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    Night Witches: A History of the All Female 588th Night Bomber Regiment
    Night Witches: A History of the All Female 588th Night Bomber Regiment
    Night Witches: A History of the All Female 588th Night Bomber Regiment
    Ebook68 pages1 hour

    Night Witches: A History of the All Female 588th Night Bomber Regiment

    By Fergus Mason

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    About this ebook

    From 1942 until the end of World War II, the Soviets had a secret weapon: women. The 588th Night Bomber Regiment was one of the most decorated units; each member had flew more than 800 missions by the end of the war, and twenty-three were awarded the Hero of the Soviet Union (the highest distinction).

    Despite all the awards, the unit is largely forgot now. This book looks at the history of one of the most daring aviations units ever commissioned.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBookCaps
    Release dateSep 30, 2014
    ISBN9781311024015

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      Book preview

      Night Witches - Fergus Mason

      HistoryCaps Presents:

      Night Witches

      A History of the All Female 588th Night Bomber Regiment

      By Fergus Mason

      © 2011 by Golgotha Press, Inc./HistoryCaps

      Published at SmashWords

      www.bookcaps.com

      About HistoryCaps

      HistoryCaps is an imprint of BookCaps™ Study Guides. With each book, a brief period of history is recapped. We publish a wide array of topics (from baseball and music to science and philosophy), so check our growing catalogue regularly (www.bookcaps.com) to see our newest books.

      Introduction

      Near Kalach, Russian Soviet Socialist Republic; July 1942

      The heavy, damp air concealed the sound at first.

      Since the breakout past Kharkov in May, the men of the Wehrmacht’s 6th Army had advanced over three hundred miles through fierce Soviet resistance. Day after day they’d marched hard along the scorched, dusty roads of southern Russia, the long columns of troops following in the wake of the Panzer regiments that smashed each Soviet line and cut the survivors into isolated pockets. It was the modern German way of war, a relentless onslaught with no pauses to let the defender rebuild his strength. And it was working; the lead elements of 6th Army were less than fifty miles from the strategic objectives of Stalingrad and the Volga River. It was hard on the infantry though, and at the end of each day they gratefully seized the chance to clean their equipment, eat and sleep.

      The field kitchen was miles behind German lines but light discipline was still strictly enforced. They’d all learned to respect the power of Soviet artillery and knew how much damage a stay-behind observer with a field telephone could inflict. One stray flash of light reaching the wrong eyes and they could be pounded mercilessly by long-range guns. The weary Ländser didn’t care. They hid the glowing ends of their cigarettes inside their helmets, and crawled under their shelter halves to examine their aching feet for blisters with a red-shaded flashlight. The horse-drawn cooker itself – the Goulash cannon – was surrounded with a hessian screen to hide any light from its wood-fired burners. A long line of soldiers straggled away from it, waiting for the surly cooks to ladle a pint of thick pea soup into their mess tins and hand them a thick slab of bread. Sentries patrolled the perimeter, alert but confident; the Soviet armies were falling back once more, and while partisan attack was always a danger, the scouts of their regiment’s Aufklärerkompanie had fanned out into the surrounding countryside to set ambushes and observe likely approach routes.

      It was one of the sentries who heard it. It sounded like wind in the trees, and he smiled as it brought back memories of the orchards on his parents’ farm back home. Then he paused. It was a still night; there was no wind, just the oppressive humidity of the Russian summer that lay on them like an old damp blanket. Still, there was that thin whistle, steadily growing louder. He unslung his rifle and peered out into the darkness. Then he realized that the sound was coming from above. As it rushed overhead he shouted the alarm, but it was too late; the bombs were already falling.

      They weren’t very large bombs. There were six of them, each weighing just under 110 pounds. They’d been released in a string, half a second apart, and now they detonated in a rapid series of crashing explosions. Many of the soldiers threw themselves to the ground at the first blast; those who were too slow screamed as shrapnel slashed at their bodies. Rifles cracked as men fired blindly into the sky. A few hundred yards away an engine suddenly burst into an uneven chugging beat that quickly dwindled into the night.

      Some of the men on the ground were writhing and screaming, calls of "Sani!" (medic) rising into the night. Others lay ominously still. The Sanitäter with their Red Cross armbands began moving from man to man, injecting morphine and applying shell dressings. The tired soldiers, shocked into wakefulness, unstrapped their short shovels and began digging foxholes in case the attacker returned. Every few minutes a machinegun stuttered a blast of tracers into the sky as nervous gunners fired at nothing. It looked like being a long, sleepless night.

      Much later, two weary men sprawled under a shelter half in a shallow hole. One brewed coffee on a solid fuel stove he’d carefully dug into the side of their makeshift bunker to hide every glimmer of light. The other groaned, stretching his aching arms and legs. He lit a cigarette from the tiny stove, cupping it carefully in his hands to hide the glowing tip. Then he stared out from under the edge of the shelter. In the east a faint band silhouetted a distant farmhouse on the horizon; dawn was near, and soon the NCOs would be chasing them out of their blankets for another hard march. He scowled; he’d hardly slept at all, and suddenly their next rest stop seemed a long way off.

      His friend nudged him with an elbow; he turned and accepted the canteen cup

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