Awesomely True History: The Time An All-Female Soviet Air Force Regiment Was So Badass The Nazis Were Scared of Them

This is a segment that I would like to do in addition to my normal blog posts. I have always been a big fan of history and I love to write about it, and I’ve made a couple of these posts on my personal Facebook, so I thought I would bring it here where I have more space to write and a little more of an opportunity to let my personal style show through. 🙂

The Night-witches: The Biggest, Baddest Bitches of World War II

Picture this. It’s 1943, in the Soviet Union, and it’s the dead of winter. You’re a young Russian girl, just about 19 years old, standing in a trench coat with the horrible winter wind whipping through your hair. You see, off in the distance, a couple crew-cut men in grey uniforms chatting and smoking cigarettes. Shit. It’s the Wehrmacht. One of them sees you and immediately flashes a sinister grin. He and his buddies start coming closer, clasping their hands together and grasping their knives. This could be the end for you. These guys are predators and you are their prey. If they get anywhere near you, you will be raped, killed, and possibly chopped into little pieces.

Except they won’t get anywhere near you, because under that trench coat you have a Russian machine gun. And you open fire. Rows and rows of Hitler’s goons get mowed down as you shoot constantly, stopping only to reload. And behind you, your girlfriends are taking off in their bomber planes, getting ready to blow these evil sons of bitches into smithereens.

The all female 588th regiment, comprising women ages 17 to 26

Let’s recap a bit. The Eastern Front of World War II began in 1941. After Nazi Germany broke their non-aggression treaty with the Soviet Union and invaded (who knew that Adolf Hitler was not to be trusted?), the war that resulted left nearly 20 million people to rot in the snow. And even though these countries were led by Hitler and Stalin, arguably the two most evil motherfuckers that have ever existed, they had different ideologies. Hitler’s Germany was a state built on oppression and tyranny. He believed that everyone who wasn’t white and ethnically German was inferior to his vision of the blond haired, blue eyed Ubermensch. The USSR, however, believed everyone was equal so long as they were loyal to the communist government.

And by everyone, they meant it: when the Nazis invaded Russia, they were shocked to find not just men, but women on the battlefield. Women were on the front lines with grenades and rifles. Women were driving tanks that mowed down German cavalry troops (the Nazis actually used a TON of horses during the war). And the scariest of all: women in the all-female 588th regiment were flying Polikarpov Po-2 bomber planes, halting the German offense from high up in the sky, often in complete darkness. The German nickname for these beautiful badasses was the Nachthexen, or Night Witches.

The Po-2 biplane flown by the Night Witches

Led by Marina Raskova, a pilot who is known as the “Russian Amelia Earhart”, these women were highly trained and capable soldiers in a time where it was almost unthinkable to even have a woman on the battlefield. Although the Po-2 planes they flew were old (built mostly in 1928), difficult to maneuver, and could only hold six bombs at a time, the girls helming them were able to make them a terrifying force equal or greater than that of any male pilots. The lack of space for their weapons meant that they had to keep taking off and landing. Pilot Maria Popova once flew 18 missions in one night. And they were craftier than anything the repressive Nazi line of thinking could come up with. One of their favorite strategies was actually to turn off the fucking engine mid-flight and glide to their destination so that the enemy never heard them coming. Oh yeah, did I mention they never carried parachutes?

The absolute mercilessness and tenacity of these soldiers caused not only physical damage to the Nazi forces, but psychological damage as well. No other belligerent had even thought to put women in combat roles, much less an elite branch of pilots. To the narrow-minded soldiers of the Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe, seeing a woman flying a plane must have literally felt like seeing a witch – terrifying and so unthinkable as to be pure fantasy.  They were so scared of these ladies that any soldier who shot down a Night Witch was awarded an Iron Cross, one of the highest honors in the German military.

Commemorative stamps honoring the regiment

See, here’s the dirty secret that they never taught you in history class. The Eastern Front of World War II, if just taken by itself, is the single biggest and bloodiest war in history by far. The Battle of Stalingrad, the heroic Russian defense that helped turn the tide in favor of the Allies, makes even D-Day look like small potatoes in comparison. And when you are just inches or minutes away from total destruction, as the Soviets often were, you end up running out of fucks to give pretty damn fast. The Night Witches used painfully obsolete equipment, were often terribly short on food and supplies, and were fighting against a brutal force that had no qualms about doing unspeakable things to them if they even got close, and yet they were able to turn all that around and become one of the most decorated regiments in the history of the war. They flew near 30,000 bombing raids, dropped 23,000 tons of bombs and 23 of their pilots were given the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.

We all know the USSR in the 1940’s was a terrible place. It was led by a tyrannic despot had no problem with letting his own son die in a concentration camp because he didn’t want to negotiate. But just because the Soviets were fighting for an evil regime doesn’t mean they were all evil people. Millions of soldiers were forced to fight in sub-zero temperatures, constantly running out of food and ammunition, with barely a jacket on to keep themselves warm, because the alternative would be to send millions more of their friends and families to die in a concentration camp. It’s not like they could just decide their government was fucked up and say “Bye, Felicia!” They were fighting an army led by arguably the worst human being to ever live in an attempt to survive and preserve the legacy of their civilization. Without the Soviet Union involved, it’s doubtful the Allies would have even won the war. And a big part of that Allied victory was thanks to the Night Witches, the biggest, baddest bitches in history.

Don’t fuck with these women. They will kill you and then probably rip your dick off.