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

into
a pilot training school to teach young men to fly. We trained boys
whose knowledge was very limited and who had not even seen a
steam engine before! It was during graduation exercises that we heard
that war had broken out. Before the war, people would say the smell
of powder was in the air, for war had already started in Europe. When
the war began, I decided to join the army voluntarily. I was a pilot,
second class. The army told me that no women were to fly in combat.
In November, 1941, I received a cable saying that I should he released
from my duties and report to the regiments being formed by Marina
Raskova.
    At the training base in Engels, I was taught to bomb targets in the
Po-2 aircraft. I was appointed squadron commander in the 588th Air
Regiment of night bombers. We trained for six months, eighteen
hours a day. We were sent to the front in the Donetsk region in the
Ukraine. Our objectives were to bomb front-line German depots,
headquarters, ammunition supplies, troops, and other targets. We
flew at night at a maximum altitude of 1,2oo meters or, in cloudy weather, at 6oo meters minimum. The planes were fabric and plywood, and that, coupled with their slow speed, made them dangerously easy targets-a bullet could explode them.

    When we arrived at the front, the first combat mission was made
by the regimental commander and the squadron commanders and
their navigators in crews of two. When we took off there were coal
deposits on fire, and coal burns constantly for years. On the way to
the target, no one fired at us. I recognized the landscape, and we had
no trouble. We flew back to the reference point, a torch that was
illuminated for us, and decided to make a second pass over the target.
When we flew over the target the second time, still no one fired at us.
We decided to release our bombs over the forest where the German
troops were concentrated, and when the bombs exploded, searchlights rocketed into the air, and antiaircraft guns began firing at us.
Going back, we had difficulty finding the airdrome because the area
was covered with smoke, and there were only three small sources of
light at the airfield. When we landed, our fellow pilots began hugging
and kissing us. We waited for the third crew to return, but it had been
shot down over the target-it was the commander of the second
squadron. We didn't give way to our grief, but we painted on the
fuselage of our planes: Revenge to the Enemy for the Death of our
Friends.
    We were retreating to the east with furious battles. In the northern
Caucasus we bombed ferries crossing the Don River, and afterward
we had to land on another airdrome in the mountains because the
Germans were rapidly approaching. It was difficult to land in the
mountains at night because our airfield was near sea level, and we had
to descend in circles. I flew 555 combat missions.
    When I became the deputy commander of the regiment in flying,
my main mission was to find airfields that we could use. The front
was fluid, and we were constantly moving from one airfield to another. Normally, we used two fields for our regiment: one, the home
airdrome; and the other, an auxiliary field about fifteen kilometers
closer to the front lines. We only landed there to rearm and refuel
during the night and then returned to our home airdrome before
daylight. The Germans couldn't find these bases close to the front
lines, because we left them before daylight when their reconnaissance planes came over our lines.
    My other mission was to train new pilots. No reinforcements
came from the rear, and we had to retrain there at the front: navigators as pilots, and mechanics as navigators. I ran a flying school, so to speak. We lost thirty pilots and navigators in our regiment during
the war.

    One night, as our aircraft passed over the target, the searchlights
came on, the antiaircraft guns were firing, and then a green rocket
was fired from the ground. The