A Dance with Death: Soviet Airwomen in World War II (44 page)

Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff of the Red Army

Olga Lisikova, transport pilot

I completed flying school in
1937 and was assigned to Aeroflot, operating on the Leningrad-Moscow line. Our aircraft
was the P-5, difficult to fly, especially for a newly trained pilot.
It could only carry 50o kg, and
the flight lasted three to four
hours. We flew at low elevation
so there was often turbulence,
and we had few instruments in
the cabin.

One day my commander told
me I was to make a solo flight
to Moscow, and I knew that
only very skillful pilots flew on
that air route. It was a miraculous dream come true: I had become a professional pilot! So
I flew the P-5 and then the
PR-S-it had the shape of a cigar and carried four passengers.
Later I became the copilot on the K-5 aircraft, and the commander of
the plane, Vasilij Lisikov, became my husband.

For the rest of my life I will remember the years 1939-4o because of
the senseless and brutal war with Finland. I had to participate in that
war. I flew the Red Cross aircraft carrying severely wounded soldiers
and officers and many who hadn't been wounded at all; they had
frozen in the bitter northern frost. The temperatures were sometimes
forty to forty-one degrees below zero centigrade. The soldiers were
poorly equipped for such weather, so they lost their extremities-it
was terrible. I made many flights in that war. I myself was wrapped in warm clothing so that I was unrecognizable, with a helmet, a mask
for my face, fur high boots, gloves, and fur overalls. I flew an opencockpit plane-open to the wind-and in spite of the armistice concluded on March 13, we went on flying out the wounded. My life was
complicated by the fact that I was carrying a child.

At the front we landed on a lake covered with a thick layer of snow,
because the aircraft was provided with skis. We would taxi to the
bank of the lake, where we loaded the wounded and flew them to the
hospital in Leningrad. When in June I announced to the commander
of the detachment that I was expecting a baby, he was astonished. He
had never even noticed that I was pregnant. He asked me how I
managed to fly and carry on missions. I told him that being the only
female pilot in the detachment was both an advantage and a disadvantage at the same time! It had never occurred to him that there should
be a gynecologist on the medical test board.

The Great Patriotic War began when my child was only ten months
old. In spite of that, I was drafted to the front in the first days of the
war. I flew the medical plane, an SP-2, and on one of the missions I
loaded two badly wounded soldiers to carry them to the hospital.
About seventy kilometers from the front line, I saw a fascist Messerschmitt Me-Io9 circling around to my tail. What could I do-how
could I protect my small, defenseless biplane with wounded aboard?
He could easily see the large red cross on my plane. But nothing
seemed to stop the beast; he was rapidly approaching my aircraft.
Now he would fire at me with his machine guns. There in the rear of
my plane lay the two wounded men; they didn't even sense the danger. And I was perfectly sure that our last minutes were ticking away.
I had always wondered, in such a situation, how fast your life flashed
in front of your eyes. At that point, I visualized all of my life, and now
I will tell you.

I was born in 1917 in the Far East. My school was on the bank of a
small bay near the village of Americanka, and my father was a schoolteacher-he brought us up. When I was four years old I could swim
very well; I climbed trees like a monkey. At eight, my father instructed me to bring my brother home from a village 5o kilometers
away. I made my way alone through the taiga and brought him
home-loo kilometers in all. I heard all of the taiga's mysterious
noises but strangely had no fear. Now we were living in Leningrad
and I was in secondary school, physically more mature than my classmates and good in school. They tried many tricks to humble me.
Once they bet that I would never sit the whole night through in the cemetery. That night I went to the oldest cemetery in the city and sat
the whole night in the lap of a monument erected to Tchaikovsky. I
also dove into water from a tower ten meters high and sat the night in
a basement full of rats! I won the right to lead.

Sixteen of us girls went to flying school, where we were issued
flying uniforms. I put mine on, and it was terrible-I looked like a
monster! It was so awfully oversized that I couldn't move in it. I cut it
drastically, as well as the high boots. Out of the remainder of the
overcoat, I stitched a beret. In my new uniform I appeared in the
formation, and I was given ten days in the guardhouse for destroying
state property! The other girls decided to support me and express
their solidarity, and the next day they all appeared for roll call in their
altered uniforms. The commander of the battalion could do nothing
but release me from the guardhouse. And that is what flashed before
my eyes in that second while the enemy fighter approached. I didn't
want to die. A painful feeling seized my heart: a mixture of grief,
misfortune, and anger for my own helplessness.

Now my brain worked clearly; not far ahead I saw a precipice and
the thin thread of a rivulet-a tiny hope for survival. I dove at the moment the fascist fighter pulled the trigger, and then he flew past me. I
saw explosions in the air, but I was not hit. I dropped between the riverbanks, very low, close to the water. Now the thought of death didn't
seem so bitter-it was mixed with triumph. I knew he had lost me, and
he would need to gain altitude to look for me. He would be furiousthe fighter plane not being able to cope with a small flying bug. The
river narrowed; the banks closed in on the plane. My hands numbed, so
hard did I grip the control stick. I didn't have the nerve to look back,
but intuition told me he was somewhere very close. Suddenly the river
abruptly turned to the right. I made a sharp turn, and at that instant the
aircraft shook very hard; the enemy machine gun had hit my tail.
Fortunately the control cables weren't damaged. But I saw that I
couldn't fly farther up the canyon, or I would crash into the narrowing
banks. I climbed up, and five minutes later I landed at my airdrome, the
14th Air Force Army. The commander and other pilots watched the
Messerschmitt firing at something, but they did not see my aircraft.
When I landed they understood what had happened. My plane was shot
through in many places, but none of us was hurt. They told me what
had happened to the enemy fighter: when he dove on my tail that last
time, he came too low to the ground and crashed into the riverbank.
The pilots congratulated me for my victory over the fascist fighter, and
the commander of the 14th awarded me the Order of the Red Banner.

After that episode, I was sent to the flying center to be retrained to
fly the Li-2 aircraft, a version of the American Douglas C-47 built
under license in the Soviet Union. I had my doubts about it because
the Group of Special Role consisted of male personnel, and the crew I
was assigned to comprised six men. I wondered how the male pilots
would accept me. Also, my experience up to now had been in simple
aircraft of the Po-2 type. The Lisunov Li-2 aircraft was equipped with
two engines of i,ooo horsepower each, to give it a load of 2.5 metric
tons of cargo or thirty paratroopers with equipment. It also had a gun
turret on the fuselage with a machine gun. It was a very sophisticated
aircraft with many instruments: some for blind flying, an automatic
pilot, de-icers, and much more. And I had to master all that knowledge in a short time. At that time I had i,6oo flying hours.

I was hospitably accepted at the center, and I finished the course
with distinction. I was transferred to the Flying Division of Special
Role, which was assigned to the State Committee of Soviet Defense.
This organization completed missions on all fronts, from the Black
Sea to the Barents Sea. The main base was at the Vnukovo airdrome,
not far from Moscow. When we were fulfilling our combat missions,
we flew out of auxiliary airfields closer to the front lines or to the
location of our mission. The pilots were experienced airline pilots
with many hours. Our missions were to bail out paratroopers, drop
supplies for encircled troops, transport fuel and spare parts to advancing troops, fly to the partisans in the rear, drop intelligence officers to
the enemy rear, and bring supplies to besieged Leningrad.

I was assigned to the 1st Regiment. The regiment was commanded
by Colonel K. Bukharov, although among ourselves we called him
Uncle Kostya. He was fifteen or twenty years older than us and had
graduated from flying school in 1925; he was deeply respected. He
came from a noble Russian family. After the great October Revolution he had concealed his origin. He had deep roots of genetic nobility
in him and preserved them, undestroyed by the regime. After hard,
devastating flights deep into the enemy rear, the commander, having
taken off his flying jacket, sat at the piano and played the Moonlight
Sonata by Beethoven.

Our deputy commander, Captain A. Kalina, was full of energy and
was gifted with a good sense of humor and a sophisticated mind. He
decided to take me as his copilot on a difficult night mission to the
enemy rear, to drop two intelligence officers by parachute. He was
astonished that I didn't feel fear. All my actions were thoroughly
calculated; I was confident. On that flight there was no time for fear. We flew over the front line at a very high altitude; there was enemy
antiaircraft fire, but we were not hit. Then we were attacked by fascist night fighters, and I could see the missiles exploding in the air.
The commander ordered me to maneuver in a sideslip and then to
dive down to the earth and hedgehop over the ground. It took me
several minutes to accustom myself to the darkness, and then I began
discerning rivers, highways, and forests. We changed course constantly: flying on one heading for ten minutes, changing to another
course until I could see a lake, then changing again. It was a
confusion-I didn't know where I was! Several seconds before we
reached the target, he took the controls, climbed to 300 meters, and
gave an order to the intelligence officers to bail out. The whole crew
knew their jobs perfectly and worked in silence. On the way back he
placed me in the pilot's seat and entrusted me with the aircraft.

The next day I was assigned to the crew of Captain Ivanov as
copilot. Our mission: to fly cargo to the besieged city of Leningrad.
My heart beat to the sound of my fair city-Leningrad, Leningrad.
Our aircraft was filled with cargo for the people exhausted and devastated by the war: the bombings, the famine and cold. I knew we were
bringing help to my friends and family.

In a month I was appointed commander of the-aircraft. But a few
days later I was ordered to fly to Siberia to be assigned as a copilot
ferrying aircraft from America. It turned out that the commander of
my division learned that I, a woman, was flying in his division, and he
was determined to get rid of me. But then he was ordered to another
command, and my chief rescinded the order.

One day I was assigned to carry cargo and two passengers, the
directors of a plant situated on the Volga River. We took off in the
morning with clear skies, but the weather soon began to change for
the worse. On the approach to the airfield the fog had completely
covered the city, and I was not allowed to land. I wasn't worried about
that, because we had enough fuel on board to land at another field
until the fog lifted at our destination. The mechanic, a crew member,
came to me and told me we had only a twenty-minute fuel supply. He
had fueled the aircraft the night before, and someone had poured off
fuel from the tanks. He had not checked the tanks before takeoff.

I had to save the plane and the passengers! I flew to another town,
where I could see the chimneys and smoke appearing from the fog. I
entered the overcast on a heading toward the lowland along the river.
The copilot was very fearful and was of no help to me. I chose a field
and decided to land with the gear down. We touched the ground, and I braked abruptly because the field was small. Only because we had a
heavy load of cargo did the aircraft not nose up. When we came to a
stop, I leaned over the control wheel and nearly fainted. I knew I was
alive only by the shivering in my knees. I had used all my willpower,
skill, and energy to save the plane, and now I was speechless! The
directors of the factory were angry that we had to make an emergency
landing, but the crew said they should thank me for saving their
lives. I never told about the lack of fuel, the real reason for the forced
landing. I don't know why I did not report what had happenedpossibly for fear of being prosecuted, or because of the awe of my
crew, who were overwhelmed with my flying skills and praised me to
everyone.

I actively took part in all the combat missions my division carried
out. The new commander of the division summoned me and told me
that I, being the only female pilot in the division, had a great responsibility, because all eyes were on me. Each flight, every landing was
closely watched by the staff. And where the failure of a male pilot
could pass unnoticed, mine would be always under surveillance. Any
blunder, or worse-an accident-would not serve me well. He cautioned me to be demanding of myself. After that talk I changed drastically; I didn't look or act like myself. Everything congested inside; I
became very strict with myself and my subordinates. Before, I would go
to rest and relax after a mission; now, I went to the navigators' room
and scrupulously studied the route of the next mission. When the crew
went to see a movie, I went to the meteorological station and studied
the weather reports. I would do everything better than the men.