Night Witches: Russian Women Fighter Pilots [audio 23 minutes]
One cold spring day in 1943, two junior lieutenants, Tamara Pamyatnykh and Raisa Surnachevskaya, were on a routine patrol over a Soviet railway junction. Suddenly they were confronted by an armada of 42 German bombers - they reacted immediately.
Diving with the sun behind them, the women opened fire on the centre of the Junkers formation. Each pilot shot down two enemy planes. Tamara ran out of ammunition and was going to ram another bomber with her airplane, when her wing was shot off. She bailed out and landed in a field.
Men and women civilians rushed over to help. "They undid the parachute straps and offered me a glass of vodka, which I refused", she recalls. "Nobody couldn't understand why the brave lad who had taken on a Nazi squadron wouldn't drink vodka!"
Russia's female pilots in during World War II
Then Tamara took off her helmet and the astonished crowd saw the dashing young aviator was a woman.
Tamara is among the surviving veterans Lucy Ash has tracked down in Moscow and southern Russia. The Soviet Union was the first nation to allow women to fly combat missions. Women pilots in other countries flew military aircraft in support roles and some were fired on by enemies. But only Soviet women pilots could fire back; only Soviet women dropped bombs and fought in air battles...
... Nadezhda Popova, now a great grandmother, was a pilot in the 46th Night Bombers Guards Regiment. "The Germans called us Night Witches because we never let them get any sleep", she says. "They spread a rumour that we had been injected with some unknown chemicals that enabled us to see so clearly in the pitch black.!"...
...Lucy talks to these formidable women veterans who played such a crucial role in the skies over Stalingrad and elsewhere on the Eastern Front. She discovers that they have not only motivated a new generation of female pilots but that their bravery has also inspired tributes from American airwomen, comic book artists and even a Dutch heavy metal band.
Read entire article at BBC
Diving with the sun behind them, the women opened fire on the centre of the Junkers formation. Each pilot shot down two enemy planes. Tamara ran out of ammunition and was going to ram another bomber with her airplane, when her wing was shot off. She bailed out and landed in a field.
Men and women civilians rushed over to help. "They undid the parachute straps and offered me a glass of vodka, which I refused", she recalls. "Nobody couldn't understand why the brave lad who had taken on a Nazi squadron wouldn't drink vodka!"
Russia's female pilots in during World War II
Then Tamara took off her helmet and the astonished crowd saw the dashing young aviator was a woman.
Tamara is among the surviving veterans Lucy Ash has tracked down in Moscow and southern Russia. The Soviet Union was the first nation to allow women to fly combat missions. Women pilots in other countries flew military aircraft in support roles and some were fired on by enemies. But only Soviet women pilots could fire back; only Soviet women dropped bombs and fought in air battles...
... Nadezhda Popova, now a great grandmother, was a pilot in the 46th Night Bombers Guards Regiment. "The Germans called us Night Witches because we never let them get any sleep", she says. "They spread a rumour that we had been injected with some unknown chemicals that enabled us to see so clearly in the pitch black.!"...
...Lucy talks to these formidable women veterans who played such a crucial role in the skies over Stalingrad and elsewhere on the Eastern Front. She discovers that they have not only motivated a new generation of female pilots but that their bravery has also inspired tributes from American airwomen, comic book artists and even a Dutch heavy metal band.