A Dance with Death: Soviet Airwomen in World War II

by Anne Noggle

  The mechanics and the sergeants had a salary of seventy rubles a month, very good money at that time, and parachute packers and mechanics of armament and avionics got less. To bathe, we were carried in trucks to a nearby town bathhouse once every two or even three weeks; it depended on the situation. There were some marriages registered at the front. The regimental commander usually gave permission, and then the documents were sent to the division commander at the front. They approved of the marriages, but there were no proper conditions, no place to live together. If the wife was pregnant she was sent from the regiment to the rear to give birth and was gone about three or four months.

  I married my husband at the end of the war; most of us married after the war was over.

  Lieutenant Raisa Surnachevskaya, senior pilot

  I was born in Moscow on August 8, 1922. I entered a technical school when I was about fifteen and very romantic. Across the street was a glider school. I saw boys and girls entering there every day, and I was carried away by the idea. The next year I was admitted, and I studied there simultaneously with the technical school and finished both. I was seventeen. I had to choose then between work or aviation; I chose aviation and became a flight instructor.

  When the war broke out I was brought with other girls in a truck to a stadium, where Raskova was founding the regiment. I was appointed to the 586th Fighter Regiment. We went through training at Engels and then to the front in the Yak-i. Our combat began in 1942 at the town of Voronezh. One of our pilots shot down a German bomber while we were still studying for combat!

  At the front we flew in pairs, and Tamara Pamyatnykh and I flew together. Our mission was air defense, and we were sent up when there were German aircraft in our area. On one particular mission we were told that there were two German planes in our area moving in the direction of a Soviet railroad station that we were to defend. When we climbed up we could see that there weren't two bombers, there were two large groups of enemy bombers! We placed ourselves above them with the sun behind us as we approached the formations.

  At first we thought they must be birds, there were so many of them. Then we realized they were German dive bombers, they were approaching the railroad station, and the station was full of trains. We wagged our wings to indicate to each other that we were ready to attack. Our first targets were the lead aircraft. On this attack we each shot down a German bomber, and then we quickly made another pass, and again each of us shot down another. My plane was not damaged by their gunfire but Tamara's plane was, and I was filled with despair when I saw her plane dropping away, spinning and on fire. I realized that I would have to continue the attack alone, and I continued making passes at the bombers, shooting, and setting sev- eral more of them on fire, but I didn't shoot them down. Our task was not to shoot the enemy down so much as to prevent them from reaching their target; in this instance, the railroad station.

  Raisa Surnachevskaya, 586th regiment

  Then there was a jolt. My aircraft was hit, there was steam and smoke in the cockpit, and the oil temperature rose to the red line, but still I could handle the plane-it was controllable-and I chose a field to make an emergency landing. But first I also made sure that I was over our territory and not behind the German lines. I landed on a hill, with my landing gear up; it was a belly landing to try to prevent my plane from turning over. In the valley below there was a village, so I tried to land so as to not further damage the aircraft or the people in the village. I wanted to transmit over my radio that I was making a forced landing, but I couldn't transmit.

  When the plane stopped I got out of the cockpit and took my parachute out, and I was thinking all the time about Tamara, because I saw her plane go down, and I thought she might have been killed. Then the civilians from the village and collective farm came toward my plane armed with sticks and spades and rushed to the aircraft, because they thought it might be a German plane. When they saw a girl, they stood still, fascinated! The chief of the collective farm came up to me and asked for documents. That area and farm had recently been occupied by the Germans, and they were very afraid. I said to the man, "First you show me your documents and then I will!"

  I left my aircraft there and told the villagers that it would be taken away by the mechanics. When they came for my aircraft, they counted forty-three bullet holes in it. Afterward it was completely repaired, and I flew all my missions in that particular aircraft.

  When I left my plane after I was shot down, I walked to the telegraph station to notify my regiment that I had been shot down and was returning to Voronezh. I was thinking about Tamara, and I asked the staff there if I could call my regiment to find out if she was safe. They said that already another young girl with a parachute had been there to notify Voronezh that she was safe. And then I saw her and she was safe!

  Later, in another battle, I shot down another German plane. It was a reconnaissance aircraft, and I was flying with the commander of the regiment, and we shot the German plane down.

  Senior Sergeant Galina Drobovich, regimental mechanic of the aircraft

  I was born in the town of Smolensk in 1921, and my mother and grandmother raised me, because my father started another family. He was a Russian intelligence officer. When I was three years old we moved to Moscow. I completed nine grades of a secondary school and then worked in an aviation plant, but I had never been in an airplane. I worked as a controller in the instrument laboratory of the plant.

  I went in for mountain climbing, and I was among the mountain climbers who were to conquer the peaks of the Caucasus Mountains. When the war actually started I was climbing the highest peak, Elbrus. We got back to Moscow with great difficulty, because trucks, carts, and trains all were crowded with people being evacuated or trying to return home. Part of the time we traveled on the roofs of the train because the cars were overflowing. When at last we arrived in Moscow we went immediately to the Military Commissariat to enlist in the army. There were huge crowds of people trying to enlist. They wouldn't enlist me because I was a woman.

  I attended courses to train medical personnel and continued working in the plant. Then the Germans started bombing Moscow, and there were many wounded civilians. We picked them up and took them to hospitals. Then I worked in a military hospital taking care of the wounded brought from the front. My working day at the aviation plant was twelve hours, and I worked in the military hospital at night. We had very little sleep.

  I heard about Marina Raskova forming the women's air regiments, and I went to Komsomol headquarters and asked to be taken in to this regiment. Before I went to be interviewed by Raskova, I put on my Alpinist boots and overalls. When Raskova saw me, she smiled and asked me what I would like to do at the front. I told her I wanted to be a machine gunner. She then appointed me as a mechanic of the aircraft. I think she took me right away because I wore the badge of First Grade Alpinist on my overalls.

  I trained in Engels, and then I was assigned to work with the Yak fighter plane in the 586th Fighter Regiment. I remember when the Yaks were first brought to Engels, because up until then we had only worked with models in the classroom, and it was altogether another thing to work outside when the wind was blowing and the temperature was forty below zero. When we touched the metal of the engine our skin would stick to it, and some of it came off on the metal. Our cheeks and foreheads were frozen too. On returning to the barracks our hands would be a deep blue color.

  At the front, when our crews were flying combat missions near our airdrome, we mechanics could recognize the sound of our guns and machine guns as a mother can tell the voice of her child. If the sound stopped, we felt we had failed our pilots because we hadn't properly prepared the aircraft for the mission, and thus our pilots could become an open target for the enemy. We worried until our planes returned.

  After the war I worked at the Kurtchatov Nuclear Research Institute. Then I married and had two children, and I still work as the assistant telephone station master in the Olympic Games Center in Moscow.

  Captain
Klavdiya Terekhova-Kasatkina, secretary of the party organization of the regiment

  My duty was to bring up the young girls to be real soldiers, real military people. My parents were peasants who moved from their village to Moscow to earn some money, and here I was born. I graduated from a technical school, and after that I entered the Moscow Textile College. I was a very brave girl: I jumped with a parachute, rode horses, drove a car, I could do everything!

  When I was finishing the third course at the college, the Great Patriotic War broke out. I went to my father and said, "There are three of us in our family, and at least one member of the family must go to the front and defend our motherland. I can do a lot of things-I will join the army and fight the hated enemy."

  On the second day of the war I went to the Central Body of the Komsomol League in Moscow and was enrolled among its staff, and my department received a lot of letters from female pilots asking to be permitted to go to the front. There were so many letters that Marina Raskova, who later on founded the regiments, calculated that the number was equal to that required to form three regiments. This was the start of the female regiments. I too submitted an application asking to be admitted to such a regiment. And when the regiments were formed, I was appointed the secretary of the party organization of the 586th Fighter Regiment with the rank of senior lieutenant, designated by three small stars on the ribbons. By the end of the war I was a captain, designated by four small stars.

  When the girls came to join the army they all looked like girls, with long, curly hair and high heels. The first thing to do was make them look all alike, like soldiers, with hair cut short, military boots, and pants. It was really very difficult to make the girls part with their hair and feminine things and put them into men's military clothing.

  In the army air force it was obligatory for the girls to jump with a parachute, especially the pilots. The commander of our regiment didn't make a single jump because she was deadly afraid of it. They even threatened that she would be relieved of command, but she still said, "No, I'm afraid to do that!" The commander of our squadron, Tamara Pamyatnykh, didn't make a single jump either. In 1943, near Voronezh, she and her wingman intercepted German bombers, and in that fight Pamyatnykh's plane was hit and she had to jump!

  About the uniforms: we were not allowed to do anything about those too large boots. Once in the morning, when we were in training, we all lined up, and Raskova faced us and gave the command: to the right. One of the girls turned to the right, but her boots remained in the same place, and she swerved and the boots didn't move. Raskova was a very strict woman, and she was young, just twentyseven; she could have reprimanded her, but she didn't- she burst out laughing. Soon after that one girl was to show that she could pack her parachute rapidly and then jump. When she was jumping one boot fell off, then the other, then the leg wrappings that replaced socks, and only then did she come to the ground- barefoot! Then we were allowed to resew the boots. We have a saying in Russia: if there hadn't been an unhappy incident there never would be a happy one!

  Valentina Lisitsina, 586th regiment

  When the girls were ordered to cut their hair very short, only one girl, Lilya Litvyak, refused to do it. I came to report to Raskova and said, "Comrade Major, your order has been carried out; everyone has had their hair cut but Lilya," and Raskova replied, "My order has not been fulfilled." I came to Lilya with tears in my eyes and asked her to please to do it, and at last she agreed.

  When we were at the front, one of the regimental duties was to protect the aircraft of important people. Zoya Pozhidayeva was assigned along with five other female pilots and six male pilots from another regiment to guard the plane of a government official. When the aircraft landed and the guard planes took off to fly back to their respective airfields, Zoya decided to trick one of the male pilots and flew around his plane several times. He cursed her with very bad names. When our planes landed and our commander asked if the flight had been successful, Zoya said, "Yes, but we should never fly with the men again because they cursed and called me bad names." Our commander called the commander of the male regiment and told him that our girls refused to fly with them anymore because of their bad behavior. The male commander lined up the whole crew and said, "How could you do that? How dare you do that? There were girls in those planes, and you have to behave yourselves!" And the pilot who had done the cursing said, "Oh my God, I didn't know they were girls! I would have never opened my mouth and uttered such words!" He decided to apologize and got into his plane and flew to our regiment. He apologized to Zoya for what he had done, and they became friends and corresponded throughout the war, and when it ended they were married.

  Besides my work, I was responsible for some amateur concerts, and also our regimental newspaper that we wrote ourselves-not printedwritten by hand. The duty of a political activist was not only to speak in the meetings and to do reports describing the political and military situation but mostly to have very close contact with all the girls and talk with them individually. When a girl was assigned a mission to fly but had to wait for some time in the cockpit before the mission, I would come up to her and talk about politics. The girls used to say, "Well I'm sorry, but go to hell with your politics, let's discuss love affairs!" They were patriots and would gladly talk politics, but they would say that it might be their last flight and they might not return, and they didn't want to talk politics, they wanted to review their emotions. There was a pressure that filled their bodies, and those personal talks helped me get to know them better.

  I knew everything about the family affairs of almost every girl, their love affairs, everything. Not like a mother, but still I was very close to them; they were frank. Moreover, such intimate talks eased pressure in their hearts. Before the flight they were fearless, but after they returned from a mission they felt a nervous strain and emotional outburst.

  One day the two girls who flew a mission in which they engaged forty-three bombers returned and were having a rest under the wings of their planes. I asked them if they experienced great fear while fulfilling their missions, and they said, "Yes, very much," and their legs were trembling still. One of them, Raisa, said that she was so frightened and overstrained that she would never fly again. Well, after she calmed down and pulled herself together, she went on performing her missions-it was an immediate reaction.

  It was especially hard mentally and emotionally to come through the experience of losing our friends. It was a great strain, and it took strength for me to somehow raise their spirits. In our regiment twelve girls perished. When the brilliant commander of one of our squadrons returned from a mission and suddenly crashed before our eyes and died, we wanted to find her body, her remains, and we didn't find anything at all. There was no special ceremony when someone perished. There was a coffin, and we stood beside it and said something about the dead person and cried, and then buried them right there in the fields.

  Leaving headquarters (a dugout) for a mission in 1942, 586th regiment

  Our first losses were at our training site at Engels. We lost two crews, two pilots in each aircraft. It was a shock for us and a misery, and we sobbed beside their coffins, and Raskova turned to all of us and said, "My darlings, my girls, squeeze your heart, stop crying, you shouldn't be sobbing, because in the future you have to face so many of them that you will ruin yourselves completely." And since that time we have suffered great losses and overcome the gravest experiences, and we were, and we remain, the closest of friends. We swore that after the war ended, each year we would have our reunion. And we do.

  Senior Sergeant Inna Pasportnikova, mechanic

  There is a monument to Lilya Litvyak, and each star on it is for a German aircraft she shot down. When they erected the monument to Lilya, they left a blank space on the stone so that one day "Hero of the Soviet Union" could be added. They searched for her plane and body for fifteen years. Only in May, 199o, was she awarded the Gold Star. Lilya had crash-landed in a field and died there, and persons unknown buried her
under the wing of the plane. Later people came and disassembled the aircraft, and no one knew Lilya was buried there. I was her mechanic when she joined the male regiment at Stalingrad but not before, in the female regiment. She flew the Yak fighter during the war. When the war broke out, she was a flight instructor.

  Lilya Litvak, 586th Fighter Regiment

  Engels, on the Volga River, was our training base. We went to Engels in October, 1941, and were given our winter uniforms in November. Once, when we were all standing in formation, Lilya was told to step forward. She was in winter uniform, and she had cut the tops off of her high fur boots and made a fur collar for her winter flying suit. Marina Raskova, our commander, asked when she had done this, and Lilya replied, "During the night." Lilya wanted to have this fashion. Raskova said that during the next night she shouldn't sleep but must take the fur collar off and put it back on the boots. She was arrested and put in an isolation room, and all night she was changing it back. This was the first time she was noticed by the other women. She was a very small person. It was strange: the war was going on, and this blonde, this girl, was thinking about her collar. I wondered, What kind of a pilot will she make when she doesn't think of more important things than the collar and how she looks! After this I started to watch her, and she was one of the best pilots; she flew her program perfectly. I never thought the time would come when I would be her mechanic.

  Our regiment, the 586th Fighter Regiment (Air Defense), was the first to be formed from the training regiment with about twenty pilots. In the beginning there were only two squadrons, and the regiment's first assignment was to protect Saratov city on the Volga River. The most important thing there was the bridge across the river-the only bridge in that area. The first woman pilot to shoot down a German aircraft in that vicinity was Valeriya Khomyakova, who was later killed in a dogfight.