A Dance with Death: Soviet Airwomen in World War II (15 page)

In spite of my wound and the damage to the plane I had to return to
my unit, so I took off for my airdrome. I made it back, but I lost
consciousness from loss of blood as I was approaching to land, and
the airplane fell out of control the last three or four meters. They
lifted me from the cockpit and took me to the hospital. That was my
701st combat mission and the first time I was wounded.

Earlier in the war I had an experience near the town of Kerch in the
Crimea. While we were on a mission the Germans were firing at us,
and a piece of shrapnel got into the engine. It quit, so we had to make
an emergency landing in the darkness, but we landed successfully.
The next morning we came to our plane and found we had stopped
just before a very deep shell hole.

In the Crimean area the Germans started using a type of shell that
when fired had red, green, and white tracers. It then split into many
bunches of what we called flowers, numerous smaller projectiles. We
feared to be caught by these innumerable "flowers."

I never worried about the condition of my aircraft when I took off
for a mission. My mechanics thoroughly prepared my plane, and I
never experienced any mechanical problems with it, the armament,
or the engine. This Gold Star of Hero of the Soviet Union is not only
my star; I share it with all my technical staff and the mechanics. It is
because of them that I remained alive. My navigator also became a
Hero of the Soviet Union. I flew a total of 715 combat missions during
the war.

I have two daughters, one a doctor and one an engineer, and I have a
granddaughter and two grandsons.

Senior Lieutenant Irina Sebrova,
pilot, wing commander

Hero of the Soviet Union

Nataliya Meklin (left), Hero of the
Soviet Union, and Irina Sebrova, Hero
of the Soviet Union, 46th regiment

I was born in a very poor family.
There were six children, and
our parents couldn't give us
a higher education. After five
grades at school, I went to trade
school to become a worker. I
took technical courses and became a locksmith. I worked in a
factory producing boxes for post
offices for four years. Meanwhile I finished courses in nursing and in Voroshilov gunnery.

There were almost all women
working at our factory. Some
repair shops had men working
also, and I was in that group.
The director of the plant was a
very active man. Once an idea
struck him, and he said, "Let us
present an aircraft to the sports
club." So we got the money from
the workers at the factory, and
the aero club bought an aircraft
with our money. After this there were four people from the factory
allowed to enter the flying courses, and I decided, why not fly! At this
point I made the decision to fly and live with aviation.

I kept on working and flying. I finished the program and assisted in
teaching the young pilots, and soon I was sent to study at the Kherson
Flying School to get a diploma as a pilot. At that time there were many
women-young girls-studying at this training center, and we felt the
war was just here before our doors. So I became a flight instructor, and I
was sent to Moscow to teach flying. It became my profession in 193839. I had been working as a flight instructor for three and one-half years
before the war, and I taught more than fifty pilots.

After the war started our flying school was evacuated to central Russia. There were rumors that Marina Raskova, our famous pilot,
was to form female regiments, and three of us decided to join. When
we came to the director of the flying club he said at first that we
couldn't leave; there was a shortage of instructors. But finally he
signed the papers, and we joined the female regiment.

Before we went into training at Engels, Raskova had a talk with
each of us individually. She told us to think twice before going to the
front because it was a very severe thing to do. None could be persuaded not to go, and we all joined the regiment. We left Moscow on a
train late at night, and we each took with us a mattress and pillow. We
started our night-bomber training in the U-2 plane. The Germans
called it the corn aircraft because it had been used in agriculture
spreading chemicals before the war.

In 1942 we flew to the front, and our first station was in the
Ukraine. The first combat night came, and the first mission was
flown by the commander of the regiment, Yevdokiya Bershanskaya,
with the regimental navigator, squadron commanders, and their navigators. Unfortunately, on this first night we lost one crew. Only then
did we really realize we were at the front. No jokes, no kidding, this
was a very serious job; now we understood what a difficult job we
were to do.

Yekaterina Ryabova was my navigator on our first mission. We
approached the target and dropped our bombs, and there was no
shooting or firing. I was very disappointed that no one was trying to
shoot us, but these were only the flowers, as we say in Russia, and the
berries will be later. The combat missions had started, and night after
night we flew missions. Then we had to retreat; it was 1942, and the
Germans approached the Stalingrad area. We had to change our positions almost every night.

Finally we were stationed in the Grozny area. We had a very warm
reception when we arrived there in the northern Caucasus, and this
was the first village where the villagers said, "Don't leave us alone
with the enemy." When we were retreating down to the south of the
country, people asked us please not to fly off and leave them alone.
We were stationed in that village for half of a year.

In January, 1943, the Soviet army started its offensive in the Stalingrad area. During this period, for the first time in the war, we stepped on ground that had been liberated by the army. Until then we had
been retreating. After some missions in the Ukraine area, we changed
our airdromes to the banks of the Sea of Azov. We were bombing the so-called Blue Line on the Kerch Peninsula. It was difficult because there were strong German positions. Most of their
military fortifications were
concentrated on this line. In
this area we lost our best pilot,
Dusya Nosal. We were all competing with her as to who could
make the most flights in one
night. One night before our
flights we were talking, and
there was a command to take
our seats in the cockpit. She
was the first to take off; I was
the second. I followed her, and
we bombed the target. The air
situation was very grave, because there were lots of German aircraft in the area, and we
tried to maneuver to escape
their fire. When we came back
to our airdrome I asked if everything was all right with our regiment. They said, "No, Dusya Nosal was hit in the temple with a
bullet, and the navigator landed the plane with her dead in the cockpit." Soon after, her navigator, Irina Kashirina, also perished in battle.

Yekaterina Ryabova (left) and
Nadezhda Popova, 46th regiment

We flew to the Crimea, and the Soviet forces started their offensive. We were assigned to the 8th Air Army, but in the Crimea we
were assigned to a male air division. When the situation changed for
the better, the marshal of the airforce army said, "Give me back my
female regiment," and the commander said, "No, I could give you two
male regiments instead."

But finally we went back under Marshal Vershinin's command
again, and we were given the Gold Star of Heroes of the Soviet Union.
The ceremony took place in Germany in a very large officers' club.
The first three women who became Heroes of the Soviet Union were
awarded this title at the beginning of 1944, and then a second group of
nine received the award, some of them living and some dead. The
documents had been sent to the Kremlin, but it took a very long time
for them to come through. The other pilots didn't envy the pilots
who got the Gold Star. In this combat fraternity envy was impossible,
because you knew that the next night they could be shot down. Even now many Heroes of the Soviet Union don't think too much about
themselves and their deeds. I don't like to show my medal; I wear it
on very rare occasions. It depends on your personality. I was in the
second group to be awarded this medal. There was then a third group,
and some others were awarded in 1946.

On one of my flights my plane was shot down. [ landed on a field
with barbed wire in the Kerch area of the Crimea, in a small territory
that had been liberated by this time. I landed there but nosed up. We
got out of the cockpit, and a car approached us. They asked if we were
wounded, and we said no. Then they said, "Leave the plane; dawn
cracks, and you must go to the ferry to he delivered to the big land."
So we got to the ferry and came to the captain, and he let us go with
him across the straits.

We were wearing our flying suits and jackets and life vests for
swimming because our mission was out over the straits, and it was
there that we were shot down. We only just made it to land on that
small liberated area. So we were lucky. When we stepped onto this
ship there were lots of wounded, and the dead were covered with
fabric. We felt ourselves a little awkward because we were safe and
sound. Before we arrived at the other hank of the straits we heard the
sound of aircraft engines-German aircraft. Everyone who could
walk ran to the shore, and the Germans began bombing the boat. We
went to the trenches and waited for them to stop. When we returned
to our unit, they embraced us; they were happy to see us alive.

In Poland I had a flight assignment to bomb the city of Danzig, with
strong fascist fortifications. Suddenly, when I was approaching the target, I noticed that the oil pressure was close to zero. A dilemma arose of
proceeding to the target or returning to base. I looked at the engine
temperature gauge and it was normal, so I decided there was something
wrong with the oil meter. When we were crossing the front line there
was some firing from the Germans, and they hit the aircraft. We
dropped all the bombs on the target, but I was looking at the instruments. Strong antiaircraft fire shelled us over the target, because this
was a strong German fortress. I made a turn and started flying back,
and I saw that the engine temperature was increasing. The engine was
overheating, and it was a long way back to our lines. I decided to fly
higher, so I climbed about 400 meters higher than usual, and it saved
me. The engine stopped, and the front line was far ahead-far in front
of me. I started gliding and saw that the ground forces were firing, but I
just managed to fly over the front line. I made an emergency landing in
the dark; I could see the land itself but no landscape. There were no lights, and landing was like walking around with closed eyes. I couldn't
see anything except that there was ground underneath us and not
water. At this moment I wanted to cry, "Mama, oh bless me, let me
make a soft landing." We did make a very soft landing, and there was
oil leaking, and the plane was covered with oil. It was a miracle-there
were lots of miracles during the war for many people.

After we stopped, we spent about one minute in the cockpit just to
listen to the situation. Behind us there was shooting. We got out of the
cockpit, leaving our chutes because they were heavy, and started off to
the forest, because we decided the front line was on a parallel road. We
started walking and took out our pistols. While we were walking I
suddenly stopped my navigator-there was a small hill of hay with two
people lying behind it. We were afraid to approach them, so we stood
watching. No movement. We would have liked to hide in the hay, but
we went to the forest out of fear that those two could be fascists. We
heard a horseman coming toward us through the forest. We didn't
know whether he was Russian or German; we decided not to stop the
rider. After some time a car approached. We heard Russian being spoken, and we were very excited. The driver of the car told us that he was
going to the front line with an emergency message, so he couldn't take
us. He told us we should go down this road seven kilometers, so we did,
with our pistols drawn, and it was snowing, but we finally came to our
unit. We felt sad, for that happened the first flight of the night, and we
missed the remainder of the night's missions.