we had to descend in circles. I flew 555 combat missions.
When I became the deputy commander of the regiment in flying, my main mission was to find airfields that we could use. The front was fluid, and we were constantly moving from one airfield to another. Normally, we used two fields for our regiment: one, the home airdrome; and the other, an auxiliary field about fifteen kilometers closer to the front lines. We only landed there to rearm and refuel during the night and then returned to our home airdrome before daylight. The Germans couldn't find these bases close to the front lines, because we left them before daylight when their reconnaissance planes came over our lines.
My other mission was to train new pilots. No reinforcements came from the rear, and we had to retrain there at the front: navigators as pilots, and mechanics as navigators. I ran a flying school, so to speak. We lost thirty pilots and navigators in our regiment during the war.
One night, as our aircraft passed over the target, the searchlights came on, the antiaircraft guns were firing, and then a green rocket was fired from the ground. The antiaircraft guns stopped, and a German fighter plane came and shot down four of our aircraft as each one came over the target. Our planes were burning like candles. We all witnessed this scene. When we landed and reported that we were being attacked by German fighters, they would not let us fly again that night. We lived in a school building with folding wooden beds. You can imagine our feelings when we returned to our quarters and saw eight beds folded, and we knew they were the beds of our friends who perished a few hours ago. It was impossible not to cry. It was a great loss and pain but none of us surrendered, and we were full of anger and decided to pay the enemy back for the loss of our friends.
On one airfield where we were stationed there were two regiments, one female and one male. We had the same missions, the same aircraft, and the same targets, so we worked together. The female regiment performed better and made more combat flights each night than the male regiment. The male pilots before a flight started smoking and talking, but the women even had supper in the cockpit of their aircraft. Once one of the German prisoners said, "When the women started bombing our trenches we (Germans) had a number of radio nets, and the radio stations on this line warned all their troops, Attention, attention, the ladies are in the air, stay at your shelter."'
Nobody knows the exact date when they started calling us night witches. We were fighting in the Caucasus near the city of Mozdok; on one side of this city were Soviet troops and on the other, German. We were bombing the German positions nearly every night, and none of us was ever shot down, so the Germans began saying these are night witches, because it seemed impossible to kill us or shoot us down.
Once when I was looking for an auxiliary airstrip for a night landing, I couldn't know from the air that there were a lot of mines on this field. I landed, and an officer, calling to me and waving his hands, approached my aircraft and said, "Can't you see this field is mined!" Then I saw there were mines, but fortunately I landed between the rows of them. When I chose a field, it had to be convenient for landing and taking off at night. It also needed some space for about two hundred ground personnel and the maintenance battalion with its fuel, bombs, and ammunition. I had to take care that there was camouflage at night and to foresee all those things. And you are landing on this field with fear, but it is your duty.
The women in the regiment were very friendly and caring with each other, and it helped us to stand our situation. When I would see that one crew was caught by artillery fire and spotlights and I was flying behind them, I would start bombing these projectors and positions and help them to escape death. So friendship, mutual support, and love of our motherland helped us to endure and to await the victory. It is a surprise that during the war none of us had ever asked for a rest at the hospital for some illness. They paid attention to the women's situation in our regiment, and the girls had the right not to fly. But the women didn't report to the regimental doctor or tell anybody about their problems-they kept on flying. After the war we had a lot of headaches, could not relax, and had very hard problems with our sleeping, because for nearly three years we turned over the day and night. During daytime we could sleep for only about four hours, and that is not enough. Then, with training and briefing, there were a lot of sleepless nights. For the first year after the war everyone had problems with sleeping, and I know there were no sleeping pills. I couldn't sleep for at least three months.
I could go on talking about it because we had been fighting for one thousand nights-one thousand nights in combat. Every day the girls became more courageous. To fly a combat mission is not a trip under the moon. Every attack, every bombing is a dance with death. In spite of this, every girl knew the danger, and none ever refused to fly her mission or used a pretext to avoid participating in the bombing. Our feelings were that we were doing a simple job, just a job to save our country, to liberate it from the enemy. I don't know what was in the hearts of these girls when they were climbing into and sitting in the cockpit before their flight. I don't know, but you could not read on their faces any fear or feeling of danger, and they performed their duty with an open heart and very honestly and bravely.
After the war, I continued to fly for two years; then, because of the condition of my health, I retired. In 1947 I married a military man and had to change my domicile from Rostov to the Ashkhabad town area. There was an earthquake in Ashkhabad in 1948 when Stalin was in power, and he ordered us not to tell anybody. Even in our own country nobody knew the situation! They announced there was an earthquake and there were no victims, as usual. In the U.S., Canada, and Mexico there would be lots of victims, lots of damage; and in this country there was no information, no damage, no victims at all. So no help was sent.
After the war our country was destroyed, and we didn't have any help from anyone. Ashkhabad was completely destroyed. Only the mosques, the building of the party organization, and some other buildings built before the war survived the earthquake. I saw Kerch city in the Crimea when the city was destroyed during the war, but the picture in Ashkhabad was completely the same. It was destroyed. My daughter was born in August, and she died in this earthquake. It took place late at night. There are a lot of mosquitoes in that area, and when they bite you they leave scars and wounds on your body. So I decided to put her near the wall, and during the earthquake the building crashed completely.
Forty-five years have passed since the war, and the women that took part in it are still friends. We are very happy when we come together, and we get together often to celebrate some occasion. We help each other financially and in morale, and we write a lot of letters to each other. We send postcards to each other on VE Day with poems, pictures, or drawings.
NOTE: Serafima Amosova-Taranenko died in 1992.
Captain Klavdiya Ilushina, engineer of the regiment
I was born in 1916 in Moscow in the family of a worker. I finished secondary school in Moscow and entered a technical college, studying engineering and electronics. After my third year I was sent to Gorky to help build an automobile manufacturing plant. This was my practical training, to work in actual construction. This period just before the war was one of developing heavy industry in our country, and there was much construction of industrial plants.
After graduation I was sent to the region of Noginsk to work in an electrical station. I realized that I lacked knowledge, so I wanted to learn more in my field and decided to go on with my studies. I submitted my documents to the aviation department of a military engineering academy. I chose that particular department, because since my childhood I had been dreaming of connecting my life with aviation. The competition was severe. There were forty-seven men and women who submitted their documents to study there, and only three were to be admitted to the academy. And I was one of them!
These were the most magnificent, most wonderful years of my youth. I lived the ve
ry process of acquiring knowledge; it brought me mental satisfaction. The staff of the department were very friendly to me because there were only two women in the department. Women then, as women today, had absolute equal opportunity with men. The faculty found me to he one of the brightest cadets, and I graduated with flying colors.
When I entered the academy my health was very poor, caused by the poverty of our country, because I had starved a lot in my youth. The academy treated this problem with sympathy and understanding and sent me to a sanatorium several times. They also gave me breaks at the third, fourth, and fifth courses just to give me a time to relax. I graduated from the academy in May, 1941, and I was twenty-five years old.
When the war broke out I was drafted to an aircraft plant. I was on the board that tested the aircraft and examined the planes and the equipment. But I didn't want to be in the rear; I wanted to be in active army service, and I requested that I be drafted to the front. I was given an option to either stay at the aviation plant or to go with the regiments then being formed by Marina Raskova. I chose the regiments.
I was immediately drafted as the engineer of the regiment. Then I found myself in the 46th Guards Bomber Regiment. I was in that regiment from its origin until the last day of the war. In August, 1946, when the regiment was released, I returned to Moscow with the rank of captain.
My duty during the war was as engineer of the equipment installed in the aircraft, and I was responsible for its maintenance and proper operation. The equipment in the Po-2 was quite simple, but I had a heavy work load because the regiment had many planes, and each night I had to see to each one.