June 11, 2021
At the height of World War II, Joseph Stalin, besieged by the Nazis turned to a group of aeronautical women that eventually struck such fear in the Germans, they named them Nachthexen or “Night Witches.” Led by the “Soviet Amelia Earhart,” Colonel Marina Raskova, the Night Witches bombarded the Nazis with over 23,000 tons of munitions over 30,000 bombing raids, exclusively at night.
They faced sexual harassment and outright derision due to their “unwomanly” desire to fight. Nevertheless, 24 of the flyers earned the title of “Hero of the Soviet Union.” And the Night Witches helped turn the tide of WWII despite laughable planes and equipment. As Nadezhda Popova, flyer of 852 missions, said, “We did have clever, educated, very talented girls.”
Russia’s Darkest Hour
When the Nazis unleashed Operation Barbarossa upon the Soviet Union, roughly four million German soldiers marched from the west. That incursion threatened the heart of Russia, Moscow. Only then did Stalin acquiesce to Raskova’s request to command an all-woman group of bombers. The “Soviet Earhart” selected 1,200 women from 2,000 volunteers, most between 17 and 26. From there they underwent intensive training in Engels, a small town north of Stalingrad.
Women To The Rescue
Over a few short months, the 588th Night Bomber Regiment learned what normally takes years of training. They also made do with preposterous planes, Polikarpov Po-2 biplanes, normally used for crop dusting. As Steve Prowse, author of The Night Witches, a nonfiction account of this little-known female squadron, called them fly matchbooks, “It was like a coffin with wings.”
Woefully Equipped
Besides planes whose maximum speed was slower than their German counterparts' stall speed, the all-women regiment worked with feeble equipment. In place of prosaic tools like radar, guns, and radios, the fierce flyers terrorized the Nazis with rulers, stopwatches, flashlights, and pencils. Their planes were so old fashioned that in the Russian winter simply touching the crafts without protection would remove skin. However, these brilliant ladies turned the plane's weaknesses into strengths.
Brains Over Brawn
The Germans dubbed them Night Witches due to the whooshing and wooden clattering sounds coming from their planes. As Prowse learned, those “sounds were the only warning the Germans had. The planes were too small to show up on radar… [or] on infrared locators. They never used radios (because they didn’t have any), so radio locators couldn’t pick them up either. They were basically ghosts.”
Can’t Touch This
Ironically, their planes' comically slow speeds made them more maneuverable and difficult to hit. They could also take off and land just about anywhere. Still, the torpid planes were forced to fly low due to their lack of speed, which was why they always flew at night. During the day their sluggish aircrafts would have been sitting ducks and any tracer bullet could have lit their matchbook crafts like dry kindling. Any air attacks forced them into a dive since a scant few possessed any defensive ammunition.
Impeccable Record
In over 30,000 missions they only lost 30 pilots, including the mother of them all, Marina Raskova. So forcefully assailed, the Nazis concluded two indisputable facts: The women must be criminals, masters at stealing who fought on front lines as punishment for their crimes. Or the Night Witches received special injections that allowed them to see in the night. According to Popova, “This was nonsense, of course.”
The Night Witches tactics included two-person crews, 40 of those pairs flew between 8 and 18 missions per night. Carrying only two bombs, one under each wing, they ravaged the Germans with their “stealth mode.” The first wave of planes would attract attention, catching the beams of spotlights. The second wave, using these spotlights as targets, would glide in, engines off, and unleash hell. The only sound these clandestine bombers issued was the soft clacking of their wooden wings. Hence the German label “Night Witches.”