Night Witches: The Forgotten Heroines of the Soviet Union

Youtube ^

[NorseViking]

NHD Senior Individual Documentary; all media and music sources are credited at the end.

[BenLurkin]

Another Hillary thread?

[NorseViking]

Not exactly although the headline fits.

[Steely Tom]

"The main factor that drove them to work harder was to disprove the misogyny that came from their male peers."

— 6:10 in the video.

[PIF]

"Night Witches" (German: die Nachthexen; Russian: Ночные ведьмы, Nochnye Vedmy) was a World War II German nickname for the all female military aviators of the 588th Night Bomber Regiment, known later as the 46th "Taman" Guards Night Bomber Aviation Regiment, of the Soviet Air Forces. - wiki

[NorseViking]

I think top Soviet female air force figures even do not belong to feminist regiments at all. That would be a Stalingrad ace bomber buster Lily Litvyak and strike wing commander Anna Yegorova. Both served along men.

[NorseViking]

The model for bedcheck Charlie.

[Bratch]

The Night Witches and World War II

 

The History Guy: History Deserves to Be Remembered

 

The History Guy recounts the story of the Night Witches, the most decorated female combat aviation unit of the Second World War.

 

If you're interested in graphic novels, Garth Ennis has created a fictional story about the Night Witches based on the real history. Thank you to the publisher for sending a free copy of the book for review purposes. You can read Ms. History's review of the book here: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4...

 

The History Guy uses images that are in the Public Domain. As photographs of actual events are often not available, I will sometimes use photographs of similar events or objects for illustration.

 

[Nateman]

History Channel article. Amazing story , the Soviets gave them used obsolete equipment like biplanes and they improvised and became quite effective.

[TMN78247]

In 1983, I got to MEET & HAVE LUNCH WITH Lt. Natasha Koznikov, who flew over 300 CAS missions against the German Army. (She told us over lunch that she was shot down 4X & was WIA X2.) = All 4’ 10” & (I would guess) about 80 pounds of her.

Like almost every REAL wartime hero/heroine that I’ve ever met, LT Koznikov humbly said, “I did nothing special. - I just did what I was told & as well as I could do.- Many soldiers did far more than I.”

NOTE: At that time, the former LT was “an honored guest of” a group of WASP pilots & the CAF at a ceremony to remember the combatants of The Battle of Stalingrad.

Yours, TMN78247

[Bull Snipe]

Soviet Armed Forces had women everywhere. In 1944, a battalion of Sherman tanks in the 1st Guard Tank Army was commanded by Aleksandra Samuseko. She was the only women battalion commander in the Soviet Army.

[null and void]

I’ve been saying for years that the Battle of Stalingrad saved us all from a nuclear war.They could be no question in our war planners’ minds that we could win even a nuclear war against these people.

[NorseViking]

It was rare in the Army, and Soviet Navy never employed women in combat roles although they enlisted boys as young as 13 for sailors later in war. Soviet air force was infamous for using girls as young as 16 for any roles and boys in earlier teens for ground crews and gunners mostly in bomber command.
The infamous Stockholm massacre in 1944 was mostly blamed on teenage crews in USSR although the story is mostly unknown in the West or explained through conspiracy theories. The bomber armada was assembled to bomb the Nazi in Finland and then the very same day the bombing of Sweden occurred. Soviet air lost a number of bombers while Nazis didn’t claim a single shot down. It is widely believed in the Soviet air force that some bombers manned by teen female personnel deviated from the group at night by hundreds of miles and then navigated by the coastline and bombed the crap out the first city they found which was Stockholm and then perished in the Ocean due to a lack of fuel on the way back home.

[omega4412]

Sabaton CD “Heroes”

[Bull Snipe]

The Soviet Army placed women closer to combat than the American, Brits, or the Germans. They served as radio operators in infantry outfits and as combat medics. To my knowledge they were never assigned as infantry. The Soviets used women extensively as snipers up until 1944. They stopped training women as snipers then, when they realized the women snipers died at a much higher rate than men.
Women were used extensively in tank crews. One estimate that I have seen is that 25 percent of Soviet tanks rolling into Berlin had a women crewmember, usually the tank mechanic. Women were extensively employed in artillery and Katyusha batteries.