by Anne Noggle
When I first came to the regiment, I was not pleased. I wasn't used to working with girls, for I had always worked with men. The girls seemed noisy, and some of them were naughty. The ground personnel, I mean the mechanics, were from a very common strata of society: from factories, from working families. The pilots and navigators and technical staff all came from universities and colleges, and they were not homogeneous. It irritated me in the first period of my service, but later on, after I was in closer contact with the girls, we all became like sisters. Up to the present day we call all members of our regiment sisters.
Every day held anxiety and concern, for we lost one-third of the regiment in a very short period, and among them were my closest friends. Each night was a kind of torture. We prepared the aircraft for combat missions, and at times they flew ten or more missions in a night. That was twenty or thirty aircraft to be refueled and rearmed ten times a night. Each night I moved to the auxiliary field in one of the regimental vehicles, where I oversaw the preparation of the aircraft during the night. We never had enough sleep; not for the whole war did we have sufficient sleep. The mechanics prepared the aircraft for combat all during the night, and they repaired and tested them in the daytime. We averaged two hours of sleep at the end of the night's bombing missions. It would have been impossible to carry out that schedule if we had not had some breaks. When the weather was very had the planes didn't fly, and on a few occasions we had a holiday.
I had married while I was at the military academy. My husband was drafted into the army in the very first days of the war, and then he was killed in action. I had no time for love during the war.
At one point we were stationed in the Caucasus in an area that was very close to a swamp. There were lots of mosquitoes, and I was bitten so severely that I was ill, and my body was covered with red spots. The regimental doctor decided to take me to Rostov on the Don for examination and consultation with another doctor. While we were on our way to that military hospital, we were bombed and fired upon. When we came to the hospital, there was another very severe bombing. The Germans were bombing the hospital, and people were being wounded and killed. They were carrying the wounded out of what had been the hospital, but it was completely destroyed; I was so shattered by what I was witnessing that I broke down completely. It was a carnage! The doctors were totally engaged in caring for the dying and wounded, and our doctor decided that we should return at once to our regiment.
On our journey hack, I looked down at my body and saw the disease had vanished-all the red spots had disappeared completely! It must have been the trauma of the bombing, but I left the regiment absolutely sick and returned absolutely healthy. Out of that terrible tragedy came a small comedy.
Another time we were stationed in Belorussia, and the area was in a state of flux. First our troops were encircled, then they were not. The Germans and our troops were all mixed in close proximity, and an area would be first under our control, then under German troops. We were sleeping in tents at the airfield, and just before dawn, we saw a group of people moving toward us. We didn't know what to do. Were they the enemy or Soviet troops? We got ready to fire at them, and at that moment they displayed a white flag. It turned out that they were Soviet troops who had gotten lost in the woods. The white flag saved their lives and our lives: we would have fired at them. There were so many units encircled and milling around with the Germans that even the commanders had no clear idea of the situation.
In the Crimea we were advancing, and we moved into a Ukrainian settlement, a village; we were billeted in their houses. I was in a house where I was treated to a very good meal, and it was Easter time. The housewife cooked special cakes and eggs and other good things to eat. We were so excited and happy that we at last were going to have substantial meals and a good sleep. By then all I could think about and dream about was a full night's sleep. So at last I fell into bed and went to sleep. I dreamed that the aircraft in the regiment were being bombed by the fascists. Then the housewife shook me by the shoulder and said, "You must get up, your airfield is being bombed, your aircraft are burning!" Well, the dream coincided with the truth. I had a fortune-telling vision in my dream!
We all rushed to the airfield to save our planes. I threw on my clothes and shoes in the darkness and ran out of the house, and it wasn't until I was running toward the airfield that I realized I had on my high heels. I lost the heel of one shoe, and at that moment a German plane came down the road, following me with tracer bullets. He was flying at such low altitude that I could see his face. I threw myself flat on the ground, and he flew over me.
When I came to the airfield many of our planes were damaged, some burning and some destroyed. The Germans had gone. I jumped into the cockpit of one of the aircraft to check the damage, and the German planes returned and continued bombing. I dove out of the cockpit onto the ground and lay under the wing. There were no trenches in which to hide, the bombing was heavy, and all of us lay on the ground with no protection, waiting for it to stop. When they flew away two or three of the girls were wounded, and our planes sustained heavy damage.
Before that episode, the regiment was inspected by the commander of the front. He was not satisfied with us because he did not like the underwear and linen hung out on clotheslines, nor was he satisfied with the combat readiness of the regiment. The second time he came to inspect he was completely satisfied with our readiness, and he decided to reward the girls with suits, coats, skirts, and a pair of highheeled shoes. So they were ordered and given to all the girls in the regiment. And that is why I had high-heeled shoes at the front!
While we were stationed in the Crimea, we were flying from our air base to the auxiliary airfield when we were attacked by a German fighter. The Po-2 had four of us, the pilot, navigator, myself, and a mechanic, squeezed into the two cockpits. I could hear the zinging of the bullets passing by my head, but miraculously, none of us was hit. The plane was punctured all over with small holes, and the instrument panel was smashed. It was difficult for the pilot to control the plane, but she had to land because we had no parachutes. As we approached for the landing, the German pilot circled and came back to shoot us down. There was nothing to be done but try to get the plane on the ground. It happened that a formation of our fighters appeared, passing overhead, and the German turned back toward his own lines. That is what saved us.
After the war I remained in the military, and I retired at the age of fifty-five in the rank of lieutenant-colonel after thirty-two years.
Senior Lieutenant Yevgeniya Zhigulenko, pilot, commander of the formation
Hero of the Soviet Union
Yevgeniya Zhigulenko, 46th regiment. Photograph by Khaldei
I was born in the Kuban region. My relatives come from Norway, and my grandfather was the captain of a vessel. For some faults he was dismissed from the navy, and later on he immigrated to Russia and settled in the Kuban region. My original name, my maiden name, is Azarova. The name Zhigulenko I have now stuck to me quite accidently. If you are aware of the events that went on in Russia in the early postrevolutionary years, with the Civil War between the Reds and the Whites-Russians killing Russians-trying to prove by means of blood whose power was stronger, then you know that the massacre was nearly impossible to escape. My father did not want to he involved in the Civil War. He managed to get a passport that had belonged to a man, Zhigulenko by name. According to those papers Zhigulenko was a physically disabled man, not to be recruited to the army. Thus my father survived, and from then on the family had this name. It is traditional in this country for a woman to change her last name when she marries, so I knew I wouldn't have that name when I married. But in the end it has happened that I've been wearing that name all my life! I feel pity for my original name-I wish I could have it back. I feel so much that we all have our roots manifested in this way.
Since my childhood I have been a freedom-loving Cossack girl riding a horse along the Kuban steppes. My spirit has always been emancipated, unconquered, and proud. Nothing passes by me u
nnoticed-that is a part of my Cossack nature also. Suddenly, out of nowhere, a strong desire to fly was born in my flesh. In my teens, when at school, I joined a glider club. I was full of dreams and romanticism; another wild desire dazzling in my mind was that I wanted to be an actress. I had drama classes, and we staged several performances in my native town. I even had a pseudonym just as an actor does, and I named myself Lola Bredis.
In the course of my life this childish craziness came true, and I became a movie director. Many years after the war I went to film school in Moscow. I have made two feature films, and in the second I had a small part as an actress.
Back to my youth: when I finished secondary school I moved to Moscow and entered college, but I couldn't completely quit my secret dream of flying. I was spellbound by the mystery of flight. I thought of it as my integration with the universe. At night, I went to Tushino Airfield for night flying in the glider school; in the day, I attended college. I devoted my spare time to music classes at the Moscow Conservatory. You can see now how gigantic my perspective washow tempting was my life unfolding, how it swirled around me in its wild dance!
On June 22, 1941, I was returning to my college hostel room, full of joy and life, and I sensed something tense in the air. The war-the war has started, the girls told me. I had only a vague knowledge about war, from books, mass media, and propaganda. Now it was a reality to live with. I made up my mind to go to the front.
My path to the front was a comedy. My friend Nina and I had no profession when the war broke out, no skill applicable to the front. We devised a plan. We dug out a telephone number of a colonel in the airforce headquarters in Moscow, and we called him. We spoke to him mysteriously and never revealed our secret on the phone. We said we could tell him our secret only in private. We persistently dialed his office telephone number for a week. We drove him crazy for the whole week, so he surrendered. He signed for us a pass to his office in the airforce headquarters. We entered that huge, concrete building, and going down its long corridors we promised each other that we would never leave the office until they let us go to the front.
I opened the door of the colonel's office and announced, "Comrade Colonel, if you try to get rid of us we will sleep here, we will not leave, we will stay here forever!" He looked at us in horror; his mouth dropped open. We sensed he thought us two crazies. Then he sternly said to us, "What is your case?" We answered that until they let us go to the front, we would not leave. He burst out laughing. "You girls should have told me about it at once! Marina Raskova is forming female flying regiments; she is to be here in a few minutes, and you may personally talk with her."
She arrived so alive and so miraculously beautiful-we were spellbound. We stood breathless, so great was our emotion. She smiled at us; she was well aware of her enigmatic beauty. We murmured affirmatively when she asked if we wanted to join the regiments. She gave us passes to the Zhukovsky Academy, where the regiments were being assembled. Thus my girlfriend and I joined the regiment.
At the training field in Engels, I was assigned as a navigator. Those assigned as pilots had many more hours in the air than I. All of us who were navigators looked upon ourselves as a very elite group because our backgrounds were of colleges and universities. We were well-read, intellectually minded, had good manners, and never heard or said dirty words.
I was assigned to the 588th Air Regiment, and after training we were sent to the front. I flew as navigator with pilot Polina Makogon, who was only twenty-five; but I, being nineteen, considered her to be quite old. Our flights together made me believe everyone was born under her own star, lucky or tragic; but we are all destined to our own fate, a fate impossible to change no matter what the circumstances. My flights as a navigator with Polina substantiated this observation. There were three episodes, the first being in the Caucasus, where our airfield was located in a vast, hilly land. The runway abruptly ended in a steep precipice, but ordinarily it was long enough for the aircraft to take off and land. We took off on a mission, and the wheels had just left the ground when the engine coughed and died. The plane returned to earth, and we were rushing toward the precipice. The Po-2 aircraft were without brakes, and by a miracle we stopped just ten steps from the abyss. We gasped with relief; it was my first experience when I sensed mortality in the air.
We were assigned to bomb a bridge that the Germans were constructing from the left bank of the Mozdok River. On the right bank were our troops. From above, at an altitude of 1,200 meters, it is difficult at night to discern what is below. The small bridge seemed a thin thread. To hit it a pilot had to concentrate all her energy and vision, and more than that, to know exactly her speed, altitude, and course for a full minute before the bomb was dropped. When the target became discernible and was under the wing of the aircraft, I cried to the pilot to hold to the left because we were drifting with the wind. Our bombs missed the target.
The antiaircraft guns were firing, and the searchlights lit up the sky around us. I was sweating and could feel a strip of sweat rolling down my back. We turned from the target, giving way to following aircraft. In the turn we fell into a stall and were nearing a crash, but she managed to recover. Later on, when I myself piloted the aircraft, I understood why she lost control over the target. There is a superhuman psychic overstrain when you are blinded by the searchlights and deafened by the explosions of antiaircraft shells and fire all around you. Your concentration over the target is so intense that it results in a complete loss of your whereabouts-a disorientation. You cannot tell the sky from the ground. Many of our crews crashed in that way.
Another proof in support of my theory of destiny: our aircraft was hit by enemy fire in the Caucasian foothills, and we were descending into a forced landing. In the pitch blackness I could discern a hill on the right side and called out to the pilot to stay to the left, otherwise we would crash into the hill. I was not sure she had heard me, so I decided to flare the area to see the landscape, although for us to use a flare in that way was strictly forbidden-the enemy could spot us. But our lives were at stake, so I violated the order; I had a strong urge to live. In the light of the flare Polina could see the hill; she made a quick turn to the left, and we escaped the crash.
Soon after that episode I was made a pilot, and a younger and less skilled navigator was assigned to fly with Polina. They were flying back from a mission and collided with another aircraft in the air. Both crews crashed and perished. With me, my pilot escaped death three times; with another navigator, she perished. I don't associate her death with any unskillfulness of the navigator. Now that I am so closely studying occult sciences and astrology, I think my pilot was destined to die so young. But I was her silver cord-the thread that held her to survive. As soon as that invisible connection was torn off between us, she perished.
In the regiment we had a shortage of pilots, and so navigators were retrained to become pilots and ground personnel to become navigators. My advantage was that I already knew how to fly, so I became a pilot. By the end of the war I had a greater number of combat hours than most of the air crews. I managed to outstrip them because I have very long legs! There was an order in the regiment that the first pilot to get into the cockpit and start the engine was to be the first to take off; I was always the first because I ran faster!
We all volunteered to go to the front and strove to fulfill the most combat missions, even beyond our physical capacity. We longed to see the end of that horrible war, to liberate our fair motherland. We, young girls of the flying regiments, did our best to contribute to the defeat of the enemy and victory for our suffering people.
But life remains life, and we, as military pilots, still remained young girls. We dreamed of our grooms, marriages, children, and a future happy, peaceful life. We thought to meet our future mates at the front. But our 46th regiment was unique, for it was purely female. There wasn't even a shabby male mechanic to rest a glance on. Nevertheless, after a night of combat we never forgot to curl our hair. Some girls thought it unpatriotic
to look attractive. I argued that we should. I said, "Imagine that I have a forced landing at a male fighter airdrome. Soldiers are rushing to my aircraft because they know that the crew is female. I, absolutely dashing, slide out of the cockpit and take off my helmet, and my golden, curly hair streams down my shoulders. Everyone is awed by my dazzling beauty. They all desperately fall in love with me."
The Soviet army began advancing into the Crimean Peninsula. Our mission was to keep enemy bombers from taking off from their airfield by bombing the airstrip every few minutes. My assignment was to map a course for the regiment and to drop firebombs, which produced a series of small fires indicating the location of their airdrome for the other crews to follow. In order not to lose our orientation, we had to flare the area. The instant the flare lit the area, we were over their cement landing strip. My navigator then suggested that we fly on five kilometers to the fascist weapon storage area and bomb it.
We dropped bombs and set the building on fire. For the next several seconds the silence was frightening, because I knew very well the enemy would react and smash us to pieces. I was all nerves and fear, and my teeth clenched. Then the guns all fired along with search lights. I smelled gas in the cockpit-the fuel line was hit! When I saw the storage building flaming above me and the moon below me, I knew we had entered a stall. I recovered instinctively. The plane was shaking, losing flying speed and altitude. I headed toward the waters of the strait, and I remembered that there was an auxiliary field somewhere in the hills.
I called to my navigator to give me directions, but there was no reaction. I turned in my seat and to my horror found no navigator. I began sweating at the thought that I had lost my navigator while we were stalling upside down. I could not stand that thought-I had no right to come back to the regiment without her. The altitude of the aircraft was dropping down and down; then the altimeter showed no height at all.