by Anne Noggle
When Yevgeniya Rudneva, the navigator of the squadron, was killed, I was again ordered to be a navigator. And to the very last day of the war, I lingered as a navigator. All in all I made 816 combat missions; as a pilot, more than Soo. No pilot wants to be a navigator! We all wanted to help the motherland; we were all afraid and knew it was dangerous, but still we did not want to show our weakness. We were mere girls; there were no men at all in our regiment, and we got along very well without them. Each combat mission we were face to face with death.
We flew our missions with the pilot in the front cockpit and the navigator in the rear one. We never flew in formation; we took off at intervals to specific targets such as railroad stations or German field headquarters-places the Germans were trying to protect. They placed antiaircraft guns and powerful searchlights around these places to safeguard them. We always flew at night because our small biplanes were very slow and vulnerable. They were made of wood and fabric, and if they were hit by tracer bullets or antiaircraft guns, it would set them on fire. We had no parachutes, and if your plane caught on fire you usually couldn't survive.
On one mission I was the fourth to take off. By that time I was thought to be an experienced pilot, and I flew with a young, new navigator that night. She was formerly a gunner but retrained to be a navigator, and this was one of her first missions. Our target was a fifteen-minute flight from the airdrome.
Halfway to the target I could see four searchlights turn on. It didn't impress me greatly because I was used to them turning on every night. I explained to the navigator what it could mean. I could also see a white spot caught by the searchlights, but in a few seconds that white spot turned into red. I knew quite well what that meant: an aircraft was burning. I calculated it was the first plane that took off from our airdrome. The strangest thing was that no antiaircraft shells were exploding in the air; the antiaircraft guns were silent, but still it was set on fire. I felt so miserable seeing our aircraft falling down, uncontrollable and in flames. The burning plane had hardly touched the ground when the four searchlights were switched on again and caught the second of our aircraft. Usually as we approached the target there was a sea of fire from the antiaircraft guns, and now for the second time the guns were silent. Do you know how I felt at that moment? A bitter tickling in my throat, incapable of breathing. Goosebumps were jumping along my back, and I could hardly feel my feet-they were as if made of cotton-wool. We saw the second plane set on fire too, and I saw in the sky the smoke trail of a fighter. I realized that a German fighter had shot down our two aircraft.
We were approaching the front line, and I realized that in a few minutes I too would he a target for the fighter. I also knew our plane was vulnerable to fighters and that we could hardly escape death. My legs wooden, my teeth clenched. Our velocity was ioo kilometers per hour and his was Soo. I was so frightened I couldn't even think of escape. We were across the front line when we saw the third of our aircraft shot down, and I was the fourth. I was to be over the target in two minutes.
Then, as you know, in most tragic and desperate situations your brain begins calculating, and I found my way out quickly. I decided to approach the target from a very low altitude. I throttled hack so the engine was idling and we were gliding. We dove down, and I flew over the target at an altitude of Soo meters. While we were gliding over the target I could see the third plane on fire, turning over and over in the air, somersaulting down, the flares exploding one after another in the cockpits. We realized that our friends were dying.
My navigator whispered to me, as though the Germans could hear us, that we were now over the target and were ready to drop our bombs. Normally we would drop the bombs, make a turn while we were still over the target, and pick up a heading to fly home. I decided we should fly on in order to shorten our exposure over the searchlights and to the German fighter. We should then turn back and fly straight over the target, drop our bombs, and be gone. So I told my navigator not to drop the bombs until we were back over the target.
We had been told never to drop our bombs at a lower altitude than 400 meters so that we would not be caught in the explosion. We continued to glide and make our turn, and our altitude was lower than 300 meters. I couldn't even think about the altitude at that moment. The only idea that was burning in my mind was to drop the bombs and quickly head for home-not to be shot down by the fighter. When we dropped them our plane was so shaken by the aerodynamic blow from the bombs exploding that I thought we would split into pieces. Instantly the searchlights shot into the air trying to catch us, but I glided noiselessly until the altitude decreased to ioo meters. Only then did I start the engine, when we were away from the target. The engine roared as if warning us that we could be caught by the searchlights. I turned my head back, and what I saw shook me with grief. Another of our aircraft was burning and falling, the fifth over the target and the fourth to be shot down.
From all aspects it was a terrible night. The Germans had never before used the combination of antiaircraft guns, searchlights, and fighters to attack us, and our crews were not prepared to face these tactics. Even now I cannot understand why the pilot of the fifth plane didn't realize what I was doing and follow me. I reflected a lot on that and came to the conclusion that to complete her duty was foremost in her mind. She knew she was destined to die, but she didn't change her course and flew on to the target to be killed.
When the extent of the tragedy was realized, all further flights were canceled for the night. That night we lost eight girls in ten minutes. For our whole wartime experience it was our worst, most horrible, tragic night. For the next few nights the Soviet fighter regiments cleared the air for us, and only then could we renew our missions.
In the spring of 1943 a comic-tragic episode happened in my flying career. All the roads were so slushy that no trucks could get through to our airdrome. The airplanes couldn't fly because they couldn't take off. Our main airfield was usually situated forty kilometers from the front, our auxiliary field twenty kilometers from the front. Our routine was that when going on a mission, half of our planes would take off from the main airfield and the others from our auxiliary one.
This night, the twenty aircraft from our auxiliary airfield completed their mission and returned to the field. But because it was sleeting the roads were impassable, and the trucks couldn't get to the field to bring us fuel. So those of us at the auxiliary field were stuck there for three days. On the fourth day we received a message that cargo aircraft from Moscow with food supplies had landed 20o kilometers from us. At the auxiliary field we had been without food for four days. With this message, we received an order to fly to that location and bring the supplies to the regiment.
We gathered fuel from all the planes, enough for eight aircraft, and laid log flooring to help them take off. We wheeled the planes through the mud and slush to that flooring, almost carrying them in our hands. Finally we were ready to take off for that destination. We were to fly that mission without our navigators. It was going to be a difficult flight because it was a 40o-kilometer round trip to the cargo planes and back.
We flew to the cargo planes, loaded our planes with food supplies, and then flew to our regiment at a very low altitude of about 200 meters. Only at this low altitude in the daytime could we avoid being shot down by enemy fighters.
During that day I made three flights and covered 1,2oo kilometers. When we were at last supplied with fuel and ammunition after flying all day long, we were assigned a night combat mission. I didn't take into consideration that I had already become exhausted by the long daytime flights and that exhaustion had taken a toll on my eyesight, brain, thinking process, and nerves. The moment we took off I was almost snoozing away. By then nearly all the navigators could easily fly the aircraft, and my navigator suggested that she fly while I took a little nap on the way to the target. So I dozed off while the navigator flew.
I thought I had slept but one minute when my navigator shook me by my shoulder, pleading with me to wake up. We we
re over the target. When I opened my eyes, I seized the control stick and saw lights of enemy aircraft directly in front of me. I began maneuvering to escape them, throwing the aircraft back and forth, performing some incredible maneuvers, and then I lost spatial orientation. Our plane began falling out of control. My navigator shouted at me, "Larisa, wake up, what are you doing? There are no fighters; these are the searchlights!" She even fought with me to pull the control stick out of my hands because we had already fallen about i,ooo meters. I personally couldn't tell the earth from the sky. When I at last regained real consciousness, we were 6oo meters above the ground. Only then did I recognize the earth. It's a funny story to tell about that night, but at the time I felt only fear.
Each mission was a constant overstrain. We inhaled the gunpowder, choking and coughing, unable to breathe, from the antiaircraft gunfire bursting around us. It sometimes lasted fifteen minutes until we completely escaped the searchlights. When you leave behind the area of the target, the sea of antiaircraft fire, and the searchlights, the next instant you start shivering-your feet and knees start jumping-and you cannot talk at all because you are wheezing in your throat. This was a normal reaction after each flight. In a few minutes you recover.
When we flew five nights with maximum missions, we lost appetites and sleep in our reaction to the overstrain. We usually returned from the missions in early morning, had breakfast, and went to bed. But if we flew many missions at night we couldn't fall asleep in the morning. And even if we couldn't sleep we still had to fly again that next night, and pilots sometimes fell asleep during a mission. We even had a kind of agreement between the pilot and the navigator that one of us would sleep going to the target and the other returning to the airfield. I have a feeling that there were times when both the pilot and navigator dozed off for a minute or so because of exhaustion. Sometimes I even forgot whether I was flying toward the target or back from the target. At those times we had to peer under the wings to see if the bombs were attached in order to know whether we were going or returning! Our doctor gave us pills nicknamed Coca-Cola to keep us awake, and sometimes we took so many of them that we couldn't fall asleep at all when we lay down to sleep.
I was twice shot down. The first time was when our regiment was flying from one airfield to another. I was flying as a navigator with Serafima Amosova as pilot, and we were first to take off to find a location for a new airdrome. Then we would signal the other aircraft to land. This day we were attacked by a German Messerschmitt. He fired at us and made a few holes in the fuselage and wings. We made a forced landing, and he attacked us two more times on the ground. We jumped out of the cockpits and ran in different directions to hide from the bullets. After he attacked us three times he flew away. Although the plane had a number of holes in it, we took off and found a new airdrome for our regiment.
Another time, on a night mission over the town of Kerch, I was flying as pilot. Our plane was hit by an antiaircraft shell that stuck into the engine, and the engine quit. When we were hit, our altitude was i,6oo meters. But because the terrain was hilly, I had to think hard about a place to land. We didn't know our exact location, whether we were over Soviet or German territory. My navigator shot signaling rockets into the air, and I could see clearly both the compass showing that we were heading toward German-held territory and the altimeter showing that we were very close to the ground, about 5 meters high. We were not on the coast but in the mountains! I had only a few seconds to turn back from that heading and to level the aircraft. I knocked down two telegraph posts with the wing, landed, and rolled into a deep trench. We were 400 meters from the German front line.
But when we landed we didn't know if we were in Soviet or German territory, so we climbed out of our cockpits and decided we would reconnoiter. If we heard Russian voices we would go on to headquarters and report, and if we heard German voices we would use our pistols and simultaneously shoot and kill each other in order not to be captured by the Germans. We knew that the Germans tortured Soviet women pilots brutally, and our greatest fear was to be captured by them. We were more afraid to be imprisoned than to die. We lay on the ground and waited to hear some signs of life. After a while we heard voices speaking in Russian saying, "Where are you?"
Our regiment lost thirty girls, both pilots and navigators, during the war. On the ground we lost three: one from cancer, one from a bombing, and the third from diphtheria. In quantity, we lost almost the whole flying personnel of the regiment and kept up our strength with replacements. These replacements came in part from male regiments where there happened to be one woman pilot who would be transferred to our regiment.
Initially our regiment was to consist of two squadrons, but when we were awarded the title of "Guards" regiment, a great honor, we were allowed a third squadron. We requested permission to form a fourth squadron, which was to be a training squadron, because we trained all our own personnel. We were allowed to do this, and in fact this squadron also flew some combat missions. The commander of the air army personally forbade our commander, Bershanskaya, from flying combat missions, but I think she flew about forty missions. In our regiment there were twenty-three Heroes of the Soviet Union, of which five were honored posthumously. Eleven received that title at the front and the remainder in 1946.
After the war, when I was traveling on the train with my husband, we stopped at a very small station, and some officers brought a newspaper onto the train. In it was a decree of the Soviet government that said I had been awarded the Hero of the Soviet Union medal, the Gold Star. Where it was really celebrated was on that train with my husband when he was going on a business trip to Moscow. We were supposed to be given an apartment and ten square meters of extra living area. These privileges were introduced at the fiftieth anniversary of Soviet power. Those who first were awarded the Gold Star during the war were given 25,000 rubles. Once a year we can go to a sanitorium free of charge. Upon retirement honorees are given a personal pension. But the people in the Soviet Union have hated all the special privileges given to high-ranking Soviet officials, and so in 1992 all these privileges will he canceled for everybody.
Senior Lieutenant Zoya Parfyonova, pilot, deputy commander of the squadron
Hero of the Soviet Union
I was horn in 1920 in the Chuvash region of the Russian Republic, and I graduated from secondary school, finishing only seven grades. Then I was trained to be a nurse. While I was working as a nurse I decided that I would fly, so I worked at a glider school as a nurse and trained to fly at the same time; first on a glider and then on a powered aircraft, the U-2 biplane. Both flew off the same airdrome. I graduated from that school with excellent grades, and they wanted me to instruct there, so I remained as a flight instructor and trained one group of pilots.
When the war broke out, our school became a military pilot training school, and I was drafted into the army with the rank of sergeant. All the male instructors were sent to the front, and we women wanted to go too, but we were told that we must stay there and teach cadets to fly. But when Marina Raskova appealed to the women pilots to join her regiment, the chief of our school could not restrain me from doing that. I was then transferred to the women's regiment to train for combat.
Because we had only flown in the daytime, they trained us to fly at night. Then I was assigned to the 588th Air Regiment, which later became the 46th Guards Bomber Regiment. When we arrived at the front, the first night mission was flown by our commanders, so we were all sitting on the airfield waiting for them to return. When they returned, we discovered that our own squadron commander had not come back but was killed that very first night. She was our commander and friend, and we could not help but cry. The next night the whole regiment was assigned a combat mission.
I don't want to hide anything; I want to say we experienced many feelings and emotions-fear, joy, love, sorrow-as we faced very hard experiences. Sometimes when we successfully completed a mission we even sang and danced there at the airfield because life is life, and we were y
oung.
In 1945 we were on our last combat mission, one of eleven crews, and it took place in eastern Prussia. It was February; the weather was severe and the roads impassable, and it was impossible to bring needed armament up to our troops. Our assignment was to drop cargo to our infantry and artillery, and our regiment and a male regiment were assigned the same mission.
It was a nightmare to make that mission. I had to go without my navigator because the cockpit was overloaded with armament. The plane was very heavily loaded, really overloaded, with cargo underneath where we usually carried bombs. It was also a daylight mission. None of the other aircraft completed that mission because the weather conditions were severe with the visibility zero-I was the only one. I made the flight at a very low altitude, following the railroad tracks. It was snowing very hard.
We had been told that when we arrived at the appointed place we should circle a few times until our troops signaled to us, and then we could land. I was able to land there because my plane was equipped with skis rather than wheels. Well, I made several circles at that place, and no one appeared to signal me; no one was there. So I flew on for four or five minutes and saw a crowd of people and a tank. I was flying so low that I was afraid the wing would touch the ground when I banked to turn. Suddenly I could see the German markings on the tank, and they had elevated the gun and started shooting at me. German infantrymen began firing at me, the airplane was hit all over like a sieve, and I was wounded in the leg. I made a 18o-degree turn and flew away from them. The aircraft was shaking and difficult to fly because of the damage to it. In three minutes I saw our Soviet troops on the ground waving to me, and I landed to deliver the cargo. They told me they had seen me in the air and had shot flares to signal me, but I didn't see them because of the poor visibility. They were grateful for the supplies and also for the information I gave them about the disposition of the enemy.