A Dance with Death: Soviet Airwomen in World War II

by Anne Noggle

Before graduation from high school we filled out the application for flying school. We had to pass a medical check; then our biographies were checked to see if any of our relatives were in labor camps or other places for criminals. Last, we were tested in mathematics and history. Only five girls from the Leningrad area were admitted, and only two of us graduated from flying school. It was a civil aviation school until 1939, when it was turned into a military flying school. At that time the squadrons of male students remained at the school, and our squadron of female students was transferred to Tambov, where I graduated.

  When pilots graduated from the civil flying school they were then given a job in civil aviation. Three of us were sent to Alma-Ata city in central Asia, bordering on China. We were happy because this is an area where the great apples grow, and Alma-Ata, in the Kazakh language, means "big apple." We spent three days there and then were told there were no vacancies. We were instructed to go to Semipalatinsk, a city that is now a nuclear site, also in central Asia. We were twenty years old at this time. What we found was an airdrome and a two-story building. At night the wolves were howling, and we were frightened. It was in a desert. There was a small railroad station, and two trains came there: one in the morning for people to go to work in a factory, and one in the evening for them to go home. All day we spent our time at the airport. I arrived there in the fall. There were lots of handsome pilots, and I made friends with many of them. They liked me and said the airport was not a proper place to live in a room with two other girls. They said they would find me a room out in the city. The pilots and the others who studied there would play soccer, and I was the goalkeeper.

  I would fly to the Chinese border delivering mail. We flew the U-2, an open-cockpit plane, and we tried to cover our faces as much as possible. Only our eyes were showing.

  In the early part of 1941 I was transferred to Novosibirsk city. The government issued a decree that our country must have 15o,00o pilots! By this time the Second World War had started, and Poland, Czechoslovakia, and France were all occupied by German troops. The government understood that our flying schools could not train enough military pilots, so they sent squadrons to different cities to organize flying clubs for basic training. Later the graduates of these flying clubs were sent on to the military schools to be trained in more sophisticated military aircraft. I trained pilots as a part of this program from 1941 to the beginning of 1942.

  In April, 1942, a telegram from Marina Raskova came, ordering that I immediately be sent to Engels to join the women's regiments in training. I had to learn the manuals and military routine, and I remember that our days were very busy. When I arrived, I had 570 flying hours. I was called to Raskova's office, where she told me she wanted me to be her liaison pilot. She had three regiments training under her command, and she needed someone to fly to the various airdromes to fulfill missions for her. My title was chief pilot-like an adjutant would be in a ground army. It was a great honor for me. Then Raskova told me that she would train me to fly the Ut-2, because it was the only such aircraft in the regiments. It was a new plane, and it was for her use. It cruised at 22o kilometers per hour, had two open cockpits, a fixed landing gear, and no armament. It was a very good aerobatic aircraft. I may have been the only woman who flew the Ut-2, because I have never met or heard of another who flew it. When I landed on some field or military airdrome and they saw that I was a woman pilot, they were surprised, because this aircraft looked like a small fighter.

  The daughter of Marina Raskova studied at the ballet school in the Bolshoi Theater, and I was sent to evacuate her from Moscow. Raskova sent a letter along with me asking her daughter to please give Galina some milk. She knew that I had in the past flown a number of highranking officers, and they had eaten in the plane and offered me nothing. She trusted me and my flying to put her daughter in my hands.

  At the front we were stationed near Stalingrad, and we were bombing the German positions there. The living conditions were grave at that time. We were living in the trenches with no water to drink except when we melted snow, and when we had meals in the canteen, which was an old wooden building, we saw the water dripping from the ceiling onto the tables. We joked that we were eating, and the soup was still in our bowls!

  After Stalingrad we were sent to central Russia and then to the Kuban area in the northern Caucasus. Once I flew to the airdrome with the airforce commander to initialize the liaison between the many airforce regiments, because there was no ground communica tion between the regimental airdromes. When I was about to land a German plane passed me, and I could plainly see the black crosses on the wings and the yellow around the crosses. I also saw the pilot, who looked gaunt, and I noticed that he had white hair. I decided not to land, and I pulled up and flew to a nearby small village and began circling the church at an altitude just above the tops of the trees to evade the German aircraft. My plane was defenseless, and it was also difficult to fly because it was extremely sensitive on the controls. The German was following me, and a burst of machine-gun fire hit the surfaces of the plane, but he didn't set it on fire. I even bit my lips until blood came trying to level the aircraft. Then he flew away, and I landed at the airdrome. When I landed a handsome and tall man came to me and asked if I was alive. He asked me in the manner you would ask a man, using a man's vocabulary. I said yes, I was alive, so he knew then that I was a woman. He said, "Oh, all of us were thinking that the German pilot would kill you!"

  Because I flew over Soviet territory and there was little threat from ground fire, I flew at as low an altitude as possible; otherwise, I would have been strafed and shot down by German aircraft. Part of my duty was to pick up the remains of our crashed pilots in parachute sacks. Most of the bodies I carried were in pieces. One of our pilots had very beautiful hands; everyone noticed her hands and commented on them. When they loaded her remains into my plane a hand was sticking out of the bag, and I recognized it as her hand.

  When I was away on such a duty I was walking along by our front line, and I heard some strange, intermittent, soft whistling sounds. I didn't recognize the sound immediately and turned my attention to listening-then I realized those were bullets! Bullets singing. They were shooting at me.

  My flying duties required that I land wherever I was to pick up or deliver someone or something, and I landed on roads or small fieldsthe nearest place. Once I was told to pick up one of our wounded pilots, Irina Osadze. Irina's aircraft had been hit by an anti-aircraft shell, the shell hit the Plexiglas of the bomber, and pieces of the glass were sticking out of her face and neck. When we arrived at the field hospital the nurse wanted to pull out the pieces, but Irina did it herself. She didn't fear pain.

  Another time I flew to another of our pilots, Yelena KulkovaMalutina, when she was wounded in her belly, and her bowels were perforated in twelve places. I flew to the field hospital with our regimental doctor so he could find out where she had been transferred and to check on her wounds. On our way back I couldn't land on our airdrome because of a heavy fog, and I decided to land elsewhere until the fog cleared. When I climbed up out of the fog a Soviet fighter was right there. He pulled alongside, showed me his navigational chart, and indicated that he did not know where he was. I then showed him where the airdrome was. When he landed he asked who was the pilot of this number twenty-eight aircraft, and he was told Galina. He said that he must find her and kiss her, and when they asked him why, he told them that I had saved his life!

  When I was told to fly somewhere I was only given a general idea of where it was; I was to fly there and then find a certain place. I would draw my route on a map and fly there, but it seemed to me that God saved me many times.

  Pilots want to play games with the aircraft-to violate the law. Katrina Musatova and I decided to fly to another airdrome where Katrina had a boyfriend, so we carried some turnips and other vegetables, flew over the barracks, and threw the vegetables, bombing them boom, boom, boom on the roof. I was a pilot, and now here I was being a navigator-bombardier! We made a
nother pass, and there they were, out there eating the vegetables as we flew over.

  In October, 1944, I was invited to join the Airforce Liaison Squadron. In the 125th regiment I was the lone liaison pilot, but in the airforce army there was a whole squadron. I was promised that I would be appointed flight commander in that squadron, but when I arrived, there were ten to fifteen aircraft and the same number of male pilots. Some of them were full of indignation, saying, "Why? Aren't there any good pilots in our squadron so that you decided to appoint this small girl?" I told the commander that I would like to be appointed to the position right now, but first let these male pilots see what kind of a pilot I am. The commander often tested me and sent me with other crews on a mission.

  Once I flew with another aircraft and my plane was faster, so I lost him in the bad weather, a mist. You can see the terrain only vertically, but in front of you, you can't see anything. I had to maneuver and make some turns, but finally I came to my destination, and the other pilots were happy to see that I was still alive. They kissed me and hugged me with tears in their eyes.

  Then, after all, I was appointed flight commander, and all my subordinates respected me greatly. Finally, I selected the best, the handsomest of the pilots in the squadron, and I married him. Unfortunately, two years ago on Victory Day, May 9, he died. He was only sixty-seven, and he should have lived longer. He had been flying for forty years: twenty-five in military aviation and fifteen in civil aviation. I have two daughters; both of them graduated from institutes, and they have their own families. After my husband's death I moved to my junior daughter's apartment, and we live together.

  Sergeant Yekaterina Chujkova, mechanic of armament

  When we are awarded orders or medals in our army, we have a tradition: to drop our orders and medals into a crystal glass filled with vodka and to drink that glass of vodka to the bottom. In the wartime we had to use empty food cans instead of the crystal.

  I was born in 1925. When the war broke out I lived in Leningrad and was finishing secondary school. The pupils from senior classes were sent to dig trenches at one of our airfields. When winter came and we were not allowed to dig trenches anymore, we were sent to escort citizens of Leningrad to shelters when the bombing started. We had a special pass that allowed us to escort people in the daytime as well as at night. We also accompanied the militia in searching out traitors who climbed onto the roofs of our plants and factories and indicated with flares where the factories were located so the German aircraft could bomb them.

  When the siege of Leningrad began, the ration of bread was 125 grams (about 4.5 ounces) a day. We were starving, and we were physically weak. It was difficult to move. We students were assembled and given a portion of mash made of soup without any fat, any meat, anything. Just boiled water and a piece of brown bread. All of the students were gathered in one place to be given some food in order for us to survive this siege. And that was the way it was in 1942. My sister worked at a plant, and when her plant was evacuated to Moscow, she took me with her.

  I arrived in Moscow and reported to the Young Communist League with my documents to be stamped. One woman on that committee asked me if I wanted to go to the front, and I said yes. Marina Raskova's emissary had come to Moscow to select girls for the regiments. She saw me and asked why I wanted to join the regiment, because I was so thin and small that I could hardly move, suffering from the starvation in Leningrad. I told her that in Leningrad I had to survive the siege and that I would put on my weight when in the regiment. The army received much better nutrition than any civilian at that time. Maybe she felt sorry for me-I was accepted to join. At that time my mother and a sister and brother lived near Moscow in the German-occupied territory, my grandmother was still in Leningrad, and my father had perished at the front. One of my other sisters was evacuated to Siberia with the kindergarten where she worked.

  When I joined the regiment, it was 1943. At this date the regiment badly needed reinforcement. I was taken right to the front and trained there for a month. I was taught how to arm the bomb with the detonator and to attach it onto the aircraft itself. I trembled when the instructor tested me, because I was still so weak and the bombs weighed so much-I was trembling like a mouse while he stood there watching me affix the bombs to the aircraft. We had all our training right on the airfield, and our model was a real plane.

  At night we had to take our turn on guard duty: to take a gun and guard the aircraft. In the winter we had to dig the bombs out of the snow blown by snowstorms, and we found it was much easier to keep the bombs under the plane. Guarding the planes was not a very pleasant duty, for our eyesight was constantly strained. And we had to listen, too, very hard. The shift was two hours on, then two hours off to rest; then another two hours' guard duty. I was frightened to he out there at night, and when I heard a noise in the forest I would call out, "Stop, who's coming? Stop, who's there?" If no one answered I said, "I'm sorry, but I'm going to shoot; excuse me, I'm going to shoot!"

  The aircraft were distributed on the sides of the runway at great distances from each other, and my guard post was near the forest. In the distance I saw a figure, then no figure, then a figure again, and I cried, "Stop, who's coming? I'll shoot!" I shot into the air; then I shot at the figure, and it fell down in the snow. It turned out to be a Russian guarding the perimeter who had forgotten the password. He lay in the snow until the information was passed on to the staff, and they came out and found he was one of our soldiers. He was frozen but unhurt!

  I was a very good singer, and I was keen on singing. I was in the chorus, and when I was affixing the bombs to the aircraft I would sing out loud, and everybody could hear me. Once, when I was preparing the last plane before the night, I knew it was the last assignment for that day. I was polishing the guns and affixing the bombs, and I took off my boots because it was easier to climb up on the wing without them. The technician of armament came up and said that I was again doing my duties bare-legged. I replied that my boots were so loose it was hard to work in them. According to the army rules I should have been punished for being out of uniform, but I was not because there was no one to replace me. We didn't wear socks, only foot clothsbig, bandagelike cloths. We had to resew our uniforms; they were men's uniforms and didn't fit. In the winter we were cold, and we used a modified oil drum for heat in our dugout. We would go to the forest with an axe and chop wood for ourselves. We did everything for ourselves-washed linens, sewed our clothes, dug our dugouts, chopped our wood-everything.

  Near the town of Smolensk they put another engine in the aircraft and had to use a special wood ladder to climb up. We decided to steal the ladder for firewood for our stove. It was very, very cold, and we were afraid of the forest at night, so we chopped up the ladder and carried the small pieces into our dugouts. The next morning we lined up, and the commander of the squadron said that someone had stolen the ladder. She asked who had stolen it and said that the ones who had stolen the ladder should take two steps forward. She repeated that, and the third time, all of the girls in the first squadron took two steps forward! There was a new girl who had just joined the regiment, and she also took two steps forward. The commander asked why she was doing that, and the girl said that she would do what everybody else did. A few days later the same commander came into our dugout and saw that it was very warm, and she said, "Good for you, you found a way to keep warm!" This was the commander of the squadron, Nadezhda Fedutenko, Hero of the Soviet Union.

  For our breakfast we had a dry piece of bread. We worked so hard and slept so little and had so little proper food that when I was working the streams of tears ran down my face. The streams ran down while I was cleaning different small devices in the petrol and affixing the bombs to the aircraft at dawn. I never said to myself, What have I come here for? I only thought how difficult it was.

  We always saw the planes off on their missions, and we stood on the airfield and watched them return. If the squadron came back in tight formation we were happy. But if they came bac
k one at a timeone aircraft landed, and then another, and another, and another-it meant that they had been attacked by the German fighters. We recognized our own aircraft according to the sound of the engines. We immediately knew that it was our pilot and plane. In the evening, when we exchanged information about each of our planes, we would describe them as we would a close relative. One would say, "My aircraft was the fourth one to return," and another would say, "Mine was ninth to land." We experienced it very intimately. It was the leading topic of our conversation.

  Each of our planes had five machine guns. When they got back, if all the bullets had been fired, we had to reload each gun, and it held 27o bullets. It was impossible to carry the box with the bullets into the aircraft, and it was very difficult to load the guns, especially in the pilot's cabin. The cockpit was very small, and the machine gun was directly in front of the pilot, where all the instruments were located. I had to crawl on my knees.

  All the girls in our squadron lived in our dugout. In other squadrons they did it differently. And in some places we lived differently: sometimes in houses, sometimes in smaller dugouts.

  I was arrested during the war and sent to the guardhouse, and there was hardly a person who was not arrested at some time. Mostly we were arrested for exchanging things with the local peasants. We would exchange our men's underwear for potatoes, pies, milk, and so on. We exchanged what we didn't wear. Once I went to the nearest village with a girlfriend to make an exchange, and on our way we met a commissar from our regiment. She realized what we were doing, and we were arrested for three days and put in the guardhouse. It was no worse than the dugout, and it was warm there, with something to eat and a heap of straw. The other girls would bring us a book and push it through the window. There was a soldier guarding you when you were in the guardhouse; for example, my bosom friend Sasha was standing guard on me with a gun. There wasn't any special detachment to guard us; our girls did it.