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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

34. Keeping the Nazis Up at Night

Pilots of the Night Witches in 1942. Wikimedia

The psychological damage of the 588^th bomber raids might have exceeded the physical harm. The incessant raids throughout the night kept exhausted Nazis from getting adequate rest, and the fear of a random bomb falling on one at any moment further frayed nerves that were often already at the snapping point.

The Germans nicknamed the Soviet aviatrixes Nachtexen, or “Night Witches“, because the whooshing noise of their wooden planes – whose pilots sometimes cut off the engines and glided to their targets to increase the chances of surprise – sounded like a sweeping broom. So feared and hated were the Night Witches, that any German who downed one was automatically awarded an Iron Cross.

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.