How a student of Moscow State University became a mentor to the "Night Witches" and gave the Germans a real hell

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

Among the female heroes of the Second World War, Evgenia Rudneva stands out. This girl, a native of the so-called golden youth, became a real aviation ace, and literally performed feats almost every day. The fascists called the fearless pilots from her regiment "night witches" and were seriously afraid of the appearance of their planes. On account of the fragile girl 645 sorties.

"Daughter of two peoples": a short biography of the legendary pilot

A native of Ukraine (the city of Berdyansk, Zaporozhye region), Zhenya Rudneva at the age of ten moved with her family to Moscow.

In 1938 he entered the Faculty of Mechanics and Mathematics at Moscow State University. From school, she was fascinated by astronomy, continued to study it in her student years. In the summer of 1941, third-year student Zhenya Rudneva, together with other university students, builds structures for the defense of the city, is on duty as part of air defense units. In the fall of 1941 - already a volunteer of the Soviet army, sent to the school of navigators in the city of Engels (not far from Saratov). In 1942 she successfully graduated from it.

Zhenechka Rudneva - gentle, kind, smiling; who knows little about life, because she was brought up in a warm family atmosphere - the only beloved daughter, clever and beautiful. She read a lot and thought about many things, loved to dream. She also dreamed that she would meet her love. And I met - on the way home during a front-line vacation. The captain of the tank forces, her dear Slavik. Many letters, wonderful, warm; rare meetings.

A gentle girl with a pure soul could not stay away - the enemy was rapidly advancing. She was seized by one desire - to be as useful as possible in the struggle of her people against the enemy army. Zhenya Rudneva is a representative of the "golden youth", but not in the modern sense of this expression: in peacetime she would have served her Motherland and her people differently, perhaps in the scientific field, but with the same dedication with which she became part of the nationwide resistance to the enemy. In this complete dedication of oneself to the common cause, there was no admixture of vanity or self-interest, such as Zhenya thought and felt, in this they saw the purpose of their life.

Navigator-astronomer and her combat path

She was only twenty years old when she entered the navigator school. Having had nothing to do with aviation before, she mastered the flight business so that she became a brilliant navigator of the crew, then the squadron, and in 1943 - the regiment. In addition, she grew into a talented mentor and passed on experience to her students - "navigators". Her charges never made a mistake on a mission and never got lost, returning from a mission to the airfield.

Evgenia Rudneva and her comrades in arms destroyed the enemy near Mozdok and Vladikavkaz, in the Kuban and Taman Peninsula. This combat path is like a compressed spring - so much has been experienced and done. This is how Zhenya Rudneva lived her short, but bright and full of high meaning life.

What Evgenia Rudneva flew on

The main tasks of Evgenia Rudneva and the rest of the regiment's pilots were to approach enemy targets and bombard them. The girls made about ten flights (and sometimes more) per night, and in the morning they simply collapsed from their feet from tension and fatigue.

They performed their tasks on PO-2 (Polikarpov's biplanes). These lightweight plywood aircraft were intended for training flights or for use in agriculture. Due to the lack of military aircraft, biplanes were converted into bombers: shells weighing about 200 kg were attached under the "belly" of the machine.

In order to be able to take on board another 20 kg of additional ammunition, the girls abandoned parachutes. If the plane was shot down by enemy anti-aircraft guns or a fighter, then the crew had no chance of surviving.

In the winter cold, the pilots froze through and through in the cold cramped cockpits. It was difficult to maneuver and avoid enemy fighters on a biplane - a light aircraft could hardly pull out its load, and its maximum speed was only 120 km / h. But this did not prevent the girls from successfully fulfilling the combat missions assigned to them on these "heavenly slugs." The Nazis watched with horror their appearance over their locations and strategic facilities.

The last flight over Kerch. The task is completed

In the spring of 1944, Soviet troops had to drive out the Nazis from the Kerch Peninsula. During the winter, the enemy was well entrenched on the Crimean bridgehead, and powerful air defense was established. Soviet aviation worked around the clock: during the day - fighters, attack aircraft and heavy bombers, and with the onset of dusk and until morning - night bombers.

Evgenia Rudneva was assigned a combat mission - being on the line of contact, to observe the actions of night bombers and evaluate their effectiveness. Rudneva made several reports on the results of her observations at divisional conferences. As a navigator of the regiment, she already performed combat flights less often, but to check the work of the pilots, she took part in test flights.

At the end of March, there were many such flights - almost every night. On April 8, Evgenia Rudneva was facing one of these - her 645th, the last. Around midnight, the crew of Rudneva-Prokofieva took off on a mission. The enemy met them with powerful barrage of fire. The shell hit the gas tank, the fire quickly engulfed the entire cabin. The biplane fell, but Zhenya Rudneva managed to drop all the bombs. Signal flares flew like multicolored stars near the ground, as if the girls were saying goodbye to their combat girlfriends.

On April 10, fellow soldiers of Evgenia Rudneva dropped 25 tons of SABs on enemy fortifications in 194 sorties. Squishing their noses, the young armed men wrote on the bombs: "For my wife!" On the afternoon of April 11, by the joint efforts of ground forces and aviation, the enemy's defense was broken, Kerch was liberated.

Evgenia Rudneva fulfilled her oath taken on the oath - she did everything possible to bring victory closer and free her homeland from the enemy. She spent 796 hours under fire from enemy artillery, dropped 79 tons of luminous bombs on the enemy. The girl was posthumously awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.

These feats were so significant that they were repeatedly rewarded with film adaptations. The most eminent Soviet directors shot films about fragile but brave pilots.