A Dance with Death: Soviet Airwomen in World War II (8 page)

On this flight the antiaircraft guns were silent. I sensed something
very uncommon about that and then thought of the only reason for
the silence-German fighter aircraft! We had not been attacked in
this way before; we had not developed tactics to counter the attack of
fighter planes. I had considerable experience in combat and maneu vered to escape the searchlights, for to escape the searchlights was to
escape the fighter. But behind me flew young, inexperienced crewsreinforcements who did not escape. Four of the aircraft following me
were shot down. The tracer bullets set their planes on fire; our planes
were so vulnerable they were burning like sheets of paper. We were
not equipped with parachutes at that time, so eight girls burned in the
air. One was Irina Kashirina, who had landed the aircraft with the
dead pilot. It is a horrible scene when a plane is burning. First it
explodes; then it burns like a torch falling apart, and you can see
particles of fuselage, wings, tail, and human bodies scattered in the
air. The other crews who were in the air at that moment witnessed
that tragedy. I saw it with my own eyes as I returned from the
mission.

In the morning, when we realized that the girls had perished and
we would never see their smiling faces, never hear their voices, horror
seized us. We didn't sleep that day and the next night fulfilled our
combat missions without a wink of sleep. The everyday ration of
vodka in the army was 200 grams, and we were daily allowed 200
grams of dry wine. But the regimental commander forbade us to
drink, and we gave our word of honor not to break her order. Even
after that tragedy we kept our word.

Our airdrome was occasionally attacked from the air. In the Crimea
our field was bombed by a group of fascist fighters at dawn, when we
were in the field mess eating breakfast. We were at a new location,
and the logistics battalion hadn't yet camouflaged the airfield and
planes. We rushed from the mess to our planes, which were dispersed
on the field, and we flew off in all directions in order to save the
aircraft. I must confess that when I am telling you all these stories, I
am shivering as if going through hell over and over again. If I talk
about my war experiences, I cannot sleep afterwards, so much is my
agitation.

In the Taman area I was assigned to bomb a column of enemy
trucks and weapons moving along the road. The night was moonlit,
and this was not in our favor. The altitude was low, and the silhouette
of the aircraft was clearly discernible to the Germans, but for awhile
they masked and didn't fire at me. We dropped three flares to light the
area. Hardly had my navigator, Tatyana Sumarokova, dropped half of
the bombs when four antiaircraft guns burst out firing at us in rapid
succession. These were Oerlekon tracer missiles. All of the tracers
hit the aileron wires, and I lost control of the ailerons. The tracers
also hit the bomb wires under the left wing, and we couldn't drop those bombs. The most urgent necessity was to get out of the fire
zone. But I couldn't maneuver because of the aileron damage; the
only possible escape was to dive. My altitude dropped from 60o to
200 meters. That made it especially risky, because at that altitude we
could be hit by submachine gun fire, or even by a gun! My navigator
was wounded in the forehead and was blinded by blood. Without her
to guide me, I headed back to our airdrome. I didn't know to what
extent our aircraft was damaged. We were lucky to have no wind that
night; if the wind had banked our plane, I would have never been able
to level it. The bombs still attached to the left wing were pulling the
aircraft to the left. I held the plane with my right rudder. But how to
land the plane? The landing strip was ninety degrees from my heading, and somehow I had to turn. Using the rudder, I kept applying
pressure to the right. Soon I saw the airdrome, and I shot three red
rockets to indicate an emergency landing. Since we were landing with
the bombs still under the left wing, I made a decision to land a
distance from the other planes so as not to blow them up if we
exploded. When the altitude dropped to six or eight meters, I completely lost control and stalled. The fact that we didn't fall flat saved
us from exploding. The aircraft went to pieces: the fuel tank fell on
my right foot and squeezed it; I hit my head against the control panel
and lost consciousness. Our ground personnel ran to our plane and
extracted the navigator from her cockpit, but they couldn't pull me
out because I was trapped by the fuel tank, which was too heavy to
lift. So they had to axe the fuselage to break into the cockpit. I was
happy to remain alive.

I can't help trembling when I recall an accident that happened in
my squadron, for in recalling, it again comes alive. It took place on a
mission over the Taman Peninsula. A very young crew of pilot and
navigator came into my squadron as reinforcements. I always escorted new, unskilled crews to the target on their first flight, so after
takeoff, I joined up with them. Our target was Mitridat in the Crimean.
We dropped our bombs and made a turn to fly back when I saw a very
low overcast rapidly advancing from the Black Sea. I idled the engine
and dove to escape the overcast, but the clouds were growing incredibly fast, like a snowball, in front of our eyes. For awhile we could dive
into the holes between heavy clouds, but they soon disappeared in
that gray, scary mass. The wind increased, and I could see we were
drifting. I made a sixty-degree drift correction, for the wind was
strengthening, and there was extreme turbulence. I came out of the
overcast at 300 meters. Below me was the sea-no shore in sight. The Taman Peninsula separates the Black Sea from the Sea of Azov. I
understood that I had not corrected my heading enough, and I had
been blown to the Sea of Azov! The overcast pressed me lower to the
water, and the aircraft was shaking heavily from the extreme turbulence. I corrected my course to fly back; I was thrown back and forth,
up and down. I could hear the sounds of the water splashing below
me, the sea spray streamed off the waves-my insides were throbbing
and jumping. Around me was nothing but pitch-black emptiness, and
the head wind was almost equal to the speed of my aircraft. For three
hours I was suspended in the air and seemed not to move. Then, in
the distance, I saw land; I prayed to the skies to help me to the land.
Finally, I was able to land on the Taman Peninsula. I feared for the
young crew, for there was no news of them-I knew they had crashed.
A month later their bodies were found on the shore of the Sea of Azov.
They ran out of fuel and fell into the sea.

On another mission over the Kerch Strait the engine quit. I couldn't
even think of making a forced landing on the waters of the strait
because it was winter, and our heavy fur overalls made it impossible
to float to the surface. I throttled back to save on fuel and took
advantage of the tail wind to make it to land. It was night, and I had to
land in an area that had been mined by the Germans; the land was
uneven, torn by explosions. I landed at minimum speed to reduce the
landing roll. When we came to a stop, I was so happy and relieved that
I jumped out of the cockpit and immediately fell into a deep trench!
Fortune had smiled on me again.

When we were flying in the northern Caucasus, we would take off
in clear weather and often return in dense fog that reached from the
ground up to fifty meters. We found the location of the airdrome by
orientation, for we knew all the terrain landmarks. On those foggy
nights, the ground personnel would shoot a red flare to indicate the
landing strip and a green one if they thought the aircraft was not in
position to land. Landing in thick fog, I would enter that milky sheet,
and when the cockpit began to darken, it was a sign that the land was
close. Then I would pull the nose up and sink to the ground for a
landing.

In Belorussia the Soviet troops began their major offensive on all
fronts, pushing the enemy to the west. The front-line troops advanced
very fast, and small numbers of enemy troops were encircled and
scattered in the Belorussian woods. They were hiding there and were
trying to fight back the attacks of the Soviet army. Our new location
was a clearing in the woods, and when we landed, some of the girls went into the forest and saw very closely-nose to nose-German
tanks masked among the trees! Our aircraft were short of fuel because the logistical battalion had been detained. But we had to leave
because at any moment we could be attacked by the tanks, so we flew
away. The situation itself was ridiculous. Here we were, encircled by
the German tanks, while their tanks were encircled by the advancing
Soviet army!

What did we all think then, the girls from the flying regiments?
Was the war a woman's business? Of course not. But then we didn't
think about that. We defended our fair motherland, our people whom
the fascists had trampled. We won the greatest victory of the twentieth century! I never dreamed to see the victory. We sensed it, but by
then I had a feeling I would not live to see it. Now having gone
through that hell it has become priceless to me as never before.

There is an opinion about women in combat that a woman stops
being a woman after bombing, destroying, and killing; that she becomes crude and tough. This is not true; we all remained kind, compassionate, and loving. We became even more womanly, more caring
of our children, our parents, and the land that has nourished us.

After the war our regiment was released, and we all wanted to fly
in civil aviation. I applied to the medical board, but I could not pass
the medical examination. I had undermined my physical and mental
health at the front; I was completely exhausted by the four years of
war and combat. There was a period when we went without a day off
for one hundred days.

I have always been a devoted Communist, and I have worked for
the benefit of my people.

Lieutenant Polina Gelman,
navigator

Hero of the Soviet Union

When the war broke out I was a sergeant, and when I retired I was a
major. I didn't fly after the war, but I still served. My pilot, Dusya
Nosal, was killed, and the night she was killed I didn't fly with her.
She was training another young navigator, and the navigator brought
the plane back. Dusya was the first woman pilot to become a Hero of
the Soviet Union in the Great Patriotic War. My next pilot was
Maguba Syetlanova, a Tartar.

We flew one after another over the target every three minutes. The
Germans liked to sleep at night, and they were very angry with the
planes. They spread the rumor throughout the army that these were neither women nor men but
night witches. When our army
advanced again, the civilians
said to us that we were very attractive and that the Germans
had told them that we were
very ugly night witches!

The English book Night
Witches is fictionalized; only
the names are real. The book by
Raisa Aronova of the same title
was written during the war,
tracing our path. She collected
the events associated with a
particular place and wrote chapters about the different personalities: a true chronicle. She
herself flew in the regiment as a
pilot and carried out 96o combat missions.

Polina Gelman, 46th Guards
Bomber Regiment

I was born in igr9 and grew
up in the first postrevolutionary period. Right after the revolution it was like in your Civil War:
everything was burning. I read the book Gone with the Wind, describing the events between the South and North, and it was all
burning. We didn't know exactly what was going on then, we didn't
know the real truth, the real roots of the events, but still it was a kind
of an adventure for us. We were young, we had a very good time-we
enjoyed it.

My father was killed in our Civil War when I was only five months
old. My mother raised me by herself. She didn't have much education,
but she was a very cultured woman who was well-read. She participated in the revolution in October, 1917, as a nurse. I remember her
telling me how she brought bread, tobacco, and papers to the revolutionary prisoners, pretending to be a rich lady, and she also got
clothes and false papers to the prisoners to help them escape. This all
happened in the Ukraine region when power was switching from the
Reds to the Whites, back and forth.

In 1919, when my mother was giving birth to me, a shell from the
air destroyed half of the hospital, and my mother was in the half of
the building that was safe. I consider it to have been a good sign because I am still alive! I went to a secondary school, finishing ten
grades with excellent marks. When I was in ninth grade, my girlfriend and I decided to enter a glider school that had started in our
town. In the glider school we first jumped with parachutes. On my
first flight in the glider, the instructor told me to do a maneuver that
he had shown me, and I had difficulty reaching the controls. I was
very low in the cockpit, and he couldn't even see me, and that frightened him because I had disappeared! When we landed he called me
such bad, dirty names that I have never heard again, and he said that I
couldn't fly anymore because I was too little. I was in love with
aviation and wanted to devote my life to it, but I was so unhappy that
I could not become a pilot that I chose to go to Moscow University
and study history.