SABATON - Night Witches (Animated Story Video)
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[History/Music] Sabaton plugging their animated story video for Night Witches for International Women's Day
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If you aren't familiar with them, the 588th was an all-women night bomber regiment for the Soviets during WWII. And they were not fucking around.
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(they also did what they could to REMAIN all-women, despite command's efforts to force men into the regiment)
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(The longest holdout was a mechanic who ended up transferring out at some point after they started requisitioning only women's uniforms and clothes for him)
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Eventually they were given modern planes (like the heavily armed nightmare with wings, the Ilyushin IL-2. Also known as "the flying tank," not to be confused with experimental attempts to strap wings onto an actual tank)
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But until they were, they were taking on the far more modern Germans using old canvas biplanes left lying around from World War I
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With instructions to fly low to avoid being spotted by enemy fighters, and if engaged to use their slow speed to their advantage
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Because they took much longer to stall in a climb than more modern aircraft, and could force the enemy pilot to stall out so they could either turn around and shoot him down or make their escape when he had to pull off to avoid the stall (their top speed was also only SLIGHTLY faster than said stall speed).
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It also meant the planes were so light that they would cut the throttle and leave the engines idling so they could quietly glide to their target, so that the only warning that they were in the area and attacking was when the bombs fell.
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By the end of the war, most of the surviving members of the 588th had more than 1,000 missions to their name. Individually.
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And for a regiment with a grand total of 261 members, the fact 23 of them were awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union (comparable to our Medal of Honor, but not exactly alike) was an impressive feat in its own right.
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Fairly good summation - I'd add that they were facing every murderous contrivance the Germans could manage in terms of flak and night-fighting aircraft, at absurdly low altitude.
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A lot of those medals were awarded posthumously, and the criteria for people who received them often sound absurd to our ears.
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There were other women's units, too, flying day fighters - but the Night Witches are a fascinating and unique part of the over 800,000 women who served in the Red Army during the war. Nurses, doctors, snipers (especally as snipers), machine gunners, tank drivers, pilots, navigators, gunners, and marines.
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There were, but part of the 588th's claim to fame was that they managed to remain exclusively women.
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And they had to wrangle Stalin to do it - the man did not change his mind easily, when dealing with prejudices.
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Though for an excellent resource on what it was like for other women pilots, I do have a book recommendation. It's the memoir of Anna Yegorova, who started out flying recon and delivering messages and ended up being transferred to ground attack.
Red Sky, Black Death: A Soviet Woman Pilot's Memoir ...
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ANNA YEGOROVA. Yes. Read that.
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I need to re-read it, last time I touched it was for my not-thesis
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Anna "there is nothing made by Germans that can kill me" Yegorova.
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Anybody reading this, just order that. 
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(it was a higher level course, but since I was a junior at the time it wasn't something I'd be writing a thesis for. But I put more work into it than my actual thesis)
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(What was it on, specifically, since you've hooked my interest for SOME REASON - had a chapter on the Po-2 in a book I wrote and kiiiiinda WENT ON about the Witches.0
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Also, the awesome (in the original sense of the word) person in question, with the Shturmovik in the background: 
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The class was on War and Memory, and I chose to make my project around the Soviet women combatants of World War II and the subsequent response by the Soviets.
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(which was to just pretend it didn't happen they totes didn't send women into combat DID YOU KNOW ANYONE SAYING WE DID IS EITHER LYING OR A PROSTITUTE OR A LYING PROSTITUTE???)
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(the President of Russia- Soviet era political structure was a confusing headache- even went so far as to tell one group "Do not tell your story, we will tell your story." And then they promptly never told their story and just lazily denied everything.)
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Yeah, funny enough the Communists never did well with people who demonstrated this thing, called independent thinking.
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Anyway it was easily the second most enjoyable project I did in college and the fact we had fifteen minutes to present without interruption and the class had some Army asshole who also happened to be SUPER sexist (shocker) also meant it was the most enjoyable presentation I ever did.
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Just getting silently glared at the whole time and trying to avoid laughing outright.
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Oh, yeah, history and memory is - across the board - the most fascinating field to me. And HAH yes, that's what you do.
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Especially when I started going over the findings of some of their (male) commanding officers, outside the air force
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Just like Yegorova would want - right down the enemy's throat
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Who pretty much documented for the whole world to see that as far as they were concerned women made better snipers and radio operators
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They were superb, with the added cherry on top that the Germans, schooled in the sexism that was just one facet of the Reich's awfulness, had no idea how to handle them.
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The former because (as a general rule) they tended to be more patient and could endure discomfort for far longer, in addition to having slightly better eyesight.
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The latter because they tended to speak far more clearly and enunciate their words better, which is KIIIIIIIND of important when you're relaying positions, calling for artillery or air strikes, etc.
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Also briefly mentioned the husband and wife who insisted on fighting the Germans together and got Stalin himself to agree to it after they bought the fucking tank themselves
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because how could you NOT mention that
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Best part? That is not a singular story - another woman bought her own after her husband was killed, so long as authorities would allow her to go on a vengeance quest, which she did.
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"Roll around in a heavy tank and fuck up Nazis" is a great goal for any marriage, and they both made it all the way to Berlin and survived the war.
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Can't remember her name off the top of my head, but I do remember the name of her tank, so another mention was the TC of a T-34 who named her tank "Amazon"
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She didn't survive the war, but went out like a boss.
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If it's the one I'm referring to, then "taking 8-12 Nazi tanks with her" is definitely boss.
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I mean, even take the production advantage out of the equation, these stories are why the Germans were always going to lose.
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The tank had one of its tracks blown loose by artillery and she just figured "welp, nothing to it" and climbed out to fix it herself. As in, the rest of the crew wasn't setting foot outside because they were still being shelled and shot at.
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And she rightly deduced that while that is definitely not an ideal time to go outside, a stationary tank is MUCH easier to hit.
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If I dig back into my research, would you want the info on the woman I found in the Soviet marines?
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Where "life expectancy" was a phrase you laughed about.
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If I remember right I also led with the fact that with the Battle of Stalingrad, the first real line of defense were women AA gunners and pilots
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The AA gunners in particular decided to give a big ol' middle finger to German armor rolling in, depressed their guns to the horizontal, and just started shelling the piss out of them.
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Hell of an anecdote to start with.
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No chance of stopping them, but they sure as hell were going to make them pay for every yard of advance.
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One of the Soviet brass in charge actually watched it happen (repeatedly) and wrote in his diary that "This was the beginning of our fight to defend Stalingrad"
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A German officer commanding one of the armored divisions also wrote about it in his diary, both praising and cursing their tenacity, and ending it with the slightly comedic "I must stop writing now, as now that we've finally silenced the guns in front of us still more of them have just begun firing from a nearby hill."
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(paraphrased)
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Oh, and here's a photo of some of the Night Witches. Nadezhda Popova is the one standing, and she lived to the ripe old age of 91 and her death was announced by the President of Ukraine when she passed.
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Too much badass in that picture, can't make out elements.
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Here's more, then
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posing with their laughably outdated aircraft
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My favorite part? They only ever wore the skirts when the propaganda photographers showed up.
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Because the Soviet authorities got nervous about them wearing pants.
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That probably varied a bit, since Marina Raskova was actually fairly close to Stalin (and it was her repeated lobbying that was partly responsible for women being allowed to fly combat missions at all)
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So while she was alive and kicking, you'd have to be a very ballsy officer to say jack-all about it.
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It was hardly good for your career or your life to say shit about someone with Stalin's ear
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Oh, they'd let them serve especially since they kept enlisting anyway and it was "all hands on deck" early on, but authorities periodically tried to feminize things for the usual reasons.
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At least, in this regard, the propaganda departments.
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Which is my favorite part. "Stop enlisting!" "No."
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"....Fine, but you'll be in non-comba-" "No."
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"Ugh, fine, go kill Germans." "Yes. Many."