Again, dreadful weather set in. Yet again, the aviators had to land short of their new base. Their little group of three pilots, three navigators, three gunners, and one mechanic celebrated the new year in a village called Lopatino while they waited for the snow and wind to die down.
Marina was growing impatient and was anxious about getting to her regiment, so soon to be assigned to combat and still without their commander. There was a great deal of pressure on her, after more than a year of preparation, to finally prove herself as a woman who could lead a combat regiment.
At last, on January 4, 1943, they had a chance to try again. There was a break in the weather, and though it wasn’t likely to last, Marina was a confident navigator and knew that she’d found her way through bad weather before. She’d have her own highly experienced chief navigator, Kirill Khil, along with her for support. She decided to risk it.
Marina led the way, taking off in a Pe-2 with three men: her gunner, Nikolai Erofeev; one of the mechanics, Vladimir Kruglov; and Kirill. Determined that this time she was going to make it to their new base at last, Marina gave orders to the other two Pe-2 pilots, Galina Tenuyeva and Gubina Ljubov, not to break formation unless they had an engine failure.
But clouds closed in on them. Galina, flying after Marina, could hardly see the wings of her own aircraft—let alone the two other planes in the formation. Before long, the three Pe-2 pilots were flying blindly alone in deadly fog, hoping only that they could find a place to land.
Galina said, “I think Raskova . . . was looking for a place to land and trying to recognize the landscape. We would go into clouds and out, and in and out of them, and when we saw she was maneuvering, we dropped back a little in our formation and lost Raskova’s aircraft in the clouds.”
Galina’s navigator gave a yell as she finally saw something—the ground right in front of them. Then their plane slammed into the earth on its belly. Galina’s face smashed into the controls, and her navigator catapulted past her into the instrument panel.
But they both survived the landing.
Gubina, the other pilot in the formation, was also struggling to see where she was. By chance, she saw a dark patch looming in the murk ahead of them, and Gubina pulled up the nose of her plane to avoid hitting it. Then her plane, too, struck the ground on its belly. The thing she’d tried to avoid turned out to be a bush—a bush that saved her life and those of her crew. If she hadn’t raised the plane’s nose at the last second, she’d have flown straight into the ground.
All three planes crashed that day—including Marina Raskova’s.
Marina’s plane came down near Saratov, painfully close to the familiar airfield at Engels, just out of reach and invisible in the storm. Even with two experienced navigators on board, they couldn’t find a place to land.
Marina flew blindly into the side of the Volga River’s high bank. As the plane hit the ground, she was thrown forward against the gunsight. In the impact, the metal back of the pilot’s seat beheaded her navigator, Kirill, who’d been standing behind her.
Nikolai and Vladimir survived the crash but froze to death before anyone was able to find them.
And Marina’s head was split in two by the impact with the gunsight. She was killed instantly.
Why did Marina press on that day?
It may have been against her own better judgment. She may have been overthinking her role as commander of the not-yet-in-combat 587th Regiment, the last of her regiments to go to war. She may have been anxious to perform bravely and to prove herself both to her aviators and to her nation.
She may have been thinking of Stalin’s Order 227. She may have been thinking of her own relationship with Josef Stalin, whatever it was, and how Order 227’s command, “Not one step back,” made it an act of treason to retreat in the face of danger.
Galina noticed that they flew over three airfields they could have landed at before the flight ended in disaster. She said, “[Marina Raskova] 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.”
Marina had made the fatal mistake of continuing to fly into bad weather.
Everyone who had trained in the 122nd Air Group was devastated by the news.
Zoya Pozhidayeva and other pilots in her squadron of the 586th Fighter Aviation Regiment were at an unfamiliar airfield when they heard. They were still stuck at the base where Zhenya Prokhorova froze to death after her crash in thick fog. How heartbreaking, in addition to Zhenya, to learn now of the death of their beloved Marina Raskova!
Zhenya Rudneva, navigator and storyteller, recorded in her diary the moment that the 588th Night Bomber Aviation Regiment found out:
“In the morning, when the squadrons formed up, we heard the terrible news. Rakobolskaya came out and said: ‘Raskova is dead.’ We all let out a sigh; all stood at attention and silently bared our heads. My mind was in a turmoil. I told myself mentally: ‘It must have been a printing error; this couldn’t have happened.’ Our Major Raskova! Even now, when I think of it, I still can’t believe it.”
Masha Dolina, who’d been slowly struggling between snowstorms to make her own way to the 587th’s new air base with her navigator and gunner, had stopped to refuel. That was when she heard the news. One of the local pilots told her that her commander had been killed, and she reacted with complete disbelief. “That’s not something you should joke about!” she yelled. By the time someone showed her the newspaper announcement, she was already shaking.
Like Masha, most of the aviators of the 587th Regiment didn’t find out about Marina’s death until January 9, five days after the crash. “Our commissar gathered us together in a big dugout and told us what had happened,” said the regimental navigator, Valya Kravchenko—the one who’d last year scrounged cabbages on the train ride to Engels. “We just cried.”
Marina Raskova was given the Soviet Union’s first state funeral of the war, with Moscow city and Soviet state officials in attendance, a thundering salute of guns, and an air force flyover. As a final honor, Marina’s ashes were placed in the Kremlin wall next to Polina Osipenko’s, the woman who’d been Valentina Grizodubova’s copilot on the Rodina flight.
The news of Marina’s death was reported throughout the nation and around the world. Many American newspapers carried the story, praising the brave commanding woman who’d flown for the Soviet Union, allied with the United States against the Nazis. Marina was such an international celebrity that her obituary and photograph even made front-page news in some American papers.
The grieving aviators of the 587th had lost their commander just as they were about to receive their first combat assignments.
And the question on everyone’s mind was “What will now happen to our regiment?”
The women were worried that without Marina’s driving force behind them, they would be disbanded. The war had already been going on for a year and a half while they were training—they were supposed to be the Soviet Union’s only women’s dive-bombing regiment, and they still hadn’t dropped a single bomb. Maybe their planes would be taken away to beef up an existing men’s regiment, and they’d be back to square one looking for a way to volunteer.
But that didn’t happen. Zhenya Timofeyeva, the deputy commander of the 587th, was out in the subzero wind clearing snow from the Pe-2s when she was called back to her new and unfamiliar headquarters to receive a transmitted message.
An officer told her she’d been temporarily put in charge of the regiment. Now she was going to have to lead them in their first bombing mission.
Zhenya was stunned and reluctant—but she knew all too well that an order was an order. She was also worried that if she did refuse, her superiors would be encouraged to close down the 587th as a regiment.
She told the officer, “Yes, Sir! Am taking over the Regiment!”
The 587th now shared an airfield with the 10th Leningrad Bomber Aviation Regiment. The men of the 10th Leningrad turned ou
t to be friendly and sympathetic, and were assigned to help train the 587th in battle techniques in their challenging, powerful Pe-2 dive-bombers. The two regiments flew together until the end of the war, starting with the 587th’s very first combat mission on January 28, 1943. That day, Zhenya Timofeyeva and her navigator, Valya Kravchenko, flew in formation along with another 587th Pe-2 and seven Pe-2s from the 10th Leningrad. They were supposed to bomb enemy defenses northeast of Stalingrad, near an important tractor factory.
“When we took off at dawn, a frosty mist shrouded the ground. Below, settlements flashed and trucks moved along roads,” said Zhenya. “Finally, the ruins of Stalingrad appeared—a dark line of demolished buildings stretching endlessly along the Volga. Then came the first explosions of antiaircraft artillery shells.”
The German troops had started firing at the Soviet planes overhead.
When the leading plane suddenly made a steep descent, Zhenya swooped after him. The other pilot’s sharp thinking probably stopped the exploding German shells from hitting Zhenya’s plane.
Zhenya and Valya watched to see when their leader’s bomb bay doors opened, to give them a clue when to drop their own bombs.
Back at their base, during the report they had to make about how the mission went, they joked with the 10th Leningrad pilots, calling them “brothers” or “old men.”
Zhenya spoke of them warmly. “Together we fought, together rejoiced in each other’s successes, and together mourned our fallen comrades.”
On January 30, only three weeks after they learned of Marina Raskova’s death, the 587th flew an independent combat mission for the first time. But they were ready for it. Beneath them, the blackened ruins of Stalingrad were softened by a fresh fall of snow, and around them the Soviet air and ground forces were flattening the last German troops outside the city.
The German commander surrendered on January 31—despite orders cabled from Hitler to fight to the death. On February 2, 1943, the six-month-long battle for the city of Stalingrad came to an end. The USSR had scored its first real triumph of the war—and Hitler had received his first serious defeat.
The German forces hadn’t been halted in their furious bid for military supremacy over the USSR, but the front was no longer advancing. At last, the spirits of the Soviet people began to lift a little.
But Hitler wasn’t anywhere near done with them. He had his generals get to work on a springtime plan for crushing the Red Army near the city of Kursk, and hoped to get to Moscow that way. The new plan had a new name: Operation Citadel.
The fight to defend the Motherland was far from finished.
23
Valentin Markov
The new quarters for the flight crews of the 587th were in a village about three kilometers (two miles) away from their base. Each morning they’d trek to the airfield with one woman breaking snow up to her waist for the rest of the line.
At the snow-covered airfield were three dugouts, a runway, and a taxiway. Here, the 587th took off for their initial aggressive combat missions in their powerful Pe-2 dive-bombers; back on the ground, every aircrew of three and all the rest of the regiment waited anxiously to find out who their new commander would be.
They were still in mourning for their beloved Marina. “We liked her very much,” Katya Fedotova said. Katya was one of the four flying friends whom Marina had assigned so they could stay together. “Liked her as our commander, older friend, and a person. And suddenly she was gone. We cried unashamedly. We were so anxious to know who [was] going to replace her!”
Zhenya Timofeyeva, who’d taken temporary command of the 587th Regiment on January 15, turned it over to its new commander on the last day of the Battle of Stalingrad, February 2, 1943.
His name was Valentin Markov.
At the age of thirty-three, Valentin was already an experienced combat pilot and commander. When he received his new assignment, he had just recovered from hospitalization after being injured in battle, and he wasn’t happy when he learned that he’d be leading a women’s regiment.
The women of the 587th were equally disgusted. Valya Kravchenko commented, “We women wouldn’t even hear of a man coming to command our regiment!” and added, “Behind his back we called him ‘bayonet.’ He was so strict and straight.”
There was apprehension and prejudice on both sides when Valentin Markov took up his new post. But the young women of the 587th and their new commander were going to surprise each other.
When Valentin and his navigator, Nikolai Nikitin, first arrived at the 587th’s base near Stalingrad, they watched the Pe-2s dive-bombers coming and going from the frozen airfield. Valentin had to admit that the women pilots could handle their planes.
However, when he inspected the aircraft up close, he wasn’t impressed with the grease on some of the machine guns. He gave one of the armorers a lecture about the importance of good maintenance. To his horror, the young woman looked as if she were about to burst into tears. Valentin had no idea how to cope with a crying female—he quickly backed off.
Then he called all the women of the 587th together so he could make a speech. His new regiment stood lined up in the snow before him while he pointed out someone’s dirty boots and a hole in someone else’s jacket.
“I am your new commander,” Valentin told them. “I warn you, I am going to expect a lot from you. Don’t count on any allowances from me because you are women.”
He didn’t have a chance of making a good impression.
It didn’t do Valentin any favors that the young women he was talking to were still stunned with grief over the loss of their beloved Marina Raskova. But also, they didn’t like how he was talking down to them. They weren’t a group of naive schoolgirls—they were a regiment of well-trained aviators, and some of them had already flown in combat under enemy fire.
“At first, we gave him a hard time,” said pilot Katya Fedotova. They resented being told to clean what they considered to be spotlessly clean aircraft cockpits; they burst into tears if someone got left out of an aircrew assignment.
But whether or not Valentin wanted to be there leading the 587th, and whether or not they wanted him there, he wasn’t going to shirk his responsibility as a commander. Valentin Markov came up with a rigorous training program for his pilots. Even though they were already flying combat missions, he made them drill in high-altitude flying and precision dive-bombing.
Also, he wasn’t insensitive. He realized he had to raise the young women’s spirits—he couldn’t let their grief affect their work. His showed his clear commitment to them by flying with them on many of their combat missions, which quickly gained their respect and admiration.
And he let them take pride in their accomplishments. He established a tradition that after a successful mission, each squadron would fly home together at a low height in an air-show formation. That way, Valentin said, “those on the ground would know that everybody was coming home with a victory.”
Valentin Markov gave the 587th firm guidance and a positive outlook. And despite the terrible circumstances in which they first flew to war, under Valentin’s command the regiment grew proud and united. Eventually they came to love their commander. After they’d been flying with Valentin for a while, they stopped calling him “bayonet” behind his back. Instead, they, too, gave him the fond nickname Batya, Russian for “Dad”—even though he was only about ten years older than most of them.
“We survived the war because of our regimental commander,” said tail gunner Tonya Khokhlova. “All through the flights he was addressing his navigator, asking, ‘How are the girls?’” When Valya Kravchenko navigated for Valentin, she’d grow absorbed in her map and suddenly hear him ask, “Where is Melashvili? Where is Spitsina, Yegorova, Matyukhina, Kirillova, Fedotova?” Valentin would make Valya look around for the rest of his squadron while he flew, often thinking harder about his flight crews than about the enemy targets.
Once, when one of Katya Fedotova’s engines began to run rough as she flew in form
ation after Valentin Markov on a combat mission, he made everybody else slow down so that Katya’s faulty aircraft could keep up with the other planes.
“So it was because Markov always tried to take care and see that we were protected that we made it back,” Katya concluded.
The 587th Bomber Aviation Regiment, too, was now back on its feet, facing into a fresh wind.
24
Exhaustion and Honor for the Night Bombers
As soon as darkness fell each night, the night bombers began their harassment duties in their open-cockpit Po-2s, flying out to the front lines and relentlessly dumping exlosives on the Germans troops. As the war dragged on, the Soviets found these repeated night attacks also affected the morale of the German soldiers. The constant bombardment wore on their nerves, made dents in their weapons and food supplies, and deprived them of sleep.
Throughout the war, hundreds of Soviet night bomber regiments moved to follow the front line, as it skirted swamps or rough terrain, or bulged in one direction or another when there was a local victory. Soldiers fighting at the front had to live with constant uncertainty about where they’d be the next day. They built new airstrips as they needed them and lived with the local population or even in hastily dug trenches in the ground sheltered by tarpaulin sheets. They excelled at their job of making sure the enemy didn’t get a wink of sleep, but that meant that they didn’t get much sleep either.
Flying in the dark is a constant strain even if you don’t have people shooting at you from the ground. The Po-2 pilots flew using visual flight references only—they couldn’t navigate or even fly level if they couldn’t see the horizon. The German antiaircraft searchlights, which completely ruined your night vision, were a horror to the bomber pilots. They put you as much at risk of crashing as of being blasted out of the sky.
A Thousand Sisters Page 14
