# Night Witches: The All-Female Soviet Pilots of WWII

*History & War · Eleanor Hartwell · 2026-10-11*

## TL;DR

The Night Witches were an all-female Soviet air regiment formed after Marina Raskova won Stalin's approval in 1941. Flying slow Polikarpov Po-2 biplanes on night bombing raids, they harassed German positions across the Eastern Front until 1945. Their tactic of cutting engines to glide silently earned them the nickname the Germans gave them.

## Key facts

- The regiment was formally the 588th Night Bomber Regiment, later renamed the 46th Guards Night Bomber Aviation Regiment.
- Marina Raskova, a pioneering Soviet aviator, helped form the women's air regiments after receiving approval in 1941.
- The Po-2 biplane was a 1920s design that carried only a small bomb load and had no parachutes for its crews.
- Nadezhda Popova, one of the regiment's most decorated pilots, reportedly flew 18 missions in a single night.
- The Night Witches were reportedly not included in the Moscow Victory Parade of 1945, though the precise reason is disputed.

## Why Were They Called the Night Witches?

On the Eastern Front of World War II, after darkness fell, German soldiers heard something that made their skin crawl: a soft, dry rustle, the sound of wind scraping across wooden wings. It did not roar like an engine. It whispered, like a broom gliding through the dark. The men gave the unseen attackers a name. They called them the **Night Witches**, or Nachthexen.

Radar operators strained at their screens and saw almost nothing. Searchlight crews swept the sky and caught empty air. The planes came in slow and low, and when they neared their target the engines cut out entirely, so the only warning was that strange hiss of air over fabric and plywood. For a soldier in a trench, that sound meant bombs were already falling.

What the Germans feared most was flown by young women with almost nothing in their hands. No radar. No machine guns. No parachutes. Just maps, compasses, and the nerve to fly open-cockpit biplanes through freezing night air. Over four years of war, these crews flew more than 30,000 sorties and dropped over 23,000 tons of bombs.

They were not invisible, of course. They were just nearly impossible to catch. The Polikarpov Po-2 biplanes they flew were built in the 1920s out of plywood and fabric, and they had spent their earlier lives as agricultural sprayers. They carried no armor. Against fast German fighters, their slowness turned into a strange kind of protection. A fighter that tried to line up a shot on a Po-2 risked stalling out before it could fire.

So the women used the night itself as their weapon. They approached with engines idling, glided the last stretch in silence, and let the wind over their wings announce them only at the final second. The sound was so unnerving that German troops reportedly stopped lighting cigarettes after dark, afraid the tiny glow would draw the invisible planes down on them.

That is how a handful of young women in flimsy wooden aircraft became one of the most feared sights and sounds of the Eastern Front. The Night Witches did not win the war with technology. They won their reputation with silence, darkness, and a rustle that no soldier who heard it ever forgot.

## Who Was Marina Raskova?

Marina Raskova was already a national celebrity in the Soviet Union, a record-setting aviator so famous that newspapers compared her to Amelia Earhart. By 1941, with German armies driving deep into Soviet territory, her fame gave her something more useful than admiration: a direct line to Joseph Stalin. She used it to ask for the impossible, permission for women to fly combat missions. He said yes.

That answer mattered because it broke a wall. As the story goes, it was the first time a government formally authorized women to fly direct combat missions, not ferrying planes or shuffling paper behind the lines, but flying into enemy fire. Three air regiments were formed, and roughly 400 young women were brought together to fill them. Most were between 17 and 26 years old.

Getting there took pressure from below as much as a decision from above. Across the country, Soviet women had grown tired of rear-line roles and wanted to fight, and their letters poured in to Raskova by the sackful. She did not brush them off. She carried their case to the top, and in 1941 the approval came through.

Then came the uniforms. They had been cut for men, which is a polite way of saying almost nothing fit. The boots were the worst of it, so loose that the women pulled bedding out of their bunks and stuffed it into the toes and heels just to keep the things on their feet. It was a small, almost comic detail, and it said everything about how ready the military was for them.

What they got next made the boots look generous. The aircraft handed to these new regiments were Polikarpov Po-2 biplanes, plywood-and-fabric machines dating to the 1920s that had spent their working lives as trainers and crop dusters. They carried no radar, no machine guns, no parachutes. The women navigated with maps and compasses, and in open cockpits the winter cold was its own kind of enemy, brutal enough that touching bare metal with bare hands could tear skin. None of that stopped them from becoming the pilots the German troops on the Eastern Front would come to dread, the ones remembered as the Night Witches.

## How Did the Night Witches Bomb Without Radar or Guns?

Picture the machine these women were handed: a Polikarpov Po-2, a biplane designed in the 1920s, built from plywood and stretched fabric, and originally put to work spraying fields on Soviet farms. By the time the Night Witches took it into combat, it was a slow, open-cockpit trainer pressed into a job it was never built to survive.

It could not stop a bullet. It could not hold back the cold. The covering was cloth over wood, which meant a single well-placed round could pass straight through the airframe. In the air, at altitude, in an open cockpit, the wind bit hard enough to threaten frostbite on every sortie. On the ground in freezing weather, touching the bare metal and wood with an ungloved hand could tear the skin away.

Now the part that makes the whole enterprise feel almost absurd. Each Po-2 could lift only two bombs. Two. That is the entire payload of one mission, so a single night's work for a German target was not one flight but many. Crews routinely flew eight sorties in a night, and in the heaviest stretches they went up as many as eighteen times before dawn, landing, rearming, and climbing back into the cold again and again.

Nadezhda Popova, one of the regiment's most celebrated pilots, is credited with flying eighteen missions in a single night. Think about that for a moment. Eighteen takeoffs in the dark, eighteen times threading a fragile wooden biplane through searchlights and anti-aircraft fire, and eighteen landings on a strip she could barely see.

That mismatch is the real revelation here. The most feared night bombers on the Eastern Front were not sleek metal warplanes. They were planes built for spraying fields, flown by young women who had to go back up seventeen more times because the plane could only carry two bombs at once.

## Cut the Engine, Glide, and Strike

The Polikarpov Po-2 was slow, unarmed, and built of plywood and fabric. It caught fire easily. Yet that very weakness became the Night Witches' strangest advantage. German radar struggled to detect the little biplanes, and the women learned to exploit the gap. As they neared a target, the pilots cut their engines and let the aircraft glide in silently through the dark.

The only sound left was wind sliding between the wings, a soft rustle that German troops on the Eastern Front came to dread. For them, it was the signal of approaching death. The tactic was precise. Three planes flew together. Two drew the searchlights and anti-aircraft fire while the third glided in unseen and dropped its bombs. Then the roles rotated. German gunners, scrambling to maneuver against such slow aircraft, often missed the moment entirely.

The fear ran deep. Soldiers stopped even lighting cigarettes at night. Rumors spread that the women took special drugs to see in the dark, or that they had superhuman abilities. German pilots were reportedly promised the Iron Cross medal for shooting just one of them down, though the planes remained extremely difficult to intercept.

What made the tactic work was the aircraft itself. The Po-2 could fly so slowly and so low that enemy fighters, built for speed, could not match its pace without stalling. The women used this to slip away into the dark after each strike, leaving the searchlights sweeping empty sky.

## The Cost, the Honors, and the Parade They Were Left Out Of

More than 30 pilots of the Night Witches died during the war, and one of them was the woman who had made the whole experiment possible. Marina Raskova, the pilot compared to Amelia Earhart, was killed when her plane crashed after she was sent to the front. Her ashes were interred in the Kremlin wall with a state ceremony, a burial reserved for the country's most honored dead.

For the women who lived, the state had medals ready. Some survivors were declared Heroes of the Soviet Union, the nation's highest title for valor. So the record was clear: these pilots had flown combat missions, taken fire, and earned the country's gratitude in writing.

Then the war ended, and the gratitude got complicated. The women were not invited to Moscow's victory parade. The reason commonly given is that their planes were not considered combat aircraft and were simply too slow to keep formation. That explanation is reported and contested, though. The precise official reasoning behind the exclusion is not firmly documented, so treat the popular version as the story that circulated, not as a matter of record.

What is not in doubt is why they flew at all. They painted flowers on their aircraft. They flew for courage, not speed, and the plywood biplanes that embarrassed the parades had already done something no formation flyover could show: 30,000-plus sorties, more than 23,000 tons of bombs, and four years of nights when the only warning the German lines got was a sound like a broom brushing the dark.


## Frequently asked questions

**Who were the Night Witches, and why were they called that?**

The Night Witches were an all-female Soviet air regiment that flew combat missions during World War II. German soldiers gave them the nickname "Nachthexen," or Night Witches, because their slow planes cut their engines and glided silently through the dark, terrifying troops below who could only hear a soft whoosh overhead.

**What aircraft did the Night Witches fly?**

They flew the Polikarpov Po-2, a plywood-and-fabric biplane from the 1920s that had originally been built for agricultural spraying. Open cockpits, no armor, and no protection from the cold made every winter flight brutal. In freezing weather, touching the bare airframe with bare hands could tear skin.

**How did the Night Witches bomb without radar or guns?**

They navigated by paper maps and compasses, with no radar and no machine guns on board. Approaching a target, they cut their engines and glided in silent. In one tactic, three planes flew together, two drew searchlights and anti-aircraft fire while the third slipped through the dark and dropped its bombs.

**Why were the Night Witches excluded from the Moscow victory parade?**

It is commonly said that the women's regiments were left out of the 1945 Moscow victory parade because their Po-2s were deemed non-combat aircraft and too slow. The precise official reasoning, however, is not firmly documented, so the exclusion is best treated as a widely repeated claim rather than a settled fact.

**How many missions did the Night Witches fly, and how many bombs did they drop?**

Over four years of war, the women's aviation units flew more than 30,000 sorties and dropped over 23,000 tons of bombs. Each Po-2 carried only two bombs, so crews often flew eight or more missions in a single night, returning again and again to rearm and take off.

**Who was Marina Raskova?**

Marina Raskova was a celebrated Soviet pilot compared to Amelia Earhart. In 1941 she secured Stalin's approval to form women's air regiments, and three regiments were created with roughly 400 young women, most between 17 and 26 years old. Their uniforms were cut for men, so they stuffed their oversized boots with bedding to keep them on.

**What happened to Nadezhda Popova?**

Nadezhda Popova is credited with flying 18 missions in a single night. Several pilots who survived the war were declared Heroes of the Soviet Union. More than 30 pilots died during the conflict, including Raskova, whose ashes were buried in the Kremlin with a state ceremony.

**Did the Night Witches really cut their engines to glide?**

Yes, cutting the engines and gliding was a documented core stealth tactic. The Po-2 was slow and easy to set alight, but radar struggled to track it, and the only sound of its approach was wind rushing across the wings. German pilots were even promised the Iron Cross for shooting one down. Editorial note: Details that remain unconfirmed, including some mission counts and casualty figures, are presented here as reported rather than as settled fact.

Canonical: https://curio.madeda.com/night-witches-the-all-female-soviet-pilots-of-wwii/