"Grounded" Inspiration: How the Soviet "Night Witches" terrorized the Nazi-occupied skies of WWII

     When we began looking for inspiration for our play "Grounded" the theme of a fearless woman taking to the skies was central to The Pilot's story.  One of our most favorite stories of WWII comes from the Soviet Union* where women were given an interesting opportunity not afforded to their Allied female counterparts: the ability to fly bombing missions.
    In 1941, as the Soviet army experienced catastrophic losses on the front lines battle and  the Nazis forged into Russia, Eastern Europe and the Baltics, the very real prospect of losing the Soviet Union to the Nazis loomed.   With a desperate need to have as many soldiers on the ground to fight with the infantry, out of necessity women were deemed suitable to fly in combat, and Stalin gave the command to form a squadron of female pilots.  In Soviet Russia, women were often deemed capable (within a hierarchical set of restrictions) to perform the jobs previously held by men, and thus a squadron of female pilots was born.

  Headed by the formidable pilot Colonel Marina Raskova, this all-volunteer squadron flew the rickety wooden Polikarpov Po-2 bi-planes. These planes contained no navigating equipment in their open-air cockpit, fit only two pilots, and were built with plywood frames and canvas stretched over the wings.  With only compasses and paper maps to navigate, these pilots had to fly their slow, outdated planes flew under the cover of night with no light in the cockpits, carrying exactly six bombs. 
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   The pilots would fly as close to their targets as possible, and then to avoid detection would KILL THEIR ENGINES when they were close enough to the ground, glide silently over their targets, drop their bombs, and then re-start their engines.  These planes made an eerie "whooooooosh" sound as they swept over the Nazis, giving the sound of a witches broomstick. 
    Nazis began referring to them as the “Nachthexen,” or “Night Witches," which made these female pilots incredibly happy. To be so feared by such a fearsome regime must have been a fantastic feeling.  The Nazis were terrified of them, these awesomely brave women who flew canvas planes without fear, and for their gumption they were deemed the incarnation of the famous Russian fairy-tale witch "Baba Yaga."  

  The Night Witches flew over 30,000 bombing raids, and their most famous "witch," Nadezhda Popova flew 852 missions.  Were it not for these women going out in unstable aircraft every night, to endlessly drop bombs on the Nazis, the Soviet Union, which experienced the highest casualties of the war, would have fallen to the Nazis.
   And yet....their story is not widely known outside of Russian History books, and even then they often receive only a footnote.  One of the most remarkable battle squadrons to take to the skies in WWII,  a group of the bravest pilots flying against such great odds, was run by a bunch of "witches."
    Get on your broomsticks, ladies!

​Learn more about the Night Witches here.

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* This is not a commendation of the Soviet Union, or least of all Stalin.  The Soviets were a brutal, violent, dictatorship that carried out  the Ukrainian Holocaust, murdered millions of their own citizens, and committed an atrocious reign of terror.  The fact that these women were Soviet does not make us admire or respect them any less.  History is complicated.