The Night Witches and the Soviet women who bombed the Eastern Front in plywood biplanes

The 588th Night Bomber Regiment of the Soviet Air Force was the most decorated female unit in World War II, flying over 23,000 combat sorties in obsolete Polikarpov Po-2 biplanes between 1942 and 1945. The Germans called them Nachthexen — Night Witches — for the broomstick-like sound their biplane wires made when the pilots cut their engines and glided silently through searchlight beams to drop bombs by hand. The regiment remained all-female from formation to disbandment: every pilot, navigator, mechanic, armorer, and officer was a woman.

How Did the Night Witches Come to Exist?

By October 1941, the Wehrmacht had pushed deep into the Soviet Union and the Soviet air force had suffered catastrophic losses — entire squadrons destroyed on the ground in the opening weeks of Operation Barbarossa.

Marina Raskova, already a national hero, seized the moment. Raskova was the Soviet equivalent of Amelia Earhart, a navigator who had set long-distance flight records in the late 1930s. In 1938, she and two other women flew a Tupolev ANT-37 nonstop from Moscow to the Sea of Okhotsk — nearly 6,000 kilometers. When they ran low on fuel, Raskova bailed out over the Siberian taiga and survived ten days in the wilderness before rescue. She was awarded the title Hero of the Soviet Union.

Raskova went directly to Stalin and proposed three all-female aviation regiments — not support roles, but frontline combat units flying fighters, day bombers, and night bombers. On October 8, 1941, Order Number 0099 established the three regiments under her command. Hundreds of women, most barely out of their teens, reported for training at Engels airfield near Saratov.

Two of the three regiments eventually integrated men or transitioned to modern aircraft. The 588th Night Bomber Regiment stayed entirely female for the entire war.

What Aircraft Did the Night Witches Fly?

The Polikarpov Po-2 was a biplane that looked like it belonged in the 1920s — because it did. It was designed as a trainer and crop duster.

The specifications tell the story of just how outmatched it was:

Maximum speed: 94 mph (a Messerschmitt Bf 109 could reach 370 mph)
Construction: canvas and plywood, with no armor
Cockpit: open, with minimal instruments
Defensive armament: none initially; some later carried a rear-mounted ShKAS machine gun
No radios in the early days, and no parachutes for much of the war

Navigators calculated bombing runs with a flashlight, a stopwatch, a map on their knee, and a ruler. The Po-2 could carry approximately 600 kilograms (1,300 pounds) of bombs on racks under the lower wings, released manually by the navigator leaning over the side of the cockpit.

How Did the Night Witches Use a Terrible Aircraft So Effectively?

Flying exclusively after dark, the 588th developed a tactic built around the Po-2’s greatest liability — its slowness.

Aircraft launched in formations of three. The first two planes flew in as bait, drawing searchlights and antiaircraft fire. The third pilot cut her engine entirely. The propeller windmilled to a stop, and the biplane glided in near-total silence through the darkness. The only sound was the wind vibrating through the bracing wires — the “broomstick” sound that gave the unit its name.

After releasing bombs over the target, the pilot restarted the engine and climbed away for another run.

The Po-2’s absurdly low speed created an accidental tactical advantage against interceptors. German fighters at combat speed couldn’t slow down enough to match a Po-2 without stalling. A Messerschmitt would overshoot, pull up, come around, and by then the biplane had vanished into the dark.

How Many Missions Did the Night Witches Fly?

The sortie count is almost difficult to believe. Individual crews flew multiple missions per night — not two or three, but as many as eight, ten, fifteen, or even eighteen sorties in a single night. They would land, the ground crew would reload bombs and refuel by hand, and the crew would take off again. On some nights, the regiment collectively flew over 100 sorties.

The ground crews worked without powered equipment, hauling bombs and wrestling them onto wing racks in freezing darkness. Some mechanics were so small they stood on ammunition crates to reach the upper wing. They kept the Po-2 fleet operational in conditions that would have grounded modern maintenance facilities.

Who Were the Women of the 588th?

Nadezhda Popova flew her first combat mission in 1942 at age twenty-one. Her brother had already been killed by the Germans. On one mission, her Po-2 was hit by antiaircraft fire and caught fire. She landed it, extinguished the flames, and flew another sortie the same night. Over the course of the war, she completed 852 missions in a plywood biplane with no armor. She was shot down multiple times and kept returning to duty.

Yevdokiya Bershanskaya, a civilian flight instructor before the war, commanded the regiment through most of the conflict. Under her leadership, 23 members of the 588th received the Hero of the Soviet Union, the country’s highest military decoration.

Raisa Aronova wrote in her memoirs that what stayed with her most was not the flak or the searchlights — it was the cold. Open-cockpit flying in a Russian winter, wearing whatever layers they could pile on, and it was never enough. Frostbite was constant. Wind at altitude froze exposed skin. Some women developed permanent nerve damage in their hands and feet.

How Did the Germans Respond to the Night Witches?

The Wehrmacht’s reaction reveals how seriously it took the threat. After early encounters, the Germans stationed some of their best searchlight and flak batteries against the 588th. They assigned night fighters specifically to hunt Po-2s. Any German pilot who shot down a Night Witch was automatically awarded the Iron Cross.

Despite these measures, the Po-2’s strange advantage — being too slow to intercept cleanly — kept the kill ratio lower than the Germans expected.

Still, 32 women of the 588th were killed in action. Some were shot down by flak, some caught by night fighters, and some died in crashes during takeoff or landing on unprepared strips. In a small, tight-knit unit where everyone knew everyone, each loss was felt across the entire regiment.

Where Did the 588th Fight?

The regiment participated in some of the most critical campaigns on the Eastern Front:

North Caucasus
Crimea
Belarus
Poland
Germany itself, where they flew their final combat missions in 1945

They served from the desperate days of 1942, when the Soviet Union teetered on the edge of collapse, all the way to Berlin.

What Happened to the Night Witches After the War?

Many veterans returned to civilian life and found that the world didn’t know what to do with them. In the West, their story was virtually unknown for decades. Soviet propaganda celebrated the unit but rarely gave individual women the recognition they deserved. It wasn’t until the 1980s and 1990s that Western historians pieced together the full story, largely through interviews with surviving veterans.

Nadezhda Popova lived until 2013, reaching the age of ninety-one. She spent her later years giving interviews, attending commemorations, and ensuring the story survived her generation. She once told a journalist she could still hear the wind through those biplane wires — that it came to her in dreams.

Key Takeaways

The 588th Night Bomber Regiment flew over 23,000 combat sorties in obsolete Po-2 biplanes, remaining entirely female throughout the war.
Pilots deliberately cut their engines to glide silently over targets, exploiting the Po-2’s slowness as a tactical advantage against faster German interceptors.
Individual crews flew up to 18 sorties in a single night, with ground crews reloading bombs by hand in freezing darkness.
Marina Raskova, a record-setting aviator and Hero of the Soviet Union, convinced Stalin to create three all-female combat aviation regiments in October 1941.
32 women were killed in action, and 23 received the Hero of the Soviet Union — the highest Soviet military honor — demonstrating both the cost and the impact of their service.