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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

33. The Night Witches’ Tally

Irina Sebrova, who flew 1008 missions during the war. Wikimedia

The women of the 588^th braved bullets and frostbite in the air, and battled sexual harassment and skepticism on the ground. Their commander, Marina Raskova, bucked them up with the Twelve Commandment of the Night Witches, the first of which was: “Be proud you are a woman“. Killing Nazis was their primary goal, but in their free time, they did needlework, patchwork, decorated their airplanes, and danced.

Flying up to eighteen bombing missions a night, the 588^th put up quite a record. One of their pilots, Irina Sebrova, flew over a thousand sorties. Collectively, the Night Witches flew over 30,000 combat sorties, during which they dropped over 3000 tons of bombs, and 26,000 incendiary munitions. Their last flight took place on May 4^th, 1945, about forty miles from Berlin. Despite being one of the most highly decorated Soviet Air Force units, they were not included in the Victory Day Parade at war’s end, because their Polikarpov planes were too slow and looked too old.

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.