'They were adrenaline junkies': The remarkable all-female flying team that helped defeat the Nazis – with wooden planes14 hours agoShareSaveChristopher LuuShareSaveAndrei Linde(Credit: Andrei Linde)

A new episode of the BBC's History's Secret Heroes podcast focuses on the Night Witches, a group of Russian female pilots who bombed German forces under the cover of darkness.

World War Two is filled with so many extraordinary tales of heroism that not all of them have got their due. Now BBC Radio 4's History's Secret Heroes podcast, narrated by Helena Bonham Carter, has set out to celebrate these unsung war heroes. And none, arguably, are more remarkable than those covered in a new episode – a squadron of Russian female pilots who flew under the cover of night and carried out covert bombing missions.

The Germans would go on to call these women die Nacht Hexen, or the Night Witches. They were an elite band of pilots, navigators, ground crew and mechanics, whose passion for aviation and strong sense of duty led them to break gender barriers.

Andrei LindeThe wooden planes the Night Witches flew were typically used to spray pesticide (Credit: Andrei Linde)

Those who were part of the squadron included aspiring pilots and best friends Polina Gelman and Galya Dokutovich. Both had learnt to fly when young – and when in October 1941, the order was given to famed Soviet aviator Marina Raskova to recruit women into female flying units, including the Night Witches, they jumped at the chance.

"They definitely were adrenaline junkies. They wanted to fly, they were crazy about flying," historian Lyuba Vinogradova, author of Avenging Angels: Soviet Women Snipers on the Eastern Front (1941-45), says of the two women. "And second of all they were extremely patriotic. So, they, both of them, volunteered."

Their commander Raskova was an inspiration. "She was a great celebrity of her time. Her name, her picture, her face were known all over [the country]. She was a role model. She was a woman that showed that women are perfectly capable of this kind of flying," Vinogradova says.

Turning limitations to their advantage

The Night Witches trained near the Volga River near Engels, Russia, and had to fit what would have typically been three years of training into just three months. The women found themselves both selected as navigators, rather than pilots, something which initially disappointed Dokutovich – though after she got up in the air, she became more positive about this outcome, writing: "Now I see how exciting being a navigator is! When you have done a little flying you walk around in a dream, and just want to get back up in the sky."

Andrei LindeThe women completed what should have been three years of training in just three months (Credit: Andrei Linde)

Because the Soviet forces were short of aircraft, the women were issued wooden Po-2 planes, which were not fit for battle, having typically been used to spray pesticide. On top of that, they weren't given guns, radios or parachutes. As a result, they prioritised carrying bombs.

When it came to their planes, they used their limitations to their advantage: the Po-2s made hardly any noise, couldn't be tracked by radio location, and were too small to show up on infrared locators. So the women were able to fly over German territory, shut off their engines and glide – and more easily release their bombs without detection.

The Soviet pilot girl who fought the Nazi and became a star

According to Vinogradova, the pace of their operations was relentless: "Every four minutes an aircraft would take off, bomb the target and turn back, and the other aircraft would take their place."

The Germans spread stories of the attacks across areas they occupied, depicting the Night Witches as a supernatural force. They were given the name die Nacht Hexen, or the Night Witches, because their wooden aircraft were likened to brooms, while their tactics made it feel as if they could appear and disappear without a trace.

History's Secret Heroes

In History's Secret Heroes, Helena Bonham Carter recounts untold stories of heroes from World War Two whose acts of resistance, deception and courage helped defeat fascism. Learn all about forgotten stories of survival, bravery and espionage – from the opera singers who helped dozens of Jewish people escape Nazi Germany to the woman that Winston Churchill would go on to call his favourite spy.

If you’d like to listen to the full podcast episode on the Night Witches, search for History's Secret Heroes wherever you get your podcasts.

The Night Witches' victories earned them distinction, and in 1943 they officially became the Forty-Sixth Guards Night Bomber Aviation Regiment. However, in July 1943, the Germans surprised the pilots with a new tactic: they kept their anti-aircraft guns silent, and instead waged a night fighter air attack against the bombers. Dokutovich was killed on 31 July, along with seven of her fellow "Witches" in what Vinogradova calls "the worst night probably in the entire history of the regiment". Nevertheless, the women continued to fight right up until the Allies declared victory in May 1945.

"They were at the airfield ready to fly a mission when it was announced to them," Vinogradova says of Gelman and the other Witches' commitment to the cause.

More like this:

• How Audrey Hepburn became a secret spy during World War Two

• Churchill's secret weapon against the Nazis

• The life-changing day World War Two began

In October 1945, the regiment was officially disbanded and it would hold the distinction of being the only unit within the Red Army to still be entirely female at the end of World War Two. Gelman would later join the Military Institute of Foreign Languages, and name her daughter Galya after her fallen friend.

Gelman died in 2005, and towards the end of her life she reflected on why the Witches were so successful – crediting the fact that they performed their duties voluntarily. Speaking to historian Reina Pennington, Gelman said, "It was their free will, and that which is done at the call of the heart is always done better than that which is done out of obligation."

* This article is adapted from a script by Alex von Tunzelmann.

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