Record-breaking aviator who created the women's combat air regiments
During the 1938 Rodina flight, with fuel running out over the taiga, Raskova's navigator cockpit in the nose was the most dangerous place to be in a crash landing. Ordered by Grizodubova to bail out, she jumped into the Siberian wilderness with nothing but two bars of chocolate — and survived ten days alone before rescue.
The first woman navigator in the Soviet Air Force and one of the first three women awarded Hero of the Soviet Union (1938). She set a women's world distance record on the Moscow–Far East nonstop flight aboard the Rodina in 1938, parachuting into the taiga to save her crew. In 1941 she used her personal access to Stalin to win approval for three all-female air regiments, the 586th Fighter, 587th Bomber, and 588th Night Bomber regiments, the last of which became legendary as the 'Night Witches.' She personally commanded the 587th Bomber Regiment until her death in a crash en route to the Stalingrad front in 1943.
Career Timeline
- 1931Draftswoman, Aero Navigation Laboratory, Zhukovsky Air Force Academy
- 1933First woman to qualify as navigator in the Soviet Air Force
- 1934Instructor, Zhukovsky Air Force Academy — first woman
- 1935Qualified as instrument flight instructor; graduated Central Flying Club
- 1937–1939Staff consultant, Special Department, NKVD
- 1937–1938Set multiple women's world aviation records as navigator
- 1938Moscow–Far East nonstop flight on Rodina; awarded Hero of the Soviet Union
- 1941Founded three women's air regiments — 586th, 587th, 588th
- 1942–1943Commander, 587th Bomber Aviation Regiment; led conversion to Pe-2 bombers
Related historical events
Founding the Women's Air Regiments
After the German invasion in June 1941, women pilots and navigators across the Soviet Union volunteered for frontline service. But their applications were routinely blocked or delayed by bureaucratic obstruction despite no formal ban on women in combat. Raskova, receiving their letters and armed with her Hero of the Soviet Union status and NKVD rank, became convinced that all-female combat units were necessary. On 8 September 1941 she delivered a speech calling for women pilots to be allowed to fight. And she used her personal access to Stalin to press the case directly. On 8 October 1941 the State Defence Committee issued GKO Order No. 0099, authorizing three all-female air regiments under the 122nd Aviation Group. Raskova set up a training base at Engels in Saratov Oblast and sorted roughly 1,200 volunteers by experience: the most advanced pilots to the 586th Fighter Regiment (Yak-1s), professionally qualified pilots to the 587th Bomber Regiment (Pe-2s), and the least experienced to the 588th Night Bomber Regiment (Po-2s). Every role (pilots, navigators, mechanics, armourers, engineers) was filled by women. The regiments compressed what was normally four years of training into a few months and began deploying to the front from spring 1942. Raskova personally commanded the 587th, leading its conversion from obsolete Su-2s to the cutting-edge Pe-2 dive bomber, securing the new aircraft through direct negotiation with Aviation Industry Commissar Shakhurin.