A Dance with Death: Soviet Airwomen in World War II

by Anne Noggle

  Another time I was shot down on the northern Caucasian front. I had received an order to leave the aircraft and parachute down, but I loved the plane and wanted to land it, and I did. The controls were disabled, and I landed using the engines for control. The dive brakes were also damaged and had fallen down.

  On another occasion, one engine was set on fire, and I landed the plane with the one remaining engine. When I was on final approach to our field all the systems quit, and the other engine quit, but I managed to land and save the airplane. Every flight in the Pe-2 was a game with death, a very dangerous game. That was why in the air force there was a certain lore that if a pilot or navigator made seventy missions in a Pe-2, they were awarded the medal of Hero of the Soviet Union. I made seventy-two combat missions in that aircraft; I was horn under a lucky star! All in all I flew 2,800 hours.

  Once we were stationed at an airdrome that had a male air regiment, the 124th, nearby. About half of our regiment made happy marriages with members of that regiment. My first marriage was with a navigator from that regiment, who died in 1972. My mechanic of armament in our own regiment divorced about that time, and we married. We had been through the hardships of war together so we knew each other well, and we started a new family. My friends told us that two broken hearts had been united.

  In Operation Bagration we suffered very great losses and severe battles. After fulfilling these combat missions we were awarded various orders, medals, special streamers, and certificates. For that operation I was awarded the Order of Combat Red Banner. For all combat during the war, I was awarded two Orders of Red Banner, one Order of Lenin, and the Hero of the Soviet Union.

  When we had successfully freed Borisov town, our regiment was titled Borisovski Regiment. After that operation the girls asked me to throw a streamer out of my plane, on which they had written an inscription: "To the Inhabitants of the Town of Borisov with Military Regards, from Women Pilots of the Borisovski Regiment" with the signature of Mariya Dolina. They had made the streamer out of ten military towels sewn together. I didn't know how to throw the streamer out of the plane, because I was a little afraid of Markov, our regimental commander. I decided that at a very low altitude, I would say there was something wrong with my engine and that we were going to land at the Borisov airdrome. Markov said all right. So I lagged behind and made a circle over the town, and it was burning, all afire; it looked like Stalingrad had looked. Besides the streamer itself, we penned a letter to the Borisov Party Council. The letter said that we wished the inhabitants to restore the city, to flourish, continue peacetime jobs, and help people survive, while we continued our job at the front. We threw the streamer out, and the city people carried it into their museum and kept it there, and now it is in the Minsk Museum.

  After we dropped the streamer and returned to our formation the gunner reported to Commander Markov that there was nothing wrong with our engine, and he realized that it was a hooligan trick. When we landed he arrested me and put me for fifteen days in the guardhouse. But I only stayed there two days because they needed pilots. Markov entered the guardhouse and told me that there was no time for sitting and relaxing, I must work and fly.

  It is distressing even now to speak about the war, because we lost forty-seven of our girls. And war is not a female profession, but we were defending the liberty and freedom of our country. Those who remain alive must live long and remember those who perished and should relate the experience to the younger generation. The feeling of all these women in our regiments who remain alive, and of all the people that had to undergo the hardships of the war, is that all people should work for the peaceful existence of all the countries so that war does not come to any land. We are not a militant nation, and we had to bear twenty million losses, so we call on all the people of the world not to let that happen again.

  Presently, I am in the Presidium of the Republican Council of the Veterans in War. On May 9, 199o, I was asked to talk in front of our President Gorbachev on behalf of the Ukrainian veterans.

  Sergeant Anna Kirilina, mechanic of armament

  Before the war I was a textile worker, and I was keen on parachute jumping; I jumped out of sheer sport. When I was jumping I got a strange, unpleasant feeling inside, but there were boys there too, and I didn't want to show fear in front of the boys! So I didn't show it, and I jumped several times. When war broke out I went to volunteer for the armed forces, but nothing happened. There was a shortage of labor at the plant, and that might have been the reason. Then, suddenly, I was called and admitted to the air regiments being formed by Raskova.

  All our hardships started at Stalingrad. I had to affix i,ooo kilos of bombs to the aircraft-I alone. The bombs came in boxes totally unprepared. I had to affix ten bombs to the plane, and each bomb weighed ioo kilos. We had a special metallic cable that lifted the bomb, and then we attached it to the aircraft with our hands. I also prepared the bombs for explosion.

  Then I had to prepare the machine guns. It was in winter, a severe, frosty winter. I had to do my work with bare hands, and my hands froze; my right hand was completely frozen. I bandaged it and tried to hide it; otherwise I could be sent back, and I didn't want to be sent to the rear. Later on the hand came alive again, but for some time it remained dead; I couldn't feel it at all.

  Our underground dugouts were heated by a very small fireplace called a burzhujk, made from an oil drum. After the revolution there was a class of people called bourgeoisie, who were known to live in much better conditions than the peasantry, workers, and average people. They had more wealth, more luxuries, like this fireplace that during the war was considered to be a luxury-it was our luxury. And that's why people called it burzhujk, derived from the word bourgeoisie.

  We had no place to wash our hands or our linen. We lived in dugouts with no water to wash, and when we had any it was cold. When we received the detonators and explosive elements, they were in special metallic boxes, very small boxes. After we emptied them we used the boxes for heating water. When you live in a primitive, ugly domicile, you try to make it comfortable and cozy even if you are not there except for short periods. Just when it would become somewhat inhabitable we would move to another location, leave everything behind, and start anew at a different airfield.

  Wartime is wartime, and war is not a labor for women. We didn't even feel what was happening because we were so physically overstrained. But the war made us not friends but relatives. It made us sisters-dear, dear creatures to each other. On the day of our reunion we say, I go to meet my sisters, because for the four years of war, we all went through and experienced so much that sometimes it seems impossible for a human creature to know it in her whole lifetime.

  Certainly there was love and friendship. When I went to the front I had a fiance-an engagement-and we agreed that when we returned home, we would marry. Moreover, I belonged to an orthodox church, and I never violated the rules of the church. If I swore my fiance to be my beloved man, I could not betray him. I remained loyal to him through all the years of war, and after the war we came home and married. I had to conceal my beliefs for a long time because I would have been persecuted, but now I can speak frankly about that.

  I was a devoted textile worker. As a pilot loves her aircraft, I loved my instrument very much, and when I returned to the plant, entered the room, and saw my textile instrument standing there, I rushed up to it. I was extremely happy that I had returned to peaceful labor. After the war and those bombings, those sleepless nights, the happiest moment of my life was when I entered the plant and realized the war had come to an end! I now still work at the same plant, and fortunately I'm healthy and I go on laboring.

  Junior Lieutenant Antonina Pugachova-Makarova, navigator

  1a5th Regiment Pe-2 crew preparing for a flight

  I was born in 1924. When I was a child I dreamed of becoming a pilot, but because I was short, I was not allowed to join the air force. When the war started I was in the ninth grade in school.

  In 1942 I joined the a
rmy. I was sent to the military aviation school in Moscow, where a battalion of girls were studying meteorology and other aviation sciences. Shortly before graduation, the school received an order to select the best-trained girls and send them to the regiment of Marina Raskova. Only ten were selected, and we all did our best to be among them. I was afraid that my short height would be against me. Before the final test I put thick pieces of paper in my high boots to make me look taller, and I was put on the list to go.

  We were sent to Yoshkar-Ola to be trained as navigators. We trained in the TB-3 dive bomber. It could dive and drop bombs, and it would shake, rattle, and jump. We were told to bring some buckets along with us because we weren't used to flying, and all of us were leaning over the buckets being sick. We also trained in parachute jumping. I jumped twice, which was required in our training.

  After training, the commanders selected nine of us to go to the front. I was very happy that my dream came true. We then started training in crews: navigator, pilot, and gunner. My crew commander was Tamara Rusakova, who was a very fine pilot and a very strict commander. She made us clean the aircraft after every flight, and only then did we have the right to leave the airdrome. When there was snow on the ground we had to make a hangar out of the snow to protect the plane. Everyone else would have left the field, but we would still he working.

  The 587th regiment had lost the equivalent of a squadron soon after the war started and needed replacements. In March, 1944, we were sent to the front. We found the atmosphere in the regiment to be intelligent, strict, and just. Commander Markov liked order; he was a very clever and educated man and a gifted pilot. We all tried to do our best to please him and do our duty in as excellent a way as possible. Among ourselves we called him Baty, which is a familiar form of papa. It was because of Tamara and Valentin Markov that my flying career ended so meaningfully. He had an incredible, magnetic influence on all of us.

  At the front our airdrome was near Smolensk. During our first combat missions, we were flying in formation and escorted by fighters. It was nothing like I had expected. I thought we would be endlessly attacked by Germans and firing at them. I fancied to see explosions of aircraft, shells, bombs, and flames here and there, and bullets tracing like wildfire in the sky. In reality there were no German aircraft, and everything appeared very simple: to fly, drop bombs, and go home. We could see the explosions of antiaircraft shells. There was black smoke, and then it disappeared. It seems to me that God saved us, and we felt calm and believed that nothing would happen to us. There was that feeling that God watched over us. Usually when we flew missions there were twenty-seven aircraft, and I could not tell if I was a good navigator because we were in a formation and followed the lead plane.

  But many of our missions were difficult, and we lost a lot of our combat friends. The worst thing was to see the bomber of my friends being shot down: there is smoke and fire, and it is going down, and you are flying, and you can't do anything to help them. When we were bombing Libava city on the Baltic Sea it was especially dangerous. Each of our planes had five machine guns to defend it, and we had fighter cover. When there were only a few German fighters in our area, our fighters started dogfights with them, and our gunners had nothing to do. But when there were lots of German fighters, we had to help protect ourselves, using our own machine guns. When I became a navigator in the Pe-2, I felt I had an advantage. Tall navigators had to sit, but because of my height I could stand up and see very well. In the aircraft the fumes of the fuel bothered me like an allergy, and sometimes I felt that I was going to lose consciousness.

  Our regiment was given the honor of becoming a "Guards" regiment, and in that ceremony we changed from being the 587th Bomber Regiment to the 125th Guards Bomber Regiment. We were awarded two combat orders.

  Life goes on. All of us enjoyed the days when we could have a bath. There was a truck with a large box on top, and each week or so this truck arrived at our regiment, and we could have a bath in cold water. It was like a holiday for us. We especially wanted a bath after a combat mission, but that was often impossible. When we were stationed near a village the people there would sometimes invite us to their homes, and we could bathe there. We liked to sleep on clean sheets. There is an old Russian tradition that before going into battle you should wash all your linen and clothes and put them on; we knew that any day we could crash and be killed. This is our old, old tradition, and if our logistics personnel could not bring us clean towels and linen, we washed them ourselves.

  Just after the war I returned to civilian life. I realized that I had only nine years of school and that sooner or later I would have to continue my education. I went back and finished secondary school, then teachers' college, and later on a pedagogical institute. All these years I've been teaching in a secondary school and in other higher educational institutions.

  We have a saying that if you like to climb mountains, they will kill you; and if you are devoted to flying, the aircraft will kill you. My pilot, Tamara, continued to fly, and on a flight above the Baltic Sea something happened to her plane, and she crashed and died.

  In the Kremlin after award ceremony of Hero of the Soviet Union Gold Star medals. Bottom row: Klavdiya Fomichova (left), Nadezhda Fedutenko (center). 7bp row: Mariya Dolina (third from left) and Antonina Zubkova (far right), 1i5th regiment

  Sergeant Antonina Lepilina, mechanic of armament

  I was born in Moscow in the family of a confectioner. My mother was most of the time a housewife. Upon finishing eight grades of a secondary school-there are normally eleven grades-I went to work in an aviation plant as a controller, checking parts for the aircraft. When the war started and I heard Raskova was forming the women's regiments, I went to Komsomol headquarters and asked to be drafted there. I was accepted as a mechanic of armament to her regiment.

  The pilot of my aircraft was Mariya Dolina, and my most anxious moments were while waiting for my aircrew to return from a mission. Both my pilot and her navigator, Galina Dzhunkovskaya, were awarded the Gold Star of Hero of the Soviet Union. Everyone in my crew survived the war, and we finished the war together. In the Caucasus region my crew was one of four shot down, and it was the first time that our aircraft did not return from a mission. I cannot even describe my emotional experience at the thought that my friends might have perished.

  They were shot down on a mission when both engines and fuel tanks were hit by enemy fire, and Mariya Dolina managed to bellyland the aircraft. When she did, the cockpit hatch jammed, and the girls couldn't get out. By this time the cockpit already was full of smoke. It was the tail gunner who saved their lives. He got out of his cockpit, crawled along the fuselage, forced the canopy open, dragged them out of the cockpit, and rushed them away from the aircraft. They were no more than fifty meters from the plane when it blew up.

  Another time they didn't return from a mission that day, but the next day they were flown back to our airdrome in another aircraft. I had watched our navigator, Galina, while she was in the presence of Commander Markov and guessed that they had feelings for each other. It was just an undercurrent, because they didn't act in any way but properly, ever. But when the girls were brought back burned and injured, Valentin Markov himself carried Galina out of the plane and over to the vehicle to bring them to the regiment. Then we all knew his feelings for her. They were married after the war.

  Lieutenant Yelena Kulkova-Malutina, senior pilot

  I was born in Leningrad in 1917, the year of the revolution. While I was still in school, I attended glider school. I was seventeen years old. When I graduated I entered a pilot's school of civil aviation, which I completed in three years. I was then sent to a Urals unit of aviation, and I worked as a pilot in medical aviation. The connections between the Kazan region and the central part of Russia where I worked were bad. The roads were in poor condition, and the only possible way to carry mail and things such as food and sick people was by plane. I flew a U-2 mainly to carry the sick. This unit was called a Unit of Special Activity.


  In 1942 I was transferred to the town of Magnitogorsk, where I was an instructor-pilot. I was twenty-three or twenty-four when the war started, and I trained male pilots in a military training school. At that time, just before the war, Soviet aviation was in its glory. There was an outburst of aviation development, and aviation was widely talked about. In our present-day situation, we never talk about cosmic space and exploration. Aviation flourished then. At the school I was the only woman out of eighteen instructors. It was in an open airfield, and there was no place for a ladies' room. Everything was open; to find a place I had to go behind a bush, where I could he seen by everyone, and there were only men. I was so shy and embarrassed that I didn't even have a gulp of water in order not to go to the ladies' room behind a bush. And the cadets insisted on asking our commander why I didn't ever have breakfast!

  Then I was transferred to a group that was preparing to fly in one of Marina Raskova's regiments. The regiments had suffered losses at the front, and they needed crews to take their places. By this time I had 1,5oo hours of flying time; that is why, as an experienced pilot, I was trained in the most complex plane, the Pe-2 dive bomber. In our school the nutrition had been very poor: it was wartime. When I went to the regiment the food was so much better that for a period of time I couldn't eat enough-I just ate much food. It took time before I felt full. When I joined the regiment everyone was so friendly, so helpful-they loved each other. Even though I came to the regiment for only the last year and a half, I cherish the friendships I made for all of my life.