by Anne Noggle
When Raskova's plane crashed into the embankment her head hit against the gun sight, and it split her head in two. When her body was found-she was to be in an open casket-a doctor performed surgery on her and restored her head and face, using a picture. I also hit my head and face. My navigator flew by me in the cabin and struck the instrument panel, and her legs were hurt.
The other crew also saw a small black spot on the earth-it was a bush-so they pulled the nose of their aircraft up just in time to avert flying completely into the ground. Luckily we stopped on the edge of a deep slope. Although we all took off with clear skies, the weather conditions became worse and worse, but Raskova felt she must go on to her regiment. She did not use the good judgment to land while the weather conditions were good enough to do it. She was anxious about her regiment and wanted to get there. After the crash I was without an aircraft and had to return to Engels to await a new one. Major Valentin Markov became the commander of our regiment.
On my first combat mission in Markov's formation I stuck to him very closely. I was afraid to deviate from the course, because after the accident I felt a little fear and nervousness. On this first mission my plane was shelled by antiaircraft guns, and my gunner was mortally wounded. After the shelling ceased, I asked my navigator and tail gunner if they were all right. They both said yes, but I saw the blood spattered on the glass, and when we landed and they removed the gunner from the plane, he was dying.
Yet another time we were shot down when I was making my fifth combat flight. We bombed successfully and were already descending when suddenly we were machine gunned into the left side of the aircraft. It cut through all of our systems and damaged the fuel tank and one engine. The plane had a black tail of engine smoke behind it, and we made an emergency landing at a Russian fighter airdrome. I had the same navigator that was with me when we crashed with Raskova. When we made the emergency landing, we discovered that the landing gear was damaged. The tires burned down completely from braking, and the wheels were twisted. The commander of the fighter squadron based there greeted us in "pure Russian style"using bad words-thinking it was a male crew. He didn't want us landing there when his fighter aircraft needed to come in to land. When we got out of the cockpit and he saw we were women, he was embarrassed and felt bad about how he greeted us.
Once, when a new engine was installed in my plane, I made several test flights, and I was letting down to land when suddenly I saw a German fighter under my wing. He didn't shoot me, or even try to, and I landed even though he could have shot me down, because on the test flight we were not prepared to defend ourselves. After we landed safely the German fighter strafed our airfield and flew away. But because he had observed the field, the German fascists returned that night and shot up the field and bombed it.
I was wounded once when we were on a combat mission in 1945 bombing the port of Libava. We were flying by the sea, so we had to think of what we would do if we were shot down over the water. We were over the Baltic Sea to bomb the seaport, which was strongly fortified by the Germans. The whole air division was sent to carry out that mission. Our squadron was the last of that gigantic group of Soviet aircraft over the target. The antiaircraft guns were firing at us; one of the shells damaged the left engine, and another shell wounded me in the right arm. I was bleeding and lost consciousness for a short time. Ludmila Popova, my navigator, gave me liquid ammonia to inhale and also bandaged me while I was unconscious; then, together, we held the aircraft controls. For 2,000 meters it descended uncontrolled. I regained control, but the regiment had flown on. We were left alone with a damaged aircraft, and I with a wounded arm. I decided to try to make it back to our home field. We made it, and the navigator signaled with a rocket that the pilot was wounded. When we landed, the right engine no longer ran either, and the aircraft was towed off the runway.
Life is life, and war is war; we were young girls, and we liked to make merry and sing. One of the girls in the regiment had a beautiful voice and often performed at amateur concerts. For such occasions we stitched for her a white silk dress made out of parachute fabric.
I flew up to 1947, when the regiment was released, and then I retired.
Sergeant Nataliya Smirnova, tail-gunner
I was born in Moscow in 1924. I come from a family of office workers. When the war started our family was evacuated to the town of Gorky, on the Volga River. Our means were limited; I had to help my family, so I worked as a ground radio operator. In 1942 1 become an aircraft radio operator. I began flying in civil aviation, but we were all longing to get to the front. I sent my documents to various army offices asking to be drafted to the army, but in vain. When the I25th Guards Bomber Regiment was suffering great losses they remembered my application, and I was sent to the regiment as a reinforcement. It took me only one day to pack my things.
I was a tail gunner and radio operator, and on one mission we were to bomb the port of Libava. In the tail-gunner position, we entered the plane from under the fuselage by way of a small hatch. My position was behind and completely separate from the pilot and navigator cabin. The top machine gun was fired through an opening directly above my head. I never sat but stood facing the tail of the aircraft, with my feet on the lower hatch and my head thrust out of the upper hatch. Libava was a seaport, and severe battles were waged there both on the ground and in the air.
Our navigator called my attention to the area above the port. It was black with smoke coming from the burst of anti-aircraft shells. Our plane was thrown back and forth by the concussion of the explosions; anti-aircraft shells seemed to be exploding beneath us and all around us. One of them exploded directly below my hatch, blowing open the lower hatch and throwing me completely out of the aircraft through the upper hatch. I found myself on top of the fuselage and felt a strong stream of air trying to blow me completely off, because we were flying at a very high speed. I tried to grasp the skin of the aircraft, but it was smooth and I couldn't hold onto it. But suddenly I felt something holding me to the plane. It turned out that my parachute harness had caught on a strap holding the machine gun in place. I still don't know exactly how I got back into the aircraft, but I managed to drag myself back inside. When I found myself again in the cockpit, I shut the lower hatch with my feet, but I couldn't feel them. They seemed boneless, and I had to sit down. I couldn't catch my breath, I couldn't make a sound, and my pilot was calling me on the radio. After a moment or two I pulled myself together and told her that everything was all right.
Another time we were returning from a mission to Pilau and were approaching the airfield when I saw a tail of white steam dragging behind our plane. First I thought it was fuel; then the white color turned into black. My pilot was Tamara Melashvili, and she was very strict. She was also very emotional and easily excited, so I didn't want to upset her until I knew the cause of that steam. My first question was, "What is the fuel pressure?" My second was, "How much fuel do we have left?" Tamara asked why I was constantly asking those questions because everything was all right. But it wasn't. Our aircraft had been hit on the mission and was leaking antifreeze. Our oil line had also been hit by the shell and was leaking under the fuselage. I felt the sleeve of my right arm and my side and found them soaked. We then made an emergency landing.
Introduction
The 586th Fighter Regiment (Air Defense) was the first of the three regiments to become operational in April, 1942. A defense regiment, its primary duty entailed guarding important targets from incursion by enemy bombers and escorting aircraft of important persons. Thus the mission of this regiment was not to hunt enemy aircraft-to pick a fight-but to guard specific targets from destruction. In this protective stance, when the enemy planes were turned back, they were not pursued. The mission, being defensive in nature, explains why this regiment did not have an outstanding record of enemy kills and thus was never designated as a "Guards" regiment.
The original commander of the regiment, Major Tamara Kazarinova, an experienced military pilot, was recalled very
early on in the war because of failing health. Her replacement was a male pilot, Lieutenant-Colonel A. V. Gridnev, who commanded the regiment until the end of the war. Originally there were two squadrons of ten aircraft each, manned only by women pilots. Later an additional squadron of male pilots joined the regiment. Some of the ground personnel were also men, including a number of mechanics, because the fighter aircraft were mechanically quite sophisticated, and the women mechanics had been given only minimal training during the short period before moving to the front.
In September, 1942, eight women pilots with accompanying ground crews were detached from the 586th and temporarily assigned to two all-male regiments during the Battle of Stalingrad. These regiments consisted of pilots known as free fighters, pilots who actively sought out the enemy and engaged them. Three of the women assigned to these regiments perished in combat. Two of them, Lilya Litvyak and Katya Budanova, became aces while flying with the male regiments. Litvyak was credited with twelve kills and two shared kills; Budanova was said to have shot down even more enemy aircraft, although the exact number was not known. Both of them died in combat in the summer of 1943. The remaining women pilots with their ground crews were later returned to the 586th. Lilya Litvyak, whose remains were not found until 1989, was posthumously awarded her nation's highest award, Hero of the Soviet Union, by then-President Mikhail Gorbachev in 199o.
Left to right: Lilya Litvyak, Yekaterina Budanova, Mariya Kuznetsova, 586th regiment fighter pilots
Early in the war, without radar, fighter aircraft were airborne at all times protecting vital areas. When a radar unit warning of enemy aircraft in the vicinity became operational, it became possible for air defense fighters to remain on ground alert, instead of being airborne and visually searching for enemy aircraft. The term "readiness one" was used to indicate a fighter aircraft at the end of a runway with the pilot in the cockpit, ready to start the engine and take off to intercept the enemy as it approached. The regiment was initially equipped with a Soviet-made Yakovlev (Yak-i) fighter, a single-seat, low-wing aircraft with a liquid-cooled I,I00 HP engine. It had a top speed of about 400 MPH and carried two very small-caliber machine guns. Later the Yak-i was replaced with more advanced Yak aircraft, equipped with heavy-caliber machine guns and a 20 mm cannon.
The first Yak-i's had a radio receiver only; later, the aircraft were provided with two-way radios. No antifreeze was available for the aircraft early in the war, and it was necessary to drain the engines of water and oil in the winter whenever the planes were on the ground for any length of time to keep the engines from freezing.
The regiment flew 4,419 combat missions, engaged in 125 dogfights, and shot down thirty-eight enemy aircraft. Ten of the women pilots were killed during the war (including the three killed while assigned to the male regiments), and nine more joined the regiment in 1943 as replacements.
NOTE: Nine women pilots of the 586th regiment were alive in 199o, and all of them were interviewed.
Senior Lieutenant Tamara Pamyatnykh, pilot, commander of the squadron
Tamara Pamyatnykh deft) and Galina Burdina, 586th regiment
I was born in September, 1919. When I was sixteen I attended glider school, and then I went on to the aviation school at Uliganovsk to become a flight instructor. When the war broke out I became a military officer and taught cadets. On October 10, 1941, I was called to Moscow. It was an exciting time, for everything was chaotic, everyone was running away, and there were lots of refugees in the railway station. I thought I was to be sent to the rear, but instead I was admitted to Raskova's regiment.
We trained at Engels starting in the last days of October, and when Raskova asked us in which regiment we wanted to serve, I said the fighter regiment. We trained in the Yak-r, and later I was appointed commander of the formation.
My first combat mission was in July, 1942. We were to fly escort for a transport aircraft carrying Voroshilov, a member of the State Defense Committee, to the Stalingrad front. When we arrived and I got out of the cockpit to report, the officer at the airfield looked at me and asked, "Where are the pilots?" I was a lieutenant, and when I told him we girls were the pilots, he didn't believe me. He walked around our three aircraft, saw two more girls there, and he still couldn't believe it! He asked how we were going to fly back, and I told him the same way we came here.
In August, 1942, three of us were assigned a combat mission: to deliver a message to the commanding staff of the army concerning its movement. It took considerable time to fly there, and it was dark before we arrived. None of us had flown the fighters at night; we hadn't been trained in night flying at all. I could see Stalingrad burning, but I couldn't see the front line and feared we might land on an enemy airfield. At that moment the Soviet forces shot a rocket into the air to indicate the location of the airfield. We had no lights turned on, and I was afraid that one of the other two planes would land on top of mine, so I turned on my lights for just a minute, even though I had no permission to do it. Galina Burdina told me that if I hadn't done that she would have landed on top of me! We all landed safelyour first night landings.
On one combat mission with Raisa Surnachevskaya as my wingman, we were assigned to intercept and shoot down a German reconnaissance aircraft. We soon saw not one aircraft but two formations of German bombers totaling forty-two planes. We climbed until our altitude was well above them and dove down firing at the lead aircraft of the formation. Each of us shot down one bomber on our first pass through their formation. Then we turned and approached the formation again and shot down two more bombers. By that time my guns were empty, and I decided to ram one of their bombers with my aircraft. I came so close to the enemy that I could see the face of the pilot. He was a huge man with a very fierce face. I was about to ram him when my plane was hit with gunfire, the wing separated from the aircraft, and I fell into a spin. It was also on fire.
I was being thrown about with so much force that my arms were flailing about, and I couldn't even get hold of the seat belt. I had already opened the canopy. My life flew in front of my eyes. I wanted to jump, but I couldn't open the belt. I didn't feel fear, but I thought I was going to die. At last I got the belt open and I didn't even jump-I was thrown out of the cockpit! I pulled the ring of my parachute, and it opened. When I landed, I started touching myself to see if I had injuries because I thought I had been severely wounded. I had blood on my face, and I felt very ill. My face was hurt, and the blood was running down. When my parachute opened, I was only ISO meters from the ground.
I looked up to the sky and saw that Raisa had circled around and was making another attack on the bombers. I thought, If she makes that attack alone she will never survive. I went to the telegraph station to report to my regiment that my aircraft was down and destroyed. Then I saw Raisa walking across a field, and it was wintertime, and there was snow, and we were in our fur boots. We came together and embraced each other and had the feeling that we had both been given birth again.
But in spite of the fact we were safe and alive, I began worrying that I might be punished because my aircraft was destroyed; I wasn't afraid, but I thought something might happen because of it. Instead, we were decorated! It came over the radio that we had turned back the large formation of German bombers and shot down four of them. We were each awarded the Order of the Red Star. Then the King of England, who read of this event, sent each of us a gold watch through the Soviet Minister of Foreign Affairs. Mine is inscribed: From the Minister of Foreign Affairs to the brave and gallant pilot Lieutenant Tamara Pamyatnykh-from the King of England, George VI.
Once I had an accident in the air. I was assigned the mission of intercepting an enemy reconnaissance plane, and I flew the mission with Galina Burdina. I came in to attack the enemy aircraft and discovered that it was an Airacobra, an American-built Russian plane. At the same time the Airacobra pilot mistook my Yak for the enemy. I didn't fire at him because I recognized him in time, but he came in and started firing at me. The problem was that when you are to
ld by the ground controller that enemy planes are in that area you just assume that one is it, and you start shooting right away, not looking to see what plane it really is. The Airacobra's bullets hit my fuel tank, smashed the instruments, and hit through the armor plate. The wings were shot, and I had to return to my airfield.
When the other pilot mistook me for an enemy plane and I recognized him as a Soviet fighter, I began diving away. He dove after me and then Galina dove after him, for she wanted to save me. He continued firing and hitting my aircraft, and then he flew away. I managed to land on our airfield. When I got out of the cockpit, I saw that there were holes in my jacket where a bullet had gone completely through but hadn't touched me! At first the regimental commander didn't believe me when I told him a Russian Airacobra shot me down, but when they cut open the gas tank they found Russian bullets, and then he knew it was true. That pilot was to be tried by a military tribunal for his mistake, but we applied to the commander of the army with a personal request to set him free because we felt so sorry for the young boy. So he wasn't sentenced and went on flying.
In 1944 I fell in love with a pilot from a male fighter regiment, married, and flew in my husband's regiment for the remainder of the war. In July, 1944, my husband was shot down and imprisoned by the Germans in Buchenwald Concentration Camp, but he survived. When Buchenwald was liberated by the Soviet troops the prisoners were half-dead. When my husband came out into the fresh air he fainted, and he was taken to an American hospital. He was there for twenty days receiving nourishment, and then he was loaded into a Soviet aircraft and brought back. We did not meet until after the end of the war, in Moscow. He remained in the air force for the rest of his career and retired as a colonel. I gave birth to three children, and now we have five grandchildren.