German ww2 air navigation tools how to#

And the top speed of the Po-2 was slower than the stall speed of German fighter planes, making it hard to engage from the air. Being made of wood and canvas, the plane didn’t show up on German radars or infrared indicators. Its light weight made it more maneuverable than the German planes, which made them harder to shoot down. The Po-2 did have some advantages, however. The Night Witches also carried pistols to use if they crashed, but would save the last bullet for themselves so they wouldn’t be captured alive. If they put their bare hand on the fuselage, the flesh might come off when they pulled their hand away. In extremely cold weather, they could get frost bite. Because the cockpits were open, the pilot and navigator were exposed to the elements, including rain and freezing wind. They also had no modern instruments and had to rely on maps, compasses, stopwatches, pencils, and flashlights to find their way to their objectives.

The Night Witches carried no parachutes because they flew so close to the ground and parachutes also added extra weight. Because of those handicaps, the planes could only fly at night, under the cover of darkness. The weight of the bombs and crew forced the plane to travel low, which allowed it to be spotted easily by the enemy. The plane’s top speed was 90 miles per hour, and it could carry only two bombs, one under each wing. If a tracer bullet struck the plane, it could easily burst into flames. Some Night Witches likened the rickety Po-2 to “a coffin with wings” because the plane was made of plywood with canvas stretched over it. The plane was like a death trap waiting to spring. The pilot sat up front and the navigator, who also was the bombardier, sat in the rear. So the 588th was given out-of-date Polikarpov Po-2 biplanes that were primarily used as crop dusters and training planes. Unfortunately, there weren’t enough modern planes to go around.

But in a unique twist of fate, the “least qualified” became the most feared and famous. Officially, the women were treated just like their male counterparts – except they were given more soap.Īfter the training, the pilots deemed most qualified were assigned to the 586th Fighter Aviation Regiment the second most qualified to 587th Bomber Aviation Regiment and the least qualified to the 588th Night Bomber Aviation Regiment. Some also cut their hair short to appear like men, but painted flowers on their planes and used navigation pencils to color their lips to add a feminine touch to the war. And the boots were sometimes so oversize that the women tore up their bedding and stuffed it in their boots to make them fit better. The clothes were often too large and baggy.

They spent an intensive year training, learning not just how to fly, but to navigate and maintain the aircraft too – training that normally took several years to complete.īecause the Soviet Air Force had no females up until then, the women were given old men’s uniforms. Most were university students in their late teens to mid-twenties. Around 400 were accepted for each regiment. Stalin also authorized the creation of three all-women fighting groups: Some were integrated into regiments to fight alongside male pilots. She showed him the letters and convinced him to have the Soviet Air Force accept women as combat pilots. Joseph Stalin was one of Raskova’s admirers. After all, if women were allowed to fight alongside men on the ground, why not in the air too? Raskova received a slew of letters from women protesting the prohibition. But when Germany invaded Russia in 1941, Russian women weren’t allowed in the Soviet Air Force even though they were allowed on the front lines in the army. Flying was popular in the 1930s and thousands of women belonged to flying clubs. Women pilots, though, weren’t unusual in the Soviet Union. The Night Witches were organized by Major Marina Raskova, who was essentially Russia’s equivalent to our Amelia Earhart. All the members of the 588th were women, including the navigators, ground crews, and support staff. The pilots weren’t the only women in the 588th. But the Night Witches were the first women military pilots in the 20th century to directly engage an enemy in combat. In World War II, American women such as the WASPs supported the war by ferrying and testing planes. Who were these Night Witches? They were the all-women pilots of Russia’s 588th Night Bomber Aviation Regiment. What was one the most horrifying sounds a German soldier on the Russian front could hear in the dead of night – a sound that would turn his heart to jelly? The soft “whooshing” of the wind off the struts of a “Night Witch” jerry-rigged biplane bomber described as the eerie sound of a witch’s broom as it quietly glided in to drop its payload of bombs.

German ww2 air navigation tools how to#