Hi, I'm the History Guy. I have a degree in history, I love history and if you
love history too this is the channel for you. Over 800,000 women enlisted in the Soviet armed
forces in the Second World War, a war that Russia still calls the Great Patriotic War,
and while they are heroes there the exploits of those women are relatively unknown here in
the United States. But that's why we have the History Guy, to remind us of people that we
really should remember, and if you have never heard of the famed Night Witches of the Soviet
Union you really should, because they were fierce. It all started with one extraordinary personality,
Marina Raskova, the first female navigator in the Soviet Air Force, she set several long-distance
flying records in the 1930s. When she and her crew set the international women's record for
straight line long-distance flight in 1938, they were recognized with the Hero of the Soviet Union
award, the first women so recognized, and the only ones prior to the Second World War. Russia tended
to be more open to women in the military than a number of nations were and in the first World War
they had fielded one of the very first all-female combat units. And the situation was dire in
the Great Patriotic War, where over 800,000 women signed up for the Soviet Armed Forces,
but the Soviet Air Force was still unsold on the idea of women combat pilots. And while there was
no official restriction, they tend to set up administrative burdens that made it impossible
for a woman to get a combat pilot commission. But Marina Raskova was a hero of the Soviet Union and
she personally knew Stalin and she was able to leverage that relationship to get Stalin to
authorize the creation of an all-female flying Corps. The Corps included three regiments and
Raskova herself died in an accident leading one of those regiments. All three saw distinguished
service, but only one would remain all-female throughout the entire war and earned a special
reputation worth noticing, the 588th Night Bomber Regiment, The Night Witches of the Soviet Union.
Night bombing in the Second World War tended to be a high-tech affair, using the latest aircraft and
the newest navigational techniques and technology in order to navigate through the darkness,
not so much the 544th. The 544th were equipped with this 1928 biplane, the Polikarpov Po-2, the
Po-2 was a slow, steady two-seat design, mostly used for training, and because it was produced
in an agricultural variant, it had the less than complimentary nickname Kukuruznik, or Crop Duster.
It was easy to fly but it was very slow, carried a very small bomb load, and it was very fragile,
a hit from one tracer round could easily set the whole plane on fire. But the Kukuruznik
did have its strengths it could, for example, take off and land with a very short runway,
it didn't require a paved airstrip at all, just a good flat field. It could fly steady at very
low altitudes and because it was so slow it could actually turn on and dime, and its top speed was
slower than the stall speed of most German pursuit fighters which actually made it very difficult
for them to target. It would have been suicide flying a plane like that during the day, it would
have been easy for anti-aircraft guns to shoot down, but at night, flying at treetop level,
it was extremely difficult to target, and its engine made a peculiar noise which the Germans
likened to a sewing machine which was described as nerve-wracking. But more terrifying was the
way the plane was used in the bombing attack, the pilot would gear up and go to a high altitude and
then cut the engine and glide over the target as they dropped their bombs. With no engine noise,
it was extremely difficult to target and shoot at the aircraft, but even worse really was the
eerie whistling noise that went through the wings as the plane was dropping its bombs,
which the Germans thought sounded like witches flying on their brooms. And thus the Germans
gave them the nickname “Night Witches”, a nickname that they eagerly embraced. One downside though,
flying at low altitudes like that made parachutes worthless, and so they didn't even carry them.
The 544th started flying in June of 1942, under the command of Yevdokiya Bershanskaya. The
regiment flew harassment and precision bombing missions, and because the planes carried such
a small bomb load, the way that they would do it is that they would sneak up to a field close
to the enemy lines at dusk with all their support vehicles, they didn't fly in any kind of formation
they just took off at regular intervals, flew a few miles across the lines to where the Germans
were, dropped their bombs and then returned back to the airfield to reload, and they would continue
doing that until dawn when they would fly back to their base. There were no radios in the aircraft
so they had no communication while they were flying, early in the war there was a fear that
the battlefield moved so quickly, the Germans were advancing so fast, that they never knew when they
took off if by the time it came to land that their runway would still be behind their own lines. When
it was too muddy and their planes would sink in the mud, they would just go rip up nearby fences,
lay the fence post down in a line and use that as their runway. They would fly sometimes as
many as eight or more missions in a single night. It was an extremely dangerous way to fly and most
of them would suffer through multiple crashes or injuries during their career. At its height the
regiment had 40, two women air crews, and it was truly an all-women regiment, all the ground and
support crews, all of the command, every person in the regiment was a woman. By February of 1943,
the 544th had distinguished itself enough to be retitled as an elite Guards unit, the 46th Guards
armored Aviation Regiment. The Night Witches certainly proved an important point, that women
pilots could be just as effective in combat, as men. At the end of the war, the 46th flew over
24,000 missions and dropped 23,000 tons of bombs. Every pilot in the regiment had flown more than
800 combat missions by the end of the war. It was the most highly decorated all-female unit
in the Soviet Air Force, with 23 members winning the award Hero of the Soviet Union. 30 women of
the regiment lost their lives during the war. They were used quite a lot in Soviet propaganda
during the war, and they're still well remembered in Russia today, but it's hard to say if the Night
Witches really changed culture. For example, the Russian military today thinks that it is
too stressful for women to be combat pilots and there are no women serving as pilots in
the Russian Armed Forces today. The United States didn't start allowing women to be combat pilots
until 1993, and they still represent a fairly small percentage of our trained combat pilots,
and it wasn't until just last year 2016 that the United States opened all combat roles in
the military to availability to women. I guess the wheel of culture turns slowly, but isn't that
all the more reason that we should remember the heroism of the Night Witches of the Soviet Union.
I'm the History Guy. I hope you enjoyed this edition of my channel, 5 minutes of history,
short snippets of forgotten history 5 to 10 minutes long. If you enjoyed this then please
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