The Night Witches

HISTORY This Week

The HISTORY® Channel | Back Pocket Studios

History, Society & Culture

4.5 • 4.2K Ratings

🗓️ 4 October 2021

⏱️ ? minutes

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Summary

October 4, 1938. Soviet pilot Marina Raskova beats a world record: the longest continuous flight ever recorded by a woman. She'll soon break another barrier-- she'll lead the first-ever female air force pilots to fly on the front lines of World War Two. One of her regiments in particular will wreak havoc on Nazi German soldiers and become the most notorious night bombers in the entire Soviet Union. They'll become known as the Night Witches. Who were these barrier-breaking pilots? And how did they become some of the most feared forces on the Eastern front?

Thank you to our guests, Claudia Hagen, author of "Tonight We Fly!" The Soviet Night Witches of WWII, and to Christer Bergström, author of "Black Cross Red Star - Air War over the Eastern Front: Volume 1 Operation Barbarossa."

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Transcript

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0:00.0	The History Channel, original podcast.
0:06.0	History this week, October 4, 1938.
0:11.0	I'm Sally Helm.
0:17.0	Marina Roskawa is running out of options.
0:20.0	She's been navigating through the Siberian wilderness
0:23.0	with nothing but matches, a revolver, a compass,
0:27.0	and a little bit of chocolate.
0:30.0	That's what she had time to grab 10 days ago,
0:32.0	when she had to suddenly bail out of a moving plane.
0:38.0	Roskawa and two fellow Soviet pilots were trying to set a new record,
0:43.0	the longest distance ever flown by women.
0:47.0	They took off from Moscow on a plane called the Rodina,
0:50.0	which translates to Motherland.
0:52.0	And about a day later,
0:54.0	somewhere over this remote part of Siberia,
0:57.0	they run into trouble.
0:59.0	A red light in the cockpit starts blinking.
1:02.0	They're running out of fuel.
1:04.0	Extreme cold has knocked out their radio,
1:07.0	and the plane begins to sink lower and lower.
1:11.0	Because of the way the Rodina is built,
1:14.0	the three women are flying in three separate compartments.
	...

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