A Dance with Death: Soviet Airwomen in World War II (29 page)

I had to guard three aircraft at night; it was March, and the snow
was melting. In March, in Russia, the snow is deep. It only starts
melting under the snow, and there are floods of water. I was walking
along and water fell into my boots, and it soaked through. My socks
and my boots were full of water, and I guarded the aircraft for a long
time in that condition. When I returned to our dugout I didn't even
feel the pain in the skin and legs, I felt it in my bones-the very stem
of my legs. We could never leave our post on guard duty.

Once when the regiment moved we landed on an airfield near
Minsk. There was no one at the field when we arrived, and then
German crews came out of the forest and saw the airfield occupied by
Russian crews, almost all of them women. They were at a loss for
words to be taken prisoner by Russian women. All of the habitable
dwellings nearby were mined by the Germans, so we had to live under
the wings of our aircraft on that airfield.

We were young girls and wanted to look womanlike. We were sick
and tired of the men's boots, and once I decided to put on these
slippers I knitted for myself. From other people's point of view, it was
ridiculous when I appeared in my slippers in uniform!

All of us liked to knit. We liked handicraft work, especially embroidery, and found it to be the most amusing spare-time occupation,
except for one girl in our regiment, Belova by name. We used to joke
about her and say that if she only started embroidering, the war
would soon be over. It happened that she took to embroidering, and
the war was really over soon!

After the war I returned to my peaceful profession of radio engineer.
I worked for Moscow Radio for twenty years. I was a sound producer,
and later on I worked at restoring old records. In 1962 I was awarded
the Order of Labor Red Banner, a very honorable award. One year ago
(1990) I retired.

Senior Lieutenant Galina Tenuyeva-Lomanova,
pilot, commander of the formation

I was not even sixteen when I decided to join an aero club. It was
usual to be a Komsomol member in order to join a glider club, but I
was not. So I went to a Young Communist League committee asking
to be admitted into the Komsomol, and then I joined the aero club.
Later I became an instructor in the same club. The only time I ever
jumped with a parachute was while instructing there. I was given no
instruction, and I broke my leg when I landed!

When the war broke out I stayed on as a military flight instructor with the rank of sergeant. By this time I was already married and had
given birth to a daughter. My husband was also a military pilot-a
fighter pilot. Later we both went to the front; Ito Raskova's regiment,
and he to a male regiment. He perished at the front in 1943.

Our military school was evacuated to another area, and I took my
mother, father, and daughter with me. It was such a mess in the early
part of the war. Some military schools were released, some moved,
and there seemed to he no logic in it. Then our school was unexpectedly released: the pilots transferred to the infantry, and the instructor-pilots went to a male air regiment.

I went to Saratov to pick up the orders for the male regiment at the
headquarters of the Volga front, and there I met Raskova. She asked
me why I was with a male regiment and said that I should join her
regiment. We were real patriots, and we loved our country and our
heroes. Raskova was well-known throughout our country and throughout the world. She was a national hero, an attractive and beautiful
creature whom I admired in all respects, so I agreed to fly in her
regiment.

At Engels I was trained to fly the Pe-2 dive bomber. Raskova, who
was to command the dive bomber regiment, was by profession a
navigator and had to be retrained as a pilot in order to lead us in
combat. She was first trained on the SB-2, a twin-engine, three-place
aircraft, and then trained herself in the Pe-2. She had few hours up to
that time as a pilot; most of her hours in the air had been as a
navigator. The Pe-2 was the most complicated aircraft of the war
period and required more than a little skill to fly.

When our regiment was to fly on to the front, two of our aircraft
had engines operating improperly. Mine was one of them. So while
the rest of our second squadron flew to Stalingrad, we stayed where
we were. At that time Raskova was in Moscow, and she knew that we
were in Kirzhach while they were repairing our aircraft. So on her
way from Moscow to the front, she flew to Kirzhach to join up with
us and lead us to the Stalingrad front. But the weather conditions
were very bad, so it was not a nonstop flight. We landed in the settlement of Lopatino, where we saw the New Year in. On January 4, 1943,
we took off for the front. We flew in a formation of three aircraft with
Raskova piloting the lead plane. Before we took off Raskova gave us
an order that we could leave the formation only if an engine quit; we
should fly as a formation.

We could have landed along the way as we flew across three airfields, but it was Raskova's order to fly directly to the Stalingrad front without landing except in emergency. The first airfield we flew over
had a little snow on it, the second was already overcast, and the third
was completely obscured-visibility zero. The flight was very long,
the fuel was very short, and we were supposed to land in Razhojshina,
but we couldn't because of the weather. I think Raskova might have
thought we could land on the Engels airfield, which is located on the
banks of the Volga River. One bank of the river is fifty meters higher
than the other, and she was looking for a place to land and trying to
recognize the landscape. We would go into clouds and out, and in and
out of them, and when we saw she was maneuvering, we dropped
back a little in our formation and lost Raskova's aircraft in the clouds.

Gubina Ljubov, the pilot in the third aircraft, and I had some training in night flights, and we could orient ourselves by instruments. My
navigator and I decided to examine the terrain of the Volga River
while in flight, but we could see nothing. So we broke out of formation, and I no longer knew where the other two aircraft were. By then
the visibility was so bad that I could hardly see the wings of my own
plane! We were descending, and my navigator said, "There is the
earth!" As she said it, I pulled back on the stick, the aircraft bumped
the ground, we crashed, and the plane was destroyed. All three of our
planes crashed. All three crew members perished in Raskova's plane,
and all of us survived in the other two planes.

When Raskova's plane crashed into the embankment her head hit
against the gun sight, and it split her head in two. When her body was
found-she was to be in an open casket-a doctor performed surgery
on her and restored her head and face, using a picture. I also hit my
head and face. My navigator flew by me in the cabin and struck the
instrument panel, and her legs were hurt.

The other crew also saw a small black spot on the earth-it was a
bush-so they pulled the nose of their aircraft up just in time to avert
flying completely into the ground. Luckily we stopped on the edge of
a deep slope. Although we all took off with clear skies, the weather
conditions became worse and worse, but Raskova felt she must go on
to her regiment. She did not use the good judgment to land while the
weather conditions were good enough to do it. She was anxious about
her regiment and wanted to get there. After the crash I was without
an aircraft and had to return to Engels to await a new one. Major
Valentin Markov became the commander of our regiment.

On my first combat mission in Markov's formation I stuck to him
very closely. I was afraid to deviate from the course, because after the
accident I felt a little fear and nervousness. On this first mission my plane was shelled by antiaircraft guns, and my gunner was mortally
wounded. After the shelling ceased, I asked my navigator and tail
gunner if they were all right. They both said yes, but I saw the blood
spattered on the glass, and when we landed and they removed the
gunner from the plane, he was dying.

Yet another time we were shot down when I was making my fifth
combat flight. We bombed successfully and were already descending
when suddenly we were machine gunned into the left side of the
aircraft. It cut through all of our systems and damaged the fuel tank
and one engine. The plane had a black tail of engine smoke behind it,
and we made an emergency landing at a Russian fighter airdrome. I
had the same navigator that was with me when we crashed with
Raskova. When we made the emergency landing, we discovered that
the landing gear was damaged. The tires burned down completely
from braking, and the wheels were twisted. The commander of the
fighter squadron based there greeted us in "pure Russian style"using bad words-thinking it was a male crew. He didn't want us
landing there when his fighter aircraft needed to come in to land.
When we got out of the cockpit and he saw we were women, he was
embarrassed and felt bad about how he greeted us.

Once, when a new engine was installed in my plane, I made several
test flights, and I was letting down to land when suddenly I saw a
German fighter under my wing. He didn't shoot me, or even try to,
and I landed even though he could have shot me down, because on
the test flight we were not prepared to defend ourselves. After we
landed safely the German fighter strafed our airfield and flew away.
But because he had observed the field, the German fascists returned
that night and shot up the field and bombed it.

I was wounded once when we were on a combat mission in 1945
bombing the port of Libava. We were flying by the sea, so we had to
think of what we would do if we were shot down over the water. We
were over the Baltic Sea to bomb the seaport, which was strongly
fortified by the Germans. The whole air division was sent to carry
out that mission. Our squadron was the last of that gigantic group of
Soviet aircraft over the target. The antiaircraft guns were firing at us;
one of the shells damaged the left engine, and another shell wounded
me in the right arm. I was bleeding and lost consciousness for a short
time. Ludmila Popova, my navigator, gave me liquid ammonia to
inhale and also bandaged me while I was unconscious; then, together,
we held the aircraft controls. For 2,000 meters it descended uncontrolled. I regained control, but the regiment had flown on. We were left alone with a damaged aircraft, and I with a wounded arm. I
decided to try to make it back to our home field. We made it, and the
navigator signaled with a rocket that the pilot was wounded. When
we landed, the right engine no longer ran either, and the aircraft was
towed off the runway.

Life is life, and war is war; we were young girls, and we liked to
make merry and sing. One of the girls in the regiment had a beautiful
voice and often performed at amateur concerts. For such occasions we
stitched for her a white silk dress made out of parachute fabric.

I flew up to 1947, when the regiment was released, and then I
retired.

Sergeant Nataliya Smirnova,
tail-gunner

I was born in Moscow in 1924. I come from a family of office workers.
When the war started our family was evacuated to the town of Gorky,
on the Volga River. Our means were limited; I had to help my family,
so I worked as a ground radio operator. In 1942 1 become an aircraft
radio operator. I began flying in civil aviation, but we were all longing
to get to the front. I sent my documents to various army offices
asking to be drafted to the army, but in vain. When the I25th Guards
Bomber Regiment was suffering great losses they remembered my
application, and I was sent to the regiment as a reinforcement. It took
me only one day to pack my things.

I was a tail gunner and radio operator, and on one mission we were
to bomb the port of Libava. In the tail-gunner position, we entered the
plane from under the fuselage by way of a small hatch. My position
was behind and completely separate from the pilot and navigator
cabin. The top machine gun was fired through an opening directly
above my head. I never sat but stood facing the tail of the aircraft,
with my feet on the lower hatch and my head thrust out of the upper
hatch. Libava was a seaport, and severe battles were waged there both
on the ground and in the air.

Our navigator called my attention to the area above the port. It was
black with smoke coming from the burst of anti-aircraft shells. Our
plane was thrown back and forth by the concussion of the explosions;
anti-aircraft shells seemed to be exploding beneath us and all around
us. One of them exploded directly below my hatch, blowing open the
lower hatch and throwing me completely out of the aircraft through
the upper hatch. I found myself on top of the fuselage and felt a strong
stream of air trying to blow me completely off, because we were flying at a very high speed. I tried to grasp the skin of the aircraft, but
it was smooth and I couldn't hold onto it. But suddenly I felt something holding me to the plane. It turned out that my parachute harness had caught on a strap holding the machine gun in place. I still
don't know exactly how I got back into the aircraft, but I managed to
drag myself back inside. When I found myself again in the cockpit, I
shut the lower hatch with my feet, but I couldn't feel them. They
seemed boneless, and I had to sit down. I couldn't catch my breath, I
couldn't make a sound, and my pilot was calling me on the radio.
After a moment or two I pulled myself together and told her that
everything was all right.

Another time we were returning from a mission to Pilau and were
approaching the airfield when I saw a tail of white steam dragging
behind our plane. First I thought it was fuel; then the white color
turned into black. My pilot was Tamara Melashvili, and she was very
strict. She was also very emotional and easily excited, so I didn't want
to upset her until I knew the cause of that steam. My first question
was, "What is the fuel pressure?" My second was, "How much fuel do
we have left?" Tamara asked why I was constantly asking those questions because everything was all right. But it wasn't. Our aircraft had
been hit on the mission and was leaking antifreeze. Our oil line had
also been hit by the shell and was leaking under the fuselage. I felt the
sleeve of my right arm and my side and found them soaked. We then
made an emergency landing.