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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

37. The Night Witches Take Flight

The women of the 588^th Night Bomber Regiment flew in slow – and by the standards of WWII, antiquated – plywood and canvass Polikarpov Po-2 biplanes, originally designed in the 1920s for flight training and crop dusting. Flying such old and unmilitary machines into combat during the daytime was suicide, but if flown at night under the cover of darkness, it was possible for the obsolescent Po-2s to sting the enemy and survive.

On the night of June 28^th, 1942, the 588^th flew its first combat sortie, a strike against a German headquarters facility. The flimsy Po-2s could not carry much – only two light bombs, over a short distance. However, their airfields were close to the front lines, so there was enough time to fly, bomb, return to base, reload, and repeat. Sometimes, pilots of the 588^th flew up to eighteen bombing missions during a single night.

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.