The Night Witches and the Polikarpov Po-2 biplanes that terrorized the Eastern Front

The 588th Night Bomber Regiment — an all-female Soviet unit known as the Night Witches — flew over 23,000 combat sorties during World War II in open-cockpit Polikarpov Po-2 biplanes made of wood and canvas. Flying without parachutes, radar, or defensive weapons, they carried out as many as 18 bombing missions per crew in a single night, gliding silently over German positions with their engines cut. The Germans called them Nachthexen and feared them enough to offer the Iron Cross to any pilot who shot one down.

How Did an All-Female Combat Regiment Come to Exist?

In 1941, the Soviet Union was reeling. The German Wehrmacht had destroyed thousands of Soviet aircraft on the ground in the opening weeks of Operation Barbarossa, and the VVS (Soviet Air Force) was desperate for pilots.

Marina Raskova, already a national hero, petitioned Stalin directly. Raskova was the Soviet equivalent of Amelia Earhart — in 1938, she and two other women had set a world distance record for female pilots, flying a Tupolev ANT-37 nearly 4,000 miles nonstop from Moscow to Siberia’s far eastern coast. When the plane ran out of fuel short of the airfield, Raskova bailed out into the Siberian taiga and survived 10 days in the wilderness with a revolver and a chocolate bar.

Her proposal was radical: form entirely female aviation regiments. Not mixed units — every position filled by women. Pilots, navigators, mechanics, armorers, ground crew, and commanders. Stalin approved, and Soviet Order Number 0099 established three female aviation regiments in October 1941. One flew fighters, one flew dive bombers, and the third — the 588th Night Bomber Regiment — flew the Po-2.

What Made the Po-2 an Effective Weapon?

The Po-2 was designed in 1927 by Nikolai Polikarpov as a primary trainer. It was a fabric-covered biplane with a wooden frame, open cockpits, and a Shvetsov M-11 radial engine producing about 110 horsepower. Its top speed was roughly 94 mph, with a cruise speed closer to 70 mph and a stall speed around 40 mph. A Cessna 172 cruises faster than the Po-2’s maximum speed.

But the Po-2’s limitations became tactical advantages:

It flew below the stall speed of a Messerschmitt Bf 109, meaning German fighters couldn’t slow down enough for a clean shot without stalling out.
It could operate from dirt roads, frozen fields, or pastures — no prepared runway needed.
The engine could be throttled to idle, allowing the aircraft to glide in near-total silence.
It was mechanically simple, easy to maintain with minimal tools and parts.

That silence was the weapon. German searchlights struggled to track something so small and slow. Antiaircraft guns were calibrated to lead fast-moving targets, and the Po-2 barely registered by those standards.

What Did a Night Witches Mission Look Like?

The regiment flew exclusively at night. Po-2s took off from flat stretches of ground just kilometers behind the front lines, carrying a pilot in the front cockpit and a navigator/bombardier in the rear. Slung under the lower wings were six to eight 50-kilogram fragmentation or incendiary bombs — roughly 200 to 300 kilograms of ordnance per sortie.

The standard approach: fly toward the target at around 1,000 meters (3,300 feet). The lead aircraft would sometimes deliberately draw searchlight fire while the other two went dark. The pilot would cut the engine entirely and glide. No engine noise. No lights. The only sound was wind hissing through the wing struts and canvas.

The Germans below heard nothing until bombs were already falling.

After the drop, the pilot restarted the Shvetsov, climbed away into darkness, and flew home to rearm. Then repeated the entire cycle. Five missions per night was light duty. Eight was routine. On peak nights, individual crews flew 15 to 18 sorties between dusk and dawn. Turnaround time between missions was sometimes as short as five minutes, with all-female ground crews reloading bombs and checking aircraft by hand in the dark.

What Conditions Did They Endure?

The cockpits were open to the Russian night. There was no heating. Winter temperatures on the Eastern Front dropped to minus 30 or minus 40 degrees. The women flew in leather helmets and goggles, suffering routine frostbite. Their hands stuck to exposed metal surfaces.

They carried no parachutes for most of the war — the Po-2 flew too low for one to be useful, and the weight savings meant more bombs. If antiaircraft tracer fire hit the doped canvas, the entire aircraft could ignite in seconds. Wood and fabric burned like kindling. There was no ejection and no bailout. A hit meant burning.

The pilots who survived this were mostly between 17 and 26 years old — students, factory workers, and athletes. Some had flying experience from Soviet civil aviation clubs. Many had none before training.

Who Led Them?

Major Yevdokiya Bershanskaya took command at age 28, having flown since she was 15. She led the regiment for the entire war — calm under pressure, tactically sharp, and fiercely protective of her pilots. The 588th flew its first combat mission on June 12, 1942, against a German headquarters near the Donbas. Three crews went out. Three came back. From that night forward, the regiment flew almost every night for three years.

The unit fought from Stalingrad to Berlin — through the Battle of the Caucasus, the liberation of Crimea, and the push into Poland and Germany. When the war ended in May 1945, some of these women were barely 22.

How Did the Germans Respond?

The Germans could not solve the Night Witches problem. Fighters couldn’t reliably intercept an aircraft flying below their minimum speed. Searchlights couldn’t consistently track something so small and slow. They eventually positioned machine gun nests along likely approach routes, but the Night Witches adapted — constantly changing routes, using terrain masking, and flying along river valleys to conceal their approach.

The nickname Nachthexen (Night Witches) reportedly came from the sound of the Po-2 gliding with its engine off. The wind hissing through the bracing wires reminded German soldiers of a broomstick sweeping. That sound in the dark, followed by explosions, was enough to keep battle-hardened Wehrmacht troops awake at night.

Who Were the Standout Pilots?

Nadezhda Popova flew 852 missions. She was shot down multiple times. On one sortie, her Po-2 was hit by antiaircraft fire and caught fire — she landed the burning aircraft and pulled her navigator out. On another, she counted 42 bullet holes in her plane after returning to base. In a postwar interview, she said the anger at what the Germans were doing to her country was always stronger than the fear. Popova lived to 91, dying in 2013. German veterans she met later in life told her the silent gliding biplanes were the most frightening thing they experienced in the war.

Yevgeniya Zhigulenko flew 968 missions and later became a film director, producing the 1981 movie Night Witches in the Sky. She said the hardest part was watching friends not return and then flying the same route the next night.

What Is the Regiment’s Legacy?

The 588th dropped roughly 3,000 tons of bombs over the course of the war. Twenty-three members were awarded Hero of the Soviet Union, the highest Soviet military honor — an extraordinary number for a single regiment. It was the most decorated female unit in the Soviet Air Force and the only one of the three women’s regiments that remained entirely female for the entire war.

Twenty-three women of the 588th were killed in action. The youngest was 19.

After the war, the Soviet Union offered little recognition. Many Night Witches returned to civilian life and were told to keep quiet. The regiment was disbanded and its aircraft scrapped. Their story remained largely unknown outside Russia until Western historians began researching it in the 1970s and 1980s. Bruce Myles’ Night Witches (1981) was among the first English-language accounts, followed by Reina Pennington’s Wings, Women and War.

The Po-2 was never meant to be a weapon. It was a trainer, a utility aircraft, an afterthought. The women of the 588th turned it into one of the most effective harassment bombing platforms of the entire war — not through technology or firepower, but through skill, courage, and the willingness to fly into the dark again and again.

Key Takeaways

The 588th Night Bomber Regiment flew over 23,000 combat sorties in obsolete Po-2 biplanes, with some crews completing 15–18 missions in a single night.
The Po-2’s extreme slow speed was a tactical advantage — German fighters couldn’t intercept it without stalling, and its engine-off glide capability enabled silent bombing runs.
Every member of the regiment was a woman — pilots, navigators, mechanics, and ground crew — and it remained all-female for the entire war.
Twenty-three pilots earned Hero of the Soviet Union, making the 588th one of the most decorated regiments in the Soviet Air Force.
Their story was suppressed for decades after the war and only gained widespread recognition through Western historians in the 1980s.