The war correspondent Konstantin Simonov met Marina Raskova in the autumn of 1942 at Kamyshin airfield, halfway between Stalingrad and Saratov.369 He had never seen her close-up before and had not realized that she was “so young and had such a beautiful face.” He was struck by Raskova’s “still, gentle Russian beauty.” He thought later that the meeting had perhaps been so strongly etched in his memory because she died soon after.
Just before New Year 1943, 587 Heavy Bomber Regiment finally received the long-awaited order to fly at the beginning of January to the Stalingrad Front.370 Part of the regiment was to fly from the Kalinin Front where they had been active in operations, the rest from Engels. The Second Squadron, led by Klava Fomichyova, suffered an early reverse. They took off and—what an awful thing to happen—one of Masha Dolina’s engines failed.371 She managed a safe “belly” landing but was terribly upset at being left behind. She was not able to set off in pursuit of her squadron until the morning of January 4. Raskova and two crews that had been delayed by other difficulties also took off from the other front.
The weather was less than ideal and several times Masha had to put down and wait it out at intermediate airfields. She had no idea where the rest of the regiment’s pilots were or which of them had already reached their destination. Landing at one of these airfields to refuel and take a break, she and her crew went to the canteen. Pilots were normally a boisterous, jocular bunch, but today they were subdued and from their somber expressions it was immediately obvious that something bad had occurred. Masha, her navigator Galya Dzhunkovskaya and gunner Ivan Solyonov looked at them in bewilderment until someone said, “Have you really not heard? Your regimental commander has been killed!”
“What do you mean?” Masha shouted. “That’s not something you should joke about!” Even as she was shouting she started to shake. Someone passed her a newspaper that confirmed the terrible news. “On January 4, 1943, while on her way to the Stalingrad Front M. Raskova died in a plane crash.”
Raskova had crashed in low cloud while flying from Arzamas to Saratov with the two straggler crews. Before taking off they had received a weather report from the Central Hydrometeorological Center warning of bad weather along the route.372 They could fly to Petrovsk, but must land there and wait for the fog to lift. It was dense fog from there on all the way to Razboyshchina Station. The Petlyakov Pe-2 dive-bombers had only basic instruments and in adverse weather conditions were soon helpless. Raskova was well aware that you could not fly them in thick fog, heavy rain or snowfall but decided nevertheless not to wait. She was keen to catch up with the others. As they approached Petrovsk the fog became impenetrable but Raskova decided to fly on. She said it seemed to be clearing. By the time they reached Razboyshchina visibility was zero. It was not the first time the pretty, gray-eyed major had diced with death. She had many times before put her own life, and those of others, at risk. This was to be the last.
Raskova had the regiment’s chief navigator, Captain Kirill Khil, flying with her. He was a top-class professional, worshipped in the regiment. Khil could perhaps have saved them but Raskova, also trained as a navigator, probably opted to rely on her own judgment. As with many other Russian rivers, the left bank of the Volga slopes gently while the right is steep and high. Raskova sent the aircraft into a dive, intending to break through the fog.373 Instead they crashed into the right bank of the Volga. The search for them was concentrated far from the scene of the accident, and they were found only after the weather cleared.
The pilot’s cockpit took the brunt of the impact and Raskova was killed instantly. A terrible impact with the armor-plated back of the pilot’s seat as they hit the bank beheaded Khil. The gunner-radio operator and the chief mechanic of the squadron, who was also traveling with them, would probably have survived if the plane had been found that day. The tail broke off on impact and they were injured. Both men froze to death there beside the aircraft. When they were found, the mechanic was still clutching a bloody towel with which he had been trying to staunch the bleeding from the gunner’s injury.
The airwomen Raskova was leading during her last flight were luckier. When the fog began to close in on them they dispersed, since you do not fly in close formation when visibility is low. Both Lyuba Gubina and Galya Lomanova were experienced pilots who before the war had worked as flying club instructors. Lyuba managed to discern the edge of a forest and landed her plane there. Galya Lomanova landed near a railway station. Both were injured and damaged their aircraft, but survived and were able to fly to Moscow to bid farewell to Raskova.
Her body was flown on a U-2 to the Saratov Aviation Plant, which was close to the crash site. The Director, Levin, could not believe this “big-hearted, wonderful, enchanting woman” was dead.374 Raskova was on friendly terms with his family and, when she came to the plant, would often spend a couple of hours with them, talking, playing the piano, and singing the songs they loved.
Levin reported what had happened to his superiors, and shortly afterward received instructions to “prepare the body and send it overnight to Moscow.” The “preparation” was undertaken by a team led by Sergey Mirotvortsev, a famous academician and surgeon. They did their best to rebuild her face. Raskova’s head was intact, but her face was so disfigured it needed more than forty stitches. The initial intention was for Raskova to lie for her final farewell in an open coffin, but this was reconsidered and instead a closed coffin stood in the foyer of the factory’s clubhouse. All the workers there and thousands of residents of Saratov and military units went past to pay their last respects to Marina Raskova.
Late that night the body was taken to Moscow in a special carriage attached to an express train. Kirill Khil and the other crew members whose deaths she had caused were buried in a common grave near the scene of the crash.
After hearing the terrible news, Masha Dolina flew on to rejoin her regiment. Everybody there was in mourning.375 They were all crying, pilots, navigators, gunners and technicians. “There was a painful memorial service at which the entire regiment was in tears,” Dolina recalled. The news of Raskova’s death was soon passed on to the other two regiments.
Zhenya Rudneva wrote in her diary, “The next day at the squadron’s morning inspection we received awful news. Rakobolskaya came in and said, ‘Raskova is dead.’ There was a gasp. Everybody got to their feet and bared their heads in silence. I was sure there must be a mistake in the newspaper. It could not be true. Our major. Raskova. Thirty-one years old.”376
Galya Dokutovich wrote in her diary that Raskova was the most remarkable woman she had ever met, her “youthful ideal, organizer and first commander.”377 She was comforted by the thought that, after the other two regiments had ceased to be composed exclusively of women, her own 588 Night Bomber Regiment had become the best embodiment of Raskova’s ideal.
The entire country was in mourning. Her death and funeral took up the entire front page of all the national newspapers. Pravda wrote in an editorial entitled “Moscow attends Raskova’s funeral”:
From the high ceilings to the plinth of the funeral urn strips of black crêpe cascade down. In this urn are contained the ashes of one of the most remarkable women of our time, Hero of the Soviet Union Marina Raskova. The Gold Star and two Orders of Lenin glitter on crimson velvet by the plinth.
Members of the Soviet government, People’s Commissars, Heroes of Socialist Labor, Heroes of the Soviet Union, the U.S.S.R.’s greatest people stand today beside Raskova’s coffin. The hands of the clock approach three. The guard of honor is formed by Moscow Party Secretary A.S. Shcherbakov, Marshal S.M. Budyonny, and V.P. Pronin, Chairman of the Moscow City Council.
It is three o’clock, the time when the funeral urn containing the ashes of Marina Raskova will make its final journey to the Kremlin wall on Red Square.
The urn with the ashes of Raskova moves to the Kremlin wall. A threefold volley and the roar of engines as aircraft fly over Red Square proclaim to Moscow that Marina Raskova, Hero of the Soviet Union, great Russian aviatrix, has concluded her glorious career.
After Raskova’s death, as indeed before it, her daughter Tanya was brought up by her grandmother. The command of her orphaned 587 Regiment was entrusted, if only temporarily, to Zhenya Timofeyeva.
Timofeyeva was the most experienced pilot in the Heavy Bomber Regiment. Even before the war she had flown a twin-engined bomber and been a squadron leader, but she had inherited no easy task. After the death of its commander the regiment seemed to lose faith in itself, and others lost faith in it too. At an airfield where 587 Regiment was to land on its way to the Stalingrad Front, on hearing the news that a female bomber regiment was approaching, a mock panic broke out. “Get in the dugouts! Women landing!” the pilots yelled, only half joking.
Zhenya Timofeyeva, like the rest of the unit, was distraught. She kept wondering what future the regiment now had. Would all their hard work in training to fly a complex aircraft have been for nothing? Would they be trusted? They were waiting for the order to move to a front-line airfield on the left bank of the Volga, and in the meantime needed to get on with clearing snow. The snowdrifts were waist high and, leading the women out to the aircraft, Timofeyeva walked backward because the icy wind bit their faces. When they were hard at work she was summoned to headquarters where she found a representative of 8 Air Army waiting. “Take command of the regiment,” she was ordered. Zhenya was shocked. How could she replace Raskova and lead her girls into the first real battle of their lives? She had it on the tip of her tongue to say “No!” but instead heard what sounded like someone else’s voice say, “Yes, sir!”
The weather was unchanged over the next few days, with more than forty degrees of frost and a high wind, but they had to get on with their training, flying at high altitude, in formation, and communicating in the air. In the latter half of January she reported that the regiment was ready, and on January 28 they finally set off on their first bombing mission, led by pilots of 10 Bomber Regiment which was stationed at the same airfield. Although her death could not be directly blamed on the Germans, the pilots used a screwdriver to scratch “For Marina Raskova!” on the first 100-kilogram bombs they dropped on their enemy at Stalingrad.
“This will be my last letter for a long time, and perhaps forever. My friend has to go to the airfield and will take it, because tomorrow the last plane will leave from our kettle of encirclement. The situation is beyond our control. The Russians are three kilometers from our last air base and if we lose that not even a mouse will escape from here, including me. Of course, the same goes for hundreds of thousands of others, but it is small consolation to know that they too are facing death.” This letter from an unknown German soldier was airlifted out of the kettle by the last aircraft to land there, but the plane was shot down and the letter never reached its addressee.378
Setting out on their first combat mission, 587 Women’s Heavy Bomber Regiment was in a state of feverish excitement.379 Taking to the air at dawn, they peered down at the ground enveloped in freezing mist. They flew over a few villages, saw vehicles driving along roads, and soon had a view of the ruins of Stalingrad, “an endless succession of charred ruins extending along the banks of the Volga.” They encountered the first bursts of anti-aircraft fire, small black clouds they had not seen before and which did not, as yet, seem all that frightening. Navigator Valya Kravchenko touched Zhenya’s shoulder and pointed toward the ground below. She saw the turn in the road toward the Volga, the skeletons of destroyed buildings, then the Barricades Arms Factory and, finally, their target—the Tractor Factory.
“Keep an eye on the bomb doors of the leading aircraft,” Valya said, “and I’ll keep an eye on what’s happening in the air.”380 At that very moment the hatches of the lead aircraft opened. Zhenya was about to point this out to her navigator when she felt the hatches of her own aircraft open. The leader dived suddenly, straight to where the flak was exploding, and Zhenya followed him. The next explosions were higher and to their right. Bombs rained down from the lead aircraft and Zhenya immediately felt a jolt in her own plane. Their bombs had been dropped. They hit the target.
Masha Dolina’s heart too was beating wildly at that moment as she gave herself mental instructions: “Easy, Masha! Maintain height! Bomb hatches opening any minute now.” Freed of its deadly cargo her plane bounced upward. Masha glanced at the navigator, Galya Dzhunkovskaya, the prettiest girl in the regiment who, at that moment, was looking pale. She smiled back and said, “Congratulations on your baptism of fire, Masha!”381
On January 30, when the dark ruins of Stalingrad were shrouded in snow that had fallen overnight, they flew for the first time without lead aircraft, and on February 1 released the last of the 14,980 kilograms of bombs they dropped on Stalingrad.
On January 31 the newly promoted Field Marshal Paulus, who had lost all communication with the outside world, took the decision to surrender. At 0700 hours a German soldier crawled out of the basement of the central department store where Paulus and 6th Army headquarters were holed up, bearing a white flag.
Paulus signed the surrender that same day, but units of his Army, unable to communicate with their headquarters, continued resistance for a further day, so 587 Regiment continued bombing for another twenty-four hours.
Like all who were at Stalingrad in those days, the airwomen were appalled by the sight of a city reduced to rubble. “I suppose my Leningrad looks just the same,” Lena Timofeyeva said sadly.382 Through all the sadness, however, there was joy at the victory, and satisfaction in the sense of having successfully accomplished their mission.
When they had dropped all their bombs, they would often hear the voice of the gunner and radio operator in their headphones: “Ground says thank you for the strike. The tanks are going in.”383 As they left the target area at low level they would see tanks on the move. Behind them Ilyushin ground attack aircraft would flatten the German positions, to be followed by the infantry.
The last German spy plane flew over Stalingrad on February 2, 1943. The pilot reported, “The city is quiet. No signs of continuing hostilities observed.” The bomber regiments asked the commander of the Air Army if they could view from the ground the battlefield they had seen only from a height of 2,000–3,000 meters.384 Permission was granted for all pilots of lead aircraft, and on February 4 they were loaded onto three open trucks (at a temperature of minus twenty-five degrees) and, with stops to let them warm up, traveled to Ilovlya Station, sixty kilometers from Stalingrad. From then on the road was “littered with corpses” of Soviet and German soldiers, interspersed with civilian men, women and children. Before driving into the city they saw armed soldiers and barbed wire entanglements where minefields had yet to be cleared. Beyond was a “battlefield still breathing war. Not all the wounded had yet been gathered up, wrecked aircraft were smoking, tanks burning.” Sixty years later, as she dictated her memoirs, Masha Dolina closed her eyes and saw this all again: the dazzlingly white fresh snow, and on it the black hordes of Paulus’s encircled army. Looking at the starving, frozen Germans Masha felt only hatred. “Half-dead, frozen Krauts were straggling along and falling. We felt such rage at the sight of these captured fascists, this filth. They were skulking along like a pack of wolves. None of them helped a fallen comrade.” She remembered that “monstrous sight” for the rest of her life.
Hatred of the enemy was so overwhelming that Masha’s kind heart felt no twinge of pity for these unfortunates. The civilian population too, after all the sufferings and tragedy they had endured, gave vent to their fury.385 Prisoners tried to march as close to the head of the columns as they could, near the guards. The local women, children and old men would attack them, tearing off their blankets, spitting in their faces, throwing stones at them. Those who were too weak to march any further were vengefully shot by the Russians, just as the Germans had shot Russian prisoners of war. Of almost 100,000 German soldiers taken prisoner only half survived The rest were shot by guards who felt no pity, or died of hunger or sickness on their way to camps, or after they arrived. Some rotted alive in hospitals, where the Russians gave them virtually no medical treatment.
In the ruined city Masha Dolina was treated to a sight of Paulus himself. There were five truckloads of people wanting to see the defeated Field Marshal. When Masha and her comrades arrived, Paulus came out to them pale, haggard, and stony-faced. They wanted to ask questions, but the composed and dignified Paulus refused to talk.
Major Valentin Markov arrived in the women’s 587 Heavy Bomber Regiment after Stalingrad. The pilots believed Zhenya Timofeyeva was perfectly capable of leading it, but the senior officers decided a career army commander was needed. As no woman judged capable of leading the regiment was to be found, they sent in the slender, brown-haired, highly-decorated major. Neither he nor the women’s regiment was overwhelmed.386
Markov was thirty-three and had been commanding a men’s dive-bomber regiment. He was shot down and wounded, had a spell in the hospital and, emerging to learn what his new appointment was to be, felt as if a bucket of ice-cold water had been poured over his head. He simply could not see himself in command of a women’s regiment. These planes were difficult to fly. How could women be expected to cope with them? Markov’s first reaction was, “Why me?” When asked whether he would like to command the regiment, he replied that he would not and asked his superiors to find someone else. The question, however, had been purely a matter of form. The order had been signed. He had no choice.
Coming out of the office at headquarters “pale and angry,” Markov told his friends waiting outside the door the position he had been given. He recalled, “Their hair stood on end,” and they thought trying to command a women’s regiment would drive Markov mad.
A thousand questions assailed him. How should he behave toward these women, whom he assumed he would find fickle and over-sensitive? How could he instill the discipline essential on combat missions? And how would they rate him against their beloved Raskova? Markov decided to be “fair, strict and demanding,” and hope for the best.387
In fact he fitted into his new role admirably, although the girls agreed they could not imagine a greater contrast to Raskova. Their new commander’s manner was stern and cold. They saw him as “tall, thin, and gloomy,” and immediately nicknamed him “The Dagger.” At their first parade his expression conveyed the unambiguous message that he saw his appointment as a humiliation and a cross he would just have to bear.388
“Let’s start with discipline,” Markov said severely, “like a warder talking to convicts,” as he surveyed his troops, who had just floundered through three kilometers of deep snow from the village, lined up in the thirty-degree frost. He warned them he would make no allowances for the weaker sex, stuck his finger in a hole in the jacket of a girl mechanic, and caustically pointed out to another girl that her boots were dirty. How they hated him! There began an endless cycle of getting ready for parades, drilling of aircrews, drilling of armorers. Heaven forbid that anyone should fail to march properly on parade; heaven forbid anyone should smear too much grease on their weapon. “Save that for when you are buttering bread at home, young woman,” Markov told one with an icy stare.
It was only when they started flying with Markov that they saw he was exactly the kind of commander they needed.