A Dance with Death: Soviet Airwomen in World War II by Anne Noggle

Author:Anne Noggle
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2011-08-06T07:24:00+00:00

Junior Lieutenant Antonina Pugachova-Makarova, navigator

1a5th Regiment Pe-2 crew preparing for a flight

I was born in 1924. When I was a child I dreamed of becoming a pilot, but because I was short, I was not allowed to join the air force. When the war started I was in the ninth grade in school.

In 1942 I joined the army. I was sent to the military aviation school in Moscow, where a battalion of girls were studying meteorology and other aviation sciences. Shortly before graduation, the school received an order to select the best-trained girls and send them to the regiment of Marina Raskova. Only ten were selected, and we all did our best to be among them. I was afraid that my short height would be against me. Before the final test I put thick pieces of paper in my high boots to make me look taller, and I was put on the list to go.

We were sent to Yoshkar-Ola to be trained as navigators. We trained in the TB-3 dive bomber. It could dive and drop bombs, and it would shake, rattle, and jump. We were told to bring some buckets along with us because we weren't used to flying, and all of us were leaning over the buckets being sick. We also trained in parachute jumping. I jumped twice, which was required in our training.

After training, the commanders selected nine of us to go to the front. I was very happy that my dream came true. We then started training in crews: navigator, pilot, and gunner. My crew commander was Tamara Rusakova, who was a very fine pilot and a very strict commander. She made us clean the aircraft after every flight, and only then did we have the right to leave the airdrome. When there was snow on the ground we had to make a hangar out of the snow to protect the plane. Everyone else would have left the field, but we would still he working.

The 587th regiment had lost the equivalent of a squadron soon after the war started and needed replacements. In March, 1944, we were sent to the front. We found the atmosphere in the regiment to be intelligent, strict, and just. Commander Markov liked order; he was a very clever and educated man and a gifted pilot. We all tried to do our best to please him and do our duty in as excellent a way as possible. Among ourselves we called him Baty, which is a familiar form of papa. It was because of Tamara and Valentin Markov that my flying career ended so meaningfully. He had an incredible, magnetic influence on all of us.

At the front our airdrome was near Smolensk. During our first combat missions, we were flying in formation and escorted by fighters. It was nothing like I had expected. I thought we would be endlessly attacked by Germans and firing at them. I fancied to see explosions of aircraft, shells, bombs, and flames here and there, and bullets tracing like wildfire in the sky.

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