The Female Fighter Pilots of World War II

The women of the 588th Night Bomber Regiment, with their aircraft in the background

Night Witches: The Female Fighter Pilots of World War II -- Megan Garber, The Atlantic

Members of the 588th Night Bomber Regiment decorated their planes with flowers ... and dropped 23,000 tons of bombs.

It was the spring of 1943, at the height of World War II. Two pilots, members of the Soviet Air Force, were flying their planes -- Polikarpov Po-2 biplanes, built mainly of plywood and canvas -- over a Soviet railway junction. Their passage was on its way to being a routine patrol ... until the pilots found themselves confronted by a collection of German bombers. Forty-two of them.

The pilots did what anyone piloting a plane made of plywood would do when confronted with enemy craft and enemy fire: they ducked. They sent their planes into dives, returning fire directly into the center of the German formation. The tiny planes' flimsiness was in some ways an asset: their maximum speed that was lower than the stall speed of the Nazi planes, meaning that the pilots could maneuver their craft with much more agility than their attackers could. The outnumbered Soviets downed two Nazi craft before one of their own planes lost its wing to enemy fire. The pilot bailed out, landing, finally, in a field.

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My Comment: I asked my father once on why did he not join the Soviet Air Force when the war broke (he served in the Soviet military from 1941 -1946).... his answer .... because of his university math degree they needed him to serve in an artillery unit .... but he was relieved by this decision .... he saw too many Soviet planes shot down by the Nazis at the beginning of the war that convinced him that serving as a pilot was a death wish and he was not interested in committing suicide.

Update: Here is another interesting World War II story from the BBC .... How aerial photographs tracked down Hitler's flying bombs.