by Anne Noggle
In September, 1942, some of our pilots, including Lilya, were sent to different male regiments protecting Stalingrad during that terrible battle, and I was sent there also, to he Lilya's mechanic. Lilya bleached her hair white, and she would send me to the hospital to get hydrogen peroxide liquid to do it. She took pieces of parachute, sewed them together, painted it different colors, and wrapped it around her neck.
Lilya was very fond of flowers, and whenever she saw them she picked them. She would arrive at the airfield early in the morning in the summer, pick a bucket of flowers, and spread them on the wings of her plane. She especially loved roses. In the winter she wrote to her mother in Moscow asking for a picture with roses. Her mother couldn't find a picture, so she asked me to write to my mother, who sent a postcard with roses, but the roses were yellow and Lilya liked red. She put the picture of roses on the left side of the instrument panel and flew with it. She was pretty and thin and looked like the actress Serova, who was quite famous. Lilya was born in 1921, and at that time she was twenty years old and I was twenty-one.
The day Lilya didn't come back from a mission-when she perished-I was not there at the airdrome. I had been sent to take the entrance examinations for the Airforce Academy, so that day, unfortunately, I wasn't there. I was the only woman who entered the academy and there were no barracks for women, so I had to come back to my regiment. When I arrived I was told Lilya had not returned yesterday. I served on her crew for about eight months.
It was very difficult to work as a mechanic-that is a man's job. The airdrome was often bombed by the Germans, and there was some artillery shelling, but I wasn't afraid for my life. I was just waiting for Lilya to come back; I was impatient for her to return from her flight. The aircraft flew about five flights a day when the weather was good, starting at sunrise. The pilots stayed in a village nearby, and we mechanics slept at the airdrome near the aircraft in open trenches. When it became cold in the winter, we took the engine cover and put it over ourselves, and in the morning we would wake up with ice on our hair and faces.
My hands are scarred and misshapen because of the kerosene we used. Many parts of the engine were very hard to get to, and it was impossible to wear our gloves when we worked. When it was very cold I would touch the engine, and my fingers stuck to it, and it pulled the skin off. The brakes worked by air pressure, and the compressor air container weighed sixty kilograms. In the summer I could roll it, but in the winter I had to carry it. I would put it on my shoulder and carry it from one plane to another, because the engines started with pressurized air.
Sometimes men flew the same aircraft as Lilya, for there was a shortage of planes. Lilya was very small and short, and each time the men flew it I had to fix the pedals, then fix them again when Lilya flew, and it took time. My friends used to say, "You are always with your legs up," because I had to go head first into the cockpit to change the rudder pedals; I had to dive into the cockpit.
Lilya was wounded twice before she perished. She was first wounded in her leg, and even after this she kept on fighting. She managed to land the aircraft, but she couldn't taxi or get out of the cockpit because of her wound. The second time she was wounded she belly-landed on German territory, and she could see them running toward her but she escaped them. It happened that if you were shot down and landed, one of your aircraft would land next to you if they saw it. At that time another Soviet fighter pilot landed and picked up Lilya, and she escaped. There were two different airdromes in our area, and when the pilot flew back with Lilya, he landed on the other airfield so nobody knew who he was; she never found out.
Lilya shot down twelve enemy planes by herself, including a balloon; she shared three others. The balloon was a threat to that whole area of the front, and it was protected by many anti-aircraft guns and had a German officer observing from it. Many Soviet airmen tried to shoot it down but turned back, because there was a wall of fire from the guns. Lilya volunteered to shoot it down. She was just out of the hospital from her wounds, promising the doctors she would go visit her mother and recover, but she spent only one day, then returned to her regiment. She went to the regimental commander and said, "Let me shoot down the balloon." He said she could not, for she was still ill and had no right to fly. She told him that if he did not let her do it she would do it without his permission, and he told her in that case she should tell him how she was going to do it.
She took off and flew-not straight to the front line, but parallel to it, to the area where there were no German troops or artillery. She crossed the front line and flew to the rear, choosing the time of day when she could approach the balloon from the direction of the sun. Nobody expected her to appear from that side; she fired, and it caught fire and went down. This was in the spring of 1942. She was a senior lieutenant. Lilya's real name was Lydiya. Her mother called her Lilya, and Lilya herself liked to be called that name because in Russian lilya means lily-flower.
When Lilya approached the airdrome after a victory, it was impossible to watch her; she would fly at a very low altitude and start doing acrobatics over the field. Her regimental commander would say, "I will destroy her for what she is doing, I will teach her a lesson!" After she landed and taxied to her position she would ask me, "Did our father shout at me?" And he did shout at her, and then he admired what she had done. She flew over the field so low the covers of the aircraft would flap and fly around, she created such a wind! When she was shot down the first time, she received a new Yak-i aircraft. Men pilots tried to stop her from flying because they wanted to save her, but it was impossible. She was a flight commander; there were three aircraft in a flight.
Earlier Lilya flew as wingman with the squadron commander, Alexei Salomatin. They loved each other, and he taught her about combat. One day Lilya was sitting in the cockpit in readiness tworeadiness one is on the runway. Lilya and I were talking, with me sitting on the wing of the plane while she was waiting for her turn to take off, and at this time the squadron commander and a new, young pilot were up flying. Alexei was training him, doing aerobatics with engines roaring, and then one of the aircraft started coming down with a roar, crashed, and exploded. Everyone thought it was the new pilot, but no, it was the squadron commander, it was Alexei. Something happened to his plane, and he didn't have time to bail out. We buried him, and after this happened Lilya didn't want to stay on the ground, she only wanted to fly and fight, and she flew combat desperately. This happened in May, 1943, and Lilya perished on August I.
She was returning from a mission of escorting the 11-2 aircraft, sometimes called the flying tank, and from somewhere behind the clouds, two German aircraft appeared. Lilya and her wingman, who were flying along the edge of the bomber squadron, were attacked, and she was shot down. She tried to escape by diving into the clouds, and at this point another Soviet pilot, Ivan Borisenko, saw this scene and tried to find her after she dove. He looked everywhere but couldn't find her. He never saw an aircraft explode or a pilot jump with a parachute. She never returned from that mission.
In reality she managed to belly-land the aircraft near a village. She was buried under the wing of the plane. We don't know who buried her, the fascists or the Soviet soldiers who liberated the village the next day. And we also don't know whether she was mortally wounded in the crash or killed by the Germans on the spot.
Left to right: Valentina Guozdikova, Klavdiya Pankratova, Lilya Litvyak, 586th regiment
In August, 1943, the commander of her regiment wrote all the documents to posthumously award her the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. But because there was no evidence of her death, no trace of her or the aircraft, this procedure was stopped, and the rumor was that she might have become a prisoner of the Germans. There were many rumors of various sightings of her as a prisoner in camps and speculation about what happened to her, but until this year (1990, there was no evidence. I personally searched for her plane for three years with my husband and grandchildren, using a metal detector. We found thirty aircraft but not hers.
Lilya's father was killed in 1937 during the repressions, and Lilya was very afraid to die somewhere unknown. It was her feeling, and she was very afraid of it. Lilya's brother had to change his name to his mother's name. He said his father was tortured and killed in 1937, and he changed his name to save his own life. I don't blame him; nobody would blame him who lived in that time. He said his father was killed in a concentration camp; his sister, no one knows where; and there were rumors about her going over to the Germans. It was very hard times for him. Lilya's mother decided to treat me as Lilya's sister. She never knew about the happy ending of this story.
A few years ago, two boys were playing in a field in Belorussia and saw a snake that went into a hole. They decided to widen the hole to take the snake away, and they found a body-her body. So they dug it out and invited the commission, the specialists, to inspect the remains. This commission wrote a paper that said it was the body of a woman pilot, very small; and they found hair, her flying suit, and a gold tooth. Then the commission reburied her in a village nearby. People had been searching for her body for fifteen years. In May, 199o, President Gorbachev signed the decree that made Lilya Litvyak posthumously a Hero of the Soviet Union. Now I have a right to die. I swore that I would find Lilya before I died and that has happened, so now I can die.
NOTE: Lilya Litvyak's brother, with great pride, showed me her Gold Star of Hero of the Soviet Union medal and the citation signed by Mikhail Gorbachev.
Senior Sergeant Valentina Kislitsa, mechanic of the aircraft
My parents were teachers in a small village settlement where I was born in 1922. It was in the region of Stavropol in the Caucasus, the same region where Gorbachev was born. My father was killed in 1922 in the Civil War. In 1938 I finished secondary school and came to Moscow, where I enrolled in the Moscow Aviation University. I was a third-year student when the Great Patriotic War began. It was summertime and I was supposed to go home to spend my holiday, but because of the war I stayed in Moscow to work in a plant as a controller. My university was evacuated to an Asian republic. So at that time I decided to volunteer for the army and was accepted into Raskova's regiments. After training I was assigned to the 586th Fighter Regiment, and we went to the front. I stayed with the regiment until the end of the war.
After the war I returned to the university, and upon graduation I worked for the Central Aerohydrodynamic Research Institute. This institute resembles NASA in its research. I am not retired; I still work as an engineer economist. I have been working at this institute for forty-two years.
Lieutenant Valentina Volkova-Tikhonova, pilot
Valentina Volkova-Tikhonova, 586th regiment
Before the war, I was a pilot instructor in the glider school. I had a great amount of flying hours. When the war broke out, I taught the young men to fly the U-2. I was twenty-three when I started flying. When I went into the women's regiment in 1942, I was twenty-seven. We flew the Yak-1, and we guarded certain important places on the ground. When we moved forward into Voronezh, the remains of the Germans and Soviets killed in the fighting had not yet been removed, and when snow and ice started melting and the river began moving, the river was red with blood.
We landed in an area formerly occupied by the Germans, and the town was completely destroyed. Apart from the wreckage we could see gallows everywhere, used by the Germans to hang their own people. The airfield was mined, and they couldn't find the mines because they were a special kind, so only the runway was clear. There were a lot of aircraft in the air, and one of my girlfriends who was a pilot stood on the side of the runway and shot a rocket into the air to identify the airfield for our pilots. A rocket malfunctioned and fell into the grass at the side of the runway and started burning the dry grass. My friend threw a blanket on it to put out the fire and started jumping on it to smother the flames, and she jumped onto a mine. She was thrown into the air, and I was thrown aside by the explosive force. She was taken to the hospital, and none of us could tell whether she was alive or dead-she was alive. Gunpowder got under her skin, and the doctors could do nothing about that. Her face remained dark with powder burns for the rest of her life.
When I was young during the war, I was convinced it was a job for a woman to fly combat. In those times our only thought was to defend the motherland, to save the country. I didn't think of it as emotional and physical pressure. I had become a pilot before the war, and it was only natural for me to become a military pilot. Now I realize that the stress was very great and that it is not a female job. The task was even more aggravating because when you are the sole person in the plane, you have to be extremely alert and aware; you are the gunner, navigator, and pilot all in one person.
We constantly had two aircraft on alert. As soon as the enemy was spotted, we took off to attack. Our planes flew at boo kilometers per hour, our altitude was as high as 1o kilometers (33,000 ft.), and we flew with oxygen. Our job was to keep the enemy from getting to their target.
I was considered to be a second-generation military pilot. I joined the regiment in 1942. I flew in the daytime, and some of my friends were night fighters. The night flights were the most dangerous. The night fighter pilots said goodbye before they left and kissed each other at dawn when they returned. We waited for them to return, and when they all came back we were happy.
I had 518 hours of combat flying during the war.
Sergeant Nina Shebalina, mechanic to the commander of the regiment
First I was a mechanic of the regiment, and then I was the mechanic to the commander of the regiment. I was surprised when it happened; I was proud and at the same time a little afraid. It was a very important and responsible position. When the war started I was a third-year student at the Moscow Aviation Institute preparing to acquire the profession of designing aircraft. Like all girls at that time I was a patriot, and I tried to volunteer. I wrote a special letter asking that I be allowed to go to the front, and at last I was allowed to join the regiment that Raskova founded. My knowledge then was completely theoretical-I was a student.
At first I was mechanic to Raisa Belyayeva, the commander of a squadron, and she was killed. She was returning from a combat mission, and suddenly I saw her aircraft dive into the ground. We never knew what happened to her or why this happened. She was in communication with the field and the other aircraft in her squadron, and abruptly the communication stopped, and the plane just dove into the ground. We think she was overstrained or fainted. No bullet had hit her. It was a terrible shock to me. When she perished I had already been reassigned to the aircraft of the regimental commander, even though I was fearful of having such a responsibility on my shoulders. I remained in this assignment for the remainder of the war.
I was never arrested while I was in the army-it wasn't common. I remember two or three times girls were arrested, but it was because they violated some established rules or discipline, and you know that the army is the army, and discipline is the first and foremost thing. Probably they were most often arrested because they ran away to a dance when they were supposed to guard the planes. Some were very strong-headed, and they didn't want to obey orders.
The living conditions were really very difficult for us. The pilots were provided with very primitive quarters, but we lived in trenches that we dug on the airfield at the tails of our planes. These trenches were covered only with canvas, so we lived underground. First of all, there was no place to live; and second, there was no time to sleep. In daytime the pilots flew combat missions, and in the nighttime we had to repair the aircraft. We worked at night with a cover over the engine and used torches for light. In some areas we lived in destroyed houses or in barracks if they were available.
The first shock of being at the front came at Stalingrad. We arrived by fighter-bomber, and when our aircraft landed and we emerged from the plane, the artillery shelling began; we were caught in the shelling. I was a young girl and I was frightened. The regiment had not been informed of our arrival, and they didn't come to meet us. When t
he girls began jumping from the fighter-bomber and the men in the regiment saw us being shelled, they ran to us and pushed us into their trenches, covering us with their bodies. Thus we lay still all together until the shelling ceased. None of our flying personnel perished in the bombings and strafing during this period, but I did see one girl from the logistics battalion, who had served us our dinner, killed carrying a tray with dishes.
During the four months that I was a mechanic for the aircraft I lost two male pilots. At that time there was a great shortage of planes, and the planes we did have had to alternate between pilots. So when a woman pilot would return from a combat mission, a male pilot would take the aircraft on another mission, and the aircraft were flown nearly all the time. We had to examine the aircraft after every mission and to fuel it if it had sustained no damage.
In the 586th there was one squadron of male pilots and two of women with ten planes and pilots in each. During the war we lost ten women pilots. Both the commander and chief navigator of our regiment were men.
After the war I went hack to my undergraduate work and graduated as an aeronautical engineer five years after the war ended. It took so long because I had two brothers who became invalids from the war, my father was an invalid of war, and my mother was very old, so I had to go home to the Ukraine to help the family. I worked at the Research Institute of Radio Electronics as an engineer. The war added much to my courage and much to my character, and later on, when I received my diploma for a master's degree, it was very different from the mechanics work I had done in the war.
During the war my attitude toward my aircraft was really like it was a living creature, like a baby. I cared for it every day and night, and I had to go through lots of tears when I lost my plane. I saw it off and said goodbye to it when they went on a combat mission, and then I was impatiently awaiting their return. If it didn't come back it was a misery, a misfortune. When I received a new plane, it took some patience and time for me to accustom myself to it. We all knew our own aircraft: you didn't have to see it, you just heard it and you knew. In between flights, when we were waiting for our planes to return, we had a little time to sit on the grass to talk and laugh.