A Dance with Death: Soviet Airwomen in World War II (14 page)

We had been told never to drop our bombs at a lower altitude than
400 meters so that we would not be caught in the explosion. We
continued to glide and make our turn, and our altitude was lower
than 300 meters. I couldn't even think about the altitude at that
moment. The only idea that was burning in my mind was to drop the
bombs and quickly head for home-not to be shot down by the
fighter. When we dropped them our plane was so shaken by the aerodynamic blow from the bombs exploding that I thought we would
split into pieces. Instantly the searchlights shot into the air trying
to catch us, but I glided noiselessly until the altitude decreased to
ioo meters. Only then did I start the engine, when we were away from
the target. The engine roared as if warning us that we could be caught
by the searchlights. I turned my head back, and what I saw shook
me with grief. Another of our aircraft was burning and falling, the
fifth over the target and the fourth to be shot down.

From all aspects it was a terrible night. The Germans had never
before used the combination of antiaircraft guns, searchlights, and fighters to attack us, and our crews were not prepared to face these
tactics. Even now I cannot understand why the pilot of the fifth plane
didn't realize what I was doing and follow me. I reflected a lot on that
and came to the conclusion that to complete her duty was foremost
in her mind. She knew she was destined to die, but she didn't change
her course and flew on to the target to be killed.

When the extent of the tragedy was realized, all further flights
were canceled for the night. That night we lost eight girls in ten
minutes. For our whole wartime experience it was our worst, most
horrible, tragic night. For the next few nights the Soviet fighter regiments cleared the air for us, and only then could we renew our
missions.

In the spring of 1943 a comic-tragic episode happened in my flying
career. All the roads were so slushy that no trucks could get through
to our airdrome. The airplanes couldn't fly because they couldn't take
off. Our main airfield was usually situated forty kilometers from the
front, our auxiliary field twenty kilometers from the front. Our routine was that when going on a mission, half of our planes would take
off from the main airfield and the others from our auxiliary one.

This night, the twenty aircraft from our auxiliary airfield completed their mission and returned to the field. But because it was
sleeting the roads were impassable, and the trucks couldn't get to the
field to bring us fuel. So those of us at the auxiliary field were stuck
there for three days. On the fourth day we received a message that
cargo aircraft from Moscow with food supplies had landed 20o kilometers from us. At the auxiliary field we had been without food for
four days. With this message, we received an order to fly to that
location and bring the supplies to the regiment.

We gathered fuel from all the planes, enough for eight aircraft, and
laid log flooring to help them take off. We wheeled the planes through
the mud and slush to that flooring, almost carrying them in our
hands. Finally we were ready to take off for that destination. We were
to fly that mission without our navigators. It was going to be a difficult flight because it was a 40o-kilometer round trip to the cargo
planes and back.

We flew to the cargo planes, loaded our planes with food supplies,
and then flew to our regiment at a very low altitude of about 200
meters. Only at this low altitude in the daytime could we avoid being
shot down by enemy fighters.

During that day I made three flights and covered 1,2oo kilometers.
When we were at last supplied with fuel and ammunition after flying all day long, we were assigned a night combat mission. I didn't take
into consideration that I had already become exhausted by the long
daytime flights and that exhaustion had taken a toll on my eyesight,
brain, thinking process, and nerves. The moment we took off I was
almost snoozing away. By then nearly all the navigators could easily
fly the aircraft, and my navigator suggested that she fly while I took a
little nap on the way to the target. So I dozed off while the navigator
flew.

I thought I had slept but one minute when my navigator shook me
by my shoulder, pleading with me to wake up. We were over the
target. When I opened my eyes, I seized the control stick and saw
lights of enemy aircraft directly in front of me. I began maneuvering
to escape them, throwing the aircraft back and forth, performing
some incredible maneuvers, and then I lost spatial orientation. Our
plane began falling out of control. My navigator shouted at me,
"Larisa, wake up, what are you doing? There are no fighters; these are
the searchlights!" She even fought with me to pull the control stick
out of my hands because we had already fallen about i,ooo meters. I
personally couldn't tell the earth from the sky. When I at last regained real consciousness, we were 6oo meters above the ground.
Only then did I recognize the earth. It's a funny story to tell about
that night, but at the time I felt only fear.

Each mission was a constant overstrain. We inhaled the gunpowder, choking and coughing, unable to breathe, from the antiaircraft gunfire bursting around us. It sometimes lasted fifteen minutes until we completely escaped the searchlights. When you leave
behind the area of the target, the sea of antiaircraft fire, and the
searchlights, the next instant you start shivering-your feet and knees
start jumping-and you cannot talk at all because you are wheezing
in your throat. This was a normal reaction after each flight. In a few
minutes you recover.

When we flew five nights with maximum missions, we lost appetites and sleep in our reaction to the overstrain. We usually returned
from the missions in early morning, had breakfast, and went to bed.
But if we flew many missions at night we couldn't fall asleep in the
morning. And even if we couldn't sleep we still had to fly again that
next night, and pilots sometimes fell asleep during a mission. We
even had a kind of agreement between the pilot and the navigator that
one of us would sleep going to the target and the other returning to
the airfield. I have a feeling that there were times when both the pilot
and navigator dozed off for a minute or so because of exhaustion. Sometimes I even forgot whether I was flying toward the target or
back from the target. At those times we had to peer under the wings
to see if the bombs were attached in order to know whether we were
going or returning! Our doctor gave us pills nicknamed Coca-Cola to
keep us awake, and sometimes we took so many of them that we
couldn't fall asleep at all when we lay down to sleep.

I was twice shot down. The first time was when our regiment was
flying from one airfield to another. I was flying as a navigator with
Serafima Amosova as pilot, and we were first to take off to find a
location for a new airdrome. Then we would signal the other aircraft
to land. This day we were attacked by a German Messerschmitt. He
fired at us and made a few holes in the fuselage and wings. We made a
forced landing, and he attacked us two more times on the ground. We
jumped out of the cockpits and ran in different directions to hide
from the bullets. After he attacked us three times he flew away.
Although the plane had a number of holes in it, we took off and found
a new airdrome for our regiment.

Another time, on a night mission over the town of Kerch, I was
flying as pilot. Our plane was hit by an antiaircraft shell that stuck
into the engine, and the engine quit. When we were hit, our altitude
was i,6oo meters. But because the terrain was hilly, I had to think
hard about a place to land. We didn't know our exact location, whether
we were over Soviet or German territory. My navigator shot signaling rockets into the air, and I could see clearly both the compass
showing that we were heading toward German-held territory and
the altimeter showing that we were very close to the ground, about
5 meters high. We were not on the coast but in the mountains! I had
only a few seconds to turn back from that heading and to level the
aircraft. I knocked down two telegraph posts with the wing, landed,
and rolled into a deep trench. We were 400 meters from the German
front line.

But when we landed we didn't know if we were in Soviet or German territory, so we climbed out of our cockpits and decided we
would reconnoiter. If we heard Russian voices we would go on to
headquarters and report, and if we heard German voices we would
use our pistols and simultaneously shoot and kill each other in order
not to be captured by the Germans. We knew that the Germans
tortured Soviet women pilots brutally, and our greatest fear was to be
captured by them. We were more afraid to be imprisoned than to die.
We lay on the ground and waited to hear some signs of life. After a
while we heard voices speaking in Russian saying, "Where are you?"

Our regiment lost thirty girls, both pilots and navigators, during
the war. On the ground we lost three: one from cancer, one from a
bombing, and the third from diphtheria. In quantity, we lost almost
the whole flying personnel of the regiment and kept up our strength
with replacements. These replacements came in part from male regiments where there happened to be one woman pilot who would be
transferred to our regiment.

Initially our regiment was to consist of two squadrons, but when
we were awarded the title of "Guards" regiment, a great honor, we
were allowed a third squadron. We requested permission to form a
fourth squadron, which was to be a training squadron, because we
trained all our own personnel. We were allowed to do this, and in fact
this squadron also flew some combat missions. The commander of
the air army personally forbade our commander, Bershanskaya, from
flying combat missions, but I think she flew about forty missions. In
our regiment there were twenty-three Heroes of the Soviet Union, of
which five were honored posthumously. Eleven received that title at
the front and the remainder in 1946.

After the war, when I was traveling on the train with my husband,
we stopped at a very small station, and some officers brought a newspaper onto the train. In it was a decree of the Soviet government that
said I had been awarded the Hero of the Soviet Union medal, the Gold
Star. Where it was really celebrated was on that train with my husband when he was going on a business trip to Moscow. We were
supposed to be given an apartment and ten square meters of extra
living area. These privileges were introduced at the fiftieth anniversary of Soviet power. Those who first were awarded the Gold Star
during the war were given 25,000 rubles. Once a year we can go to a
sanitorium free of charge. Upon retirement honorees are given a personal pension. But the people in the Soviet Union have hated all the
special privileges given to high-ranking Soviet officials, and so in
1992 all these privileges will he canceled for everybody.

Senior Lieutenant Zoya Parfyonova,
pilot, deputy commander of the squadron

Hero of the Soviet Union

I was horn in 1920 in the Chuvash region of the Russian Republic,
and I graduated from secondary school, finishing only seven grades.
Then I was trained to be a nurse. While I was working as a nurse I
decided that I would fly, so I worked at a glider school as a nurse and
trained to fly at the same time; first on a glider and then on a powered aircraft, the U-2 biplane. Both flew off the same airdrome. I graduated
from that school with excellent grades, and they wanted me to instruct there, so I remained as a flight instructor and trained one group
of pilots.

When the war broke out, our school became a military pilot training school, and I was drafted into the army with the rank of sergeant.
All the male instructors were sent to the front, and we women
wanted to go too, but we were told that we must stay there and teach
cadets to fly. But when Marina Raskova appealed to the women pilots
to join her regiment, the chief of our school could not restrain me
from doing that. I was then transferred to the women's regiment to
train for combat.

Because we had only flown in the daytime, they trained us to fly at
night. Then I was assigned to the 588th Air Regiment, which later
became the 46th Guards Bomber Regiment. When we arrived at the
front, the first night mission was flown by our commanders, so we
were all sitting on the airfield waiting for them to return. When they
returned, we discovered that our own squadron commander had not
come back but was killed that very first night. She was our commander and friend, and we could not help but cry. The next night the
whole regiment was assigned a combat mission.

I don't want to hide anything; I want to say we experienced many
feelings and emotions-fear, joy, love, sorrow-as we faced very hard
experiences. Sometimes when we successfully completed a mission
we even sang and danced there at the airfield because life is life, and
we were young.

In 1945 we were on our last combat mission, one of eleven crews,
and it took place in eastern Prussia. It was February; the weather was
severe and the roads impassable, and it was impossible to bring
needed armament up to our troops. Our assignment was to drop cargo
to our infantry and artillery, and our regiment and a male regiment
were assigned the same mission.

It was a nightmare to make that mission. I had to go without my
navigator because the cockpit was overloaded with armament. The
plane was very heavily loaded, really overloaded, with cargo underneath where we usually carried bombs. It was also a daylight mission.
None of the other aircraft completed that mission because the weather
conditions were severe with the visibility zero-I was the only one. I
made the flight at a very low altitude, following the railroad tracks. It
was snowing very hard.

We had been told that when we arrived at the appointed place we should circle a few times until our troops signaled to us, and then we
could land. I was able to land there because my plane was equipped
with skis rather than wheels. Well, I made several circles at that
place, and no one appeared to signal me; no one was there. So I flew
on for four or five minutes and saw a crowd of people and a tank. I was
flying so low that I was afraid the wing would touch the ground when
I banked to turn. Suddenly I could see the German markings on the
tank, and they had elevated the gun and started shooting at me.
German infantrymen began firing at me, the airplane was hit all over
like a sieve, and I was wounded in the leg. I made a 18o-degree turn
and flew away from them. The aircraft was shaking and difficult to
fly because of the damage to it. In three minutes I saw our Soviet
troops on the ground waving to me, and I landed to deliver the cargo.
They told me they had seen me in the air and had shot flares to signal
me, but I didn't see them because of the poor visibility. They were
grateful for the supplies and also for the information I gave them
about the disposition of the enemy.