Intro: Growing up I heard a lot about witches. I was a curious child that could never keep her nose out of a book. I learnt about all sorts and types. Magic fascinated me and witches wielded it in so many ways. There were the good witches with red and gold ties who harnessed magic with a wand and knowledge. There were the bad witches with green skin and broomsticks. I knew everything there was to know about witches. The worlds they came from, their stories, their companions. Or at least I thought. After all, I had never heard of the most feared witches in history. The night witches. I am Alexi Johnson, this is Passing through. (Cue intro music)
Script proper: The Night witches unlike most witches don’t hail from a storybook. Their lives aren’t confined to a page. They are not the type of witch most think of. They don’t hide in candy houses. They didn’t have horns or turn into dragons. They didn’t have brooms or wear witches hats. They are not something to be found in a storybook or on the big screen. These these witches turned in their broomsticks for makeshift bombers. Their horns for curls and instead of turning into dragons to spit fire they dropped bombs.
They would arrive in the night, the only warring they gave was a Whoosh. The quiet sound of aircraft slicing through the air. Then BOOM! The color of fire and ripple of flame would hit the sky. Then the sound of a shuttering engine and the outline of a plane against the flames. This is what the Germans would see and hear on the Eastern front most nights after 1941. these pilots who silently dropped bombs without remorse. Instilled the fear of Witches in the Germans minds.
The Witches were born from one woman. Marina Raskova. Marina Raskova was in many aspects a soviet Ameila airheart. She and two other women had made a flight in 1938 from Moscow to the far East. This flight not only established a new nonstop flight record for women, but also opened up a new route over Siberia. The feat not only gained her fame but respect as both a pilot and a navigator.
She would craft three regiments. The 46th guards bomber regiment also known as the 588th, the 125th guard bomber regiment and the 586th fighter regiment. Each of these regiments would rack up accolades of their own. Behind each was a team of women. Each with their own stories behind their experience in the war. As some of the first women to fight combat in a modern era. Each story is unique, some long and some short. Not one story is the same, nor their outlook on the war or country. Even their outlook on loss and joy. Some stories are long, others are short.
These are some of their stories. Told in their own words. These are the Night witches, the soviet airwomen of ww2.
Statement of Senior Lieutenant Yevgeniya Zhigukenko pilot of the 46th, commander of the formation. Hero of the soviet union
Regarding hair
We all volunteered to go to the front and strove to fulfill the most combat missions, even beyond our physical capacity. We longed to see the end of that horrible war, to liberate our fair motherland. We, young girls of the flying regiments, did our best to contribute to the defeat of the enemy and victory for our suffering people
But life remains life, and we, as military pilots, still remained young girls. We dreamed of our grooms, marriages, children, and a future happy life. We thought to meet our future mates at the front. But our 46th (Also known as the 588th) was unique, for it was purely female. There wasn’t even a shabby male mechanic to rest a glance on. Nevertheless, after a night of combat we never forgot to curl our hair. Some girls thought it unpatriotic to look attractive. I argued that we should. I said “Imagine that I have forced a landing at a male fighter airdrome. Soldiers are rushing to my aircraft because they know that the crew is female. I, absolutely dashing, slide out of the cockpit and take off my helmet, and my golden, curly hair streams down my shoulders. Everyone is awed by my dazzling beauty. They all desperately fall in love with me.”
Regarding the aftermath of a crash
I found myself whispering to my mama to help me. Ahead of me were the banks of the strait. I felt the wheels sliding on the water; then they hit and stuck in the sand. I had made it just to the water’s edge. Then I heard my navigators voice “What the hell!” I was crazy with relief and happiness. I turned and leaned over her; she was stuck in the cockpit with one leg pierced through the cabin floor. She was alive, she was safe!
While we were stalling, her seat had fallen to the bottom of the cabin, and her leg had stuck into the broken floor. When she took off her helmet I saw a huge bump on her forehead. She had hurt her head when we crashed. The infantrymen were running to our wrecked plane. She, who had miraculously escaped death, was now grieving over her forehead because she wanted to look attractive! Life took over from the war-we all wanted to love and be loved. She cried with dismay, “Look how many grooms are around, and who is going yo marry me with a huge bump on my forehead?” I burst out laughing, but it was a hysterical laughter. Thus I relieved myself of that intensity of fear and tension.
Regarding the finding of a child.
I met this child on one of my missions. We were flying back to our regiment at dawn, and in the outskirts of a Belorussian village I saw something very tiny, a black spot-but it was something alive. When we landed I saw a small boy all alone in a deserted village. My first impulse was to give him all the rations each pilot carries in her emergency sack: candies, a bar of chocolate, sugared milk. I grabbed it from the cabin and flew to the child, spreading my arms like wings, hoping to see a smile on the face of that tiny creature whom I could make happy for at least a few moments. But in front of me was a skinny, frozen face with enormous green eyes. And in them no glimpse of joy. “Aunty, are you going to the front?” He asked me, and in his voice was a weak hope. “My daddy is at the front. Find him, please. My mama is dying there in the trench. If you find him, she won’t die…”
So you see, we couldn’t help flying in combat, and we did our best for those tiny human beings to they would never have to suffer anymore-it was a genuine truth of the heart.
Statement of Senior Lieutenant Zoya Parfyonova pilot of the 46th, deputy commander of the squadron. Hero of the Soviet Union
Regarding emotion
I don’t want to hide anything; I want to say we experienced many feelings and emotions-fear, joy, love, sorrow-as we faced very hard experiences. Sometimes when we successfully completed a mission we even sang and danced there at the airfield because life is life, and we were young.
Statement of Senior Lieutenant Nadezhda Popova pilot of the 46th, squadron commander. Hero of the Soviet Union
Regarding the death of her brother
I was very shocked when in the early days of the war my brother was killed. We were close, and I cried for days and nights. When my mother heard that her son had perished–he was only twenty and had never kissed a girl–she met me at our house and sobbed “That damned Hitler!”
I saw the German aircraft flying along our roads filled with people who were leaving their homes, firing at them with their machine guns. Seeing this gave me feelings inside that made me want to fight them. During the war our house, in the German-occupied territory, became the fascist police office. They destryoed the apricot trees and flowers and used our garage to torture our people. They blasted our school, and it was like a terrible storm had invaded our country. The war changed our lives forever.
Statement of Captain Mariya Dolina pilot of the 125th, commander if the squadron, Hero of the soviet Union
Regarding war
It is distressing even now to speak about the war, because we lost forty-seven of our girls. And war is not a female profession, but we were defending the liberty and freedom of our country. Those who remain alive must live long and remember those who perished and should relate the experience to the younger generation. The feeling of all these women in our regiments who remain alive, and of all the people that had had to undergo the hardships of war, is that all people should work for peaceful existence of all the countries so that war does not come to any land.
Statement of Lieutenant Ludmila Popva, navigator of the 125th
Regarding a crash
When the shell exploded, the glass in the canopy of our compartment was blown out. The wind blew away everything, and the map that I had in my hand flew away also, so I had nothing with which to navigate. Before combat missions, our commander always warned us that we must know the location of places and the terrain of the flying area by heart in order to find our way without a map. We didn’t realize what the purpose was for that, and we would talk about those grumbling commanders who always tried to find some fault with us. And then, when I found myself in that situation, I realized how important it really was. I had to bring us back to our airdrome by memory. We managed to stay airborne all the way back to our own regimental airfield. Galya (the pilot) asked me to help her land the aircraft, because she felt she was not capable of doing it alone with only one arm. I helped her with the controls the best I could. When we landed she was sent to the hospital and I was assigned another pilot.
Life is life . Certainly war is a difficult job to do, but it was not confined to gravity. We found time to have fun, to dance and sing, on those nights when we hadn’t had any losses. We were young and romantic and had a lot of dreams; thoughts of the future. We came from different parts of the country. There were other Muscovites, and we would get together and imagine the day when we would go home and stroll along the streets. Everyone would look at us and admire us, the streets would be lit, and all would be sunny and shiny with war behind us. War is not a normal thing for any country, for any state, for any man, and especially for a woman. And war is not the form for settling differences between countries.
Statement of Mariya Kaloshina, mechanic of the 125th
Regarding hobbies
We were young girls and wanted to look womanlike. We were sick and tired of men’s boots, and once I decided to put those on these slippers I knitted for myself. From other people’s point of view, it was ridiculous when I appeared in my slippers in uniform!
All of us liked to knit. We liked handicraft work, especially embroidery, and found it to be the most amusing spare-time occupation, except for one girl in our regiment, Belova by name. We used to joke about her and say that if she only started embroidering, the war would soon be over. It happened that she took to embroidering, and the war was really over soon!
Statement of senior Lieutenant Galina Tenuyeva-Lomanova, pilot, commander of the formation 586th
Regarding the death of Marina Raskova
We were descending, and my navigator said, “There is the earth!” As she said it, I pulled back on the stick, the aircraft bumped the ground, we crashed, and the plane was destroyed. All three of our planes crashed. All three crew members perished in Raskova’s plane, and all of us survived in the other two planes.
When Raskova’s plane crashed into the embankment her head hit against the gun sight, and it split her head in two. When her body was found-she was to be in an open casket-a doctor preformed surgery on her and restored her head and face, using a picture. I also hit my head and face. My navigator flew by me in the cabin and struck the instrument panel and her legs were hurt.
Statement of Captain Klavdiya Terekhova-Kasatkina, secretary of the party organization of the regiment, 586th
Regarding the first losses of the 586th
Our first losses were at our training site at Engles. We lost two crews, two pilots in each aircraft. It was a shock for us and a misery, and we sobbed beside their coffins, and Raskova turned to all of us and said, “My darling girls, squeeze your heart, stop crying, you shouldn’t be sobbing, because in the future you have to face so many of them that you will ruin yourselves completely.” And since that time we have suffered great losses and overcome the gravest experiences, and we were, and we remain, the closest of friends.
Regarding uniforms
About the uniforms: we were not allowed to do anything about those too large boots. Once in the morning, when we were in training, we all lined up, and Raskova faced us and gave the command: to the right. One of the girls turned to the right, but her boots remained in the same place, and she swerved and the boots didn’t move. Raskova was a very strict woman, and she was young, just twenty-seven; she could have reprimanded her, but she didn’t. She burst out laughing. Soon after that one girl was to show that she could pack her parachute rapidly then jump. When she was jumping one boot fell off, then the other, then the leg wrappings that replaced socks, and only then did she come to the ground barefoot! Then we were allowed to resew the boots.
Statement of Senior Sergeant Inna Pasportnikova, mechanic of the 586th
Regarding the life and death of Lilya Litvyak
There is a monument to Lilya Litvyak, and each star on it is for a German aircraft she shot down. When they erected the monument to Lilya, they left a blank space on the stone so that one day “Hero of the Soviet Union” could be added. Lilya had crash-landed in a field and died there, and persons unknown buried her under the wing of the plane. Later people came and dismantled the air-craft, and no one knew Lilya was buried there. I was her mechanic when she joined the male regiment in Stalingrad but not before, in the female regiment.
Engles, on the Volga River, was our training base. We went to Engles in October, 1941, and were given our winter uniforms in November. Once, when we were all standing in formation, Lilya was told to step forward. She was in winter uniform, and she had cut the tops off of her high fur boots and made a fur collar for her winter flying suit. Marina Raskova, our commander, asked when she had done this, and Lilya replied, “during the night” Lilya wanted to have this fashion. Raskova said that during the next night she shouldn’t sleep but must take the fur collar off and put it back on the boots. She was arrested and put in an isolation room, and all night she was changing it back. This was the first time she was noticed by the other women. She was a very small person. It was strange: the war was going on, and this blonde, this girl, was thinking about her collar. I wondered, what kind of pilot will she make when she doesn’t think of more important things than the collar and how she looks! After this I started to watch her, and she was one of the best pilots; she flew her program perfectly. I never thought the time would come when I would be her mechanic.
Lilya was very fond of flowers, and whenever she saw them she picked them. She would arrive at the airfield early in the morning in the summer, pick a bucket of flowers, and spread them on the wings of her plane. She especially loved roses. In the winter she wrote to her mother in Moscow asking for a picture with roses. Her mother couldn’t find a picture, so she asked me to write to my mother, who sent a postcard with roses, but the roses were yellow and Lilya liked red. She put the picture of roses on the left side of the instrument panel and flew with it.
A few years ago, two boys were playing in a field in Belorussia and saw a snake that went into a hole. They decided to widen the hole to take the snake away, and they found a body–her body. So they dug it out and invited the commission, the specialists, to inspect the remains. This commission wrote a paper that said it was the body of a woman pilot, very small; and they found hair, her flying suit, and a gold tooth. Then the commission reburied her in a village nearby. People had been searching for her body for fifteen years. In May, 1990, President Gorbachev signed the decree that made Lilya Litvyak posthumously a Hero of the Soviet Union. Now I have the right to die. I swore that I would find Lilya before I died and that has happened, so now I can die.
End: The night witches while brilliantly brave young women. Were also just that. Young women. They wanted more than war and loss. Their stories should be told and heard. Every account in this episode are exprepts from Anne Noggle’s a Dance with Death. An accumulation of many accounts of the war from the witches' own voices. There are plenty I could not include and the ones I have, have been cut down for time. If you wish to read their full stories and the stories of others I implore you to check the book out. I for one found it very fascinating and I hope you will too.
Outro: I thank you all for listening. You can find the podcast on other platforms such as soundcloud and spotify. Please check out the full script and sources and research I have used for this episode at PassingThrough.wix.com. You can also check out art piece number one the dance of the night witches which correlates to this episode.
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