119 | Lydia Litvyak - The White Lily of Stalingrad and Her Chrome Boots - Black Cat Report | UFOs, Cryptids, True Crime & Paranormal

Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Bombs bursting around you. The sirens wail, telling you to
get to your plane so you can shoot the enemy from the sky.
The deadly German Luftwaffe shoots down your friends and
their planes. It's better for you to die and
your plane to survive, they say,so you don't pack a perish.
The engine rumbles to a start and you get to the runway.
Enemy machine guns hit the ground around you and pull up on

(00:23):
the stick as you lift off the ground.
Almost immediately you're throwninto action, chasing down and in
the craft, guns blazing. You hit one and then two.
You can see there's smoke trail down through the cloud.
You hear the tracer bullets passright by you and one hits your
leg. It might be over.
The pain shoots through your body and you drop almost

(00:43):
straight down through the cloudsand all goes black.
I didn't see you there. It all started early this
morning. From hunting ghosts to Bigfoot
UFOs. Cryptids, true crime,
paranormal, and more I always wanted to see.
AUFO Oh, I was. I was researching for your
entertainment. That's Bigfoot's cat.
He basically wrote the book on Monarch.

(01:03):
We aren't really comedians. What if Buddha did cocaine?
The Addams family on meth. This is the Black Hat report.
See you on the other side. Welcome to the Black Cat Report
in episode 119. I am Jerry and with me is the
well spoken, well drinking, wondrous, maybe Welsh,

(01:27):
wondering, wandering Gill. Oh, hey, hey, everybody.
You know, I just had one of those moments where it's like,
you know, when they're doing theclose-ups of folks at the award
show, like at the Grammys of theEmmys, and they're just
convinced that they're not goingto be the one that's receiving
all the all the compliments thatthat was me just now.
OK And I'm just like, yeah. And then Eminem's getting mad,

(01:49):
running away in the background. It was weird.
Did did he do that? Yeah, I think.
I don't know. Yeah, fuck it, everything's
made-up these days anyways. I like to think that crazy that
you know more about an award share than I do that has to do
with entertainers and generally That's interesting.

(02:09):
Yeah, it'd be like if I just schooled you on sports.
Exactly. That's kind of weird.
Did they start up the the particle Collider again?
Is that what's going did say andget started up we're shifting
that's. What it is OK, we're shifting
brains. Company.
Hello, my name is Joey. Tomorrow.
Cuppa Gill is getting released tomorrow, you guys are get

(02:31):
excited for that. But as well as Cuppa Joey
getting released tomorrow slash Cuppa Gill, we have done a lot
of work getting the Patreon organized well and some new
things for you to in each tier. Except to be fair, it was Gil.
Gil stayed up late, didn't sleep, became an alcoholic, got
a cocaine habit and ruined his own life to get all the Patreon

(02:52):
organized. He basically had a whole season
character arc in the span of three to four days doing this,
didn't you? Yeah, and even complete with
like the divorce and then finding out that the person I
just divorced is going to have my child.
But then it might not be my child, but they were also that
later they were born. And they do have my eyes.

(03:13):
I want them. Back gills of our lives.
The eyes. They took my eyes.
Well, you can join up to our Patreon for free, get some
awesome perks, and maybe and getan upgrade for this holiday
season as the most elusive Cryptid, Santa Claus or Santa
Gill Claus might come through and magically give you a tier
upgrade. And after Christmas and into the

(03:34):
new year, that Cryptid don't give a shit what day of the year
it is. Gifts galore.
But you know what we want to do?Is point out the fact that we
don't have an understanding of time because here at Black Cat
Report, it's important to keep in mind that it's time travel
time, baby. Hell yeah.
So you can always get a discount.

(03:56):
One of the main reasons why we launched the Patreon was no, not
just not to just get your money,which we would appreciate that,
but I'm sure you would appreciate your money too.
But it was actually to make it easier to connect with y'all and
share all the awesome shit that we want to do.
Because we realized it takes sixhours just to tell everybody

(04:18):
across every platform that we'regoing to have a movie night.
That's so fucking stupid. We just want one place to post
everything. So we're pretty much upgrading
everybody that joins in the freetier to higher tiers.
So it's pretty, it's pretty sweet and it's pretty worth it.
Just wanted to throw it in there.
And just for joining, you get a freaking shout out on our

(04:41):
episode Shout Outs. And guess what?
Gil is here to do some shout outs.
Go ahead, buddy. All right bro, so these folks
have already discovered the BCR Patreon magic.
Tim, Ian, Rochelle, Dwayne, Max Morgan, Dragon Ball, Miller's

(05:04):
Mother Fucking Monsters, Dwayne Again, maybe a different Dwayne.
We're just going to assume it's a different one.
Gavin, Jaden, Alyssa, Bree, Michael, Extreme Paranorm Girl,
James Seeley, and of course, ourmost beloved and sexiest

(05:26):
producer, Poppy Kitty. Yeah, thank you all for joining
our Patreon. You too can get your name
shouted out just literally by signing up and following our
Patreon account is not that hard.
It's crazy. Links in the show notes.
Now we're done with our pitch, and with it we don't do that

(05:49):
much. Honestly, no, we don't pitch
that much. Maybe enough time to bitch about
the pitch. You know what I'm saying is.
It exactly well something I've been really excited about from
writing the script and doing theresearch for this episode.
Today's subject I found watchinga history documentary that to me
I've gotten really into. Thanks, Dad, who is also a

(06:12):
Patreon member. It's them World War 2
documentaries. But since, you know, you hear a
lot of the American heroes of the war, Easy Company in Europe
and Band of Brothers, which you haven't watched that show,
please do. It's amazing.
You need even the scientists that worked on creating an
atomic bomb with the most recentmovie, Oppenheimer, which was
honestly probably one of the best movies of last year.
And, you know, we're going to goahead and go into another place.

(06:35):
We're going to go into the Soviet Union because you don't
hear about it as much as the heroes of the war because
honestly, they face the brunt ofthe war.
We kind of jumped in later on, You know, the British, the
Soviet Union got crushed. And we were just like, hey,
we're nice and new. We'll come in later and we'll
help you out and. We definitely came in the
kitchen and we're like here, I can open that lid after somebody

(06:56):
was just like in there for five hours beating at it and having
it hit them across the head basically and being invaded even
though they were supposed to be in a peace treaty together or
like a mutual non aggression pact.
Yeah, got fucked. And they actually had the
highest casualty count of them all, the Soviet Union, like, and
I'm talking about 34 million people, I think was close to the

(07:20):
number maybe. Yeah, yeah.
That's that's a whole couple generations of people.
And that's not too long after the Soviet or like the the the
revolution either, where there was also a lot of people killed.
So, yeah, there was a lot of people that got murdered and,
you know, killed at this time inthe Soviet Union, in Germany, so

(07:45):
in Austria, in Poland, pretty much in that whole western area
or eastern area of Europe. It's pretty popular for a while.
Yeah, right. Just dying.
Yeah well the Russians or SovietUnion who funnily enough, just
like Gil said, signed a non aggression pact with the Nazis
in the beginning of the war justso that both sides could take

(08:08):
half of Poland. And poor, poor Poland who got
attacked on both sides really had no tanks, had barely any
artillery, were still mostly working on horses and just got
to re wrecked. Yeah, it got wrecked by Nazi
Germany and by the Soviet Union because they both were like,

(08:29):
hey, you know, it was easy Poland and they just literally
went poop closed the gap and both sides were looking at each
other on the side of the war. So to be fair, Soviet Union does
not start out on the good guys side of the the allies side of
the of the World War Two. It was kind of they were like,
hey, let's just do what we can to take basically take back our

(08:49):
losses after World War One, which it was a pretty horrible
war. It was called the Great War for
a reason. Well, today we're going to talk
about Lydia Vladimirovna Litvak,the white Lily of Stalingrad.
And I'm going to say she is actually called the White Lily.
And the reason why some people call her the White Rose is

(09:11):
because in some of the propaganda, some of the news
articles in Europe, in Eastern, in Western Europe, France, UK
and the US, they actually had translated incorrectly the the
style of flower as the Rose of Stalingrad.
So in the actual Russian Soviet Union papers, they called her

(09:34):
the White Lily of Stalingrad to go along with her name with
Lydia, Lily, Lydia, you know, Sothe nice alliteration there.
They also misnomed it because the German fighter pilots, the
Nazi fighter pilots thought theysaw on her side of her plane a
rose, so a White Rose on the side.
So they confused it saying that she was the White Rose.

(09:57):
And I mean, obviously she was shooting them down.
It's. Just a Nazi's head stuck to the
side of the plane. Must be a rose.
Look at that. Oh yeah, I can even see some
red. Exactly.
I mean, it was kind of funny, Like it's kind of hard to see
because at this time, at this time you were still being able
to be within sight of each other, shoot each other down.

(10:19):
That kind of change with, you know, more next Gen. fighters
where you're kind of miles away for the most part, you don't
really get to see the other person.
But at that time you were still shooting people, pretty much
being able to see them with an eye line sight.
Lydia was born in Moscow to Russia in August 18th in 1921.
She was born into a middle classJewish family.

(10:40):
Her mother was a shop assistant and dressmaker.
Her father was a railwayman, train driver and a clerk, so he
wore many different hats. All of them hard.
All of them blue collar shirts too.
In between 1936 and 1937, in between these years, her father
was arrested or what they calleddisappeared, which most likely

(11:03):
meant he was executed during thegreat purge of Joseph Stalin's
political dissidents to consolidate his power over
Russia. Well, the Iron Karmisar Lazar
Kaganovic, 1 of Stalin's most enthusiastic cheerleaders,
basically jailed or shot 50% of the men in the Soviet Union and

(11:23):
this great remaking of Russia. I'm a huge star.
No, like, seriously, Like, you can't do anything wrong.
No, like, seriously, don't let him know that you think he could
do anything. Like, seriously, have you seen
this guy? He's fucking fantastic.
I mean, like, I thought The LastDictator was good, you know what
I'm saying? Small potatoes.
Speaking of potatoes, that's allwe've got these days.
Isn't that fucking great? I love potatoes.

(11:43):
Yeah, you can. You can match them.
You can Stew them, you can beat them.
You can ketchup them. You can even follow your hunger
pangs. Yeah, exactly.
And you better get to work because 1 you know.
What? When they go bad, they get
better. Vodka, everyone.
Yeah, exactly. And you're going to need a lot.
Of vodka? No, but I'm a huge Stalin stand.

(12:05):
Stalin stand, man. To give you some figures on how
bad it was for the military, right, So there was a lot of
commanders in the military before the Great Purge and
before World War 2, basically through during.
Well, obviously Stalin had created this huge movement and
basically murdered everybody. Like we said, one and two of the

(12:25):
people in the Soviet Union were basically murdered.
Yeah. 15 of 16 army commanders were murdered, 50 of 57 core
commanders, 154 of the 186 divisional commanders, 401 of
456 colonels were killed, and many other officers were
dismissed. And I'm putting that in

(12:47):
quotations. So All in all, about 30,000
members of the Soviet Army were killed just before World War 2
started. Yeah.
So basically took out so many ofthese people.
Well, during all of this, literally during all of this,
Lydia grew up in a small 2 bedroom house about a few blocks

(13:10):
away from the Kremlin. So honestly, not too far for
more. All the deaths were happening.
She's just, like, sitting there just being, like, having
flashbacks to the time Stalin walked outside and was checking
his pockets. And she's like, you need a
light? And he's like, yes.
And do you like, who's that, mommy?
Oh my God. Go back inside.

(13:35):
Well, while she was young, she did the normal youth activities
of Russia, joining the Little Octobrist, which was a youth
organization created in 1924 after the Russian Revolution,
specifically named for the Bolshevik Revolution that
happened in October. She became what they call a
pioneer and learned through thatorganization until she turned
14. She began flying at the age of

(13:58):
14 in 1935, so quick graduating from the Central Arrow Club.
She was actually too young to dothis, but she was given special
permission to do it by the instructor at 14.
In all fairness, the original instructor had been disappeared
a few weeks earlier and it was just a bunch of kids in charge.

(14:20):
School. Yeah, they're.
About 9:00-ish and they're like you're past, you're past.
Why do you have a fucking Arrow club?
Like planes hadn't even been around that long at that point
and they're just like, yeah whatever, just see what the kids
will do with them. They make great stocking
stuffer. I'm sure, honestly, I think that
they just, they hadn't been around that long, but people

(14:41):
were starting to create them andthey were just making random
stuff. So they were like, cool, let's
just try to fly this. Let's try to fly this, Yeah?
Fuck it. Good of good example I would say
maybe drones were the same thing, similar because drones
really hadn't been around or at least in the public eye for a
long time. But as soon as they became

(15:01):
within like a year or two, people were already having drone
clubs and so people are flying drones even though.
They might be just. 14 or 15 flying drones, maybe even 8 or
9, you know? Yeah, now like everybody in
Jersey has one at this point. It's just like you can't go
anywhere without a drone. That makes sense.
Yeah. See him everywhere.
Well, by 15, Lydia was already doing numerous solo flights and

(15:27):
serving as a flight instructor at the Aero Club.
What the fuck, dude? Yeah, I I don't have any words.
That's just saying. She's that good.
She just some people have it, you know, and I think that's
just the craziest thing, you know, that some people at the

(15:48):
youngest of ages just have that like unique talent for one
specific thing and they just keep doing it.
And it's crazy to see that like,you know, when I was younger, I
had a, you know, a lot of hot hours, but I I had I was unique,
talented, playing tennis, like Iwas very good at it.
It seemed so easy to me. You know, I wasn't obviously
like flying a plane at 15, you know, doing crazy things.

(16:12):
But like you sometimes you just have a unique talent that just
like flowers pretty easily. And she had the same thing, you
know. Well, she even became a flight
instructor at the Kiryav Airportin Moscow from 1940 to 1941.
So she's super young, but in a major airfield, she becomes a
flight instructor, and she sets a record for 8 hours of

(16:33):
instruction every single day. She was setting records at that
young age. This these records date back all
the way back to last month when we started them.
Holy shit. When we purged all the other
records, yeah. Went in and just erased
everything and rewrote it. Photoshopped.

(16:54):
I'll erase, yeah. We always here in Soviet Russia,
we always write in pencil. They can erase it.
By the time the Germans invaded Russia in 1941, she had already
trained 45 pilots. Well, we're going to skip
through a lot of actual huge historical events and summarize

(17:17):
them quickly instead of, you know, going through a huge long
laundry list of what happened inbetween 1939 and 1941.
Right. So wasn't that basically Germany
invaded Russia? It was an actual ally of Germany
through the non aggression pact on June 22nd of 1941.
This was called Operation Barbarossa and pretty much,

(17:41):
yeah. And pretty much put the Soviet
Union on its heels, driving hugely and deeply into Russia
and getting all the way to Stalingrad, Moscow and
Leningrad. The operation was actually named
for Frederick the First Barbarossa, or his nickname
Redbeard, who was the 12th century Holy Roman Emperor and

(18:01):
Crusader. The idea was basically clear the
land of any Slavic people and exterminate the populace so they
can spread the Leben's realm. Well, to give a little context
so that we can understand why the Soviet Union fought so hard
and so bitterly. Basically fighting tooth and
nail because behind the advance of the Nazis they were
exterminating pretty much any Slavic people in the areas as

(18:23):
well as the Jewish population. Well, basically anyone that
wasn't Germanesque or people that were the Unterminsch, which
is subhuman. And I want to explain this
little part because like, it shows why they were throwing
everything at the Germans, showswhy everybody was getting into
the war, you know, and why everything was happening.

(18:46):
By the end of the war, Germany had murdered over 1,000,000
Soviet Jewish people starve, 3.3million Soviet military and
millions upon millions of civilians starved to death.
Well, Hitler decided that he would put a lot of effort and
force into taking Stalingrad because it was named after the

(19:08):
leader of the Soviet Union, Joseph Stalin.
It's pretty big. And it pretty much had it
surrounded. Yeah.
And pretty much had it surrounded and was taking it
inch by inch and street by St. The Soviet generals were doing
their best to hold the line and keep Hitler from overwhelming
their armies. And.
I mean basically just barely holding the line.

(19:28):
Yeah, the line was That's literally the front door of
their house at that point. At that point they are literally
just shooting out of their own front windows.
Yeah, it was horrible. And this is the this is where
Lydia is, right? So this is where Lydia Lydiak
is. All these people are in

(19:49):
basically journeys on their doorsteps.
They're fighting to keep their homes from being blown apart,
and they're probably fighting intheir blown apart homes.
When Barbara Rosa happened, Lydia immediately put her
application in to get trained inthe Yakovlev Yak 1 aircraft and
join the military aviation unit,however.

(20:09):
The bare minimum you had to fly was 1000 hours to be approved to
join that unit. Lydia had only flown about in
between 800 to 900 hours like that.
It's not that much difference, right?
I mean 100 hours is a lot. But yeah, but I I will say
though, First off, respect that the Russians were ahead of time
or the Soviets were kind of likepretty far advanced with like

(20:31):
the 1000 hour rule, right about mastering things.
Interesting. But I do think it's funny that
probably 90% of the instructors were trained by Lydia.
I can almost guarantee you that's where it's going.
They were like, we can't let youin here.
Like bro what the? Yeah, it was pretty dumb, but
what's funny is she goes, I'm just going to fudge it a little.

(20:53):
So she fudged it by 100 hours toget her cells up to IT1K hours?
Hell yeah. And still she was rejected and
there wasn't a clear reason why she was rejected yet.
I think they just, it was just one of those things where
they're just like, no. Also, it's unbelievable because
she was probably like what, like17 at the time, 18.
So this is 1941. She was born.

(21:15):
She was 20. OK, so she was 20.
That's still a lot of hours to rack up.
By the time you're 20, though, yeah, it's a shit ton of hours.
OK, sorry. Yeah, it's a lot.
Well, eventually she was let into the military aviation
training taught and led by Marina Rascova, who at the time
had become famous and also became personal friends with
Joseph Stalin. And that is very important to

(21:37):
how she climbed the hill becauseshe became, she was a, a Stalin
stand, as Gil was saying earlier, which she was actually
a bad ass pilot herself, you know, not taking that away from
her, but a lot of other people couldn't climb because they
weren't friends with Joseph Stalin.
Just kind of. Amazing things didn't really
ensure your safety at this time did not.

(21:59):
No. No, the most talented general.
It's like, did he just fart killhim?
Go on. Well, oops.
Well, she was the one that founded the first three female
aviation units, the 586th Fighter Regiment, the 587th
Bomber Regiment, and the 588th Night Bomber Regiment, and these

(22:21):
would help in itself turn the tide in the war.
Also, I did some digging and youknow when the first female
fighter pilot in the United States flew?
2006. 1993 that was not too bad,but in 1993 an Operation Desert
Storm Brigadier General Jenny Flynn was the first one.
She was also the first one to command an air group.

(22:44):
Jesus Christ. And it's pretty crazy she had
both at the same time. Well anyways, Lydia was placed
in the all female 586 fighter regiment in the Soviet Union at
this time. A lot of the military was
watched over and investigated heavily because it's the
military. They wanted to breed out
ideology and make them hardened soldiers.
And if you've seen Top Gun, which I hope you have because

(23:07):
both are actually pretty damn good movies, Lydia acted like
the fighter pilots in that movie.
And I feel like to be a great fighter pilot, you have to be
dangerous and live life on the edge.
Makes sense? She would go out dancing with
all the men at the dancing hallsand was caught doing that.
The investigator that was taskedwith making sure the fighter
pilot stayed in line, Nina Ivakina, described her as a

(23:30):
swanky, flirtatious aviatrix. Which is an awesome way to say
that you're an amazing fighter pilot.
I would take that man so. God damn good and sexy.
It's kind of funny because like that's what the Soviet Union
did. They wanted to breed out all the
ideologies in these people. And it, and to be fair, in most

(23:51):
military units is kind of how itworks.
You kind of get bred into one particular unit.
So you get you become friends quicker.
It was just more hardcore this time because of just of Stalin,
because of the way they were trying to remake the Soviet
Union. And so it became a little bit
more hard in than most of the other militaries except for the

(24:11):
meth filled Germans. That was funny.
Well Nina Avaquina was sent by the Communist Party to find any
ideological weaknesses that werein the aviation pilots.
Even though Lydia was being watched, she didn't give a fuck
and she still went out dancing, still live life on the edge, and

(24:33):
when asked about it, she expressed absolutely no remorse
and a letter to her mother. Lydia wrote something that I
thought summed up her perfectly.She said of course what I want
is to live, if only a little, but a wild, interesting life.
The hour will soon come when we soar on the wings of Hawks, and

(24:55):
the life we live will be very different.
Damn. She's a badass.
She is a badass, even in the savagery, sleeplessness wartime
when most people would barely even showered, she kept her
style and the Russian military. At this time, women were given
the same uniforms as men, even the same underwear as men that

(25:17):
kind of keep everything chip chop.
Be fair, the men's underwear were G strings, yeah?
They don't talk about that, though.
They don't talk about the you know what?
They couldn't afford the rest ofthe fabric.
It was actually a very practicalway to approach.
I was going to say, they don't talk about that enough because,
you know, honestly, if you watched a Soviet Union soldier

(25:40):
on the field, do you know how sleek and quick they were in
their movements getting on to the next one?
Exactly. If only the US military was
listening. Well, the women were even told
to keep the same trimmed hair asthe men so as to keep
conformity. But Lydia said again, fuck that,
and kept her hair long. So yeah, she she just didn't

(26:02):
care. She was like, I'm gonna do what
I want, just no matter what. Takes an earbud out in the
middle of the announcement. It's just like, First off, fuck
the she's just like listening toTupac.
She's like, what? What, What?
What do you want? Huh.
What? What?
Well she traded with the hospital for peroxide and used
radiator oil to dye her hair blonde.

(26:24):
I was like man, that's that's it.
She's definitely going for it all.
Well, she took the fur off her boots and made a collar on her
aviator jacket, which was the only reason she got put into
solitary confinement. This was the reason, not because

(26:45):
all the other things that she did.
You can't be both friends with Stalin, a badass and good at
your job and fashionable. Look, it's two out of three.
Then you pick your choices. Yeah, one of those is sending
you to jail. Well, she eventually was
released from solitary confinement when she agreed to

(27:06):
put the fur back on. She.
Gave herself a nose ring. Yeah, they were like, we can't
do anything with. Her, she's just going to do
whatever she wants anyways. One thing that was even more
ludicrous that she did well whenyou compare it to the Soviet
Union way of military life, was that she wore Chrome boots.

(27:29):
Think about this, in the time period she wore Chrome colored
boots compared to everybody elsethat barely had boots probably.
No I don't like more like fucking metallic painted.
She did. She's like, so the enemy can't

(27:51):
see my feet when I'm flying above.
Exactly. Because they're the same color
stuff, yeah. See, you complained about my
dancing, now what? Can't even see me dance.
Yeah, I can't see me dance. My feet are too fast.
Well, this is going to endear her to you, Gil, if she hasn't
been already. Her favorite color was black.

(28:13):
Black cat report baby. Yep, and pretty much every
colour Gill wears is black, so. More or less, yeah.
Yeah, well, what set her apart on the battlefields is that she
actually had a white Lily, like we talked about earlier, painted
on the side of her aircraft, which was completely, completely
doesn't really matter against Soviet regulations because she

(28:35):
didn't care about anyways, So that doesn't matter.
Well, she would also wake up, and she'd wake up really early
before she'd go out on a call and she'd pick fresh white roses
and put them in the cockpit withher as she flew as some sort of
good luck charm. Hold up, I just picture you now.
I'm like World War 2, all the all the fighter pilots like or

(28:57):
all the, the planes like they always have like pin up girls
and stuff on the side. Yeah, yeah.
Hers was just like the the trucker mudflam, but it was
Stalin with like a Lily. Stalin's face on the back,
floating in the wind. Just Stalin.
I'm like, they're like, dude, seriously, you have to stop.

(29:18):
You have to take. You have to take that down.
Stalin walks by and he's like, finally someone that appreciates
my physique and just walks away.I was gonna paint you.
I wanted that. Yeah.
Damn. She got my large areolas just
right. She's good.
No, this is fine. I approve this.
This is the one thing I approve.Yeah, the one thing finally.

(29:43):
And now I'll be remembered the way I've really wanted to be.
Remembered start this the well trimmed chest with large aerial.
Well, let's quit Stalin. This pissed off a lot of the
other Soviet pilots because theyactually had to use her aircraft
after her. And I'm saying it's her aircraft
because she's the best. And they're just having a white
Lily on the side of their aircraft.

(30:03):
They also literally get into theaircraft and there's just a
bunch of flowers sitting around there.
It's like, and it's mostly, you know, when she transfers, it's
mostly men that are using her aircraft because it's her and
another woman who are the only women in that unit besides the
two mechanics that they bring with them.
But at the beginning, it was an all women aircraft.
She just eventually missed to anall male aircraft group besides

(30:25):
her and another person. So it's kind of funny because
they started getting pissed off,like can you not leave this in
the aircraft after you? And she's like, but I like them.
Well, because Lydia Litviek disagreed with Roskova.
She disagreed with the person that took her in the flight
school and took her into the flight unit.

(30:46):
Again, she mainly disagreed withher because Riscova had a cold
personality. Go figure.
And Riscova also couldn't fly due to a previous wound.
And what was crazy is that most of the people that were in her
unit actually did not like Riscova, who was the leader of
the air unit because she couldn't fly anymore.

(31:06):
They thought that because she wasn't basically one of them
anymore, she was like giving them unheard of terrible tasks
because she was like, I'll just send them to their death.
It doesn't matter because I'm not going to die.
And that was kind of happening to a lot of these people in this
unit. And so all of the people
underneath of her just kind of got pissed off.
Kind of like a high school football coach.
It's just like, oh, you're nevergoing to make it that way.

(31:28):
And everybody's like, you never even went to college.
Dude, what the fuck? Yeah.
You never played football. You haven't played football
since high school and you're like 50, you know, like, that's
kind of what it was. Well due to this Lydia got sent
to Stalingrad which was pretty much a death sentence at this
time when where the fighting wasthe hardest against Nazi

(31:48):
Germany. When Lydia arrived, she was
seldom set on missions due to her superiors feeling like women
were not equal to men and fighting situations in the air.
Because she transferred to the the all male Regiment, which her
and another female went to that regiment together with two more
mechanics, like I just said. But it was the 437th Air

(32:09):
Regiment where she actually started flying high, which was
the one she just went to. It's kind of funny they didn't
send her out at first and then they're just like, all right, we
kind of don't have any pilots tosend up anymore.
We have more planes than pilots.I guess you can have one.
I guess you can have one, yeah. For some reason, for some
reason, the kindergartner, the kindergartner Aviation club

(32:30):
hasn't really picked up yet. So we've got all these surplus
planes. Yeah, and we're actually
starting to use more, lose more planes than pilots.
I don't know how that happens. Well, on September 13th, 1942,
at just 21 years of age, she scored her first 2 kills and
only just three days after arriving in Stalingrad.

(32:52):
So at first they didn't want to put her up in the air.
And this is like 2 days they didn't want to put her up in the
air because they're like, OK, cool.
Like she's a woman, she can't fly.
And then they're like day three,all right, we need to put her in
the air. And as she gets in the day, in
her first day of flying, she kills two people.
Damn. Yeah, these first 2 kills would

(33:14):
make her the first female fighter pilot to shoot down an
enemy aircraft, and she just didn't kill one.
She got 2. Just fucking crazy.
Just some people don't even get one.
Yeah, I guess we never really addressed that like how hard it
is for a fighter, like for two planes like fighter fighter
pilots jets or planes or whatever.
Like it's, it's a really it's I need to say this early, it's a

(33:38):
really fucking big deal If like over the entire career of a
fighter pilot, if they have 3 kills, Yep.
If they have 3 takedowns, the hat trick, right?
Like that's like you're like literally people that are
higher, the higher above than you are like saluting you and
crying. They're like, God damn it, he's
good. Like it's a pretty fucking huge

(33:59):
deal. Sort of like, yeah, basically
get 2 in one day, you know, and she's probably just sitting
there saying something like cocky as fuck, just being like,
I had to make up for the days you wouldn't let me fly.
Walks away in Chrome boots. She literally, yes, she didn't,
she didn't care. She was just, she's going all
in. She was in an air group of four

(34:19):
Yak Ones and her first kill was of Aju 88 bomber.
The second plane she shot down was called the BF One O 9, which
was piloted by an 11 Victory fighter ace Staff Sergeant Irwin
Mayer, which was on the tail of her squadron commander Rosa
Baleva. She basically saved her squadron

(34:40):
commander's life by doing. Like killing the other sides,
like one of their lead people. She just like flew straight into
side see, like Frodo needed her,Frodo and Sam needed her.
She would just went in like tookout siren in like one day.
Yeah, one day. Also, when you were going to say
11 Squadron, I thought you were going to say an 11 year.
The Germans weren't that. She did this by killing an 11

(35:02):
year. The Germans weren't that.
They weren't that. They weren't that desperate yet.
They weren't. Yeah, child liberal.
I mean, talking about their morals at the time.
It didn't matter. Well, Mayer actually survived
the crash by parachuting out andwas captured by the Soviets.
I want to say something that's funny because Mayer was brought

(35:26):
to meet the person who shot him down, which was kind of a thing
in the Soviet Union and the Germans.
They were like, hey, let's. You know.
You need to, yeah, respect thing.
And especially 'cause he's, he killed 11 of the the Soviets.
And as they brought him up, there stood Lydia Litviak.
Chrome boots, platinum blonde hair, probably in all of like 5

(35:47):
foot too tall, not even making eye contact, chewing gum,
listening to Tupac. Yep, just.
Not given, no. Yeah.
He thought he was, they thought they were joking.
He was like, oh come on it really.
No, this is not the person that shot me down.

(36:07):
And he laughed. But then after he laughed, Lydia
looked at him and then started going into detail of all the
maneuvers that she and him did until she shot him out of the
sky. And Mayer actually was impressed
with this and then bowed to her.He then offered her his watch.
She's like, you killed me. Like this is a respect thing.

(36:29):
It's my good luck watch. She's like, no, it's.
Exactly, she said. She declined and said I don't
accept gifts from the enemy. Boom twice shot him down with
the boom and then Boom on his head dunked on him.
Well, the very next day, on September 14th, she shot down

(36:51):
another decorated German fighterace who was in another BF One O
9 Lame Lieutenant Holmes. Fuss, fuss, fuss, fuss.
Is that is that the? Third person or is that the
second? Person.
That's the third. The third she shot.
She's on Day 4. She's on Day 4.
With only two days of flying, she's already taken down.

(37:16):
Yep, she hit his fuel tank with her tracer rounds and it's just
super easy. She's just like boom boom boom
boom gone done easy. On September 27th, which was 13
days after that, she scored another kill knocking out Aju 88
bomber. That is if I want to say that's
4 kills if I'm correct. So within I guess 15 days of

(37:39):
being there, I think 4 or 5 kills.
Yeah. Pretty fucking damn.
Who's keeping track? I'm trying to, I mean, it's hard
because there's a lot of people,you know?
I'm not going to go through every single kill she had
because kind of all the same. Behind him, she's a mass
murderer, but we're not going togo there.
Yeah, I mean, they're Nazis though, so.

(38:02):
That's true. And they're not people, Yeah.
OK. I don't know.
It's it's hard to deviate from, you know, things like that.
So we're not going to get into that, but technically this could
be a true crime. In Stalin's eyes, it definitely
was a true crime. Everything was a true crime.

(38:22):
Well, throughout 1941 and 1942, she moved back and forth between
squadrons, still flying and still making kills.
One February of 1943, she was given the Order of the Red Star
and was promoted to Junior Lieutenant.
She was also selected to become a free hunter or in Russian,

(38:43):
Okotniki. Okotniki, which means she was
experienced enough to just go hunt and shoot down her own
targets. She had no general mission.
She's just like, been doing thatthe whole fucking time.
But I'm glad that you guys finally found a spot to be
comfortable with me 'cause I wasn't going to fucking change.

(39:03):
This is the equivalent, I guess in like you put it into anime
terms and hunter hunter, right? Like if you pass these really
arduous tests, very complicated,great anime, then you get this
thing. Well, you become a hunter and
you get a hunter card, like an actual dedicated card that
allows you to go anywhere in theworld, do anything you want, but
it also puts you above all of the world governments.

(39:27):
And so you're legally allowed tokill anywhere if you have a
hunter card. So she basically just got her
hunter card and now she's just like, they're like, there's a
rage. She's like, yeah, but I'm
sleeping. And then she just goes out
randomly and flies whenever the fuck she wants.
She could just. It's literally a license to
Rogue. Yeah.
And the difference is that now she doesn't, there's no specific

(39:48):
orders that she has to follow, which is so good for her because
she was rogue. So literally, yes, like you said
earlier, she was doing this already, but she was kind of
almost in a little bit of guidelines because she was
staying within like her wing man, her air group.
And now she kind of has this, this basically here's your,

(40:10):
here's your hall pass to go kindof wherever you want, even
without an air group. Get out of Siberia free card.
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, get out of jail free.
And she was like, hey, I probably won't even survive the
war, so doesn't matter to me it up.
Yeah, Yeah, I'd rather go to jail.
Yeah. I just wanted to ask that if

(40:31):
you're liking this episode, please consider taking a moment
to rate and review us on whatever platform you're
listening. Might seem like a small request,
but every review counts and goesa long way towards keeping this
show going and helping us deliver more of what you'd like.
Joey and I would sincerely appreciate it.

(40:51):
Now, without further ado, back to the show.
Well, on March 1943, she was wounded for the first time,
which is crazy. She's been flying for about two
years and this in the war and she gets wounded for the first
time. Her air group was attacked by a
dozen German JU 80 eights which was double the amount of Soviet

(41:14):
yaks they had. She ended up shooting down one
of them but was attacked out of nowhere by two more that came
down and dive bombed through theclouds to get her and she got
shot through the leg to get away.
She flew head first into the German formation.
Pretty much the most deadly gameof chicken you can imagine.

(41:35):
And the German squadron, yeah, they broke 1st and she flew
home. Women be crazy, right?
Yeah. Be crazy, yeah.
She literally she just made it onto the tarmac just before she
passed out because of loss of blood.
So she's basically blacking out as she's landing and she hits

(41:57):
the ground and then stops and blacks out.
Damn. Fucking nuts.
She only stayed in bed for just a few days to recuperate and
then caught a transport back to the front line.
Her next great feat caught the eye of many in the Soviet Air
Force. Not that she hadn't already done
it before, but now people higherup, we're starting to listen.

(42:17):
It's going to sound funny too, because it's kind of stupid to
think about. German intelligence used hot air
balloons for reconnaissance. I don't know if you knew that
even at this time. You.
Can see that they all stood outside of Hitler's speeches
collecting the air. Yeah, so much hot air coming to
this. We have an unlimited supply.

(42:38):
But to me, when I looked at this, I went like, I know they
had zeppelins and they used, youknow, flying air machines
basically to go travel and stufflike that.
But when I look at the idea of the technology coming out and
the fighter planes that were going literally 200 to 300,
sometimes more mph, they were using hot air balloons for

(43:00):
reconnaissance. And I guess they could get lower
and have more time to, you know,Recon the areas, especially big
large swaths of land like Russia.
And I guess that helped in the the area, but it.
Still works to this day. Look at China last year.
Anyways, it works. Oh man.
No, no, no it. Was a hot air actually, no, no,
no, they were, they were kind oflike weather balloons.

(43:20):
I don't want to side sidetrack too much, but they were
basically kind of like hot air balloon or weather balloons.
But the good thing about a balloon is, like you were saying
with them standing still is likeif you're monitoring a channel
or a valley or basically like a section of the country and
you're just trying to track likewhen folks crossover something.

(43:41):
Balloons are fucking great. They're really hard to spot.
They go 24 hours basically, never really run out of gas, you
know what I'm saying? And like you could just monitor
the fuck out of shit where it's like with a jet, you got to put
somebody up in the air. You have a limited amount of
time. And basically if they don't see
something in the two seconds because they're going 200 miles

(44:02):
an hour or whatever, they don't see it right then you're not
going to see shit. So.
Well, anyways, these hot air balloons were pretty much
heavily guarded by German fighters and every other fighter
who tried to take one down was chased away or shot down by the
German squadrons guarding it. So what's funny is to me, and
while I was getting into it, as I was like, man, it should be
really, really, really, really easy to shoot down one of these

(44:24):
balloons. And as we found out last year,
2024, it's not very easy to shoot down nor find, like you
just said. So funnily enough, Lydia devised
a way to fly completely around the balloon and the guarding
fighters and attack it from behind, which is a kind of dumb
moment to be like, hey, go around the fighters, hit it from

(44:46):
behind and outmaneuver it. Yay.
What if we went around the balloon and there?
This will never work. This is why we can't have women
pilots. Look, we need to go straight
towards the planes that are blocking us from the balloon.
I can't believe you, Lydia, out of all people who flew towards
him before, wouldn't be down with this idea.
Just like that was different. No, it's.

(45:09):
It's not different. We are following you blindly,
literally you. We do everything you do well.
Let's fly. I'm saying let's fly around it.
Yeah, I've got an idea. We're going to sharpen bamboo
and we're going to find the tallest tree we're going to wait
for. And we're going to wait till it
comes by then we're going to throw it up as high as we can.
We'll throw horses. And we'll throw.

(45:30):
That's what we're doing. Do you have a trebuchet?
We're going back in time to fix our our back in time problem.
Yeah, you want to be retro? You want to be a hipster with
your warfare with balloons? Fuck this trebuchet like buddies
go. Yeah, well, obviously Lydia
devised the way to fly completely around the balloon
and hit it from behind. And she did.

(45:51):
She took it down completely by surprise, becoming one of the
first to ever take down a Germanballoon in the Soviet Air Force,
which like, you can literally say fucking duh.
Yeah. And they literally she was the
first one. Damn.
Yeah, pretty crazy. She's hit a lot of firsts
already. I've.
Got to count for like 12, you know what I'm saying?

(46:12):
Yeah, yeah. Fucking bullet come.
On. I mean there probably was like 3
or 4 people in there too. Yeah, but it's like the size of
like 30 planes. I don't know.
Should have gave him true not too long before that, Lydia.
Just like a little bit before that, Lydia had actually been
transferred to the 73rd Air Regiment under the command of
Captain Alexi Salamatan and flewas his wingman.

(46:33):
Now, there was some contention on whether the two actually
Alexei and Lydia got married in secret during this time and had
some illicit fun and dealings. And because what is known is
that Alexei fell in love with Lydia, but Lydia was actually
probably more of come see, come SA, you know, of Alexei come see

(46:56):
is like so, so in French, you know, she's kind of Fair weather
on him. She was like, maybe I like him,
Maybe I don't. I don't know.
He's just a pilot. I mean, if you look at Lydia and
like, look at her story, I'm pretty sure that's how she was.
That's how she was with everyone.
She's like, fuck it, I don't care.
Whatever is going to happen happens.
But in late May, on the 21st, Alexei died in front of the

(47:17):
entire regiment while training anew pilot.
And as I'm laughing, I can see ababy driving the airplane and
him in the back to him. Like, all right, now turn left.
Your other left. Your other left.
No, that's down. It just breaks.

(47:38):
Oh fuck, your feet are too short.
They didn't make booster seats big enough for the babies.
Even don't talk about how Baby Driver was a sequel anyways.
It was a long lost sequel. I think they made it really
early on in World War 2 and it kind of it just got lost in the
IT got lost in the purge. Then it it actually got released

(48:01):
after glasnost. That's that's what happened.
Finally, the the movie was released.
Yeah. After this, Lydia decided to
only fly dangerous combat missions.
Before this, she was basically like, I'll take this is funny.
Before this, she was taking likeRecon missions.
She was taking anything else that she could take.
But after this, and after Alexi died, she goes all right, fuck

(48:24):
it, let's just go. Only dangerous combat missions,
stuff that I might not even comeback.
So she's like already like a hardcore badass.
And she's like, you know what, fuck it.
I'm gonna go hard. And everybody's like, what have
you been doing? I'm just gonna, I'm gonna, I'm
taking off the cuffs, you know what I'm saying?
I'm not gonna hold myself back anymore.
And they're just like, what the fuck?

(48:45):
Yeah, She did not care. She's like, all right, time to
go farther. She's time to go farther.
Yeah. Damn, I'm going to leave Lily's
in every plane, not even my own.Fuck you guys, we're all about
to be smelling good. I get she started.
There's a small bonsai farm in the back of my plane now.
And like, I know she's been putting a lot of work into it,

(49:07):
but like, we don't have room forbombs.
Well she was hell bent on killing the enemy or being
killed. On June 13th of 1943, she was
appointed flight commander over the Third Aviation Squadron, so
got a nice little promotion and on June 16th she scored another

(49:27):
kill, but she was wounded again and on her way back was wounded
again. She got wounded twice on one
mission and again she barely landed her fighter in a belly
landing and then after that refused to take medical
attention. So she got wounded twice on the
same landing, twice on the same flight, belly landed, and then

(49:50):
was just like, Nah, I'm good, good, I'm good.
Go take care of somebody else. Do you know where like how she
was like wounded? She got wounded through the
stomach on one of them and then she got wounded.
Fuck. I think 1 was through her arm or
shoulder or something like. That he's gonna leave that out.
He's gonna leave that out. Like I was sitting over here,
like, was it like a Trump assassination attempt?

(50:11):
Kind of wounded, but like a couple days later it's fine.
Or like was. It got to keep them guessing,
got to keep them guessing and obviously this.
Fucking stomach. At this moment, they weren't,
they weren't killer shots. Like she could live through
them. So they they pass through a part
of her that wouldn't necessarilybe a long term effect.
Through the stomach, Yes, but she was able to bandit herself.

(50:34):
Well, throughout the next few weeks, she scored another few
more kills, and I technically don't know how many she's got at
this time. At the end, I'll give you a kind
of a good figure, but she's justgoing through this guy's killing
people. Yeah, Now the Germans did not
like the idea of a woman fighting in the military.
They thought it that it was barbaric.

(50:55):
And when women were captured on the battlefield, they didn't
even hesitate to kill them execution wise with the bullet
to the head or torture then killthem, which was a little
different than they already had been doing because at least they
would torture the men for information.
And just spice it up, change things up.
You know, we got to take it easyon them.

(51:16):
Yeah. So, ladies, we have to.
We can't be like everyone else. But, you know, we have to like,
only torture them, make a littlelike some hot rods that get to
and then like some other things that like, come in here and a
few bullets that you go for the kneecaps first.
You know, that's the difference between men and women.
With men, you kind of like punchthem in the chest and then you
then you shoot them. Women, you just shoot them.

(51:38):
OK, We got to be nice to the ladies.
It's called chivalry. Well I mean to be fair, they
actually were more barbaric to the women in that case because
they didn't even give them a chance to survive, they just
shot them right away. The starve to death.
Oh well, true that starve to death was the other one, but.
Yeah, there's stalags. They're fucking prison camps.
Not exactly great places. Not exactly great.

(52:00):
So you're right in a way, they were saved from being in those
camps. How are they going to launch the
operation that's literally called Barbarosa?
And they'd be like Zampa. Barbaric.
Like what the. Yeah, Germans aren't good at
irony, though I guess that's kind of the thing.
I don't think that makes their, I don't think they're comedians

(52:23):
have that. No.
They're very dry. Most German comedy is just like.
And then he walked down the streets.
And this was right after he got married last Tuesday.
Do you remember that very lovelywedding?
Yes. So he walked down the street
because his wife, she needed a Snickers bar.
You know, she was having some cramps.
And on the way home, he got a text message saying, you won't

(52:44):
believe it, with an image that showed the positive.
They were going to be, they weregoing to be mother and father.
And then a bus hit him and he died.
That's most German comedy. Man, that's a terrible Snickers
commercial. Why wait?

(53:05):
You know, advertisements really are different in different.
Countries, they go off the wall sometimes.
It was like his wife asked him his his newly white wife asked
him to go pick up his Snickers and he's like stopped at a
closer like carry out and he's like they have his Mars bars and
he like got that. He's dead on the ground.

(53:27):
The ambulance is going to flat lines down in the background,
zooms in with the bar right nextto his bloody head and she's
like, should have grabbed his Snickers.
Yes, that's the one. That's the one.
See, and Snickers needs to endorse us.
I feel like we have some great ideas for the future of their
company, at least in Germany. Yeah, I mean, clearly we're

(53:48):
just, we're just giving them gold here.
Yeah, I know, right? Shout out to Max our German, one
of our German listeners. Max, you are this shit.
Exactly. You.
Are I pre? I pre apologize for my German
impressions. Max Max is awesome.
I've been chatting with him a bunch of via e-mail and shout
out to one of Max's students. Max is a professor in Germany.

(54:12):
I think he's an English professor if I remember
correctly. English professor in Germany,
one of his students also listensto the show and they chat about
it before class sometime. So Max, I already sent you one
of the Patreon promo upgrades for your for your student after
Christmas or holiday break in Germany, which I know in Europe
is like 5 months long or something.

(54:33):
I don't know. You don't know what rights are
here. Anyways, back to German jokes.
Well, Max too. If you have some great
documentaries or anything from World War 2, send them over to
us. I would love to watch them.
I'm huge in the documentaries about World War Two.
Well, on August 1st in 1943, Lydia made her last flight.

(54:54):
Lydia was on her 4th, 4th, sortie of the day basically
going up, going back down, fighting in the middle, going
back down, going up, fighting inthe middle.
You know, might maybe not fighting on the second one camp
coming back down, kind of just watching the the aircraft going
by. She was covering a Flight
Evolution 2 ground attack aircraft that were returning to

(55:17):
base. She dove in to fight a group of
German bombers and as she dove into the formation again,
because that's her thing, she dove into the formation, 2BF1O
Nines got behind her. The last thing that was seen was
her aircraft was smoke coming from it.
Pursued by about 8 German fighters, she took on this whole

(55:40):
squadron herself. Probably 2 squadrons actually,
'cause I think squadrons. It was like the whole squadron
that we had been protecting the hot air balloon, they're like
we've. Come back.
We've come back for you. Damn so at this point literally
an entire like a fleet of aircraft are like targeting her?

(56:01):
They're targeting her and so that was from her, one of her Co
pot, one of her or her wingman. They were basically watching as
she was falling through the air and they don't know what
happened after that. This was literally a few days
before her 22nd birthday 'cause she was born in 1921.

(56:23):
She was almost 22 by the time this happened.
Fucking Christ man. Now, as I said a second ago,
nobody really knows exactly whathappened to her.
And I want to get into a few theories on what people think
happened to her because there isa generally huge discrepancy

(56:44):
between what people think happened to her.
And it really mattered in the way that her memorial looked and
the way that she was viewed later on, right?
So Russian authorities speculated that her plane was
shot down, right, which was pretty much what was happening,
right, And that she had parachuted out and survived.
And at this point in the in the Soviet Union, it really wasn't

(57:06):
look good on as a Soviet Union pilot to have a parachute on
you. But she was noticed sometimes to
put a parachute in her airplane because she had been shot twice
and barely survived, right. She was kind of, you know, and
she was also a a rebel. She was like, fuck it, I'm going
to put a parachute in there. Yeah.

(57:26):
She was then captured by Nazis and then subsequently killed.
This is important distinction because if she was captured, you
were pretty much disgraced and you could not be awarded with
any medals, right? Because that was the Soviet
Union's thing. If you were captured, you're
terrible, you're not a good fighter, you're not a good

(57:47):
soldier. You do not get the distinction
of courage, no matter how hard you fight, no matter what you
did. And that was the distinction
that the Soviet Union at that time, the government looked at
her and said, no, she didn't do well.
She got captured and then she was killed.
In in a cultural relativity kindof sense, that's a super common

(58:09):
belief across a lot of like warrior traditions across the
world. Yeah, for sure.
Americans pretty much were the ones that came in there.
Like, I'm not trying to die, dude.
Fuck you. Everybody's like, what the fuck?
Good. Good job, Good job America.
You can job America. You can survive and give be
given awards after you were captured because you could have

(58:31):
been courageous for what you did, not just because you're a
coward for being captured. Yeah, you're you're not a coward
for being captured. But in all fairness though, in
Russia, I mean, it was like it was.
Kill or be killed. It was a traditional idea and.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's die for Joseph Stalin, die
for the country, die for the motherland.
Stand on Stalin, stand on business.

(58:52):
She's standing on business and they stand on a lot of people's
necks. So that happened a lot.
Well, in 1979, they unearthed 90other crash sites in that area,
right? Because her family, her family
had gone so far after this to basically try to prove that she
didn't get captured. Because the whole time she got

(59:15):
captured, her family got startedon looking at like they were
bad, bad people too. Because just the history of
that. And it didn't look good on their
family that she got captured andthen killed.
And all the haters for the fact that she was a woman are going
to be pushing that narrative of the story.
And they were like no, she was bad ass.
You're just jealous of her Chrome boots.

(59:37):
Not 100% truth that they were trying to say no, that the
family wasn't great, that she, oh, she's just a woman.
She got captured and killed. That's whatever.
Whatever. Yeah.
Which is kind of funny too, because I feel like a lot of
times they were trying to, they would also look good as if she
was a fighter pilot and killed abunch of the Germans.
You know, even that this civilian was doing this.

(59:58):
She wasn't a civilian in the end, but she started as a
civilian. So it's kind of.
There's the propaganda to the public, and then there's the
propaganda and the Barretts, andthere's two different things
exactly. Yeah, after they unearthed the
90 crash sites that were around this area that she crashed, they
found an unidentified female body and they exhumed it, having

(01:00:18):
been buried in the village of Dmitrivka.
Sorry if I say some of these words wrong cuz I don't not a
native Russian speaker so I'm trying my best here to say some
of these cities correct. But it was assumed that this was
Litviak and this is important because it proved that she had
not been captured by the Germansand thus she was allowed to be

(01:00:41):
given a posthumous award. The reason why they said they
thought it wasn't that this would prove that she wasn't
killed by the Germans is becauseshe landed in a village that was
not controlled by the Germans. And then they buried.
She had died in the plane crash and then they buried her and she
had a plot given to her. They couldn't identify her body

(01:01:02):
at the time because nobody knew she was, but they knew that she
wasn't taken. And so this would allow her to
get awards after death and to benot basically trashed, you know,
not have her Twitter trashed after she died, you know?
And so like in 79, especially inlike Soviet Russia, so much like

(01:01:24):
so much weight is put behind stuff like that, that like it
affects the actual literal standing of your entire family
within Soviet society. So it's like you're getting an
upgrade on your apartment because your family's a part of
the da da da, da, da. You're getting to go to this
actual fucking school. You're getting to, you know,
like it, it actually does upgrade the quality of life for

(01:01:46):
shit ton of folks around her are, you know, I guess
descendants slash family of her.So like, it's big, big fucking
deal. That's a huge deal.
Well, in May 1990 all the way to1990, she was given the title
Hero of the Soviet Union, Huge honor by President Mikhail

(01:02:06):
Gorbachev. Oh yeah.
So that's huge. Damn.
All in all, she ended up with numerous awards given her by the
Soviet Union and became hero from the World War 2 era.
So I wanna go into the She sent her last letter right before her
last flight to her mom before she was killed.
She said this, and I think it showed her true character.

(01:02:28):
And before I say it, I wanna saythat her patriotism was like, it
was like hanging on an edge, right?
Yeah. She wanted to prove to the base
of the Russian government and tothe people around her that she
wasn't trash because her dad waskilled in the purge.
And so her family at the beginning was looked on really
badly. And I did deep dive into finding

(01:02:51):
why her dad was killed. There was only one guess.
And it was the one guess that the her family was having
trouble, like her mom and dad were getting close to a divorce.
And this was looked on super badly.
And then people around there started hearing about it and
they started talking to people and supposedly that's the one
guess they say why her dad was killed because there was kind of

(01:03:14):
like that like family unit kind of thing.
And he they were destabilizing it a little bit.
And so that's why they think herdad was murdered, which is like
a huge thing. And it led to her being like, I
want to show that I'm worth something, you know?
And so she tried her hardest andkind of why it created her like
I'm fighting for the Soviet Russia at this time to like take

(01:03:35):
down the Germans. I also reiterated that literally
everyone behind the Germans lineside of the line was getting
murdered and basically starved to death.
So you have both of those thingscoming into picture with her.
Her last thing she said to her mom was I have a burning desire

(01:03:56):
to drive those German reptiles out of our land.
Damn. She also had a song made for her
called Fortune Favors the Brave by an Israeli metal band, which
is kind of crazy. It's.
Not a cat, dude. She had a movie made about her
in 2019 called Litviak as well. So in Russia, which is kind.

(01:04:16):
Of good. That's fucking good, dude.
She was an amazing person in this era of people that were not
generally doing things she did. And it spoke a lot about her
character that she didn't let the military take her character
from her. She kind of stood up against
everything that they were tryingto push, which looked bad on her
in some parts. But because she was so immensely

(01:04:38):
talented and immensely bold about what she did, she was
allowed to go forward. And I think when I talked to Gil
about all these things that happen, about how basically
people want you all to be a certain way.
And I think she stands the test of that, saying, like me and Gil
always want to say, we want to be more BCR than anybody else
can be BCR. Basically, we want to be us more

(01:05:00):
than anything else in the world.And that's the way I think that
she lived. And I think that's pretty
fucking amazing. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And I mean, like, also, I'm surepart of the attitude, this is
totally just speculation here, but if you already looked down
upon just for quite literally existing, it's hard just to

(01:05:21):
survive. You know, like it's hard to
constantly process new ways and subtle ways that people are
looking down on you for things. So it's just kind of like,
you're gonna hate me anyways. Fuck you, you know, like, give
me that Chrome. Thank you all for listening to
everything in this episode and this awesome woman who is one of

(01:05:44):
The Pioneers in fighter races offemale fighter pilots and my
male fighter pilots, all the fighter pilots.
We want to thank you to all of our Patreon listeners and all of
our listeners in general becauseyou guys are amazing.
We know it's fucking cold out and this is the perfect time to
listen to podcasts, Get your drinks, get your coffee, get

(01:06:05):
your coke, get whatever you havein front of you, whatever you
have besides you. Cuddle up because tomorrow is
National Cuddling Day. Get together, have a nice
cuddle, and listen to some blackcat report.
Gil, you want to give the thank yous to all of our Patreons
again? All of our Patreon members shout

(01:06:26):
out again Tim, Ian, Rachelle, Dwayne, Max, Morgan, Dragon Paw,
Miller's Monsters, Gavin, Jayden, Alyssa, Bree, Michael,
Extreme, Paranorm Girl, James Seeley, and the one and only not

(01:06:50):
be kidding, Ben. Thank you all so much for
helping us do this. We appreciate you.
We've got some awesome things coming up.
And eventually we are excited toput out our first listener
submission episode. Gil is doing some amazing
research and reading. You know what?

(01:07:11):
I think by the time this episodehas come out, you will have seen
the first cup of Joey. Yeah, yeah.
So hope you've enjoyed it, hope you get to see this, and then
just listen to this right afterwards.
We love you. Remember to like and subscribe.
Hit that review button wherever the heck you're at.

(01:07:31):
Unless it's a bad review. Then why did you listen this
song? But hey, even for you too.
We love you and bye.

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119 | Lydia Litvyak - The White Lily of Stalingrad and Her Chrome Boots

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}119 | Lydia Litvyak - The White Lily of Stalingrad and Her Chrome Boots