The Night Witches

In the dark skies over the Eastern Front of World War II, the Soviet Union deployed one of the most unusual and effective combat units of the war: the Night Witches.

Officially the 588th Night Bomber Regiment, this unit flew outdated, fragile biplanes on nighttime harassment missions against German forces, cutting their engines to glide silently toward their targets before dropping bombs.

More notably, the regiment was entirely composed of women.

Learn about the Night Witches on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

The Night Witches or the 588th Night Bomber Regiment were an all-female group of aviators for the Soviet Union during World War II.

The regiment was formed by Marina Raskova, the first Female Navigator in the history of the Soviet Air Force.

Marina Raskova was one of the most famous aviators in the Soviet Union and a central figure in the creation of the all-female combat units of World War II.

Born in 1912, she began her career in aviation as a navigator and quickly gained national prominence in the 1930s after setting several long-distance flight records, including a highly publicized nonstop flight across the Soviet Union that made her a household name.

Her achievements earned her the title Hero of the Soviet Union, one of the country’s highest honors, and gave her rare political influence in a male-dominated field.

Because of these accolades, Raskova was a celebrity and was often compared to the American Amelia Earhart.

This level of respect gave Raskova personal connections to leadership in the USSR, specifically Joseph Stalin.

Stalin had been impressed by her aviation skills, perception with the public, and had a desire to promote women in the military as part of Soviet Propaganda.

Raskova used this position to petition Stalin to allow her to form a women’s fighting squadron for World War II.

Raskova had been getting letters from women in the Soviet Union who wanted to join the war effort.

The Soviet Constitution technically said that women had the same Civil Rights as men. A female soldier was viewed, at least for propaganda purposes, as an example of this Soviet ideal.

Despite their lofty rhetoric, traditional beliefs about women were still prevalent in Soviet society. Women were discouraged from acting in perceived “manly” roles, especially when it came to the military.

As a result, when women joined the military, they were often assigned to support roles. So, despite the “equality,” women were rarely found on the front line and were not allowed to join the Air Force.

Raskova wanted to change that.

And when the Nazis invaded, Stalin gave her a chance.

The conflict between the Soviets and the Nazis, sparked by the German invasion of the Soviet Union, was a brutal example of Total War, where lines between civilians and the military were blurred or were non existant.

At the start of the invasion, the Nazis were prevailing, inflicting staggering losses on Soviet troops and resulting in the displacement of millions of people and the loss of significant amounts of territory.

As the war dragged on, Stalin was desperate, so he gave an order to accept women into combat roles, though this was more for necessity than real gender equality.

As a result, he gave Raskova permission to deploy three all-female air force units. Women in Raskova’s group would be allowed to become pilots, support staff, and engineers.

These units would be the first time that a nation would allow women to officially engage in combat in a modern mechanized war.

If you remember back to my episode on Lyudmila Pavlichenko, she was one of the top Soviet snipers of the war and exemplified this policy of allowing women in combat roles.

Raskova created the three teams by choosing from a pool of 2000 applicants.

They were required to have a year of intense training to learn to fly, navigate, and maintain their aircraft.

A year may sound like a long time, but the usual training normally took several months to complete.

As there had been no women prior, they were given men’s old uniforms. These uniforms were usually too big. Their boots would often have bedding stuffed inside them just to keep them on their feet.

When given their planes and navigational tools, many of the women decided to add a “feminine touch” by painting flowers on them.

When completing training, the women were assigned to one of three groups.

The best aviators would be members of the 586th Fighter Aviation Regiment, the second best would be in the 587th Bomber Aviation Unit, and the worst in training would be assigned to the 588th Night Bomber Aviation Regiment.

That’s right, the Night Witches were the worst of the class, but ended up being the most feared.

The Night Witches were led by another woman, Major Yevdokiya Bershanskaya.

Major Bershanskaya had attended the Batayk School of Pilots.

After graduating in 1931, she trained other pilots before being assigned as Commander of the 218th Special Operations Aviation Squadron.

Bershanskaya was chosen to lead the 588th Night Bomber Regiment due to her qualifications.

As a part of an all-female crew, they, along with the other female Regiments, faced disparities and disadvantages compared to their male counterparts.

They were given less respect and worse equipment, faced skepticism and sexual harassment from their male counterparts, and were given old, out-of-date planes due to a lack of supplies.

The women would fly in Polikarpov Po-2 biplanes that were already outdated by the start of the war. They were essentially used as crop-dusters or training aircraft by this point. These were made with plywood and had a canvas stretched over them.

Basically, if the plane were hit, there was a good chance it would burst into flames.

Additionally, they had no parachutes because adding them would have added too much weight to the plane; they were not given any modern navigation tools, so they could only rely on maps. The cockpit was also open, leaving the pilot and navigator exposed to the elements.

Another danger was that the plane was slow, maxing out at 90 miles per hour, and could only carry two bombs. And, because the bombs were so heavy, the women were forced to fly low to the ground, so they would be easily spotted.

This led many of the women to describe their planes as “a coffin with wings.”

Their only defense is that they would fly at night to try an mitigate their obvious disadvantages.

However, there were some advantages.

Because the plane was so light, it was easily maneuverable, making it hard to land a direct hit.

Because it was made of wood and small, it wouldn’t show up on German radar or infrared detection systems.

The women, without radios, couldn’t be picked up by radio detectors.

Also, because the planes were slow and maneuverable, they could take off and land from almost anywhere, allowing attacks to be coordinated from anywhere.

They were “basically ghosts” that were almost impossible for the Nazis to detect.

And even if they were detected, their slow speed worked in their favor against other planes.

Because they were slower than the German planes could fly, it was difficult for the German planes to engage in aerial combat with them.

Because they conducted night raids and were almost undetectable, the Night Witches had a massive psychological impact on the Germans, who needed to be prepared at night and therefore got less sleep.

The main strategy the Night Witches used was flying in sorties, of which they would usually run multiple every night.

They would leave their base, fly in groups of 8 to 18 planes, drop their two bombs, return to the base, refuel, and fly again.

This strategy was effective because the Germans would defend using searchlights and guns that the Witches would need to get through to hit the target.

However, the Night Witches would fly in groups of three.

This was effective because when they would near the spotlights, two of the planes would fly through the lights and veer away from the target.

As the guns followed these planes, the third would fly forward.

To remain undetected, the third plane would kill its engine and drift to the target. The gliding plane was said to sound like a “woosh”, similar to the sweeping of a broom.

After dropping their two bombs, the pilot would turn the engine on and then switch places with one of the other planes.

This would repeat until all the bombs were dropped, and they could fly back to base and reload.

The mission of the Night Witches was to disrupt German morale by ruining their sleep while hitting important targets.

The wooshing sound, the difficulty in spotting the unit, and the fact that they were women, resulted in the German soldiers nicknaming the unit “Nachthexen” or “Night Witches”.

Germans felt that women serving in military roles was a laughable idea, so this was meant to be derogatory.

If the Germans captured female Soviet Soldiers, they would publish photos of the prisoners alongside images of German women so show the people back home difference between feminine German and masculine Soviet women..

While the name Night Witches was intended to be derogatory, when the women found out, they proudly embraced the title.

Despite looking down upon the Women, the Germans felt their impact.

The Witches’ ability to disrupt supply lines, ruin infrastructure, and destroy morale became such a massive problem for the Germans that any German who shot down a Night Witch would automatically be awarded the Iron Cross.

There is no one significant battle to associate with the Night Witches.

Their heroics stemmed from their constant, nonstop bombardment of German forces. This made them the most decorated female unit in the Soviet Air Force.

By the end of the War, the Witches had flown 23,672 combat sorties.

As a collective, the unit would complete 28,676 flight hours.

They had dropped a total of 3,000 tons of bombs and 26,000 incendiary shells.

The results were that they managed to destroy or damage 17 River Crossings, 9 railways, 2 railway stations, 26 Nazi warehouses, 12 fuel depots, 86 prepared firing positions, and 11 searchlights.

In addition, the unit made 155 supply drops to Soviet Units, which provided troops on the ground with much-needed food and ammunition.

By the end of the War, the Night Witches had lost 32 pilots from their 261 total members.

As the unit proved its ferocity and bravery, it gained respect inside the Soviet Union. Of the 89 women who received the country’s highest honor, the Hero of the Soviet Union, 22 were members of the Night Witches.

However, despite their heroic efforts, the women weren’t a part of the Soviet Victory Parade, because the planes literally flew too slowly.

Marina Raskova, who was responsible for the creation of the Night Witches, didn’t live to see the end of the war. She was killed in a plane crash in January 1943 while flying in poor weather, and she was honored with a state funeral, with her ashes interred in the Kremlin Wall.

After World War II, women were once again barred from combat roles, and the story of the Night Witches became a distant memory.

Yet despite being overlooked by history, their story and heroic efforts played a small but crucial part in the Soviet victory in World War II.

The Executive Producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel. The Associate Producers are Austin Oetken and Cameron Kieffer.

Research and writing for this episode were provided by THE… Olivia Ashe.

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