A Dance with Death: Soviet Airwomen in World War II

by Anne Noggle

  While I was working, I also managed to complete some courses called Rubfuk, or workers' faculty, a four-year course. I also attended a glider school. When I finished that program I was transferred to the powered-aircraft pilot school in Kherson, where I trained to became a flight instructor, and then I taught cadets to fly. When the war broke out in 1941 I volunteered to go to the front.

  It was September, 1941, the month of my first combat mission. I began flying the Po-2 aircraft with a male air regiment, making reconnaissance flights in the daytime. It was very dangerous to fly the Po-2 in daylight, because it was a slow, defenseless aircraft made of fabric, which made it very vulnerable to enemy fire. The German fighters often shot it down. My only armament was a pistol. The Germans were given the highest order for shooting down and capturing Russian pilots if they remained alive.

  In the spring of 1942 my plane was set on fire by the Germans, and I managed to land the burning aircraft. We were given no parachutes at all. When I landed I jumped out of the cockpit and ran for the woods, luckily in Soviet territory. While I was running the German fighters were firing at me from the air. I fell down several times and again ran. There was a cornfield, and the stalks were still there from the previous year. When I fell, I dug my head into the heap of corn and lay there while they fired at me. The plane burned completely.

  I was on a mission to bring a secret, urgent message to the staff of our Air Army. I had it with me and knew I had to somehow deliver that message, so I started out on foot and ran. Our troops were retreating, and the Germans were rapidly advancing. Here and there I could see fascist tanks and infantry from a distance. Then I was picked up by our troops and made my way toward headquarters. It was difficult with all the troops and traffic on the road, so I combined walking and riding. I had burns on my hands and feet, especially on the knees, because I was dressed in a skirt and had suffered the burns before I could land. Finally I delivered the message to headquarters, and they bandaged my burns there and sent me back to my squadron by truck.

  I served in a squadron with staff headquarters on the southern front. The dream of all the pilots in my squadron was to fly combat and not to carry messages. We all wanted to fight back. Finally I was allowed to join a male regiment where I could be trained as a combat pilot. Later, I heard that Raskova wanted me to join her regiment. She sent six messages requesting that I join, but the staff did not even let me know about it. Only after the war did I find out.

  Anna Timofeyeva-Yegorova, 805th Ground Attack Regiment

  When I first started flying the Illyushin Sturmovik 11-2 aircraft, it had one cockpit only. Because we were shot down very regularly, they added the second cockpit in the fuselage with a gunner facing to the rear armed with a large-caliber machine gun. We usually flew at an altitude of about eight hundred meters to drop bombs and at a lower altitude of about four hundred meters for attacking and strafing. Every pilot wanted to fly the 11-2, because it was a heavy plane carrying 6oo kilos of bombs and two machine guns and rockets. It was used as a close ground support aircraft at the front lines against tanks, airdromes, railways, shipseverything.

  I had a very strange reaction when I was flying over the target: my lips would bleed. They were very dry and would bleed, but not from biting them. In the summer of 1943, a third of the flying personnel in the regiment were killed over the Black Sea. Over the sea we flew very low, and even though the aircraft was well protected we suffered heavy losses. During the war my heart sank when I was flying combat missions over the sea; even now I am afraid of the sea. My regiment was stationed on the coast, the coast of the Sea of Azov, and these awful, frightful storms would develop over the sea.

  The so-called Blue Line was a fortified area made by the Germans, and it had been impossible to break through it. So they decided that we should make a smoke screen to cover our troops while they moved forward to penetrate these defenses. Before this operation, the commander of our regiment lined us up and said that he needed nineteen volunteers. Everyone volunteered. He selected commanders and deputy commanders of the squadrons, and he called my name. This mission was by order of the commander of the front.

  In the morning before the mission we lined up and handed in all our documents to the staff. The planes were disarmed, and balloons filled with gas were affixed instead. We were not to deviate from our course, not to take any evasive action, and fly one after another. We flew down the Blue Line, a distance of eleven kilometers. I was told to count three seconds and then release the gas. We were fired on constantly; the front line was completely on fire. I wanted to look behind to see what was happening but I couldn't, for I would then perhaps have deviated from the course.

  When we had fulfilled our mission and were returning to base, our commander radioed that, thanks to God, we all were here and were returning to the airdrome. Meanwhile, anyone who had damage to their aircraft should land first. It was transmitted to us that all the pilots who had completed the mission successfully had already been awarded the Order of Red Banner. When we landed, got out of our cockpits, and lined up, the commander of the army awarded us the decoration right there.

  Once, in the Taman region, I was to make a reconnaissance flight. Our attack planes were usually protected by the fighter aircraft. The fighters were stationed closer to the front line, and as I flew past the airdrome I saw the two fighters that were to protect my plane taking off. I transmitted to them that I was going to reconnoiter the ground and photograph it and to please protect me. After my transmission I heard, "Why are you speaking in such a tiny voice?" and "You are called a fighter? You're not a fighter!" and several bad expressions after that. I realized they didn't know I was a woman.

  The flight was very successful; I managed to photograph the front line even though they made some holes in the plane. I visually reconnoitered the landscape; then I turned back with the two fighters still protecting me. I reported from the air to my airdrome, and the fighter pilots could hear the conversation. After I had reported, the person on the ground said, "Thank you, Anechka," and only then did they realize I was a woman. They began circling around and wagging their wings at me. We arrived over their airfield, and I told them, "Thank you, brothers; land, please." They did not land at their airdrome but escorted me to my field, wagged their wings again, and flew away. When I landed and came into the headquarters, they were all laughing and smiling at me, saying, "See, Lieutenant Yegorova has found bridegrooms!" When at last we liber ated the Taman Peninsula in 1943, our regiment was transferred to the First Belorussian Front.

  It all happened on August 20, 1944, Aviation Day. The commander promised to throw a party after we returned from our combat mission (this was in Poland). By that time I was already the regimental navigator. Our troops had crossed the Vistula River; the Germans wanted to eliminate this bridgehead, and they had sent in reinforcements of tanks, artillery, and guns. Our mission was to stop this force. Half the attack planes were led by the commander of the regiment, a force of fifteen aircraft, and the other half were led by me, as deputy commander. The first group took off, and after an interval of ten minutes my group followed. Ten fighters protected our fifteen planes. We proceeded to the area of the bridgehead. When I was making my first pass, the antiaircraft guns started firing at my plane and hit it. The pilots in my group saw that my plane was hit and that I did not have complete control. They asked and even begged me on the radio to turn back, but I didn't listen to reason. Now, so many years have passed and I still don't know why I didn't listen to them, but I went on and made the second pass over the target.

  It was very difficult to be the leader of a male squadron. They trust you-not because you are a woman, but because you are a skillful and trained pilot. The Germans always fired at the lead plane, because if the leader could be shot down, the formation would disperse and leave without a commander. My aircraft became more uncontrollable; it was continuously going nose up. They fired at my plane with great intensity, and my gunner-a woman-was killed. I saw the glass dividing the
two cockpits covered with her blood. The instrument panel was smashed, and the engine was burning. The radio was damaged, and I had no communication. By then I had no vision of the ground or the planes. I tried to open the canopy but it wouldn't open. I became choked with the smoke and fire. The plane exploded; I was blown out of the cockpit and lost consciousness.

  When I opened my eyes, I was free of the aircraft and falling through the air. I pulled the ring and the parachute opened, but not completely. When I hit the ground I was falling very fast. I don't know if I lost consciousness, but when I opened my eyes there was a fascist standing over me with his boot on my chest. I was seriously injured: I had a broken spine, head injuries, broken arms, and a broken leg. I was burned on my knees, legs, and feet, and the skin was torn on my neck. I remember the face of the fascist; I was very afraid that I would be tortured or raped.

  I remember very little of how I was carried to the fascist barracks, but I was very much afraid of the Germans and the atrocities they could inflict on me. My only wish was that I be shot, and the sooner the better. I was brought initially to a fascist camp in Poland. I lay motionless, and I was given water through a straw by the prisoners. The Germans tore off the ribbons from my uniform. I heard Polish speech but very little else. I recall that two Germans dressed in rubber aprons came up to me in the barracks, and they poured some powder over my burns. I shouted and cried and screamed so loud that the Polish imprisoned there thought I was being tortured. But it was my injuries that made me cry out. I couldn't breathe because all my ribs were broken.

  I was never treated medically by the Germans. Soon I was loaded onto a cargo train, and in five days, under a guard of four soldiers, we were taken to a prisoner-of-war camp on Polish territory. In the same carriage was a nurse who was standing next to me all the time, crying. The German guards dragged her away and beat her, but all the same she crawled back to me and never left me alone. She cried and begged me not to die.

  The camp was international, and there were prisoners who were doctors. A Russian, Dr. Sinyakov, treated me. Sinyakov went to the Gestapo headquarters of that camp and asked, in the name of all the prisoners of the camp, that permission be given to treat the Russian pilot. All of the prisoners, except the Russians, received a parcel with food and medication from the Red Cross Society. Stalin had said during the war, "We do not have prisoners of war, only traitors"; and he forbade all help.

  On January 31, 1945, Soviet troops liberated the camp. I, being a woman, was suspected of being a collaborator. When Russian prisoners were released from the German prisons, they were immediately imprisoned in the Soviet Union. They were deprived of their rank and all their medals and were forced to stay in work camps for long periods. While I was in the German camp, the Russian doctor who treated me kept safe the documents of my two orders and my party membership card. When the Soviet troops were advancing and approaching the camp, the Germans transferred westward to another camp the Soviet prisoners who were able to be moved. Those of us who couldn't be moved stayed in the camp. The Germans started shooting those of us that remained, but the Soviet tanks rushed into the area before they could finish and liberated the camp.

  Russian prisoners were sent to Lansberg to be tested. But I was considered to be a special kind of a traitor, the worst sort, and as such I was sent to a Soviet organization called SMERCH, which meant "death to the fascists." I was to be tested there, where the fascists were tested. It was operated by the (the secret police). There were many fascists in the basement where we were confined. They all lay on the lower bunks; I lay on the upper bunk. Above that cellar was a room where officers questioned me. Through a small hole in the ceiling I could see an officer examining my orders and medals through a lens.

  I was questioned every night for ten days. They wanted to know how I had gotten to that camp: if I had really been a traitor, I would have come to the camp voluntarily and offered myself into German hands. They examined my orders and papers each night. But the doctors who treated me in the camp, who described in detail my condition when I was brought to the camp, told how they had taken care of me and how I had been imprisoned. They asked that I be released and sent to the camp at Lansberg to be tested with the other Soviet prisoners. The officers would not do that; they questioned me every night-ten of them. The soldiers on guard duty there called me bad names: German bitch, fascist bitch, swine. I was constantly guarded by soldiers, and a gun was directed into my back when I was going to the bathroom.

  On the eleventh night of the eleventh day, I pulled myself together. I felt some strength inside my body, and I ran up to the second floor. I had wanted to speak to the colonel every night, but they wouldn't let me. While I was running upstairs a soldier behind me was shouting, "Stop, or I will shoot you," but I rushed on into his quarters, a wellfurnished room with a rug. The NKVD officers lived quite well in the rear, even during the war. I cried out, "Shoot me, but I will not let you torture me."

  I don't know what happened then because I fell unconscious. When I regained consciousness, lying on the floor, I saw a glass of water standing on the table. I was in the colonel's room, but it was empty. I got up from the floor, sat on the sofa, and pulled myself together, and in a moment the colonel came in and asked if I had calmed myself. I said yes. He looked at me and said, "You are released." I asked him then to give me a certificate that said I was released and that I had been tested, and he said that he would not do that. I asked him if a woman had really given birth to him-I doubted that he could ever have had a mother if he tortured everyone like me, who came from the concentration camp wounded and burned, with all the bones in my body broken and having undergone in the camp what I had to endure.

  He didn't speak right away, and then he said that he would give me the certificate. The officer then gave me a horse and cart with a soldier as a guide who brought me to a control line. There I told an officer that I was from the 16th Air Army and wanted to return to my unit. They sympathized with me, put me on one of the trucks, and sent me back to the army.

  When I returned to the regiment everyone was so happy to see me and to know I hadn't been killed in the crash. The regimental commander gave me an apartment to myself. They all brought me small presents, like sweets. Captain Tsikhonja came to me with dresseslong dresses-and said that he was going to give these to his wife, but the moment he heard I was still alive he decided to present the dresses to me. Then he burst out crying.

  I stayed in the army until the end of the war, but I did not fly. The doctors have never let me fly since that time. They said I was an invalid.

  I found out that the commander of our regiment was also shot down but managed to land the plane in Soviet territory. They all saw my plane crash and were sure that I had perished. They never saw my parachute. At that time the commander of the regiment sent an application to the Supreme Council of the Soviet Union to award me the Gold Star of Hero of the Soviet Union posthumously. They sent my mother a pokhoronka, a document saying her daughter had been killed.

  My mother suffered greatly; she became sick after that news and stayed motionless in bed for some time. She sent my sister to a nearby village to a fortune-teller, because she had a feeling that I was still alive. The fortune-teller said it was the truth that Anna was no longer alive. My mother began going to the church to have the priest sing an orthodox song for the dead.

  The moment the camp was liberated, I wrote a letter to my mother and passed it to the tankers, who sent it to her. When she received the letter, she thought she had gone mad and that it was all a dream; she thought it was a vision. Then she went to the neighbors and asked a young boy there to read the letter. He read it word for word, and then she did believe it was true. She went home and put on her best clothes and went to the army staff that was headquartered near the village. When she had been informed that I was killed, she began receiving a small pension. So at the local army headquarters she told them to please not send her that damned pension any more!

  NOTE: Anna Timofeyeva-Y
egorova was the only woman pilot in her regiment. She was granted the Hero of the Soviet Union medal only in 1965. The award had initially been granted posthumously in 1944, then withheld when it was discovered she had not perished but had become a prisoner of war.

  Senior Sergeant Anna Popova, flight radio operator Toth Guard Air Transport Division

  I finished the war in the rank of senior sergeant. I began flying in the so-called Group of Special Role formed in Moscow, and by the end of the war it grew into the loth Guard Air Transport Division, which consisted of three regiments. This division used pilots from civil aviation. I started flying on Li-2 aircraft, then on C-47s. These were twin-engine American transport planes, ferried from Alaska to our country in the Second World War. But I came to the air forces as a ground radio operator and went to the front trained as a flight radio operator.

  Before the war I attended courses in Morse code. I cannot say I was willing to become a ground radio operator in my youth, but in the 192os and 1930S it was more or less obligatory for a Komsomol member to actively participate in the sociopolitical life of the country. So each young person of my age was supposed to join a club, an afterschool activity course or movement, to manifest loyalty to the political system as well as readiness to defend the regime when needed. An adult's extracurricular activity was normally recorded in her graduation grade list and was very significant when applying to any educational establishment or for a job. Many young girls went to glider school for reasons far loftier than demonstrating their loyalty to the system-they dreamed of flying. But I didn't join any glider school, because I was fully engaged in Morse code training.

  In order to accomplish what I've done in my life I had to break stone walls and apply unfeminine energy and effort to each step, but I have always been inspired by the real feelings of my heart. When the war was declared, a great number of young people went to the front voluntarily. I applied to the Military Commissariat several times and each time was rejected. Here is my story.