July 2, 2019 • 30 mins
The 588th Night Bomber Regiment didn't have the best equipment, and they didn't have the best planes. What this all-female bomber regiment did have, however, was unstoppable ambition, brilliant strategies and dozens of fearless pilots. Listen in to learn more about the rise of the terrifying force the German soldiers called die Nachthexen -- the Night Witches.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
(00:27):
to the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you so much for
tuning in. My name is Ben, my name is Nol
And today we are joined as always with our super producer,
Casey La Bouche Pegram. Give it up for in, folks,
I did it a weird thing, Ben, I said my
name the way I say it on our other show stuff.
They don't want you to know because you didn't start
(00:48):
off with a pithy little scene like you usually do.
That's right through me. Yes, well, it's a it's a
different recording time for us. You know, we've been doing
a lot out a weird scheduling shuffling and like I'm
I'm not in my uh, I'm not in my afternoon
Bin yet in your history zone? Not not not quite,
(01:09):
not quite, but we're in a bit of a spooky zone,
and we're talking about an adventure. I do have something
that does relate slightly. Today's show concerns a pivotal role
of women in aviation. And I don't know if I
ever mentioned this to you, but my grandmother, one of
my grandmothers, was actually a pilot or trained as one
(01:32):
in World War Two. I did not know that. It's
a true story. All. It's a true story. She was
a teacher and in the part of the world where
she resided, one of the local programs that the government
was supporting was to train teachers, some teachers to be pilots.
From World War Two. I don't think she ever shot
anyone out of the sky. No, that's that's okay. I
(01:55):
mean she's you can still be a badass and not
have any kills under your bell. I mean, being a
pilot in any kind of war, so situation is got
to be absolutely harrowing. Oh yeah, absolutely. I mean even
comparing World War Two to the modern day, the planes
are just so much more dangerous, and a dog fight,
it's kind of like a knife fight, you know. I
don't know if you guys have ever, Casey, if you
(02:15):
ever been in a knife fight that you'd be willing
to talk about on air? Uh, None, that I'm willing
to disclose on air. That's yeah, not even in your
private life, is La Bouche? Well, like I said that
that I'm willing to disclose on air. So you can
think what you want to think, you know, you know
what they say though you guys. They say never bring
a knife to a dog fight, that is true, or
a dog to a knife fight, because that would just
be cruel. Yeah, that's that's no good. Now, it's definitely
(02:38):
no good. Casey on the Case, Speaking of which I
am absolutely thrilled to be wearing one of our patented
Casey on the Case t shirts right now, featuring a
delightful photo of young Casey Pegram in his Macy's catalog
modeling days. Yeah, MI like Macy's or J. C. Penny
one of those. You can get one for yourself by
going to t public dot com slash ridiculous, his sorry,
(03:00):
where we have an assortment of fine garments or mouse
pads or what have you available, Perhaps an Upton's ad
if anybody remembers Upton's. I remember Upton the department store
similar to Dillard's or Macy's. Yeah, it's just another one
of those anchor stores at the mall, but I think
they went away. Also, also for anyone who's thinking, oh man,
(03:20):
I would love a shirt like that, why don't I
have one right now? Don't worry, folks, I'm thinking the
same thing. I I got a little snake, so I'm
gonna have to find one for myself. I'm right there
with you. Today's story. The protagonist of today's story deserve
T shirts all their own. At the very least, our
story does take place in World War Two. It does
(03:41):
not take place in the US. It takes place in
the Nazi occupied Soviet Union, where German soldiers had a
very real and very profound fear of witches. But maybe
not the kind of witches you might automatically imagine, right, Well, no,
maybe not, but it certainly was maybe tying in to
kind of a cultural fear, uh you know, which is
(04:03):
loom large in German culture, right, Hansel and Gretel, surely others,
you know, Germans are notoriously afraid of, which is everybody
knows that. But you're right. They were afraid of a
very particular type of witches who were members of the
all female Night Bomber Regiment, which was part of the
Soviet Air Forces. And these women um flew over thirty
(04:25):
thousand missions over the course of three years, dropped twenty
three thousand tons of bombs on the Nazis um and
they did all of their flights under the cover of night,
earning them the nickname the Night witches. And this name
did not arrive entirely because of the time during which
(04:45):
they chose to to make these bomb runs. It also
came about because of their approach. They were very difficult
to detect because they used a very dangerous strategy. Their
planes were made of plywood in envis and the best
way that the German soldiers could know there was a
(05:07):
night which in the area or scouting them out, was
they would hear the soft whoosh of ap plywood and
canvas plane. So it's it's literally like someone silently flying
and then hearing a whoosh followed by a cavalcade of explosions.
So each of these planes had a pilot and a navigator,
(05:30):
all female. Let's let's talk a little bit about how
they came to be. So June of nine marks the
seventy seven anniversary of the beginning of the night, which
is and there's a lot of context that pours into
this because in June of one, access Powers pushed into
the USSR, using the largest invading force in the history
(05:54):
of war, not the history of Russian war, not the
history of European war, the history of human war. It's
like saying the history of the world exactly exactly. For example,
the infamous Operation Barbarossa saw about four million troops invade
Russia from the west, and because of this operation, Russian
(06:15):
leaders began to worry that Moscow itself might be overtaken. Yeah,
it's true. And this was in fact one of the
most bloody and violent, terrible military actions considered atrocities, known
for its atrocities in World War two. Um, these atrocities
were perpetrated against the Russians by the Nazis and the soldiers,
(06:36):
the male soldiers of the Soviet Union were heading up
the front lines when the forces from the Axis Powers
invaded and overtook the capital of Russia. Right. World War
two losses of the Soviet Union from all related causes
were about twenty seven million people. And that's a that's
(06:57):
a ballpark estimate, counting civilian and military. And they were
essentially treated like cannon fodder. Right. They were treated as
utterly expendable by the Allied forces. Right. Right. So the
U s s R. Had several big things going for
it in World War Two. One, the terrain is notoriously,
notoriously dangerous and inhospitable. And second, they had a lot
(07:21):
of manpower, So the idea is maybe they could overwhelm
opponents through the sheer force of numbers alone. But this, really,
this is where we get into things like scorched earth strategies,
the kind of mentality that says, I will I like
sort of like what's similar to the people in Fukushima
(07:41):
or Chernobyl who killed themselves committed suicide to save the
greater population. Because people are fighting for what they see
is the greater good. Everyone is involved. No one is
not at war in Russia at this time, and from
the very beginning of the U. S s r. Involvement
in the war, there is already an active female Soviet pilot.
(08:04):
You may have heard her called the Russian Amelia Earhart.
Her name is Colonel Marina Raskolva. And while she was
an active pilot, she started receiving letters from women all
across Russia who said, look, I want to join the war.
I want to help anyway I can. Let's fight these Nazis,
Let's get these Germans off our land. And many of
(08:29):
them would say, you know, I work as in a
support role, right like I work at a factory making armaments,
or I work at a hospital or something but I
want to be on the front lines. They didn't end
up being quite on the front lines because those male
Soviets sold as we talked about who were on the
front lines, we're getting creamed. So the Red Army UM
(08:51):
commanders were absolutely desperate and needed something to help turn
the tide of battle. So in October of ninety one,
Stalin himself UM posted Raskova to head up an all
female squadron, air squadron to be specific. And this is
a historical thing because this was the only air squadron
(09:13):
that was, according to records, all female, and it was
the five hundred and eighty eight Night Bomber Regiment. And
the pilots weren't the only women in the regiment. Everyone
in was female, from the pilots to the commanders to
the mechanics. That's right. So this team began to assemble
(09:34):
in nineteen forty two. Their ages ranged from seventeen to
twenty six years old, and they took up residents in
a small village by the name of Ingles, where they
started training. Um Raskova personally headed up this training and
she did not take any uh any crap from from anybody.
(09:55):
She was very hard nosed instructor and commander. Yes, there's
a gre article about this called The Little Known Story
of the Night, which is an all female force in
World War Two published in Vanity Fair as well as
Atlas Obscura by author Eric Grindhauser, and in this he
depicts the way that Riskova immediately immersed her trainees into
(10:18):
the program. They had to shave their heads right, They
had to wear size forty two boots. Supply chain issues
were already in full effect at this time in Russia's
military history, so they didn't have custom uniforms. They had
to wear these bulky, ill fitting uniforms that were made
(10:40):
for dude soldiers. And one of the pilots said it
was it was kind of a rough landing for on
the first stage. She said, we didn't recognize ourselves in
the mirror. We saw boys there. And the problems with
adjust thing to the pre existing supplies didn't stop with
(11:02):
the uniforms, unfortunately, it continued onto the planes they were flying.
These planes called pull It Carpoff PO two's. These are
two seated open cockpit by planes. These are the plywood
ones I was mentioning earlier with the canvas stretched over them.
They have absolutely no armor. They're already obsolete by the forties.
(11:24):
These are the kind of things that really incentivize you
to fly quietly and in a sneaky way, because one
shot and boom, you're gone, kind of like my old
Saturn sc car I had. Yeah, wrapped that one around
a tree? Really, yeah? Are you okay? Yeah? Okay, that's fair.
These are probably unrelated though, right, these are unrelated. This
(11:46):
had nothing to do world to World War two, that's
fair now. But I remember the Red Baron, Yes, it was,
it was. He was he exclusively a Peanuts character? Or
was that actually a historical fighter pilot guy makes great pizza.
That's also true. But seriously, I really don't know. Oh of,
I mean, there's Pepperoni. No, the Red Baron he was.
He was a Prussian fighter pilot. Um. The idea of
(12:07):
a plane being made of wood and canvas is unusual,
But it wasn't that unusual, right, because this was like
cheap material, It was lightweight. Again, it was quiet, right exactly,
And in previous conflicts something like this, this style of
biplane aircraft would have been fine. It's just so many
years had passed and there was already better technology out there.
(12:31):
These planes were also pretty slow, and because they had
a slower stall speed than the standard German fighters at
the time, it made it tough for the Axis or
the German forces to actually shoot them. It's kind of
like when there are two cars racing and one of
them maybe let's say, as a truck with a big
block engine, and it can pick up speed, but once
(12:53):
it gets up to a high speed, it has a
tough time slowing down. So what would have ordinarily been
a disadvantage for these aircraft actually made them tougher to hit. Also, again,
these are exposed cockpits and this is Russia. Oh my god,
I can only imagine that. Again, that's why I picture
the red baron. There's also a detail about these planes
(13:14):
that did not give them a particularly good advantage. They
had to fly pretty low, which would make sense for
them to be flying at night. Um, but gosh, during
a regular dogfight during the day, it seems very very challenging.
You'd be kind of like a sitting duck. Um. But
here's a question to ben these open cockpits, like they
wore some kind of like protection over their faces right
(13:35):
to keep them from sure, God, googles and probably the
probably the whole nine the leather skull cap thing right
with the strap that you would buckle under your chin. Yeah,
I would imagine so. But here's the thing. The women
of the fight were unafforded. They were absolutely ready to
go and do whatever it took to pitch into the
(13:57):
war effort. So after their first bomb run, which took
place on June ninety two, they absolutely not obliterated, but
definitely slowed down the Nazi forces with these overnight bombing
runs um and continued until the end of the war. Yeah. Yeah,
at their height. So it started first bombing at June,
(14:18):
and at the height of their strength, they had forty
two person crews each which were flying get this, multiple
runs as soon as the sun set. The record would
be like eighteen runs a night. Why would you make
eighteen incredibly dangerous bombing runs, you may ask. It's because
the planes could only carry six bombs at a time,
(14:40):
so as soon as they dropped those six, provided they survived,
they flew back, got another six bombs, and then flew
back again. This meant that there was also a tightly
controlled weight limit. That's part of why they flew at
lower altitudes. But that's also the reason they could not
bring parachutes. That is, that is pretty bold and using
(15:03):
that cover of night was crucial. There was no way
around it. Um the three planes would leave at one time,
and then two would kind of act as almost decoys
or they would draw fire enemy fire, and then the
last one would would do the bomb run. And they
also had to like pre a style like kill their
(15:25):
engines so that they could they would just glide over
it before they dropped their their payload and then start
the engine and then start the engine and get out
of there. Absolute badassery. Yeah, and there's some psy op
going on here as well, because the wooching sound we
already mentioned that freak the German soldiers out. But they
they are also the source of the name night, which
(15:48):
is once they had learned that this was indeed a
crew of female combatants and bombers, the misogyny kicked in
and it was even more injury is to them on
some level that they were they were getting creamed by
female forces instead of Russian dudes. And the Germans started,
(16:10):
you know, in the fog of war, so much strange
speculation thrives. The Germans started saying that the Soviet forces
were changing the women, somehow, experimenting on them to give them, quote,
the night vision of a cat. That's right. The Germans
would have referred to them natively as uh the knock
Texan or or the night witches. And one of them, no,
(16:35):
dadsya popova, I'm gonna go with that one. She flew
a hundred and fifty roughly a hundred fifty missions, and
she received the title of Hero of the Soviet Union
um and in Albert Axel's book Greatest Russian War Stories nine,
she's quoted as saying, this was nonsense. Of course, what
(16:56):
we had were clever, educated, very talented girl and fighting
against this. For some reason, tell me what you think
about this, folks, for some reason, this gives me a
league of their own vibe in a much in a
much more dangerous field, because they had to deal with
fighting a war against ruthless opponents, but they also had
(17:19):
to deal with misogyny from people who should have been
supporting them. Members of the Soviet military were still very
dismissive of the idea of women flying in general, let
alone in combat. They wouldn't give these soldiers, these pilots,
these mechanics anyone on the credit they deserved at the time,
(17:44):
and the inspiring thing here, especially for any of us
listening who have been in a situation where you have
to confront institutionalized misogyny. Uh. These women doubled down. They
didn't care. They were not cowed. They did not say,
oh no, let's let the dudes fly the planes or whatever.
They said, Yes, we're women, we're pilots, we're killers. We
(18:06):
do what we want and if you have a tough
time with it, go pout somewhere else. Yeah. But unfortunately,
the the brass, you know, the Russian military brass, weren't
super kind to to these women. And I think there
was even like a incentive in the among the Germans
to to uh any to give an Iron Cross, which
(18:28):
I think was one of the highest awards you can
get in the German army if you shot down one
of these women. So they were hated on both sides.
Just kind of a kind of a rough situation to
be in. Fortunately, while the wheels of justice grind slow,
they grind exceedingly fine, and the members of the Night
(18:48):
which is were eventually recognized, such as the example you
had mentioned earlier, Old Popova, who got the title of
Hero of the Soviet Union and the multiple met By
the end of World War two have flown around thirty
thousand bombing raids, which translates to twenty three thousand tons
(19:12):
of explosives or munitions. They also lost a lot of people.
They lost thirty pilots during the war, which is an
unbelievably low number when you consider what those planes were
made of, their technical constraints, and the fact that these
people were often using the same strategy repeatedly, not over
(19:36):
the course of the war, but sometimes as much as
eighteen times a night, you know what I mean? Like,
how many times if you're in charge of the searchlight
on the German side, how many times do you fall
for that two planes fly in opposite directions without checking
where the bombs are coming from? You know, Yeah, that's
(19:56):
a really good question. Um, they weren't even given their
own side uniforms. They had to take kind of tattered
hand me downs from other soldiers who I don't know
if they had like died or what, but that'd be
pretty morbid. But now they were absolutely treated like second
class citizens. Yeah, this is it reminds me of something.
(20:19):
Have you seen that video that compares men's soccer and
women's soccer. And it's like a scene from American Sniper
where it's uh, Bradley Cooper as the sniper and it
shows him like you know, cocking back the gun and
like looking through the scope and then you see him
shooting at a male soccer player and they fall down
and like grab their knees and start like cringing and
crying because apparently in male soccer, um, dudes are just
(20:42):
always taking dives because it's like it gives them an
edge or they're able to get like penalty. But I
don't know on that because it's less unless the referee
absolutely sees what happened, they can't say you're faking. There
you go. It is technically, I think, and someone someone
tells us more about this. I believe it's technically on
the books illegal to do that, but it's very tough
(21:04):
to prove it. There's lots of footage of it. And
then compare that with footage of women's soccer where they
literally stand up and spit their teeth out and just
keep you know, marching forward. Um, there is absolutely an
element to that in this story. Uh So Popova, who
we spoke about earlier in an article from the Atlantic.
There's a great, great quote from her talking about walking
(21:25):
away from a bombing raid with forty two bullet holes
in her little wooden plane. You would think that would
have just shredded the thing. Ben Like, I mean, God,
to to take a hit like that in the air,
in a plane made of wood and like canvas, that
is just absolutely terrifying. I can't imagine having that level
of bravery, right. And let's also consider how young a
(21:45):
lot of these people were. They were not experienced soldiers.
They were arranging the age from seventeen to twenty six.
And many of us who have had military service in
the background may say, well, I've met some people in
their mid twenties who unfortunately have a ton of a
very very harrowing experience fighting domestically and abroad. That's true,
(22:07):
But at this time, until Stalin gave these orders, no
other nation officially allowed women to engage in combat. Previously,
women could help transfer planes and ammunition, after which they
would say, all right, it's to him for the boys
to take over or whatever. And when when the night
(22:28):
which is did this again. We cannot over emphasize how
it was a crappy gig was a crappy gig. They
didn't even get things like radar guns and radios. They
had to use rulers, stop watches, flashlights, pencils well, and
you know, and not to poo poo the Soviet Union
or anything too much. That's not what we're here to do.
(22:49):
But if you have read about the story of chernobyl Uh,
you realize that a lot of the equipment that the
folks had was were substandard. Um, they didn't have enough
aviation suits, they didn't have meters that even reached the
levels of contamination that were present in some of these situations.
So that seems to be sort of a legacy thing having,
(23:10):
you know, kind of substandard equipment. Yes. Oh, and I
want to clarify there. When we said six bombs a piece,
that's six bombs perade, not six bombs per plane. The
planes could each only carry two bombs at a time,
one under each ring. So when three planes flew out,
that was a total of six bombs they could drop
(23:30):
while the other two members of the flight or the
raid were running, uh, running scrimmage or making a distraction there.
They also had this was really cool. This is something
I couldn't find in full yet, and I'd love to
hear if someone else has found this. The commandments, the
twelve Commandments of the Night, which is the one that
(23:50):
we found, and the first one was be proud that
you are a woman. Uh. There are eleven others we've
we've got, we've got to find in them. The last
Flight of the Night, which has took place around May fourth,
nineteen five. At this time they flew within thirty seven
(24:12):
miles or sixty kilometers to everybody in any country other
than what the US and the MAYBEA and Myanmar. They
got thirty seven miles or sixty kilometers close to Berlin,
and this was three days before Germany officially surrendered. We
do know that the Germans had two theories about why
(24:33):
these women were successful spoiler alert. Neither of those theories
have anything to do with their ability as pilots or
as professionals. The first theory is that they have been
given these special injections and experiments that turned them into
uh people with supervision. And the second was that they
were all criminals who were masters at stealing, like the
(24:56):
idea of the Russian thief and law and had been
said to the front line as punishments. So they were
conscripted hardcore criminals. That's the only way they could get
away with these cunning, breezing acts. And during that really
pretty brief four year period the Night which is operated,
they lost thirty pilots and then the twenty three pilots,
(25:18):
not all of them, but twenty three of the remaining pilots,
including Popova who we talked about earlier, were given that
very high honor of heroes of the Soviet Union. Interestingly enough,
the squad was never disbanded UM, and it actually just
was given a new name and continued on and it
was called the much less intriguing sounding forty six Taman
(25:39):
Guards Night Bomber Aviation Regiment UM, which continued to be
a mainstay in the Soviet Union's mixed gender forces. And
we should also mention that they weren't just reigning death.
They also performed a hundred and fifty five supply drops
of food and AMMO to Soviet forces. And here's here's
(26:00):
one of the last facts. I found. Let's file this
under under that's a kicker. Despite being the most highly
decorated unit in the Soviet Air Force during the war.
After after they were disbanded and became part of this
other grouping. There was this big Victory Day parade in
(26:20):
Moscow and the night which is were not included because,
according to the management, their planes were too slow. But
that's like the whole point, man, It's not their faults.
They were forced to use those planes. They were giving
the leftovers. Maybe they should have had the parade at night.
I don't know. To keep it on brands. Our parades
pretty slow usually, though, I mean, I don't see how
(26:43):
that would be a detractor. Yeah, I don't know. I've
never I've never organized a Victory Day parade after a war,
although I do want to go to New Orleans and
hire my own parade. Do you know you could do that?
I told you that, right, Yeah, I'm gonna next time
I'm in New Orleans. Think parade prices are incredibly reasonable
(27:04):
in New Orleans, and you can, especially in the off season,
you can pay a group of people are not particularly princely,
some and they'll just do a parade for you. How
much are we talking Yeah? And did this include floats?
H No, this would be that. I think we're talking
a few hunter we're talking about just the musicians, which
(27:24):
I think is great because it feels like a better parade. Yeah,
that would be a lot more fun. I don't need
a float that's in the shape of my giant head. No,
no custom flutes. You're getting into Marti Gras territory. I
don't know what about Casey, would you? Would you ever
have a parade? Would you ever purchase a parade for yourself? No? Definitely,
not for someone else that. Yeah, maybe for somebody else
(27:46):
they did something really really special. Maybe, yeah, Casey on
the case I am gonna embarrass the hell out of
you when we get to New Orleans. Casey, just forget
about it and act surprised later. Well, do I think
that's all we got for today? Right then? Yeah? Yes,
So ends our tale of the Heroic Night, which is
(28:10):
one of the chapters of World War two history that
I think is very familiar to a lot of our
Russian listeners, but maybe news to some of us in
the West. We want to hear your stories of other
World War two heroes or strange tales that you think
your fellow listeners would enjoy. You can find us on
(28:30):
Facebook at Ridiculous Historians. You can also find us on
Twitter and Instagram. Yeah, and if you want to find
us individually on Instagram, I hang out with my kid
and occasionally travel, mainly domestically, but um hoping to get
out of the country one of these days two so
I can match Ben's sick Instagram adventures. But my slightly
more underwhelming adventures are at how Now, Noel Brown, I
think you're beating yourself up there a little bit. It's
(28:51):
the thing I do. Circumstances will probably find uh find
both of us overseas sooner than you think. In the meantime,
you can find getting kicked into and out of various
places at Ben Bowling named to what I would only
describe as a burst of creativity. But hey, guys, you
might be saying, I I don't really like the social
(29:12):
meads Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Those aren't my cup of vodka
and cup of meads. There we go, But I I
do have an email. I got around to that, so
can I just contact you guys that way? We have
good news for you. You can emails directly. We are
ridiculous at my heart radio dot com. Big thanks to
our super producer Casey Pegrum, as always Alex Williams, who
(29:35):
composed our theme Christopher hasiotas Friend of the Show, friend
Inside of Our Hearts Gabe Louisier. Also Eve's Jeff Coach
who will be on our show pretty soon spoiler alert.
And uh and we we'd like to welcome Ryan Barrish.
Welcome to the family, Ryan Barriss, who will be helping
us with some research moving forward. See you next time,
(29:55):
Fox Yeah. For more podcasts from My Heart Radio, visit
the I heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you
listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
(00:27):
to the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you so much for
tuning in. My name is Ben, my name is Nol
And today we are joined as always with our super producer,
Casey La Bouche Pegram. Give it up for in, folks,
I did it a weird thing, Ben, I said my
name the way I say it on our other show stuff.
They don't want you to know because you didn't start
(00:48):
off with a pithy little scene like you usually do.
That's right through me. Yes, well, it's a it's a
different recording time for us. You know, we've been doing
a lot out a weird scheduling shuffling and like I'm
I'm not in my uh, I'm not in my afternoon
Bin yet in your history zone? Not not not quite,
(01:09):
not quite, but we're in a bit of a spooky zone,
and we're talking about an adventure. I do have something
that does relate slightly. Today's show concerns a pivotal role
of women in aviation. And I don't know if I
ever mentioned this to you, but my grandmother, one of
my grandmothers, was actually a pilot or trained as one
(01:32):
in World War Two. I did not know that. It's
a true story. All. It's a true story. She was
a teacher and in the part of the world where
she resided, one of the local programs that the government
was supporting was to train teachers, some teachers to be pilots.
From World War Two. I don't think she ever shot
anyone out of the sky. No, that's that's okay. I
(01:55):
mean she's you can still be a badass and not
have any kills under your bell. I mean, being a
pilot in any kind of war, so situation is got
to be absolutely harrowing. Oh yeah, absolutely. I mean even
comparing World War Two to the modern day, the planes
are just so much more dangerous, and a dog fight,
it's kind of like a knife fight, you know. I
don't know if you guys have ever, Casey, if you
(02:15):
ever been in a knife fight that you'd be willing
to talk about on air? Uh, None, that I'm willing
to disclose on air. That's yeah, not even in your
private life, is La Bouche? Well, like I said that
that I'm willing to disclose on air. So you can
think what you want to think, you know, you know
what they say though you guys. They say never bring
a knife to a dog fight, that is true, or
a dog to a knife fight, because that would just
be cruel. Yeah, that's that's no good. Now, it's definitely
(02:38):
no good. Casey on the Case, Speaking of which I
am absolutely thrilled to be wearing one of our patented
Casey on the Case t shirts right now, featuring a
delightful photo of young Casey Pegram in his Macy's catalog
modeling days. Yeah, MI like Macy's or J. C. Penny
one of those. You can get one for yourself by
going to t public dot com slash ridiculous, his sorry,
(03:00):
where we have an assortment of fine garments or mouse
pads or what have you available, Perhaps an Upton's ad
if anybody remembers Upton's. I remember Upton the department store
similar to Dillard's or Macy's. Yeah, it's just another one
of those anchor stores at the mall, but I think
they went away. Also, also for anyone who's thinking, oh man,
(03:20):
I would love a shirt like that, why don't I
have one right now? Don't worry, folks, I'm thinking the
same thing. I I got a little snake, so I'm
gonna have to find one for myself. I'm right there
with you. Today's story. The protagonist of today's story deserve
T shirts all their own. At the very least, our
story does take place in World War Two. It does
(03:41):
not take place in the US. It takes place in
the Nazi occupied Soviet Union, where German soldiers had a
very real and very profound fear of witches. But maybe
not the kind of witches you might automatically imagine, right, Well, no,
maybe not, but it certainly was maybe tying in to
kind of a cultural fear, uh you know, which is
(04:03):
loom large in German culture, right, Hansel and Gretel, surely others,
you know, Germans are notoriously afraid of, which is everybody
knows that. But you're right. They were afraid of a
very particular type of witches who were members of the
all female Night Bomber Regiment, which was part of the
Soviet Air Forces. And these women um flew over thirty
(04:25):
thousand missions over the course of three years, dropped twenty
three thousand tons of bombs on the Nazis um and
they did all of their flights under the cover of night,
earning them the nickname the Night witches. And this name
did not arrive entirely because of the time during which
(04:45):
they chose to to make these bomb runs. It also
came about because of their approach. They were very difficult
to detect because they used a very dangerous strategy. Their
planes were made of plywood in envis and the best
way that the German soldiers could know there was a
(05:07):
night which in the area or scouting them out, was
they would hear the soft whoosh of ap plywood and
canvas plane. So it's it's literally like someone silently flying
and then hearing a whoosh followed by a cavalcade of explosions.
So each of these planes had a pilot and a navigator,
(05:30):
all female. Let's let's talk a little bit about how
they came to be. So June of nine marks the
seventy seven anniversary of the beginning of the night, which
is and there's a lot of context that pours into
this because in June of one, access Powers pushed into
the USSR, using the largest invading force in the history
(05:54):
of war, not the history of Russian war, not the
history of European war, the history of human war. It's
like saying the history of the world exactly exactly. For example,
the infamous Operation Barbarossa saw about four million troops invade
Russia from the west, and because of this operation, Russian
(06:15):
leaders began to worry that Moscow itself might be overtaken. Yeah,
it's true. And this was in fact one of the
most bloody and violent, terrible military actions considered atrocities, known
for its atrocities in World War two. Um, these atrocities
were perpetrated against the Russians by the Nazis and the soldiers,
(06:36):
the male soldiers of the Soviet Union were heading up
the front lines when the forces from the Axis Powers
invaded and overtook the capital of Russia. Right. World War
two losses of the Soviet Union from all related causes
were about twenty seven million people. And that's a that's
(06:57):
a ballpark estimate, counting civilian and military. And they were
essentially treated like cannon fodder. Right. They were treated as
utterly expendable by the Allied forces. Right. Right. So the
U s s R. Had several big things going for
it in World War Two. One, the terrain is notoriously,
notoriously dangerous and inhospitable. And second, they had a lot
(07:21):
of manpower, So the idea is maybe they could overwhelm
opponents through the sheer force of numbers alone. But this, really,
this is where we get into things like scorched earth strategies,
the kind of mentality that says, I will I like
sort of like what's similar to the people in Fukushima
(07:41):
or Chernobyl who killed themselves committed suicide to save the
greater population. Because people are fighting for what they see
is the greater good. Everyone is involved. No one is
not at war in Russia at this time, and from
the very beginning of the U. S s r. Involvement
in the war, there is already an active female Soviet pilot.
(08:04):
You may have heard her called the Russian Amelia Earhart.
Her name is Colonel Marina Raskolva. And while she was
an active pilot, she started receiving letters from women all
across Russia who said, look, I want to join the war.
I want to help anyway I can. Let's fight these Nazis,
Let's get these Germans off our land. And many of
(08:29):
them would say, you know, I work as in a
support role, right like I work at a factory making armaments,
or I work at a hospital or something but I
want to be on the front lines. They didn't end
up being quite on the front lines because those male
Soviets sold as we talked about who were on the
front lines, we're getting creamed. So the Red Army UM
(08:51):
commanders were absolutely desperate and needed something to help turn
the tide of battle. So in October of ninety one,
Stalin himself UM posted Raskova to head up an all
female squadron, air squadron to be specific. And this is
a historical thing because this was the only air squadron
(09:13):
that was, according to records, all female, and it was
the five hundred and eighty eight Night Bomber Regiment. And
the pilots weren't the only women in the regiment. Everyone
in was female, from the pilots to the commanders to
the mechanics. That's right. So this team began to assemble
(09:34):
in nineteen forty two. Their ages ranged from seventeen to
twenty six years old, and they took up residents in
a small village by the name of Ingles, where they
started training. Um Raskova personally headed up this training and
she did not take any uh any crap from from anybody.
(09:55):
She was very hard nosed instructor and commander. Yes, there's
a gre article about this called The Little Known Story
of the Night, which is an all female force in
World War Two published in Vanity Fair as well as
Atlas Obscura by author Eric Grindhauser, and in this he
depicts the way that Riskova immediately immersed her trainees into
(10:18):
the program. They had to shave their heads right, They
had to wear size forty two boots. Supply chain issues
were already in full effect at this time in Russia's
military history, so they didn't have custom uniforms. They had
to wear these bulky, ill fitting uniforms that were made
(10:40):
for dude soldiers. And one of the pilots said it
was it was kind of a rough landing for on
the first stage. She said, we didn't recognize ourselves in
the mirror. We saw boys there. And the problems with
adjust thing to the pre existing supplies didn't stop with
(11:02):
the uniforms, unfortunately, it continued onto the planes they were flying.
These planes called pull It Carpoff PO two's. These are
two seated open cockpit by planes. These are the plywood
ones I was mentioning earlier with the canvas stretched over them.
They have absolutely no armor. They're already obsolete by the forties.
(11:24):
These are the kind of things that really incentivize you
to fly quietly and in a sneaky way, because one
shot and boom, you're gone, kind of like my old
Saturn sc car I had. Yeah, wrapped that one around
a tree? Really, yeah? Are you okay? Yeah? Okay, that's fair.
These are probably unrelated though, right, these are unrelated. This
(11:46):
had nothing to do world to World War two, that's
fair now. But I remember the Red Baron, Yes, it was,
it was. He was he exclusively a Peanuts character? Or
was that actually a historical fighter pilot guy makes great pizza.
That's also true. But seriously, I really don't know. Oh of,
I mean, there's Pepperoni. No, the Red Baron he was.
He was a Prussian fighter pilot. Um. The idea of
(12:07):
a plane being made of wood and canvas is unusual,
But it wasn't that unusual, right, because this was like
cheap material, It was lightweight. Again, it was quiet, right exactly,
And in previous conflicts something like this, this style of
biplane aircraft would have been fine. It's just so many
years had passed and there was already better technology out there.
(12:31):
These planes were also pretty slow, and because they had
a slower stall speed than the standard German fighters at
the time, it made it tough for the Axis or
the German forces to actually shoot them. It's kind of
like when there are two cars racing and one of
them maybe let's say, as a truck with a big
block engine, and it can pick up speed, but once
(12:53):
it gets up to a high speed, it has a
tough time slowing down. So what would have ordinarily been
a disadvantage for these aircraft actually made them tougher to hit. Also, again,
these are exposed cockpits and this is Russia. Oh my god,
I can only imagine that. Again, that's why I picture
the red baron. There's also a detail about these planes
(13:14):
that did not give them a particularly good advantage. They
had to fly pretty low, which would make sense for
them to be flying at night. Um, but gosh, during
a regular dogfight during the day, it seems very very challenging.
You'd be kind of like a sitting duck. Um. But
here's a question to ben these open cockpits, like they
wore some kind of like protection over their faces right
(13:35):
to keep them from sure, God, googles and probably the
probably the whole nine the leather skull cap thing right
with the strap that you would buckle under your chin. Yeah,
I would imagine so. But here's the thing. The women
of the fight were unafforded. They were absolutely ready to
go and do whatever it took to pitch into the
(13:57):
war effort. So after their first bomb run, which took
place on June ninety two, they absolutely not obliterated, but
definitely slowed down the Nazi forces with these overnight bombing
runs um and continued until the end of the war. Yeah. Yeah,
at their height. So it started first bombing at June,
(14:18):
and at the height of their strength, they had forty
two person crews each which were flying get this, multiple
runs as soon as the sun set. The record would
be like eighteen runs a night. Why would you make
eighteen incredibly dangerous bombing runs, you may ask. It's because
the planes could only carry six bombs at a time,
(14:40):
so as soon as they dropped those six, provided they survived,
they flew back, got another six bombs, and then flew
back again. This meant that there was also a tightly
controlled weight limit. That's part of why they flew at
lower altitudes. But that's also the reason they could not
bring parachutes. That is, that is pretty bold and using
(15:03):
that cover of night was crucial. There was no way
around it. Um the three planes would leave at one time,
and then two would kind of act as almost decoys
or they would draw fire enemy fire, and then the
last one would would do the bomb run. And they
also had to like pre a style like kill their
(15:25):
engines so that they could they would just glide over
it before they dropped their their payload and then start
the engine and then start the engine and get out
of there. Absolute badassery. Yeah, and there's some psy op
going on here as well, because the wooching sound we
already mentioned that freak the German soldiers out. But they
they are also the source of the name night, which
(15:48):
is once they had learned that this was indeed a
crew of female combatants and bombers, the misogyny kicked in
and it was even more injury is to them on
some level that they were they were getting creamed by
female forces instead of Russian dudes. And the Germans started,
(16:10):
you know, in the fog of war, so much strange
speculation thrives. The Germans started saying that the Soviet forces
were changing the women, somehow, experimenting on them to give them, quote,
the night vision of a cat. That's right. The Germans
would have referred to them natively as uh the knock
Texan or or the night witches. And one of them, no,
(16:35):
dadsya popova, I'm gonna go with that one. She flew
a hundred and fifty roughly a hundred fifty missions, and
she received the title of Hero of the Soviet Union
um and in Albert Axel's book Greatest Russian War Stories nine,
she's quoted as saying, this was nonsense. Of course, what
(16:56):
we had were clever, educated, very talented girl and fighting
against this. For some reason, tell me what you think
about this, folks, for some reason, this gives me a
league of their own vibe in a much in a
much more dangerous field, because they had to deal with
fighting a war against ruthless opponents, but they also had
(17:19):
to deal with misogyny from people who should have been
supporting them. Members of the Soviet military were still very
dismissive of the idea of women flying in general, let
alone in combat. They wouldn't give these soldiers, these pilots,
these mechanics anyone on the credit they deserved at the time,
(17:44):
and the inspiring thing here, especially for any of us
listening who have been in a situation where you have
to confront institutionalized misogyny. Uh. These women doubled down. They
didn't care. They were not cowed. They did not say,
oh no, let's let the dudes fly the planes or whatever.
They said, Yes, we're women, we're pilots, we're killers. We
(18:06):
do what we want and if you have a tough
time with it, go pout somewhere else. Yeah. But unfortunately,
the the brass, you know, the Russian military brass, weren't
super kind to to these women. And I think there
was even like a incentive in the among the Germans
to to uh any to give an Iron Cross, which
(18:28):
I think was one of the highest awards you can
get in the German army if you shot down one
of these women. So they were hated on both sides.
Just kind of a kind of a rough situation to
be in. Fortunately, while the wheels of justice grind slow,
they grind exceedingly fine, and the members of the Night
(18:48):
which is were eventually recognized, such as the example you
had mentioned earlier, Old Popova, who got the title of
Hero of the Soviet Union and the multiple met By
the end of World War two have flown around thirty
thousand bombing raids, which translates to twenty three thousand tons
(19:12):
of explosives or munitions. They also lost a lot of people.
They lost thirty pilots during the war, which is an
unbelievably low number when you consider what those planes were
made of, their technical constraints, and the fact that these
people were often using the same strategy repeatedly, not over
(19:36):
the course of the war, but sometimes as much as
eighteen times a night, you know what I mean? Like,
how many times if you're in charge of the searchlight
on the German side, how many times do you fall
for that two planes fly in opposite directions without checking
where the bombs are coming from? You know, Yeah, that's
(19:56):
a really good question. Um, they weren't even given their
own side uniforms. They had to take kind of tattered
hand me downs from other soldiers who I don't know
if they had like died or what, but that'd be
pretty morbid. But now they were absolutely treated like second
class citizens. Yeah, this is it reminds me of something.
(20:19):
Have you seen that video that compares men's soccer and
women's soccer. And it's like a scene from American Sniper
where it's uh, Bradley Cooper as the sniper and it
shows him like you know, cocking back the gun and
like looking through the scope and then you see him
shooting at a male soccer player and they fall down
and like grab their knees and start like cringing and
crying because apparently in male soccer, um, dudes are just
(20:42):
always taking dives because it's like it gives them an
edge or they're able to get like penalty. But I
don't know on that because it's less unless the referee
absolutely sees what happened, they can't say you're faking. There
you go. It is technically, I think, and someone someone
tells us more about this. I believe it's technically on
the books illegal to do that, but it's very tough
(21:04):
to prove it. There's lots of footage of it. And
then compare that with footage of women's soccer where they
literally stand up and spit their teeth out and just
keep you know, marching forward. Um, there is absolutely an
element to that in this story. Uh So Popova, who
we spoke about earlier in an article from the Atlantic.
There's a great, great quote from her talking about walking
(21:25):
away from a bombing raid with forty two bullet holes
in her little wooden plane. You would think that would
have just shredded the thing. Ben Like, I mean, God,
to to take a hit like that in the air,
in a plane made of wood and like canvas, that
is just absolutely terrifying. I can't imagine having that level
of bravery, right. And let's also consider how young a
(21:45):
lot of these people were. They were not experienced soldiers.
They were arranging the age from seventeen to twenty six.
And many of us who have had military service in
the background may say, well, I've met some people in
their mid twenties who unfortunately have a ton of a
very very harrowing experience fighting domestically and abroad. That's true,
(22:07):
But at this time, until Stalin gave these orders, no
other nation officially allowed women to engage in combat. Previously,
women could help transfer planes and ammunition, after which they
would say, all right, it's to him for the boys
to take over or whatever. And when when the night
(22:28):
which is did this again. We cannot over emphasize how
it was a crappy gig was a crappy gig. They
didn't even get things like radar guns and radios. They
had to use rulers, stop watches, flashlights, pencils well, and
you know, and not to poo poo the Soviet Union
or anything too much. That's not what we're here to do.
(22:49):
But if you have read about the story of chernobyl Uh,
you realize that a lot of the equipment that the
folks had was were substandard. Um, they didn't have enough
aviation suits, they didn't have meters that even reached the
levels of contamination that were present in some of these situations.
So that seems to be sort of a legacy thing having,
(23:10):
you know, kind of substandard equipment. Yes. Oh, and I
want to clarify there. When we said six bombs a piece,
that's six bombs perade, not six bombs per plane. The
planes could each only carry two bombs at a time,
one under each ring. So when three planes flew out,
that was a total of six bombs they could drop
(23:30):
while the other two members of the flight or the
raid were running, uh, running scrimmage or making a distraction there.
They also had this was really cool. This is something
I couldn't find in full yet, and I'd love to
hear if someone else has found this. The commandments, the
twelve Commandments of the Night, which is the one that
(23:50):
we found, and the first one was be proud that
you are a woman. Uh. There are eleven others we've
we've got, we've got to find in them. The last
Flight of the Night, which has took place around May fourth,
nineteen five. At this time they flew within thirty seven
(24:12):
miles or sixty kilometers to everybody in any country other
than what the US and the MAYBEA and Myanmar. They
got thirty seven miles or sixty kilometers close to Berlin,
and this was three days before Germany officially surrendered. We
do know that the Germans had two theories about why
(24:33):
these women were successful spoiler alert. Neither of those theories
have anything to do with their ability as pilots or
as professionals. The first theory is that they have been
given these special injections and experiments that turned them into
uh people with supervision. And the second was that they
were all criminals who were masters at stealing, like the
(24:56):
idea of the Russian thief and law and had been
said to the front line as punishments. So they were
conscripted hardcore criminals. That's the only way they could get
away with these cunning, breezing acts. And during that really
pretty brief four year period the Night which is operated,
they lost thirty pilots and then the twenty three pilots,
(25:18):
not all of them, but twenty three of the remaining pilots,
including Popova who we talked about earlier, were given that
very high honor of heroes of the Soviet Union. Interestingly enough,
the squad was never disbanded UM, and it actually just
was given a new name and continued on and it
was called the much less intriguing sounding forty six Taman
(25:39):
Guards Night Bomber Aviation Regiment UM, which continued to be
a mainstay in the Soviet Union's mixed gender forces. And
we should also mention that they weren't just reigning death.
They also performed a hundred and fifty five supply drops
of food and AMMO to Soviet forces. And here's here's
(26:00):
one of the last facts. I found. Let's file this
under under that's a kicker. Despite being the most highly
decorated unit in the Soviet Air Force during the war.
After after they were disbanded and became part of this
other grouping. There was this big Victory Day parade in
(26:20):
Moscow and the night which is were not included because,
according to the management, their planes were too slow. But
that's like the whole point, man, It's not their faults.
They were forced to use those planes. They were giving
the leftovers. Maybe they should have had the parade at night.
I don't know. To keep it on brands. Our parades
pretty slow usually, though, I mean, I don't see how
(26:43):
that would be a detractor. Yeah, I don't know. I've
never I've never organized a Victory Day parade after a war,
although I do want to go to New Orleans and
hire my own parade. Do you know you could do that?
I told you that, right, Yeah, I'm gonna next time
I'm in New Orleans. Think parade prices are incredibly reasonable
(27:04):
in New Orleans, and you can, especially in the off season,
you can pay a group of people are not particularly princely,
some and they'll just do a parade for you. How
much are we talking Yeah? And did this include floats?
H No, this would be that. I think we're talking
a few hunter we're talking about just the musicians, which
(27:24):
I think is great because it feels like a better parade. Yeah,
that would be a lot more fun. I don't need
a float that's in the shape of my giant head. No,
no custom flutes. You're getting into Marti Gras territory. I
don't know what about Casey, would you? Would you ever
have a parade? Would you ever purchase a parade for yourself? No? Definitely,
not for someone else that. Yeah, maybe for somebody else
(27:46):
they did something really really special. Maybe, yeah, Casey on
the case I am gonna embarrass the hell out of
you when we get to New Orleans. Casey, just forget
about it and act surprised later. Well, do I think
that's all we got for today? Right then? Yeah? Yes,
So ends our tale of the Heroic Night, which is
(28:10):
one of the chapters of World War two history that
I think is very familiar to a lot of our
Russian listeners, but maybe news to some of us in
the West. We want to hear your stories of other
World War two heroes or strange tales that you think
your fellow listeners would enjoy. You can find us on
(28:30):
Facebook at Ridiculous Historians. You can also find us on
Twitter and Instagram. Yeah, and if you want to find
us individually on Instagram, I hang out with my kid
and occasionally travel, mainly domestically, but um hoping to get
out of the country one of these days two so
I can match Ben's sick Instagram adventures. But my slightly
more underwhelming adventures are at how Now, Noel Brown, I
think you're beating yourself up there a little bit. It's
(28:51):
the thing I do. Circumstances will probably find uh find
both of us overseas sooner than you think. In the meantime,
you can find getting kicked into and out of various
places at Ben Bowling named to what I would only
describe as a burst of creativity. But hey, guys, you
might be saying, I I don't really like the social
(29:12):
meads Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Those aren't my cup of vodka
and cup of meads. There we go, But I I
do have an email. I got around to that, so
can I just contact you guys that way? We have
good news for you. You can emails directly. We are
ridiculous at my heart radio dot com. Big thanks to
our super producer Casey Pegrum, as always Alex Williams, who
(29:35):
composed our theme Christopher hasiotas Friend of the Show, friend
Inside of Our Hearts Gabe Louisier. Also Eve's Jeff Coach
who will be on our show pretty soon spoiler alert.
And uh and we we'd like to welcome Ryan Barrish.
Welcome to the family, Ryan Barriss, who will be helping
us with some research moving forward. See you next time,
(29:55):
Fox Yeah. For more podcasts from My Heart Radio, visit
the I heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you
listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History News
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Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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