A Dance with Death: Soviet Airwomen in World War II

by Anne Noggle

  Our friendship has been preserved until the present day. Youth is youth. We made pillows out of our foot cloths and embroidered the Pe-2 on them. Everybody embroidered the Pe-2 on their pillows. When it came time for our last farewell at the end of the war, we could not imagine how we could go on living without each other. We made a good family.

  Lieutenant Ludmila Popova, navigator

  I was born and raised in Moscow, and my father was a military man up to the 1930s. Then, in October, 1941, he was called back into the military and was killed at the front. I was seventeen. From the moment I found out he had been killed, I was determined to go into the military and avenge his death. When I was old enough to join the army, I was sent to an aviation school and became a navigator. Later, in 1943, I joined the regiment to take the place of those who had perished.

  Galina (or Galya) Tenuyeva-Lomanova was my pilot, and she was wounded in combat. Our mission was to bomb a very well-protected target, and we were hit by heavy antiaircraft fire; the aircraft was riddled by bullets. There were holes in the engine and in the nose of the aircraft, and the engine was steaming. Lomanova was wounded in her arm. Then there was a great explosion in the nose of the plane-a shell exploded there. At first there was so much smoke in our cabin I could hardly see, but I felt the aircraft descending. When the smoke dispersed I saw Galya lying unconscious against the control stick. We had already lost 2,000 meters in altitude, and I took her by the shoulders and held her back from the stick. Then she regained consciousness, took the controls, and began flying the plane again. She decided we could make it back for a landing at our own airfield.

  When the shell exploded, the glass in the canopy of our compartment was blown out. The wind blew away everything, and the map that I had in my hand flew away also, so I had nothing with which to navigate. Before combat missions, our commander always warned us that we must know the location of places and the terrain of the flying area by heart in order to find our way without the map. We didn't realize what the purpose was for that, and we would talk about those grumbling commanders who always tried to find some fault with us. And then, when I found myself in that situation, I realized how important it really was. I had to bring us back to our airdrome by memory. We managed to stay airborne all the way back to our own regimental airfield. Galya asked me to help her land the aircraft, because she felt she was not capable of doing it alone with only one arm. I helped her with the controls as best I could. When we landed she was sent to the hospital, and I was assigned to another pilot.

  My new pilot was Irina Asadze, and she was the pilot I finished the war with. She retired at the end of the war, and in 1946 I also retired from the air force.

  When we were in eastern Prussia our gunner was severely wounded in the head. We couldn't help him, because he was in a separate compartment farther hack from us. The only thing he managed to say on the intercom was that he was wounded; these were his last words. We had already dropped all our bombs, so we detached from our formation and at maximum speed returned to the nearest airfield. When we were approaching the field we shot two rockets in the air to indicate there was a wounded person on the aircraft. When we landed we saw that he had lost much blood. He couldn't bandage himself because he had lost consciousness. He was taken to the hospital and operated on, and he lost part of his eyesight. We went with him and waited there until after his operation. I was never wounded-God saved me! I flew forty combat missions in the war.

  Life is life. Certainly war is a difficult job to do, but it was not confined to gravity. We found time to have fun, to dance and sing, on those nights when we hadn't had any losses. We were young and romantic and had a lot of dreams; thoughts for the future. We came from different parts of our country. There were other Muscovites, and we would get together and imagine the day when we would go home and stroll along the streets. Everyone would look at us and admire us, the streets would be lit, and all would be sunny and shiny with war far behind us. War is not a normal thing for any country, for any state, for any man, and especially for a woman. And war is not the form for settling differences between countries.

  Lieutenant Yekaterina Musatova-Fedotova, pilot, commander of the formation

  I started flying in a glider school when I was sixteen, and in 1941 I began working as a pilot-instructor. From the beginning of the war I wrote letters asking to be sent to the front as a volunteer. When at last they let Raskova form the regiments, she sent us all a letter asking how many flying hours we had. Because we all wanted to help our country and go to the front, we added hours to our totals. If we had too hours we wrote that we had 700 or Soo hours and were very experienced pilots. The chief of our training school went on holiday, and we took advantage of that and escaped to Engels, because he wouldn't release us from our instructing jobs. Four of us from our school arrived at the women's flight training base at Engels. The regiments had already been trained by that time. Very quickly they also trained us, and we became part of the 587th Bomber Regiment, as it was called at that time. I was nineteen years old.

  The Pe-2, the aircraft flown by the 587th regiment, was a fine airplane, probably the best in either the German or Soviet air force. But it was complex and difficult for women to fly, especially small women who were slim and hungry. The control stick was heavy to move, and our arms and legs were so short we had three folded pillows behind our backs. The navigators helped us by pushing on our backs as we pushed on the stick to get the tail up for takeoff.

  I was a born pilot. In my flight formation there were three aircraft, and I piloted the lead plane. The experienced pilots carried 1,200 kilos of bombs, and the inexperienced carried 6oo kilos. When we were assigned a combat mission that was urgent and important, the ground staff carried the regimental banners onto the airfield, and we took off with the accompaniment and rustle of the banners.

  Klara Dubkova, 125th regiment

  Once, when we were preparing for such a mission, I had climbed up only fifty meters on takeoff, and one of the engines quit. We were loaded with 1,200 kilos of bombs; it was a failure of everything. I couldn't turn back to the airfield, because all of the regiment were still taking off. On the right side was a forest, in front was a small village, and beetroot was planted horizontal to our heading. I had but a fraction of a second to decide what to do, so I chose the only course: to belly-land in the beetroot field. So down we went into the field. The aircraft came to a stop, and we were all alive and all right. At that moment the ambulance, fire truck, and people came running. I felt absolutely empty, drained; all I could think was, This is the way pilots crash their aircraft. At this moment Tonya (Antonina Khokhlova), our tail-gunner, got out of the plane, sat on the tail, took a mirror out of her pocket, and began powdering her face. She said to me, "Yekaterina, you dusted my face!" The earth was dry and dusty, and our landing stirred up the dust. Klara Dubkova, my navigator, turned to Tonya and said, "We could have exploded when we landed, and now you are making merry!" Tonya replied that with our commander as pilot that would never have happened. With humor she said to me, "You could have landed at the village where they would feed us with fried potatoes, and now we are hungry!"

  Many things go together in this life-ridiculous, funny episodes. Once, because I was on an emergency airfield, I was called to join up with the squadron in the air. I took off and felt the plane dragging to the right, so I gave more power to that engine, climbed up, and joined the formation. Then I saw the rear gunner in the plane ahead of me putting his whole leg out of his window! He was giving me a signal that something was wrong with our plane. I didn't know what was wrong, I only felt it. And because there was no transmission between aircraft, he was trying to show me with gestures and signs. When he put his leg out, I understood that one landing gear had not retracted. When we returned to our airfield after completing the mission, all the other planes were given permission to land except ours. We circled the field, and then we were given the order to parachute out of the plane. I didn't understand why we were to do that, and I d
ecided to land the aircraft on the one gear. I managed to land on the left gear, and then, very slowly, I moved off the runway to clear it for other aircraft. At this time there were cameramen at our field shooting a film about our female regiment, which was to be called The Wings of the Motherland. When we landed safely, a lot of people rushed toward the plane, and among them were those cameramen. When I got out of the cockpit, a cameraman came up to me and asked why I spoiled such a good shot, because our plane didn't turn over or crash. He expected us to turn over and to show in the film how we crashed, and now we emerged safely from the cockpit!

  Another time we took off on a combat mission and formed up with Markov in the lead, and I felt that one of my engines was slowing down. Markov perceived the situation and slowed down the whole formation. He helped us to stay with the formation throughout the mission and made sure we could keep up. If we dropped back, our fighter escort would go with the formation, and we could be shot down easily by the German fighters. So it was because Markov always tried to take care and see that we were protected that we made it back.

  We had to land on a fighter airfield because of the bad engine instead of continue on to our own field. When we made the return flight to our airdrome, I decided to show off to display my skill and ability. On our airfield there was a group of male fighter pilots. They were constantly watching us landing and taking off, so I decided to be the star of the day. I was coming in for a landing and I bounced, so I added power and went around. I thought, Now I will show them how I can land, and I did the same again-I bounced! On the third try I thought, Now I must show them, and I made a very bad landing. I had never done that before; I was so very embarrassed.

  I got out of our plane and went to report that we had returned to base, and Markov said, "Girls, have you had a good sleep this night?" I said yes, even though we hadn't, because we had to change some instruments in the plane and then fly back. He answered that we hadn't slept that night, or I could have landed the aircraft as I usually did. He didn't consider us to be ready to fly that day, and he said we could not go on the mission that morning. The three of us stood in front of him and begged to go, and he said no. We sobbed, and he put his fist on his desk and said, "No, I order you to bed to sleep, now go!"

  We were shot down again when bullets hit our fuel tank. Our fighters got in a fight with the fascist fighters, and we were left without any escort. There were nine bombers left without escort, and all but one of us was shot down by German fighters. We all made forced landings, and we all survived.

  Sergeant Mariya Kaloshina, mechanic of armament

  I was born in 1922, and I came to Raskova's regiment a little later in the war. It was in 1943, because I was only finishing a secondary school in the tenth form when the war started. While finishing school I had a dream to enter the Airforce Academy, but at the beginning of the war it was evacuated to central Asia, so I entered an aviation technical college.

  In 1943 I was assigned to the 125th Guards Bomber Regiment and taken to the front. I was then twenty-one years old. I had taken the six-month training course for the regiment, which was easy for me because I had some technical knowledge. At the front I was appointed to be a mechanic for the commander of the formation, Alexandra Krivanova.

  To affix the bombs to the aircraft, we stood on our knees and rolled them. When we got used to doing it, we rolled the bombs with our feet, our hands on our hips. There were different types of bombs: the small bombs made to destroy buildings were calledy Fugaska. There were other small bombs called Zazhigalka, and they were incendiary bombs. During the war, the Germans dropped Zazhigalkas on Moscow. I lived in Moscow when the war broke out, and we would stand on the roof of a building, pick up the bombs, and throw them into sand. Then they would stop burning. Children stayed on the roofs during the war to do that.

  At Konigsberg I had much work to do, because there were constant raids over the fascist territory; we didn't have a spare second. In the daytime we provided the aircraft with bombs, and at night we were on guard duty. We slept for about three hours.

  I had to guard three aircraft at night; it was March, and the snow was melting. In March, in Russia, the snow is deep. It only starts melting under the snow, and there are floods of water. I was walking along and water fell into my boots, and it soaked through. My socks and my boots were full of water, and I guarded the aircraft for a long time in that condition. When I returned to our dugout I didn't even feel the pain in the skin and legs, I felt it in my bones-the very stem of my legs. We could never leave our post on guard duty.

  Once when the regiment moved we landed on an airfield near Minsk. There was no one at the field when we arrived, and then German crews came out of the forest and saw the airfield occupied by Russian crews, almost all of them women. They were at a loss for words to be taken prisoner by Russian women. All of the habitable dwellings nearby were mined by the Germans, so we had to live under the wings of our aircraft on that airfield.

  We were young girls and wanted to look womanlike. We were sick and tired of the men's boots, and once I decided to put on these slippers I knitted for myself. From other people's point of view, it was ridiculous when I appeared in my slippers in uniform!

  All of us liked to knit. We liked handicraft work, especially embroidery, and found it to be the most amusing spare-time occupation, except for one girl in our regiment, Belova by name. We used to joke about her and say that if she only started embroidering, the war would soon be over. It happened that she took to embroidering, and the war was really over soon!

  After the war I returned to my peaceful profession of radio engineer. I worked for Moscow Radio for twenty years. I was a sound producer, and later on I worked at restoring old records. In 1962 I was awarded the Order of Labor Red Banner, a very honorable award. One year ago (1990) I retired.

  Senior Lieutenant Galina Tenuyeva-Lomanova, pilot, commander of the formation

  I was not even sixteen when I decided to join an aero club. It was usual to be a Komsomol member in order to join a glider club, but I was not. So I went to a Young Communist League committee asking to be admitted into the Komsomol, and then I joined the aero club. Later I became an instructor in the same club. The only time I ever jumped with a parachute was while instructing there. I was given no instruction, and I broke my leg when I landed!

  When the war broke out I stayed on as a military flight instructor with the rank of sergeant. By this time I was already married and had given birth to a daughter. My husband was also a military pilot-a fighter pilot. Later we both went to the front; Ito Raskova's regiment, and he to a male regiment. He perished at the front in 1943.

  Our military school was evacuated to another area, and I took my mother, father, and daughter with me. It was such a mess in the early part of the war. Some military schools were released, some moved, and there seemed to he no logic in it. Then our school was unexpectedly released: the pilots transferred to the infantry, and the instructor-pilots went to a male air regiment.

  I went to Saratov to pick up the orders for the male regiment at the headquarters of the Volga front, and there I met Raskova. She asked me why I was with a male regiment and said that I should join her regiment. We were real patriots, and we loved our country and our heroes. Raskova was well-known throughout our country and throughout the world. She was a national hero, an attractive and beautiful creature whom I admired in all respects, so I agreed to fly in her regiment.

  At Engels I was trained to fly the Pe-2 dive bomber. Raskova, who was to command the dive bomber regiment, was by profession a navigator and had to be retrained as a pilot in order to lead us in combat. She was first trained on the SB-2, a twin-engine, three-place aircraft, and then trained herself in the Pe-2. She had few hours up to that time as a pilot; most of her hours in the air had been as a navigator. The Pe-2 was the most complicated aircraft of the war period and required more than a little skill to fly.

  When our regiment was to fly on to the front, two of our aircraft had engines operat
ing improperly. Mine was one of them. So while the rest of our second squadron flew to Stalingrad, we stayed where we were. At that time Raskova was in Moscow, and she knew that we were in Kirzhach while they were repairing our aircraft. So on her way from Moscow to the front, she flew to Kirzhach to join up with us and lead us to the Stalingrad front. But the weather conditions were very bad, so it was not a nonstop flight. We landed in the settlement of Lopatino, where we saw the New Year in. On January 4, 1943, we took off for the front. We flew in a formation of three aircraft with Raskova piloting the lead plane. Before we took off Raskova gave us an order that we could leave the formation only if an engine quit; we should fly as a formation.

  We could have landed along the way as we flew across three airfields, but it was Raskova's order to fly directly to the Stalingrad front without landing except in emergency. The first airfield we flew over had a little snow on it, the second was already overcast, and the third was completely obscured-visibility zero. The flight was very long, the fuel was very short, and we were supposed to land in Razhojshina, but we couldn't because of the weather. I think Raskova might have thought we could land on the Engels airfield, which is located on the banks of the Volga River. One bank of the river is fifty meters higher than the other, and she 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.

  Gubina Ljubov, the pilot in the third aircraft, and I had some training in night flights, and we could orient ourselves by instruments. My navigator and I decided to examine the terrain of the Volga River while in flight, but we could see nothing. So we broke out of formation, and I no longer knew where the other two aircraft were. By then the visibility was so bad that I could hardly see the wings of my own plane! We were descending, and my navigator said, "There is the earth!" As she said it, I pulled back on the stick, the aircraft bumped the ground, we crashed, and the plane was destroyed. All three of our planes crashed. All three crew members perished in Raskova's plane, and all of us survived in the other two planes.