Much to my chagrin,someone the other day reminded me of my intention to do my bit to let people know that history includes women - women just like us - who did remarkable things,who are role models, and an inspiration to girls & women everywhere. We grow up knowing so few of them, many have turned for emulation to a family of women about whom there is nothing outstanding except their bottoms! But, to date, you pretty much have to go to University to learn about female soldiers; female doctors, scientists, spies, housewives, artists, agitators, pirates...
...And I had One of Those Moments. (I utterly refuse to have an Epiphany. Especially in public.) Last time I sent a missive to the waiting throng I explained about my inability to write...or do much else right now. (http://benefitstbrighton.blogspot.com/2022/02/mental-health-education-me.html)
But I suddenly realised, standing at the register in a tiny Coffee Cafe...yes I could! Because writing about "my" ladies brings with it a kind of burning in my chest - proselytising zeal! So I came home and set about fishing through my notes.
The first of My Ladies was Amelia Lanyer who was born in 1569, (http://benefitstbrighton.blogspot.com/2021/12/women-learning.html) but today I've leapt a few centuries to Marina Raskova, who was born around 500 years later, in 1912. Marina was the woman who approached Stalin for permission to raise three all-female Air Force squadrons in world war II. And who got them! (Don't do this if it's going to sadden you, but: try to imagine what the response would be to-day were any of us to approach our own country's Air Force with a similar proposition. )
She'd had a comfortable Middle Class upbringing: mother a teacher, father an operatic instructor, and her aunt well-known Russian singer Tatyana Liubatovich (ru: Татьяна Спиридоновна Любатович). It was almost inevitable that Marina was going to become a singer. But she made an abrupt turn when still in High School and followed, instead, Chemistry - so her first job, in 1929, was as a chemist in a dye plant. She married an Engineer and they had a child in 1930. All rather uninspiring. Yet before the decade was out, she and two others would be the first women to be awarded the Heroes of the Soviet Union medal, and her face would be featured on Soviet stamps!
In 1935 Marina and her husband divorced. No doubt a lot of things change when one's partner becomes the the most well-known flyer/navigater in Russia. Rather a hard act to follow once Marina left her job in the dying plant and enrolled in the Air Force Academy. From there she joined the Soviet Military Air Forces, Voyenno-Vozdushney Sily (VVS) in 1933; and in 1934 she became the first Soviet woman to qualify as an aviation navigator.
Her next step, that same year, was to pass her pilot's test and become the first female flying instructor, at the Zhurouski Air Academy. By 1934 she was known across Russia for her flying feats and was dubbed "Russia's Amelia Earhart." Whether she and her husband parted amicably or not, it must have been rather miserable for him - not so much her success, but her success at breaking barriers in a predominantly male environment. In the 1930's.
She became known as an endurance flyer and broke many existing records. However, in 1938, she set the International distance record when navigating 6,450 kilometers with her two female crew.
Yet I'd never heard of this twenty-six year old girl - or of her crew - who broke records men couldn't match. There have been times in my life when it really would have been of comfort. I'm fairly sure I'm not the only person to get the feeling we're on our own, as women, when it comes to breaking barriers and marching into new ground trying to look confident about it. But if we had an inkling of the hundreds of women who've done that through the centuries, and how much they contributed to our world, the playing ground becomes a little firmer under the feet.
In 1943 the nation mourned when their indomitable and toughest fighter was shot down and killed. However, her body was recovered and, even after her death she broke yet another record: she became the first woman to receive a full State Funeral with full military honours. She was posthumously awarded the Order of the Patriotic War 1st Class. and her ashes were interred into the Kremlin walls.
However... though not too many people have heard of Marina Rascova, word appears to be getting out about an aspect of her legacy that, in itself, is an amazing, exciting, triumphant chapter of WWII. In fact, in the light of it, Marina's own story tends to get subsumed, so I wanted to make it known first.
Major (yep!) Rascova's all-female squadron was the 588th. Which became the most well-known squadron in the Soviet Air Force. German fighters were told they qualified for the Iron Cross if they shot a 588 down. They were given the toughest deal of any members of the Air Force - yet managed to utilise the barriers put in their way to become the most feared, dreaded, efficient and infamous squadron of WWII.
They were dubbed "The Night Witches".And they are legend.
They deserve their own story, which I'll tell next time.
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