Free A Dance with Death: Soviet Airwomen in World War II by Anne Noggle

day before the
victory. Everything was ready, the bombs loaded and the crews on
their way to the aircraft, when suddenly we saw the mechanics run
up to our aircraft and do something. What they were doing was deactivating the bombs. The Germans had surrendered; the war was over.
I burst out crying. Everybody cried that day.
    After the war I returned to Moscow University and received my
degree in history and simultaneously graduated from the Academy of
Military Interpreters. I worked as an interpreter and didn't like it. I
studied economics and received a Ph.D. in economics. Then I was sent to Cuba to study the Cuban economy. I was there one year right
after their revolution. The Cubans were very polite and nice to me.
They would ask if I was a labor hero or a war hero, and when I said a
war hero, they were fascinated.

    Senior Lieutenant Serafima Amosova-Taranenko,
pilot, deputy commander of the regiment in flying

    Serafima Amosova-Taranenko,
46th regiment
    I was born in Siberia. An airplane once made a forced landing at our village, in a very distant rural area far from any city,
and that was the first airplane I
had ever seen. We were so excited, we ran around it, touching
it; we were village children and
didn't know anything about civilization. I couldn't even dream
of becoming a pilot. After I finished seven grades in school I
was sent to the city to study
technical courses, and I was
made a leader of small children.
I was leading them down a
street, teaching them about
street signs, when I saw a model
of an airplane on a sign hanging
on a building. I went closer and
saw that it was a flying club.
Young volunteers could train in
aviation before the war.
    I entered the flying school at age eighteen, and I flew well and got
excellent marks in glider school. Because I was an excellent pilot, I
was allowed to open the air show there at our airdrome. We had no
catapult, but the soldiers, who had been invited to stretch the elasticized rubber, stretched it very tight, and the glider took off much
sooner than I expected. The plane pulled up into a vertical position
and stalled over onto its back; then entered into a spin so the controls
didn't respond, and it dove into the ground. People ran to get out of
the way. I was injured and was taken to the hospital. At the hospital
the medical staff ridiculed me and said I shouldn't have stuck my nose into male business anyway. Lying in bed, I secretly cried all
night. I was very sorry for myself and my glider. This was in June,
1933.

    In August, the government appealed to the young people to join a
civil aviation school. I was then working as a Young Communist
League leader in the regional Komsomol Committee, and I was appointed chief of the board selecting students for civil aviation school.
I secretly put my name on the list to he admitted to the program.
When the committee saw my name they refused to let me go, because
they wanted me to perform Komsomol activities there. So I went to a
higher level of the party, and they let me do it. I was the only woman
in the class, and there were ten men. I was the only woman in the
whole school! The boys there respected me, they worshiped me, and
even loved me. They didn't even dare to touch me. I studied there for
three years with excellent marks, and they said I could choose where
I worked. I chose the western Siberian area so I could fly over my
father's house; I wanted him to see me flying the plane. I went home
when I graduated, and to my grief I learned my father had died in May.
It was August, and no one had told me of his death!
    In August, 1936, I began flying on the longest route in civil aviation, from Irkutsk, Siberia, to Moscow. I flew the aircraft that carried
mail, a Pe-5. Then I flew as an airline pilot in a single-engine aircraft
that carried nine passengers and a crew of two. In 1941, before the war,
when I had been flying for five years as a civil pilot, I was drafted