Russia’s women pilots, 1941–45
Operation Barbarossa, the Nazi attack on Soviet Russia in June 1941, was the biggest invasion in the history of the world. Over three and a half million soldiers, with 4,000 tanks, and 5,000 aircraft, poured over the frontier. Their aim: to reach the Soviet capital Moscow by the time the winter arrived. And they almost did it too. Over 4,000 of the flimsy, obsolete planes of the Russian air force were destroyed in the first week of fighting. During the autumn, nearly 20,000 Russians were dying every day in their struggle to repel the Nazi invaders. By October 1941, advanced units of some German divisions were so close to Moscow they could see sunlight glinting on the Kremlin’s golden domes.
Hitler was supremely confident of victory. “We have only to kick in the door and the whole rotten structure will come tumbling down,” he said before the campaign began. Nazi armed forces were expected to overrun the country in six to ten weeks. To begin with, Russia’s fighting forces were poorly equipped and poorly led, but they resisted the invasion with exceptional courage and tenacity. “The Russians fight with a truly stupid fanaticism,” Hitler fretted. He had good reason to. The invasion would turn out to be the greatest mistake he ever made.
Among those fighting against the Nazi invaders were thousands of women – the Soviets had the only fighting forces that allowed women in combat. This is the story of a small group of women who flew combat missions with the Russian air force…
As Soviet losses mounted during Operation Barbarossa, Marina Raskova, Russia’s most famous woman pilot, met with Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin. She argued that Russian women could make up the huge losses suffered by Soviet air force pilots. Stalin was not sympathetic to ideas of female equality, but these were desperate times. He agreed. Shortly after, Raskova broadcast on nationwide Soviet radio. She appealed for women volunteers to join three new fighter and bomber regiments she was forming. These regiments would be staffed entirely by women – from pilots to ground crew, such as mechanics and weapons specialists. Soviet newspapers, who referred to all fighter pilots as “Stalin’s Falcons”, picked up on the story too, and gave Raskova’s idea great coverage.
Among those listening was Tamara Pamyatnykh (pronounced Pam-yat-nik) from Rostov-on-Don. As a teenager Pamyatnykh had idolized Raskova, who had pioneered flights out to the far east of Russia, making one legendary 26-hour flight across 11 time zones. Russia’s communist regime brought great hardship and fear to its citizens, but not everything it did was bad. Pamyatnykh was part of a new generation of Russian women, born just after the 1917 Revolution. For the first time in Russian history, women like her from ordinary backgrounds had been given an education and undreamed of opportunities. Some of Raskova’s volunteers, for example, had already learned to fly with Soviet youth organizations.
Pamyatnykh and two friends immediately headed north to the capital to join Raskova’s airborne regiments. They arrived in Moscow on October 15 to find the city in turmoil. With Nazi troops fast approaching, stories were sweeping through the city that the government had fled. In fact it wasn’t true, but citizens had every right to fear their city would fall. There was panic in the streets, and policemen with loudspeakers had to appeal for calm.
Eventually Pamyatnykh and her friends found the office building of the Aviation Ministry, and volunteered their services. They were sent on a slow train journey to the town of Engels, north of Stalingrad, to learn how to fly. With new pilots needed so desperately, training that would normally take two years was crammed into an exhausting six months. Pamyatnykh and her fellow fliers had to make do with uniforms that were far too big for them. Boots had to be stuffed with newspapers to make them fit. In the 1940s, before powered controls were invented, a pilot needed some physical strength to fly a plane. One bomber the women flew was especially difficult to manage. On take-off, both the pilot and her navigator had to hold down the control stick together to operate the wing flaps that raised the plane into the air.
The aircraft most of the women trained on was a Polkarpov PO-2, an old-fashioned biplane made of canvas and wood. It had a top speed of only 130kmph (81mph). Designed in 1927, it looked ridiculously old-fashioned next to the sleek and deadly Messerschmitt 109s and Focke-Wulf 190s the German fighter pilots flew. German troops contemptuously nicknamed the PO-2 the “sewing machine”, because its small engine sounded just like one. But the PO-2 had its uses. It may have been slow, but it was very sturdy, and perfect for surprise attacks. At night, Soviet PO-2 pilots would cut their engines and silently glide over the German front lines, dropping bombs on them by hand.
During the winter of 1942–43, pilot losses in the Russian air force were running at 50% a year – especially around the Don and Volga regions, where fighting was at its heaviest. This was where Tamara Pamyatnykh found herself stationed with the 586th Fighter Regiment. Here, one of her greatest friends was Raisa Surnachevskaya (Sur-na-chev-sky-ah). Both women had moved on from the bumbling PO-2s they trained on, to the much faster Yak fighter. The Yak was still not as good a plane as the German fighters. Yet, like its namesake, the hairy Tibetan cow, it was sturdy, dependable and agile. But like many Russian weapons, it lacked such basic essentials, such as a radio, at a time when this was a standard piece of equipment for German, American and British pilots. In fact, the Yak did not even have a fuel gauge. Pilots had to guess, from their knowledge of average flying time on a full tank of fuel, when they needed to land to refuel.
At the height of the fighting, Pamyatnykh and Surnachevskaya were called on to intercept a single German reconnaissance aircraft over Kastornaya on the Volga. Here the Soviet army was massing its forces to mount a counterattack against the Germans. Meanwhile, the rest of their squadron were sent to guard a bridge which was under threat from air attack. It was March 19, 1943. The epic Battle of Stalingrad, the turning point of the war, had just ended with a Soviet victory, but the Nazis were far from finished.
When the two women reached their position they did not find their single enemy plane. Instead there was a huge formation of 42 Junkers 88 and Dornier 217 bombers. They must have felt they had just minutes to live. But, despite being hopelessly outnumbered, they didn’t hesitate. Pamyatnykh and Surnachevskaya dived down, with the Sun behind them to blind their enemy, and flew straight into the middle of the bomber pack. In an instant, machine gunners trained their weapons on the Soviet Yaks, concentrating their fire above and below, where there was less danger of hitting another German bomber in crossfire. Pamyatnykh darted in and out of the formation, firing steadily whenever a target appeared in front of her, all the while keeping an anxious lookout for any German fighter escorts which might arrive to protect the bombers. One long burst of fire raked the entire cockpit of a Junkers 88, and at once its gunners fell silent. The bomber dipped out of formation, beginning a long steep dive which ended a minute later with a fiery explosion. There were no parachutes.
Not that Pamyatnykh was able to watch the plane’s final moments. She was frantically weaving to avoid a steady stream of fire from a tight formation of Dornier 217s. For an instant one of them loomed in front of her, and Pamyatnykh fired a long burst, watching her bullets burst in tatters of steel and fabric all along the Dornier’s wing. As Pamyatnykh veered off sharply to the right, the fuel tanks on the bomber ignited, and the plane exploded. Fragments flew around her and smoke and oil smeared greasy trails across her windscreen.
Thrown around in her seat as her plane cartwheeled across the sky, Pamyatnykh had no time to feel fear: she was in a constant state of unreal, breathless excitement. Above her she saw another bomber diving down, a fierce fire blazing in one engine. Surnachevskaya was finding her targets too. Then Pamyatnykh climbed for another attack. Streams of machine gun fire looped up to meet her and she rolled the Yak to and fro to avoid the bullets. She picked out another Dornier at the edge of the pack and lined up her plane behind it. But when she pressed the machine gun button on her control stick, nothing happened. The Yak had run out of ammunition. In the heat of the moment, Pamyatnykh decided to ram her target. She was so close she could even see the terrified face of the tail gunner and his mousey-grey uniform. But then, just as impact seemed inevitable, the Yak spun out of control. As she dropped out of the sky, Pamyatnykh saw that one of her wings had been shot off. Quick as a flash, feeling perfectly calm, she threw back the perspex cockpit cover, and dropped from the plane. Her parachute opened, and Pamyatnykh landed in a field shortly after her Yak had nose-dived into the ground.
Only when she had landed did Pamyatnykh notice that her face was covered with blood. How she had been injured was a mystery to her. She looked up at the whirling formations above her. Surnachevskaya was still up there, alone among the formations of bombers. A thick black plume of smoke trailing to the ground told her that her friend had downed another bomber. But her latest victory had cost her dearly. Surnachevskaya’s Yak had been hit too. Not as badly as Pamyatnykh’s, but the engine was backfiring badly, and the controls felt sluggish in her hand. Surnachevskaya knew there was nothing more she could do against the bombers, but she would try, at least, to land her plane so it could be repaired and flown again. This brave decision was far more dangerous than parachuting down and leaving the plane to crash. She coasted down low, close to where Pamyatnykh had landed, and touched down in a flat field.
Meanwhile, Pamyatnykh was still in trouble. A group of angry peasants had surrounded her, and one was aiming a shotgun straight at her. Despite her protestations they were convinced she was a German pilot. They were all set to lynch her, but fortunately a Russian army officer driving by came to help her. On the journey back, as Pamyatnykh removed her heavy leather flying helmet, the driver kept turning around to stare at her in amazement. “Yes, she’s a woman,” said the officer, trying to sound blasé, while hiding his own astonishment. Pamyatnykh, continually working alongside other women pilots, had forgotten there was anything unusual about it.
Some women proved themselves to be such good combat pilots that they left the women’s regiments to fly as “free hunters” in other squadrons. One was Lilya Litvak, the highest scoring woman ace of the war. Reports vary, but she certainly shot down between 11 and 12 German planes. Described by her comrades as “strikingly pretty”, she was so small her feet didn’t even reach the foot control pedals of her Yak, which had to be specially adjusted. She was fond of flowers, and painted two on either side of her cockpit, earning her the nickname “The White Rose”. Whenever she shot down a German plane, she would have a small flower painted on the nose of her Yak. She soon became famous as a daredevil pilot and was awarded a Gold Star Hero of the Soviet Union medal. Litvak flew missions with her fellow pilot and lover, Alexei Salomaten, until he was shot down and killed. Lilya saw it all happen, and for the rest of her life she carried a photograph of the two of them sitting together on the wing of his plane.
Lilya was never the same after Salomaten died. She flew relentlessly, almost as if she didn’t wish to have a minute to herself to grieve. She told her friends that she imagined every German plane she intercepted was the one that had shot down Alexei. At the end of the day she would just collapse exhausted in her bunk. Her friends grew concerned about her. Especially her mechanic, another woman, named Ina Pasportnikova.
During the war pilots on all sides kept a tally of the aircraft they shot down, in symbols on the side of their planes. On one occasion, shortly after Alexei’s death, Lilya was flying a combat mission when she came across a German Messerschmitt 109. It had the ace of spades painted on the side, and a whole chart of downed planes displayed on the tail. There were twenty in all. Litvak and the Messerschmitt locked on to each other, and chased around the sky in a grim duel. After 15 minutes or so of intense combat, the Messerschmitt burst into flames. The pilot bailed out and was captured by Soviet soldiers as soon as he landed.
Litvak flew home to her base, feeling happy for the first time since Salomaten’s death. She had had a narrow escape. When she landed she called to Pasportnikova to paint another flower on the Yak, which was covered with bullet holes from her day’s fighting.
Later that evening, an army truck arrived at her air base. Inside was the German pilot Litvak had just shot down. He was a tall, physically imposing man and, at 40, quite old for a combat pilot. On his chest were rows of medal ribbons. He carried himself with great confidence, perhaps even arrogance, and seemed quite unafraid of his captors. He had been asked if he would like to meet the pilot who shot him down, and had replied that he would be delighted to meet such an accomplished man.
When Litvak was introduced to him, he stood up from his chair and abruptly demanded to be introduced to the real pilot, rather than “this schoolgirl”. So Litvak explained, slowly through an interpreter, exactly what had happened in their duel, where it had taken place, and how it had ended. Gradually the German pilot seemed to shrink in size, and slowly sank back in his chair. He was so angry he had been shot down by a woman, he tore the medal ribbons off his chest and threw them across the room in a rage.
After this magnificent personal victory Lilya seemed to be living on borrowed time. One day she was set upon by three fighters and crash-landed in a field. A few days later, her plane caught fire and she had to bail out at very low altitude. Her parachute barely opened before she hit the ground. Eventually it was Lilya’s fame that cost her her life. On the late afternoon of August 1, 1943, when she was still only 22, she set off on her fourth mission of that day. (Unlike their allies, Soviet pilots often flew several missions a day. When fighting was at its most intense, they even had to snatch meals in their cockpit, while their plane took on more fuel.) That morning, she had already shot down two aircraft. Litvak was last seen hurling through the sky with eight German fighters on her tail. No doubt they had recognized the white flower on her plane, and were making a determined effort to bring her down. No one saw her die. Her plane, with her body still inside it, was only discovered in 1990. Russia is always immensely proud of its heroes. Almost 50 years after her death, Litvak was given a state funeral attended by the Soviet president, Mikhail Gorbachev.
Despite their successes and undoubted courage, not everyone in the Soviet air force was pleased to see women pilots joining combat squadrons. One woman volunteer recalls being told, “Things may be bad, but we’re not so desperate that we’re going to put little girls like you up in the sky. Go home and help your mother.” Some men refused to fly with the “free hunter” women pilots, or have women as part of their ground crew. It was for these practical reasons Marina Raskova had made her squadrons women only. Some women didn’t always behave exactly like their fellow male pilots either. Recently, combat pilot Valentina Petrachenkova told journalist Jonathan Glancey, “The only times I remember being really scared was once when I got into what seemed like an irrecoverable spin… the other (time) was when I flew with a mouse waltzing across the inside of my windscreen. I screamed and screamed! But I wasn’t very frightened when I had to climb onto the wing of a parachute plane to drag back in a man who had lost his nerve. I don’t know why.”
Marina Raskova’s three women’s regiments flew combat missions right until the end of the war, although she herself was killed in action in 1943, at the age of 31. By the time the war ended in May 1945, 12% of the pilots in the Soviet air force were women. Pamyatnykh and Surnachevskaya both survived the war. Surnachevskaya was four months pregnant when she stopped flying combat missions. At the time of writing, both women are formidable grandmothers, and extremely proud of the role they played in the war.