The Right Way To Get Lost

commanderspock | lauranicus | stalins-princess

Night Witches

for those not in the know, night witches were russian lady bombers who bombed the shit out of german lines in WW2. Thing is though, they had the oldest, noisiest, crappest planes in the entire world. The engines used to conk out halfway through their missions, so they had to climb out on the wings mid flight to restart the props. the planes were also so noisy that to stop germans from hearing them combing and starting up their anti aircraft guns, they’d climb up to a certain height, coast down to german positions, drop their bombs, restart their engines in midair, and get the fuck out of dodge.

their leader flew over 200 missions and was never captured.

I had the chance to visit the Flying Heritage Collection in Seattly recently and it was amazing thanks to the volunteer who accompanied us (bf and I) for about 2 hours and told us incredible stories! That’s when I first learnt about the Night Witches -as nicknamed by the German.

The Night Witches could only carry 2 bombs in a plane and one woman piloted (or glidded into ennemy lines) while another dropped the bombs so they would do many rounds per night. In fact, most of the women bomber pilots who survived the war in 1945 had racked up nearly 1000 missions each.

(Source: sovietico)