Hello and thank you for downloading witness on the BBC World Service with me

Dina Newman. Today I'm taking you back to World War II and the story of

Yilina Malutina who served in the women's bomb arrangement in the Soviet Air Force.

They were the only women on active duty in any Air Force at the time. It's July 1944 and the Red Army is advancing across Bel-Russia,

and the Red Army is advancing across Bel-Russia, pushing the Nazis out of the Soviet territory.

On July the 4th, pilot Yilena Malutina and her colleagues

were waiting as usual for the order to take off.

In the morning morning the weather was terrible

and we thought we weren't going to fly that day.

We were sitting under the aircraft waiting for instructions.

Suddenly we saw a white rocket, a signal for us to fly.

So we took off and flew towards the target.

Our target was a major railway junction in Lithuania,

where the retreating Germans kept their hardware. This was their last frontier, and they had

assembled a lot of hardware at that particular junction.

That's why we flew in a large formation, about 180 aircraft in all.

Our airfields were covered in earth and a group takeoff was not easy for an

aircraft loaded with bombs. Still we took off section by section.

Jelena's story was recorded by section. Jelena Malutina's story was recorded by Lube Vina Gradova, author of the book,

Defending the Motherland, Soviet women who fought Hitler's Aces.

I met her when she was 92 and it was incredible you could

never believe she was so old a very rare person she was very interesting to

...