Historically speaking, war is a man’s game. Biologically speaking,
the men fit the hard warrior archetype, whilst the Woman filled the role of a soft healer,
making an important dynamic that has shaped our species for centuries. In 99% of cases therefore,
the heroic war stories you hear stem from the brave actions of men, however, that doesn’t
discount the fact that there definitely are exceptions to this rule and in today’s video
we’ll be talking about one of them, a female Russian pilot by the name of Lydia Litvak.
Prior to the German invasion of the Soviet homeland, Lydia had already been flying for
4 years and thus had some decent experience inside a cockpit. When Operation Barbarossa
was initiated in June of 1941 and the Soviets were being swept away by the Germans,
she answered her country’s desperate call and enlisted to the all female 586th Fighter
Air Regiment. After a brief stint of emergency training in the Russian Yak-1 fighter, she was
stationed at an airbase just north of Stalingrad, and was ready to help defend it to the death.
Because the all-male fighter pilot ranks by that time had been so severely depleted,
Lydia was then again transferred, but this time to the 73rd Fighter Regiment, where she hoped
she would get a shot at being a free hunter, which would allow her autonomy to search far
and wide in search of opportune targets instead of sitting on the ground and waiting for alerts.
The Commanding Officer however had no intention of sending her out with his elite Free Hunter’s,
until the CO’s best friend, and hero of the Soviet Union,
Alexei Salomaten decided to give her a shot and let her fly a patrol as his wingman.
Litvak had impressed Salomaten so much that after they landed, he praised her for being
able to stick with him during evasive and violent maneuvers that would have been hard
for any experienced pilot to pull off. She was then granted access to the Free Hunters
and started prowling the skies, quickly making a reputation for herself among German fighter pilots
as the “White Rose of Stalingrad.” At this point, she had fallen in love with Alexei Salomaten,
and as both partners in the air and on the ground, they started wreaking havoc on German fighters.
Litvak quickly became the leading female ace of the war,
however at around her 9th kill, tragedy struck, and her lover was killed in a simple training run
when Salomaten suddenly lost airspeed in a particularly sharp turn and spun into the earth,
all while Litvak was watching on in horror. This incident seemingly transformed Litvak and
she had a burning to defeat the Germans, having little regard for her own life.
In the coming months, there was no shortage of opportunity for Lydia to hunt and shoot down
German pilots, and in her most famous dogfight, she was matched against a ace with more than 20
kills to his name. They fought for 15 minutes until finally Litvak came out on top and sent
the Me-109 hurtling to the ground, with the pilot managing to bail out at the last second.
On August 1st 1943, Litvak flying career came to a violent end,
and after securing a total of 12 kills during her stint as a pilot,
she was outnumbered 8 to 1 by German fighters, and one of her fellow Yak pilots caught a glimpse of
her plane heavily smoking and falling toward the earth. No wreckage or body was ever found and some
speculate she had just given up after the untimely death of her lover. Regardless, a memorial statue
of Litvak was erected in the town of Krasny Luch, close to where she vanished, and she
will be forever immortalised as one of the most skilled female pilots of the second World War II
So guys, let me know your thoughts on female heroics
throughout the war and what you think the ultimate fate of Lydia Litvak was.