Night Witches of the Soviet Union - WYHI

588th Night Bomber Group

Soviet women were barred from combat at the beginning of the war, but a record-breaking aviatrix named Marina Raskova (hailed as the “Soviet Amelia Earhart”) was later called upon by Joseph Stalin to organize a regiment of young female pilots to fight the German invaders, making the Soviet Union the first nation to allow women to fly combat missions.

The women flew repurposed 1920s biplanes, made of canvas-draped plywood, that were previously used mostly for crop dusting. The primitive planes lacked many basic instruments, including radios—navigation was done with a stopwatch and a map. If hit, the flimsy aircrafts would burn up immediately. The pilots did not carry parachutes. The aircrafts were so small that they could only carry two bombs at a time, so the pilots were required to carry out multiple missions per night—sometimes as many as 18. Some of the pilots flew more than 800 missions during the war. The women of the 588th Night Bomber Regiment flew roughly 30,000 missions, dropping a total of 23,000 tons of bombs on the invading Nazi armies.

The planes were slow and obsolete - the speed of their aircraft was less than the stall speed of the bf-109s and fw-190s they flew against. The resourceful Russians capitalized on the planes’ maneuverability, which allowed them to deftly dodge German bullets. As a stealth technique, the bombers would idle their engines as they approached the target, then glide the rest of the way—leaving only the “whoosh” of their aircrafts in the wind to give them away. The sound reminded German soldiers of a witch’s broomstick, thus dubbing the bombers “Nachthexen,” or “night witches.”

At the end of the war, the Night Witches were not allowed to fly in the victory celebration over the Kremlin since their planes were too slow.