Night Witches

During World War II (1939–1945), the Soviet Union fielded an all-female air unit officially known as the 588th Night Bomber Aviation Regiment. Informally known as the Night Witches, the unit went on to become one of the war’s most accomplished and decorated Soviet military units. Female pilots were also assigned to the 586th and 587th Soviet Aviation Regiments, but the 588th regiment was unique: not only were its pilot ranks composed entirely of women, but it also featured all-female ground crews, navigators, and support staff.

The Night Witches unit was primarily organized and trained by Marina Raskova (1912–1943), who led the interviewing process involving the thousands of Soviet women who responded to a recruitment campaign in the summer of 1941 following Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union. Over the course of the war, the Night Witches mainly focused on disruptive nighttime bombing campaigns targeting the German front lines. The nickname is a literal translation of the German Nachthexen, which the German military used as a slur after learning of the 588th Night Bomber Aviation Regiment’s gender composition.

Background

During the 1930s, Germany and the Soviet Union developed a mutual distrust: the Germans under National Socialist (Nazi) leader Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) had come to view the Communist Party-led Soviet Union as its main European rival, while the Soviet Union under Communist Party General Secretary Joseph Stalin (1878–1953) held a similar view of Germany. As Hitler consolidated increasing levels of power over the course of the 1930s, many observers believed war between Germany and the Soviet Union would be the inevitable result.

However, to the surprise of many, Hitler and Stalin concluded a nonaggression pact in August 1939. Under the terms of the agreement, Germany and the Soviet Union agreed that neither country would launch military attacks on the other, either independently or as part of broader international alliances. The nonaggression pact carried a ten-year term, with a clause triggering an automatic five-year extension at the end of that period if neither country formally announced plans to leave the pact.

In September 1939, Germany invaded Poland, marking the outbreak of World War II. The nonaggression pact effectively functioned as a tool allowing Germany and the Soviet Union to divide Poland between them. Approximately two weeks after the German invasion, the Soviet Union moved into eastern Poland in coordination with Germany, marking the Soviet Union’s entry into the war.

However, Hitler broke the nonaggression pact between Germany and the Soviet Union by ordering German forces to invade Soviet territory in June 1941. The campaign, known by the military code name Operation Barbarossa, ultimately proved to be Germany’s largest troop mobilization operation of World War II. The Soviet Union was devastated by the surprise attack, which the country was unable to counter effectively: most of the Soviet air force was on the ground during the initial throes of the German invasion, which gave Germany a decisive air advantage and resulted in the decimation of the Soviets’ aerial forces. The German invasion of the Soviet Union marked a critical turning point in World War II. It prompted the Soviets to leave the German-led Axis to join the Allies.

Overview

Suffering heavy losses as a consequence of Germany’s surprise invasion, the Soviet Union began an aggressive recruitment campaign to enlist soldiers to defend the country. Raskova, a navigator and military instructor who already held the prestigious Hero of the Soviet Union honor, implored Stalin to accept women into the Soviet military in large numbers as part of a bid to revive its heavily depleted air force. The Soviet Union already had significant numbers of female servicemembers, with estimates suggesting that as many as one-third of all active Soviet military pilots were women by 1940. However, prior to the German invasion, female Soviet military recruits had generally been passed over in favor of their male counterparts. In October 1941, with Germany advancing deeper into Soviet territory and the Soviet military still struggling to recover from its massive losses, Stalin authorized female military recruits to serve in mass numbers. Raskova, who had previously issued public air force recruitment campaigns aimed at female volunteers, interviewed thousands of applicants and selected promising recruits for assignment into the 122nd Composite Air Group.

After arriving at their training facility, the members of the 122nd Composite Air Group were reorganized into the 586th, 587th, and 588th Soviet Aviation Regiments. There, the female recruits underwent intensive flight, navigation, mechanical, and strategic training in preparation for deployment to active duty. Upon its activation, the all-female 588th regiment was assigned to carry out sorties under cover of night. Sortie is a military term to describe a type of military attack undertaken by forces that are confined in a defensive position.

The 588th regiment’s missions mainly consisted of low-altitude flights that targeted the German front lines with bomb attacks meant to inflict both physical and psychological damage. These bombing runs were strategically designed to disrupt the German forces occupying the Soviet Union, specifically to disturb their sleep and weaken their effectiveness on the battlefield during daytime confrontations with Soviet defenders. Carrying out these airborne sorties throughout the night, the female pilots of the 588th regiment worked to extend their noisy attacks for the greatest possible lengths of time to maximize their disruptive effects. The pilots would then sleep during the day, awakening in the evening hours for their mission briefings and carrying out further sorties after nightfall.

As the front-line German soldiers became increasingly familiar with the relentless attacks, the Soviet air regiment changed tactics. The pilots began approaching in broad circular flight patterns, turning off their engines as they neared their targets to approach in silence. After releasing their bombs, the pilots would then attempt to restart their aircraft and retreat. Each of the Soviet pilots flying the sorties was armed with a pistol. If captured, they would use the pistol’s final bullet to commit suicide rather than be taken prisoner. Soviet military records indicate that approximately thirty of the Night Witches failed to return from deployment on a bombing mission.

Upon discovering that the aerial attackers were women, the Germans gave them the derisive nickname Nachthexen, which translates into English as Night Witches. The moniker reflected the sounds made by the regiment’s bombers. With the engines silenced, the wind echoed off the airplanes’ struts and created a wind-like whistle that observers likened to the haunting whoosh of a witch’s broom. Though the German military intended the term Nachthexen as an insult, it was appropriated as a compliment by the Night Witches themselves. The term was later broadly applied to all female servicemembers in the Soviet military.

Impact

World War II historians estimate that the Night Witches flew approximately thirty thousand missions over the course of the war, depriving frontline German soldiers of sleep and impairing their ability to perform on the battlefield. Under the command of Major Yevdokia Bershanskaya (1913–1982), the Night Witches also succeeded in destroying German military facilities and installations that were strategically important to their Soviet campaign. The Soviet Union ultimately succeeded in neutralizing the German military and fending off the invasion after joining the Allies, although the nation suffered millions of casualties in the process. Hitler’s decision to invade the Soviet Union is now widely regarded as a critical tactical error, with some historians opining that Germany’s failed Soviet campaign may ultimately have cost it victory in the war.

By the end of the war, the 588th Night Bomber Aviation Regiment had distinguished itself as one of the Soviet Union’s most decorated and valorous military units. The Soviet Union conferred medals for bravery on approximately two hundred thousand female servicemembers over the course of the war, with eighty-nine receiving the nation’s highest honor, Hero of the Soviet Union. Of those eighty-nine women, twenty-two were members of the Night Witches.

Despite their success, the Night Witches largely receded to the status of a historical footnote for decades. The accomplishments of the groundbreaking regiment were rediscovered in the 2010s by the high-profile American historical fiction author Kate Quinn (1981–). Quinn adapted the story of the Night Witches into the 2019 novel The Huntress, which became an international bestseller.

Bibliography

Bublitz, Rachel. The Night Witches. Dramatic Publishing Company, 2020. Print.

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“A Pact with the Soviet Union.” Facing History & Ourselves, 29 Apr. 2022, www.facinghistory.org/resource-library/pact-soviet-union. Accessed 22 Sept. 2022.

Rosenwald, Michael S. “Fierce, Feared and Female: The WWII Pilots Known as the ‘Night Witches.’” Washington Post, 1 Mar. 2019, www.washingtonpost.com/history/2019/03/01/fierce-feared-female-wwii-pilots-known-night-witches/. Accessed 22 Sept. 2022.

“The Soviet Night Witches.” Wright Museum of World War II, 1 Oct. 2020, www.wrightmuseum.org/2020/10/01/the-soviet-night-witches/. Accessed 22 Sept. 2022.

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“Who Are the Night Witches?” The Museum of Flight, blog.museumofflight.org/who-are-the-night-witches. Accessed 22 Sept. 2022.

Wilson, George Tipton. “Red Air Force Heroines: The Night Witches.” Warfare History Network, warfarehistorynetwork.com/red-air-force-heroines-the-night-witches/. Accessed 22 Sept. 2022.