Marina Rossi: The witches of the night. Stories and testimonies of female aviation in the USSR (1941 – 1945)

Marina Rossi
Ed. Unicopli, Milan 2003
pagg.191

The author, who taught History of Russia at the University of Trieste, addresses, in this essay, a topic little known to most: that of female aviation in the Soviet Union. "Until the 1941, the most prestigious flight schools and air force institutes were monopolized by the male element and no woman was accepted in the military aeronautical academies. Only excellence of merit, fueled by an extraordinary passion, allowed the first aspiring candidates to attend particular preparatory courses for professional piloting. In 1931 the Žukorskij Aeronautical Academy admitted for the first time two girls: Marina Mikhailovna Raskova, then nineteen, as a designer and Elena Nikolaevna Kusmina, as an analyst, in the Air Navigation Institute. "

In September of the 1938 three women, Valentina Grisodubova, commander of the crew, Polina Osipenko, second pilot and Marina Raskova, route official, performed on a twin-engine, the Rodina, a flight from Moscow to the Far East, covering, without intermediate stopovers, 5.947 km and flying for 29 and a half hours at a speed higher than 220 km per hour. Received at the Kremlin, they were decorated with the honor of Hero of the Soviet Union. The 22 June 1941, following the attack by Germany, there was the mobilization in almost all the European territory of the USSR for the 1915-1918 levers. In those days, there were many letters from girls attending aeroclubs and serving in civil aviation, asking to be sent to the front to fight with men.

"In the summer of the '41, the Soviet government did not have any plan for the use of women in combat and even less for the creation of female regiments."

After the Soviet Air Force lost 7.500 aircraft during the first few months of the war, although there was no need for new pilots, much less women, it was thanks to its fame that Marina Raskova came "Authorized to create a temporary group, the 122, in which pilot women, navigators of course and armor could be inserted." From this group were born, always organized by Marina Raskova and following an authorization decree of Stalin of the 8 October 1941, three female aviator regiments: the n.586, formed by fighter bombers, the n. 587, formed by dive bombers, the 588, formed by devices suitable for light night bombardments.

After training in Engels, on the Volga, the regiments found themselves at the front, where the pilot women, to win the respect of their male colleagues, had to show all their skill. And when the Germans discovered that there were also girls bombarding them, "they threw leaflets on the Soviet lines in which, in addition to various insults, they had added for them the epithet Witches of the night. "

Even among women the first victims arrived. Among them was the commander of the three air units: Major Marina Raskova, who fell to the front of Stalingrad, due to a snowstorm, the 4 January 1943, with all his crew. "The pilot women received 32 of the 92 gold medals awarded to the war heroines, considering that the aviatrixes (about 300 women) constituted only a small fraction of the 800.000 women mobilized in the Red Army. "

To them was recognized a capacity of resistance superior to that of men."At the end of the 45, the aviation women of the three air units returned to civilian life and dispersed in the various republics of the USSR. However, they decided to meet each year, the 2 May, in the garden of the Bol'šoj theater, at 12. "

Gianlorenzo Capano