Nadezhda Popova, 1921–2013

For three years during World War II, Nadezhda Popova terrorized German troops fighting on the Eastern Front. The Soviet pilot was one of the most celebrated members of an elite all-female regiment that flew bombers that had been converted from plywood-and-canvas crop dusters. Flying only in the dark, the pilots would surprise the enemy by shutting down their engines in the final stages of their bombing runs. The Germans heard only a whoosh in the air above them and, likening the sound to a broomstick, called the women “night witches.” Their skill prompted the Germans to spread rumors that Russian women were given special injections that endowed them with cat-like night vision. “This was nonsense, of course,” said Popova, who flew 852 missions in the war, including 18 in a single night, and was named a Hero of the Soviet Union, the nation’s highest honor. “What we did have were clever, educated, very talented girls.”

Popova was driven “by patriotism and a desire for revenge,” said The New York Times. Her 20-year-old brother was killed soon after the Germans invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, and years later she would recall seeing “the smiling faces of the Nazi pilots” strafing women and children fleeing her hometown in what is now Ukraine. A trained flight instructor, Popova volunteered for the air force as soon it was opened up to women in late 1941. She was assigned to the 588th Night Bomber Regiment, and was soon flying missions in a flimsy 1920s two-seater biplane. It “lacked all but the most rudimentary instruments,” said The Daily Telegraph (U.K.). There were no parachutes, guns, radios, or radar, only maps and compasses. If hit by tracer bullets, the planes would burn like paper.

The casualty rate was high among the pilots. Popova saw dozens of her female comrades die, and thought that she might have survived the war simply because she was born lucky. “I sometimes stare into the blackness and close my eyes,” Popova said in 2010. “I can still imagine myself as a young girl, up there in my little bomber. And I ask myself, ‘Nadia, how did you do it?’”

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