The inseparable four "night witches": the pilots who went through the whole war together

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

Bomber Aviation Regiment, nicknamed by the Germans "Night witches", united brave women who were ready to defend their Motherland on the battlefield during the Great Patriotic War. Every night, they fearlessly soared into the sky in "plywood" airplanes to deliver precise strikes against German bases. Despite hard work and tough discipline, good relations reigned in the regiment. A strong friendship connected the four female pilots. Side by side, they went through the entire war and remained close after the Victory!

Natasha Meklin

Natasha Meklin - a real legend of Soviet aviation. The girl went through the entire war: in July 1941, while still a student at the Aviation Institute, she dug anti-tank ditches, and already in May 1942 she was enlisted in the ranks of the Red Army. From her youth Natasha dreamed of the sky, during her school years in Kiev she attended the gliding school, and then entered the Moscow Institute at the aircraft building faculty. When the war broke out, she immediately volunteered for the military registration and enlistment office, however, they were in no hurry to take the freshman to the front.

Fate smiled at Natalia when the institute announced that an experienced pilot Marina Raskova was recruiting applicants for the air unit. Natalia, although she did not have sufficient flying practice, managed to convince Raskova of her desire to fly, and she enlisted her as a navigator.

The combat path of Meklin at the front is more than 980 sorties, during which both bases, weapons and manpower of the enemy were destroyed. Natasha served in a regiment of night dive bombers, in which there were exclusively women. As navigator, Natasha flew a lot in the crew of Ira Sebrova, on command she dropped bombs at the intended targets.

Natasha Meklin made her first flight at the helm (and 381st in her combat record!) On May 18, 1943. During the war years, they had to fly in different conditions: both through the mountain ranges in the Crimea, and during the February blizzards in East Prussia, there were such flights when the navigators were only shown the direction of movement, and the destination itself was "beyond the edge of the map", since they were moving in a hurry, and the headquarters did not have time to print new maps …

Irina Sebrova

Irina Sebrova - the absolute record holder for the number of sorties. In total, she made 1008 flights. Before the war, Irina worked at a factory for the manufacture of cardboard products, and at the same time studied at a Moscow flying club and became an instructor. When war was declared and the flying club was preparing for the evacuation, I volunteered to go to the front, I felt responsible.

Irina went through the entire war, flew in the foothills of the Caucasus and Crimea, distinguished herself in the battles for the liberation of Mogilev, Minsk, Grodno … Her combat path began with a series of accidents, it was difficult to withstand in such a situation, especially when her combat friends died one after another. However, Irina found the strength to fly further. For some time Natasha Meklin flew as navigator with her, the girls worked perfectly in a team. Later, when they flew separately, they still did not lose sight of each other.

The war brought Irina a lot of suffering, her mother died, tortured by the Nazis. However, during the war, Irina also met her future husband, Alexander Khomenko, an engineer in a repair shop. In this workshop, the "Night Witches" regularly poisoned planes damaged by shelling. Once Irina made a test flight on her plane after repairs, Alexander was sitting in the back. He did not buckle up, because even before takeoff, Ira promised that she would not perform the loop. During the flight, the pilot got carried away, and Alexander almost fell out of the cockpit when the plane was performing aerobatics. Ira could not come to her senses for a long time when she realized what had happened after landing …

Polina Gelman

Polina Gelman - another brave pilot from the "Night Witches". The entire combat path, which began with voluntary mobilization in 1941 and ended in 1945 with flights over Berlin, she went through as a navigator. And the reason for that was significant: because of her diminutive stature, Polina simply did not reach the plane's pedals. For this reason, she was unable to fly, training in the air club in peacetime. However, when the war came, her professional knowledge came in handy, and Polina was accepted as navigator. During the war years, Polina had 860 sorties.

According to reports, Polina dropped 113 tons of bombs at enemy locations. In addition to the bombing, she also participated in the delivery of vital cargo and ammunition to the military, who fell into isolation. Polina finished her combat path as the squadron's communications chief.

Remembering her most terrible flight, she tells about the incident that happened to her during the shelling of the enemy near Novorossiysk. Then she had to drop a luminous bomb and even took it off the safety catch when she saw that her stabilizer got entangled with the leggings, the strap from which hung around her neck. Exactly 10 seconds remained before the explosion, the plane was already being fired at by the Germans from anti-aircraft guns, and the pilot was waiting for instructions on where to head. In the last seconds, Polina made the only right decision - to drop the bomb along with the leggings. Since then, she flew on missions without gloves, although her hands were in danger of constant frostbite due to working with ice metal.

Raisa Aronova

Raisa AronovaLike other girls, on the eve of the war she was obsessed with the sky - she studied in the flying club, flew and jumped with a parachute. After graduating from it, she received the rank of reserve pilot and seriously thought about aviation. The dream to fly was so strong that Raisa left her studies at the Saratov Institute of Agricultural Mechanization and entered the Moscow Aviation Institute.

In the summer of 1941, like other students, she dug trenches and ditches, and after that she began to ask for the army. She was among the "Night Witches" since May 1942; in total, she flew 960 successful combat missions. She was a navigator for a long time, but after that she underwent additional training and became a pilot.

Raisa was not superstitious and believed that the number 13 brings her not trouble, but happiness. Her first sorties were quiet, the Germans literally ignored her plane, and the girl even began to worry that their crew would suspect that they were not flying to the target. A real baptism of fire happened at Raisa Aronova during her thirteenth flight: then the Germans opened heavy fire on her plane, and the pilot had to fly ahead. It is a miracle that the plane did not explode and receive no serious damage.

Raisa is a wrestler by nature. She waited a long time for her turn to the pilot courses, but life decided otherwise. On one of the combat missions, Raisa was severely wounded by shrapnel, but, overcoming the pain, dropped all the bombs on the enemy's base. When the plane finally returned to location, Raisa barely remained conscious, still joking that it might be a minor injury.

The girl was operated on urgently, more than 16 fragments were removed, and she never screamed, since it was impossible to show weakness, there was a men's ward behind the wall. She was sent for treatment by plane to Essentuki. There the girl withstood two months, and when she read in a letter from her combat friends that several fighters had been sent for retraining as pilots, she could not resist and asked the doctor to let her go to the unit. Raisa's wound was already healing during her studies, but she made her dream come true and soon took the pilot's seat in the cockpit.

Each of the heroines of our today's story went through the war from the first to the last day, lived a long life. And here is fate military pilot-heroine Marina Raskova, the commander of the women's bomber aviation regiment, which gave each of the girls a start in life, was tragic. She died in the line of duty in 1943, when she was only 30 …