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The Night Witches and Other Warrior Women of World War II

Khalid Elhassan December 8, 2019 31 min

Lyudmila Pavlichenko - World War II — WWII Red Army snipers. Pintrest

39. The Night Witches

Things got rough in the USSR during the days and months following Operation Barbarossa, the sudden German onslaught in the summer of 1941 that came within a hair’s breadth of crushing the communist state. The Soviets threw all they could lay their hands against the invaders, in a desperate attempt to stop or at least slow down the Nazis. Yet, even in those dire times, the authorities were reluctant to use women in the front line.

Women were initially barred from combat, but after repeated appeals, most notably from Major Marina Raskova, who made the case directly to Stalin, permission was granted to form female combat units. On October 8^th, 1941, three female aviation units were formed, commanded by Raskova. They were consolidated into the 588^th Night Bomber Regiment, later redesignated as the 46^th Taman Guards Night Bomber Aviation Regiment, and commonly known as The Night Witches.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.