by Anne Noggle
Senior Sergeant Yekaterina Polunina, senior mechanic of the aircraft
First I was a mechanic of the aircraft for Olga Studenetskaia, the pilot who shot down a Junkers Ju-88 bomber, and who was a deputy squadron commander. I was very surprised when she chose me to be her mechanic; probably it was because she knew I had worked at an aviation test factory. I remember when she was coming in to land and the elevator cable on her Yak broke and she couldn't land, so she opened the throttle, gained altitude, and jumped. When she jumped, the stabilizer hit her in the back as the plane was spinning, and she spent seven months in the hospital. She came hack to our unit but she was not allowed to fly anymore, so she went to light aircraft aviation.
Once I was arrested. I had to do some technical work on the aircraft that took some fifty hours, and when I went to the mess to have a bowl of soup, the commander announced a lineup. I was arrested because I wasn't on duty, and I was given ten days in the guardhouse. It was a cabin in which I could only stand still. I couldn't bend, I couldn't lie down, only stand still. The most difficult thing about it was keeping up morale. The most outrageous thing was to go outside the door of the room with a man standing behind me with a gun sticking in my back saying, "Go and have your-whatever you have to do." And I had to do it in his presence. I was doomed to stay there ten days, but I only stayed two, because no aircraft could do without the mechanic. Afterwards I read in the documents of the political staff of the regiment that I was punished because I had not prepared the aircraft for flying. But that was not true-I didn't have to prepare it for flying; I had fifty hours to do some provisional work with the plane.
After the war, all of the women who were mechanics before the war or who were attending school in mechanics or who were faculty members teaching mechanics-all changed careers. None went back to it. They found it was too heavy a work for women.
One night we were having a little rest on the heaps of straw outside on the airfield. The field was not lighted, and we suddenly heard the roaring of an engine in the air and thought it was a German plane. At that moment it turned on its identification lights-forbidden in wartime-and it became clear that the pilot was asking for lights on the runway for landing. And when it landed and we came up to the aircraft, we didn't know who was in the cockpit, a German or a Soviet pilot. If a German pilot, what to do with him: to imprison him or to fire at him? Just then the canopy opened, and a robust young man speaking Russian called us bad names, and said, "Why didn't you give me identification lights on the wind tee for the runway to land on?" He was short of fuel and was on the verge of crashing. We were so happy that he turned out to be a Soviet pilot and not a German one.
One day, at the end of the war on an airfield in Hungary, a sporttype plane came in and landed. As he taxied toward us, I realized he was not a Russian but a foreigner, and he said in German "Kaput" as he got out of the cockpit. I looked then at the wings and at the tail, and I saw the German fascist crosses. I knew I had allowed the landing of a fascist aircraft! In our regiment there was only one person who could speak a foreign language, Nina Slovokhotova, our deputy regimental navigator. She asked him in English who he was, what nationality he was, and he explained he was Hungarian and had arrived by himself to see what had happened to his native town, Budapest. And I, Yekaterina, had allowed him to land.
In 1943, after ten of our pilots died during the war, nine more came to the 586th regiment as replacements. Nine of our pilots are still alive in 199o. The Yak fighter was a sophisticated and difficult plane to maintain, so the senior engineer and squadron engineers were men. But the engineer in avionics and the engineer in armament were women. Not only women served as mechanics but men also. Most of the mechanics have suffered from ill health after the war.
The fighter pilots had to act as their own navigators and gunners, and so they had to have experience and many flying hours. Each regiment had a rear service battalion for fuel, cooks, ammunition service, chemical service, and guard company, and the airforce regiments only had the responsibility for flying missions.
There was no water, so we boiled snow; there was no antifreeze for the planes, so we drained them in winter after each mission and drained the oil and heated it in barrels with a stove underneath. The barrels were on skis like a sleigh, to take to the planes. If a plane made a forced landing, we often towed the sleigh to the aircraft for many, many kilometers. All the mechanics, twenty-two of us, were students of the Moscow Aviation Institute.
Early in the war our regiment had the Yak-1 fighter with two machine guns of 7.62 mm caliber, the same as rifle bullets-very small caliber-so it was necessary to attack about three times to shoot down a plane. In 1942 they replaced them with 12.7 mm machine guns and a 20 mm cannon that fired through the gearbox shaft. The Yak engine, as well as the machine guns, started with compressed air, with a very long tube to the compressor; and if the tubes broke in the air, the pilots couldn't fire their guns. It was difficult to adjust these machine guns so they wouldn't hit the propeller. The guns were called "klicks" because they made that kind of noise. Each gun weighed 20 kilos, and it was heavy to clean and oil in the winter.
The main mission of our air defense regiment was not to shoot down but to chase away enemy aircraft. We started in combat from the banks of the Volga River on to Vienna, Austria, where we were then equipped with Yak-9 fighters. Our aircraft guarded bridges; many river crossings including the Don, the Voronezh, the Dnieper, and the Dniester; industrial centers; railroad centers; and our troops at the front.
The pilots flew 4,419 combat missions and 125 dogfights and shot down thirty-eight enemy aircraft. Few of the places the regiment guarded were destroyed by enemy aviation. Some eight crews from our regiment were assigned to two male fighter squadrons on the Stalingrad front, and they flew in pairs with male pilots as their wingmen because they did not have as much experience.
The wingman's duty was to protect the tail of the lead fighter pilot. When one of the girls, Nechayeva, was protecting the squadron commander who was about to land, three German Me-ro9s attacked them. She had no fuel, no ammunition, but she covered his aircraft with hers, and everyone there saw her killed. Budanova, another of our pilots sent to the male squadron, perished in July, 1943, but not before she shot down over twenty German aircraft; and Lilya Litvyak, also an ace, died in August, 1943. Five of the eight pilots came back to our regiment. Our pilots would dive as much as seven kilometers in a dogfight, and their blood vessels were damaged.
There are monuments to both Budanova and Litvyak. The mechanics knew their pilots very well. I am the regimental archivist.
Captain Alexandra Makunina, chief of staff
We moved to Moscow when I was four years old. I was twenty-four when the war started, and we were on an expedition to find mineral deposits in the Ural Mountains. It was not until the fourth day of the war that we found out about it. On August 3 I got to Moscow. On October io I joined the army, went to train at Engels, and then on to the front with the 586th Fighter Regiment. It was a difficult time for Moscow itself, as the German troops were very near the capital, and it was being bombed from the air by the fascists.
Most all the women in the regiment had gone to glider school. I, too, had gone to glider school. I was in my first year of postgraduate studies after finishing in the Department of Physical Geography at the university. I flew the gliders and jumped with a parachute. I was looking for adventure, and when the war started my first impulse was to join the partisans on the ground. Being a geographer, I had been on some expeditions looking for deposits, and I also was a mountain climber. I trained with the regiment at Engels where I had navigation courses. My teacher was Marina Raskova, and Raskova herself appointed me to be chief of staff. I was striving to fly, but Marina said to me, "In the regiments I've enough girls who can fly the planes, but to be chief of staff I must be sure you are a person of brains." She would say that the staff was the brain of the regiment. As chief of staff I was the second in command on the ground after the commander
of the regiment. The position carried a wide range of responsibilities. I had the responsibility of planning the work of the regiment on the ground, air training, and combat missions. My rank was lieutenant, and I finished the war as a captain.
Besides the staff itself there was a control post responsible for the combat missions, and it was part of my duty to organize its work. Also the women could come to me if they needed something-they could and they did! They could go to town when they were not on duty, get their hair done, meet the fellows, fall in love. When bad news came from home I authorized short-term leaves for them. They used to say, "Who sleeps less than anyone in the regiment-the chief of staff!" It was a strain for me to be of this rank and to serve as a commander, and as a consequence I began fainting. I never slept more than three hours a night, sometimes not at all. When I began fainting I asked to be appointed deputy commander because I couldn't physically stand the overstrain any longer.
When I became the deputy commander my duties were to plan combat missions and training flights-schedule everything. My profession and training as a physical geographer helped me a lot. For example, when the regiment started for another airfield I had all the maps, and I explained to the girls the terrain and topography of the new area.
The women were all volunteers, and it was a fever of patriotism, a necessity for them to do something. I myself could not have acted in any other way; it was proper to be at the front and to do this work. The very notion, the very sense of defending the motherland, was the duty of all the men and the women too. But I don't think women should make combat flights at all; I think a woman should remain a woman. Combat is not for a woman.
I remember when we received military clothing for the girls: jackets, overalls, boots, pants, all male clothing, everything very large. We didn't receive any underwear for women; it was not a normal situation. One of the girls received very, very large boots, and while she was checking the aircraft and getting it ready for a mission, she took off her boots and performed her job bare-legged. At this moment the staff of the regiment was approaching. She realized that it was going to be a uniform violation and she would be punished, so she had to leave her job, jump into the hoots, and stand straight in order to report to the staff.
In our regiment the girls were attractive. They were very young and fresh, and nearby was a male regiment. Well, they got acquainted and they loved each other. Once the commander of that male regiment came to our commander and said, "I can give you as many aircraft as you want if you give me five girls [at this point he gave their names]; let's make an exchange!"
It is a fact that girls were arrested for some violations. Sonya Tishurova was keen on dancing, and she even formed a special group of girls who performed national dances in the regiment. She tried to teach the Belorussian national dance to everybody. Once she was arrested for three days for absence without leave, and when a person is arrested they are to take off their belt. She was put in a guardhouse, a room where she could do nothing, just stay there with her meals brought to her, but she still could see through the window that life was going on. Sonya stayed there without a belt on her uniform, and a brass band arrived at the regiment. It grieved her not to attend, because bands almost never came to the front. Besides, there were a lot of male regiments, and she was so popular among all the dancing fans who knew Tishurova was the best at performing the dances. So they came to her rescue and brought her a belt so she could be in uniform. She escaped from that room and came to the dance and then returned to the guardhouse!
High-ranking officials decided who was to be punished and what the punishment would be, but lower ranks could prescribe shorter punishments.
Senior Lieutenant Mariya Kuznetsova, pilot
I began flying in 1936, when I was eighteen. I was born in a city near Moscow, and my parents were peasants. My father was arrested in 1937. When I started at the aeroclub I had to write in the documents that my father was arrested and imprisoned, and for this reason, because he was considered an enemy of the people, I was expelled several times from this flying course. My friends, however, persuaded the principal of the school to let me finish the courses. My father died during the war.
I became a flight instructor in the Po-2 in a military pilot school and taught there for five years, graduating about sixty pilots. In 1941 I joined the army and was assigned to the 586th Fighter Regiment as a pilot guarding targets like bridges and such.
I took part in the actions at the Stalingrad front, and I was there when the German troops in Stalingrad were surrounded and surrendered. I remained there up to the summer of 1943. They had sent four of us to the Stalingrad front to join a male fighter regiment, and there we met the enemy's every mission. I shot down three enemy aircraft. We suffered great losses of planes and pilots at that time, and because of a shortage of aircraft I didn't fly on every combat mission. Men mostly flew the Yaks. Of four aircraft flying in a formation, one was piloted by a woman-me. I shot down a Ju-87 and a Ju-88, German bombers. At that time German planes were superior in number, and in each battle we either lost an aircraft or a crew. Our fighters attacked the bombers, and the German fighters fought our fighters, and one of our pilots said, "We have to fight the enemy on our own fair land, and in an alien sky which at present doesn't belong to us."
Two pilots before the war: Mariya Kuznetsova (left) and Valentina Volkova-Tikhonova, 586th regiment
I was shot down several times, but God saved me. My mother was a believer, and she prayed to God for my safety. But rumors reached my parents that I had been killed, and, figuratively, they buried me twice. Once my propeller blades were hit by bullets, and they skimmed down the fuselage, just missing the fuel tank. Another day I was fighting with a German aircraft and didn't notice that I was out of fuel. The engine stopped, and I dove away from the combat. I felt so sorry for my aircraft-I didn't want it to crash-I had to spare it. I knew we were extremely short of planes, so I decided to belly-land, and I was fortunate that it stopped just short of a very deep trench.
In 1943, because of the shortage of planes, the regiment could only make six or seven combat missions a day. There were more pilots than planes. When I was fighting I could see the gunfire and flashes of shell, and I remember the Germans didn't even let us have dinner! They knew from reconnaissance flights what time we usually had our meals, and they would attack the airdrome. Once they knew the location of our canteen they strafed it. The cook jumped into a trench but was killed by gunfire. We pilots usually had dinner on the surfaces of the wing of our aircraft, and the food was brought to us there. In the evening we were given ioo grams of alcohol to relieve the stress. We gave our alcohol to the men, but after heavy losses of our pilots we did drink it. Otherwise we couldn't fall asleep.
One day we were guarding a railroad station near a lake at Stalingrad, and we were given an order to intercept a group of enemy planes coming to bomb this station. Another woman pilot, Belyayeva, and I took off, and when we arrived in that area we saw a group of about ten German bombers, and we started a dogfight. During the maneuvers Belyayeva's plane was shot down, and I kept on fighting. It is our pilots' tradition to do that. We did our best not to let the enemy bomb the objective. Moreover, we shot down two fascist aircraft. The German bombers dropped their bombs in an open field and turned back. You must watch for your friend who has been shot down, and I kept looking for her; she jumped with her parachute and was safe.
Our male regiment flew the Lavochkin-5 aircraft. They were more modern and advanced than our Yak fighters. From the very start the male regimental commander didn't believe we were good pilots. Once he decided to test us and said, "In the afternoon we will have a training dogfight between male crews and you two, so two men and two women compete with each other." Belyayeva and Budanova flew, and the male squadron commander and wing commander took off. When Belyayeva was in her cockpit she said, "I will approach their aircraft from the rear," and she did it, and won the mock attack. They were so carried away by the dogfight that they didn't even
notice several German fighters approaching above them, getting ready to attack. The fascist fighters had the advantage because they were above our fighters, who were instructed to land on another airdrome because ours was blocked by the Germans. These two girls proved that in their Yaks they could fight the men in the more sophisticated aircraft-everything depended on skill.
One day I miraculously escaped death. I performed my mission and left the plane with the parachute in the cockpit and went to report. It was early in the spring with the temperature above zero centigrade. The mechanics had to start the engine occasionally to keep it warm in case I needed to fly, and suddenly it burst into flames. The mechanic escaped, but the aircraft burned completely. Probably a hole had been shot in the fuel tank and fuel was leaking, so for the third time I was very lucky.
By this time, in the summer of 1943, the Germans did not send any combat planes to our area, only reconnaissance aircraft. That is why we women pilots flying in the male fighter regiments in Stalingrad were about to be returned to our own regiment, the 586th. One of the girls who had remained with 586th regiment learned that we had fought severe dogfights with the enemy. Out of envy she escaped from the female regiment in the plane of a male pilot who had fallen ill and flew to the male regiment where we served. Her name was Anna Demchenko. She did this without permission and was punished for it.
When I was escorting a cargo Li-2 aircraft-constructed in the Soviet Union using the design of the American C-47-that carried blood from Moscow to the front for the wounded, I asked the pilot to take me home to Moscow, my native city. He didn't want to take me on board the plane. He was superstitious and believed that when a woman is on the plane it may bring misfortune. I shamed him; I had been protecting him for three days on his flights to the Stalingrad front, and he did not want to take me. At last he agreed, and I flew home and spent three days.