Nadezhda Popova
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Nadezhda Vasilyevna Popova was a squadron commander in the 46th Taman Guards Night Bomber Regiment during the Second World War who achieved significant domestic publicity after completing 18 bombing s
Nadezhda Popova portrait
Popova with Russian president Medvedev in 2009
Marina Raskova
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Marina Mikhaylovna Raskova was the first woman in the Soviet Union to achieve the diploma of professional air navigator. Raskova went from a young woman with aspirations of becoming an opera singer to
Nadezhda Popova
…military pilot, but the government initially barred women from combat and turned her away. But in October 1941, Joseph Stalin caved in to pressure from Marina Raskova and permitted the creation of three women's aviation regiments. Popova, whose brother Leonid had been killed at the front in 1941 and whose home had…
A damaged and abandoned Po-2 forced to land in Ukrainian SSR and subsequently captured by German troops, 1941. On this type of aircraft, the Night Witches flew more than 24,000 sorties
Russian pilots and ground crew pose in front of a Pe-2 dive bomber at Poltava, June 1944. Marina Raskova died while flying this type of aircraft in a flying accident, near Stalingrad
Raskova's ashes were buried in the necropolis of the Moscow Kremlin Wall, beside Osipenko's
Soviet stamp, 1939