by Anne Noggle
In spite of my wound and the damage to the plane I had to return to my unit, so I took off for my airdrome. I made it back, but I lost consciousness from loss of blood as I was approaching to land, and the airplane fell out of control the last three or four meters. They lifted me from the cockpit and took me to the hospital. That was my 701st combat mission and the first time I was wounded.
Earlier in the war I had an experience near the town of Kerch in the Crimea. While we were on a mission the Germans were firing at us, and a piece of shrapnel got into the engine. It quit, so we had to make an emergency landing in the darkness, but we landed successfully. The next morning we came to our plane and found we had stopped just before a very deep shell hole.
In the Crimean area the Germans started using a type of shell that when fired had red, green, and white tracers. It then split into many bunches of what we called flowers, numerous smaller projectiles. We feared to be caught by these innumerable "flowers."
I never worried about the condition of my aircraft when I took off for a mission. My mechanics thoroughly prepared my plane, and I never experienced any mechanical problems with it, the armament, or the engine. This Gold Star of Hero of the Soviet Union is not only my star; I share it with all my technical staff and the mechanics. It is because of them that I remained alive. My navigator also became a Hero of the Soviet Union. I flew a total of 715 combat missions during the war.
I have two daughters, one a doctor and one an engineer, and I have a granddaughter and two grandsons.
Senior Lieutenant Irina Sebrova, pilot, wing commander
Hero of the Soviet Union
Nataliya Meklin (left), Hero of the Soviet Union, and Irina Sebrova, Hero of the Soviet Union, 46th regiment
I was born in a very poor family. There were six children, and our parents couldn't give us a higher education. After five grades at school, I went to trade school to become a worker. I took technical courses and became a locksmith. I worked in a factory producing boxes for post offices for four years. Meanwhile I finished courses in nursing and in Voroshilov gunnery.
There were almost all women working at our factory. Some repair shops had men working also, and I was in that group. The director of the plant was a very active man. Once an idea struck him, and he said, "Let us present an aircraft to the sports club." So we got the money from the workers at the factory, and the aero club bought an aircraft with our money. After this there were four people from the factory allowed to enter the flying courses, and I decided, why not fly! At this point I made the decision to fly and live with aviation.
I kept on working and flying. I finished the program and assisted in teaching the young pilots, and soon I was sent to study at the Kherson Flying School to get a diploma as a pilot. At that time there were many women-young girls-studying at this training center, and we felt the war was just here before our doors. So I became a flight instructor, and I was sent to Moscow to teach flying. It became my profession in 193839. I had been working as a flight instructor for three and one-half years before the war, and I taught more than fifty pilots.
After the war started our flying school was evacuated to central Russia. There were rumors that Marina Raskova, our famous pilot, was to form female regiments, and three of us decided to join. When we came to the director of the flying club he said at first that we couldn't leave; there was a shortage of instructors. But finally he signed the papers, and we joined the female regiment.
Before we went into training at Engels, Raskova had a talk with each of us individually. She told us to think twice before going to the front because it was a very severe thing to do. None could be persuaded not to go, and we all joined the regiment. We left Moscow on a train late at night, and we each took with us a mattress and pillow. We started our night-bomber training in the U-2 plane. The Germans called it the corn aircraft because it had been used in agriculture spreading chemicals before the war.
In 1942 we flew to the front, and our first station was in the Ukraine. The first combat night came, and the first mission was flown by the commander of the regiment, Yevdokiya Bershanskaya, with the regimental navigator, squadron commanders, and their navigators. Unfortunately, on this first night we lost one crew. Only then did we really realize we were at the front. No jokes, no kidding, this was a very serious job; now we understood what a difficult job we were to do.
Yekaterina Ryabova was my navigator on our first mission. We approached the target and dropped our bombs, and there was no shooting or firing. I was very disappointed that no one was trying to shoot us, but these were only the flowers, as we say in Russia, and the berries will be later. The combat missions had started, and night after night we flew missions. Then we had to retreat; it was 1942, and the Germans approached the Stalingrad area. We had to change our positions almost every night.
Finally we were stationed in the Grozny area. We had a very warm reception when we arrived there in the northern Caucasus, and this was the first village where the villagers said, "Don't leave us alone with the enemy." When we were retreating down to the south of the country, people asked us please not to fly off and leave them alone. We were stationed in that village for half of a year.
In January, 1943, the Soviet army started its offensive in the Stalingrad area. During this period, for the first time in the war, we stepped on ground that had been liberated by the army. Until then we had been retreating. After some missions in the Ukraine area, we changed our airdromes to the banks of the Sea of Azov. We were bombing the so-called Blue Line on the Kerch Peninsula. It was difficult because there were strong German positions. Most of their military fortifications were concentrated on this line. In this area we lost our best pilot, Dusya Nosal. We were all competing with her as to who could make the most flights in one night. One night before our flights we were talking, and there was a command to take our seats in the cockpit. She was the first to take off; I was the second. I followed her, and we bombed the target. The air situation was very grave, because there were lots of German aircraft in the area, and we tried to maneuver to escape their fire. When we came back to our airdrome I asked if everything was all right with our regiment. They said, "No, Dusya Nosal was hit in the temple with a bullet, and the navigator landed the plane with her dead in the cockpit." Soon after, her navigator, Irina Kashirina, also perished in battle.
Yekaterina Ryabova (left) and Nadezhda Popova, 46th regiment
We flew to the Crimea, and the Soviet forces started their offensive. We were assigned to the 8th Air Army, but in the Crimea we were assigned to a male air division. When the situation changed for the better, the marshal of the airforce army said, "Give me back my female regiment," and the commander said, "No, I could give you two male regiments instead."
But finally we went back under Marshal Vershinin's command again, and we were given the Gold Star of Heroes of the Soviet Union. The ceremony took place in Germany in a very large officers' club. The first three women who became Heroes of the Soviet Union were awarded this title at the beginning of 1944, and then a second group of nine received the award, some of them living and some dead. The documents had been sent to the Kremlin, but it took a very long time for them to come through. The other pilots didn't envy the pilots who got the Gold Star. In this combat fraternity envy was impossible, because you knew that the next night they could be shot down. Even now many Heroes of the Soviet Union don't think too much about themselves and their deeds. I don't like to show my medal; I wear it on very rare occasions. It depends on your personality. I was in the second group to be awarded this medal. There was then a third group, and some others were awarded in 1946.
On one of my flights my plane was shot down. [ landed on a field with barbed wire in the Kerch area of the Crimea, in a small territory that had been liberated by this time. I landed there but nosed up. We got out of the cockpit, and a car approached us. They asked if we were wounded, and we said no. Then they said, "Leave the plane; dawn cracks, and you must go to the ferry to he delivered to the big la
nd." So we got to the ferry and came to the captain, and he let us go with him across the straits.
We were wearing our flying suits and jackets and life vests for swimming because our mission was out over the straits, and it was there that we were shot down. We only just made it to land on that small liberated area. So we were lucky. When we stepped onto this ship there were lots of wounded, and the dead were covered with fabric. We felt ourselves a little awkward because we were safe and sound. Before we arrived at the other hank of the straits we heard the sound of aircraft engines-German aircraft. Everyone who could walk ran to the shore, and the Germans began bombing the boat. We went to the trenches and waited for them to stop. When we returned to our unit, they embraced us; they were happy to see us alive.
In Poland I had a flight assignment to bomb the city of Danzig, with strong fascist fortifications. Suddenly, when I was approaching the target, I noticed that the oil pressure was close to zero. A dilemma arose of proceeding to the target or returning to base. I looked at the engine temperature gauge and it was normal, so I decided there was something wrong with the oil meter. When we were crossing the front line there was some firing from the Germans, and they hit the aircraft. We dropped all the bombs on the target, but I was looking at the instruments. Strong antiaircraft fire shelled us over the target, because this was a strong German fortress. I made a turn and started flying back, and I saw that the engine temperature was increasing. The engine was overheating, and it was a long way back to our lines. I decided to fly higher, so I climbed about 400 meters higher than usual, and it saved me. The engine stopped, and the front line was far ahead-far in front of me. I started gliding and saw that the ground forces were firing, but I just managed to fly over the front line. I made an emergency landing in the dark; I could see the land itself but no landscape. There were no lights, and landing was like walking around with closed eyes. I couldn't see anything except that there was ground underneath us and not water. At this moment I wanted to cry, "Mama, oh bless me, let me make a soft landing." We did make a very soft landing, and there was oil leaking, and the plane was covered with oil. It was a miracle-there were lots of miracles during the war for many people.
After we stopped, we spent about one minute in the cockpit just to listen to the situation. Behind us there was shooting. We got out of the cockpit, leaving our chutes because they were heavy, and started off to the forest, because we decided the front line was on a parallel road. We started walking and took out our pistols. While we were walking I suddenly stopped my navigator-there was a small hill of hay with two people lying behind it. We were afraid to approach them, so we stood watching. No movement. We would have liked to hide in the hay, but we went to the forest out of fear that those two could be fascists. We heard a horseman coming toward us through the forest. We didn't know whether he was Russian or German; we decided not to stop the rider. After some time a car approached. We heard Russian being spoken, and we were very excited. The driver of the car told us that he was going to the front line with an emergency message, so he couldn't take us. He told us we should go down this road seven kilometers, so we did, with our pistols drawn, and it was snowing, but we finally came to our unit. We felt sad, for that happened the first flight of the night, and we missed the remainder of the night's missions.
My military rank was senior lieutenant. I flew i,oo8 missions with bombs, but my total during the war was i,ioo flights. I had the most flying hours of the regiment.
After the war I worked as a test pilot, testing aircraft that had been worked on and put back together. I was still in the military when I had an accident flying, and I was on the brink of death. In 1948, while I was still in the service, my daughter was born in Poland, in Torun city. This is the city of love. After this we went back to Russia, and it was the end of my flying career-I quit flying.
Senior Sergeant Matryona Yurodjeva-Samsonova, mechanic of the aircraft
I was born in 1923. In my family there were six children, and our father joined the armed forces right away when the war broke out. When I went to see him off at the train and to say goodbye, I swore to my father that I would also join the army and go to the front. He said, "No, that must not happen; you are the eldest sister in the family." I was determined to go, so I enlisted in one of the regiments. My mother nearly fainted, because she had lost her husband to the army and now her daughter, too.
When Marina Raskova came to Saratov town where I lived, I applied directly to her for admission. She had founded the regiment at Engels, and Saratov is just on the opposite bank of the Volga River. I asked to join the regiment and she took me, but I had to ask several times before she agreed. By that time I was studying in the aviation technical college; I was a second-year student. I was eighteen when the war started.
I studied with the other girls at Engels for six months and was assigned to the 588th Air Regiment, later to become the 46th Guards Bomber Regiment. I worked on planes for various aircrews during the war, but the last two years I maintained the aircraft of Yevgeniya Popova. When she trusted her life into my hands, I did everything on this earth for her, to keep her alive, to keep the aircraft in the best condition. Yevgeniya trusted me so much that she didn't even put her signature on the release form. This form certified that the aircraft was in order, the engine was in order, and the mechanic had fixed the plane for a combat mission quite all right. I asked her why she didn't sign it, and she replied that she knew her life was in my hands, and she trusted me completely.
We were new at being mechanics, and the airplanes were also newly born. Because they didn't have time to completely fix the planes at the plant and because of our insufficient experience, I had to work on the new plane for a long time to make it reliable. You knew your friend was going to fly it in combat, and you did everything, even beyond your physical might and strength, to have it in perfect condition and to save the life of your aircrew.
Our regiment changed its location very frequently because the front was in flux. First it was occupied by the Germans; then we would occupy where they had been. For our type of aircraft, with its slow landing speed, we didn't really need an airfield-it could land on any field. Once, when we settled down on a new field and started operations, I was on duty guarding the regimental banner. Suddenly, we heard a noise: it was Soviet infantry soldiers running out of the forest. When they saw us they said, "Oh, girls, what are you doing here? The Germans are coming, and they will be here any second!" The crewsmechanic, navigator, and pilot-all jumped into the aircraft and flew away. Some left in trucks. But I had the banner to guard and I couldn't leave it, so I was left standing there, guarding the banner.
In wartime the banner is a sacred thing for the soldier of any detachment, any regiment, and you are to safeguard it as your baby. It should be kept alive all the time. If it disappears, it means the regiment cannot exist anymore. It was a sacred duty for any girl to safeguard the banner. We got on a truck with the banner and drove away, but the truck broke down. The three of us jumped from it, and we saw, coming down the slope, tanks and infantry both Soviet and German. So we decided to separate the banner from the pole, bury it somewhere, and remember where it was buried. When spring came we would come back and dig it up, and in this way keep it safe.
The Soviet infantry was retreating, and the Germans were advancing with troops and tanks. Then we saw that the Soviets were coming up to reinforce with their Katushas, the sacred gun of the Soviet Army. The Katusha comprises many ballistic rockets. Katusha-a purely Russian name-is a form of Katherine, like Kateriana, Katusha. Then the Katushas were set up in their stand and fired, and they crushed all the German tanks and the German infantry. It was a mass of metal, human beings, and blood. It saved our troops from retreating, and instead our troops began advancing. Then we carried the banner and began walking, and it took us almost twenty-four hours to rejoin our regiment.
When the war ended, I returned and finished aviation technical college. I was sent to work as an engineer in the capital of one of
the central Asian republics. As for the banner, I was so frightened that night and day-it was a nightmare to me-that I completely forgot the names of the girls who were with me, and for twenty years I tried to remember. Finally, when I came to the twentieth-anniversary reunion in Moscow, one of the girls ran up to me and asked if I remembered that day and how we saved the banner. I started crying, because I lived so far away from Moscow and couldn't come to a reunion for those twenty years. Now they both came up to me, those girls I was with that time, and I cried. The banner is now in the Museum of the Military Forces of the USSR, The Museum of Defense.
Senior Lieutenant Nadezhda Popova, pilot, squadron commander
Hero of the Soviet Union
When I saw an aircraft for the very first time, the pilot landed, got out of the cockpit, came to us children, and asked what village this was. We told him the name of the village, and he said, "Oh, now I know!" He climbed back into the cockpit and flew away, leaving us in the dust of the prop wash. I had thought only gods could fly, and it was amazing to me that a simple man could get in a plane and fly away.
I was born and grew up in the Ukraine, and I loved our music. I was a very emotional girl; I liked to sing and recite poetry. Before seeing this pilot I thought I would become a doctor, but after this I thought maybe I would become a pilot. My parents would say, "You'll become a doctor, you'll take care of us, you'll cure us," but now I had a desire to fly. I believed in signs, and I was afraid to say something aloud. When I would decide to do something I would keep it a secret-only when I had done the thing would I open my mouth and tell everybody about it.
I was in the tenth grade in school when I entered the air club to learn flying, but I didn't tell anyone about it. At sixteen I made both my maiden jump with a parachute and my solo flight. It was fantastic. At that moment I began to believe in myself. This is a very interesting age-at this age you want to do something unusual. My photograph, standing by an airplane in my flying suit, was in a local newspaper. When I came home my parents asked if it was me, and I said it was. They were angry because they didn't know about my flying-it was my secret. I told them I didn't want them to worry about me.