CENTRAL NEWS
Researcher Lyuba Vinogradova (Moscow, 1973) reports on the struggle against sexism that the notorious Night Witches faced in their own ranks.
“Compared to most women in the Soviet army, constantly subjected to sexual harassment and sometimes sexual violence, the ‘Night Witches’ were a privileged group. Open bullying was not tolerated. However, there was much discrimination.
The men ignored the airwomen and called them ‘dolls’. The great aviator Raisa Belyaeva, who had participated in air shows before the war, had to listen to the commander of the regiment of combatants in which she fought saying: ‘I don’t want to send you on a mission, you are very beautiful’, which, of course, was taken as an insult.
The women, who used to have more flying experience than their comrades, needed to constantly test their skills and courage.”
“‘When I see a plane with the black crosses and the swastika on its tail, I have only one feeling: hatred; this emotion makes me squeeze the trigger of my machine guns even tighter,’ said Lilya Litvyak, the avenging girl, the white lily of Stalingrad and Kursk, who was the fear of the German pilots. She was small and very beautiful. Like many others, she wanted to be a good pilot and still be an attractive woman. And at the same time, she had a lot of character. Her courage was that of a reckless demon,” says Lyuba Vinogradova.
Soviet aviators often stopped their aircraft engines to glide silently over the targets at which the bombs were dropped. Lyuba Vinogradova reports: “They were admirable, it took a lot of courage to fight those devices that caught fire easily. Many had horrible deaths.
In general, among the pilots and navigators who fought in the front line units, there were many victims. Perhaps a third. It’s hard to quantify. In the night bombing regiment, where the victims were covered by personnel, the deaths and injuries totaled 50% of the initial troops of the regiment”.
The planes used by the night witches were of the outdated Soviet model Polikarpov Po-2, also called U-2. It was a biplane used mainly to practice and fumigate. It was a versatile and general-purpose device, making it the most manufactured biplane in history. However, it was not the ideal aircraft to compete in combat. It usually had a 7.62 mm ShKAS machine gun and a small load of pumps (six small 50 kg pumps). Its maximum operating speed was 152 km/h and the cruising speed was 110 km/h. The minimum speed of the German fighters was higher than the maximum speed of the Night Witches’ biplanes, making it difficult to bring them down.
