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Now on to today's video, The Unbelievable But True Story of The Badass Night Witches
Who Fought In World War II.
Fighting in the Second World War was mostly a male activity, as it had been for most of
history.
However, it is true that hundreds of thousands of women took up arms and engaged in direct
combat during the war.
Many fought as partisans in Eastern Europe and the Balkans, or as uniformed soldiers
of the Soviet Union, which was the only government that sent women into battle in significant
numbers.
Also, throughout Western Europe's resistance movements, many women took up arms and fought
alongside men.
In this video, I'll focus on the true story the Night Witches who fought for The Soviet
Union.
The Soviets deployed women For the war more than any other country.
In the US, Rosie the Riveter is rightly praised as a symbol of women’s contribution to the
war effort, and as a harbinger of women’s increased presence in the workforce.
However, America’s mobilization of women for the war was far exceeded by that of the
Soviet Union, which made more extensive use of women in its war effort than any other
country.
In addition to employing women in armaments factories and in other roles contributing
to the wartime economy, the Soviets inducted women into the Red Army.
Not in auxiliary uniformed outfits, such as America’s WAVES, but directly into the Soviet
military.
During the war, over a million women served in the Red Army.
While most of them performed support roles, such as supply, transportation, or medical
care yet, it came to pass that roughly 100,000 Red Army women fought in the main battle line
as snipers, tank crews, combat pilots, or straightforward frontline infantry.
And there was good reason for them to finally let women into battle.
You see, things got rough in the USSR during the days and months following Operation Barbarossa,
the sudden German onslaught in the summer of 1941 that came within a hair’s breadth
of crushing the communist state.
The Soviets threw all they could lay their hands on against the invaders, in a desperate
attempt to stop or at least slow down the Nazis.
Yet, even in those dire times, the authorities were reluctant to use women in the front line.
Even though Women were initially barred from combat, after repeated appeals from Major
Marina Raskova, who made the case directly to Stalin, permission was granted to form
female combat units.
On October 8th, 1941, three female aviation units were formed, commanded by Raskova.
They were consolidated into the 588th Night Bomber Regiment, later redesignated as the
46th Taman Guards Night Bomber Aviation Regiment, and commonly known as The Night Witches.
Ignoring and overcoming the skepticism of naysayers, enthusiastic young Soviet women
flocked to the 588th Night Bomber Regiment.
Many had lost family and loved ones to the Nazi invaders, and were itching for an opportunity
to dish out some payback.
Hitherto, they had only been allowed to contribute to the war effort in support roles, but many
had wanted to be, and knew they could be if given the chance, pilots and gunners.
The volunteers were mostly in their early twenties, but some were as young as seventeen.
Not only were the pilots in these all female squadrons women, but so were the ground staff
and ground crews.
They were determined to demonstrate that female pilots and female aerial squadrons could make
a valuable contribution to the defense of the Motherland.
By June of 1942, training and organization had been completed, and the Soviet female
aviatrixes were ready for combat.
The women of the 588th Night Bomber Regiment flew in slow, and by the standards of WWII,
antiquated, plywood and canvass Polikarpov Po-2 biplanes, originally designed in the
1920s for flight training and crop dusting.
Flying such old and unmilitary machines into combat during the daytime was suicide, but
if flown at night under the cover of darkness, it was possible for the obsolescent Po-2s
to sting the enemy and survive.
On the night of June 28th, 1942, the 588th flew its first combat sortie, a strike against
a German headquarters facility.
The flimsy Po-2s could not carry much – only two light bombs, over a short distance.
However, their airfields were close to the front lines, so there was enough time to fly,
bomb, return to base, reload, and repeat.
Sometimes, pilots of the 588th flew up to eighteen bombing missions during a single
night.
The Night Witches’ planes were seriously outmatched by those of the enemy, both in
speed and in maximum altitude but it was highly maneuverable.
In the hands of a capable pilot, a Po-2 could perform jinks and dips and turns within a
small radius, that the faster and more modern German airplanes sent to shoot them down,
simply could not match.
That is assuming that they could even find them in the first place at night
The Po-twos slow speed also had its advantages: its maximum speed was less than the that of
the enemy fighter planes.
Between that, the dark cloak of night, and the aforementioned maneuverability, German
fighters had an extremely difficult time shooting down the women of the 588th.
Because of their airplanes’ light bombload consisting of only two bombs, one under each
wing, the female pilots of the 588th often flew in relatively thick formations in order
to make a dent.
A typical mission often involved up to forty planes, each with a pilot in front and a navigator
in the back.
Because of weight constraints, they almost never had any ammunition with which to defend
themselves if attacked.
Because of their wood and canvass construction, the Po-2s did not show up on radar, and the
distinctive sound of their engines was often the first warning Germans had that the raiders
were near.
The first planes usually went in as bait to attract the attention of German spotlights,
whose illumination helped the raiders.
They would release flares to further illuminate the target, drop their bombs, then make the
short flight back to base to rearm, and fly another sortie.
The psychological damage of the 588th bomber raids might have exceeded the physical harm.
The incessant raids throughout the night kept exhausted Nazis from getting adequate rest,
and the fear of a random bomb falling on one at any moment further frayed nerves that were
often already at the snapping point.
The Germans nicknamed the Soviet aviatrixes Night Witches, because the whooshing noise
of their wooden planes when pilots sometimes cut off the engines and glided to their targets
to increase the chances of surprise, resulting in the planes sounding like a sweeping broom.
So feared and hated were the Night Witches, that any German who downed one was automatically
awarded an Iron Cross.
The women of the 588th braved bullets and frostbite in the air, and battled sexual harassment
and skepticism on the ground.
Their commander, Marina Raskova, bucked them up with the Twelve Commandments of the Night
Witches, the first of which was.
Be proud.
you are a woman.
Killing Nazis was their primary goal, but in their free time, these amazing women did
needlework, patchwork, decorated their airplanes, and even liked to dance.
Flying up to eighteen bombing missions a night, the 588th delivered quite a record.
One of their pilots, Irina Sebrova, flew over a thousand sorties.
Collectively, the Night Witches flew over 30,000 combat sorties, during which they dropped
over 3000 tons of bombs, and 26,000 incendiary munitions.
Their last flight took place on May 4th, 1945, about forty miles from Berlin.
Yet, as unbelievable as it might seem, despite being one of the most highly decorated Soviet
Air Force units, these amazing, brave, and heroic women were not included in the allied
Victory Day Parade at war’s end, with the excuse that their Polikarpov planes were too
slow and looked too old.
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Fierce and Feisty Women in History channel.