Happy International Women’s Day!

To commemorate the day, I’d like to highlight one of the most famous female Soviet pilots: Marina Raskova. An aviation pioneer, record-setter, and, by most reasonable standards, an absolute badass.

Marina Raskova was a Soviet navigator and the founder of three female aviation regiments that would go on to fly over 30,000 sorties during World War II.

As a crew member on several record-setting flights in the 1930s, Raskova became a household name across the Soviet Union. In 1938, while attempting to set an international women’s record for a straight-line distance flight from Moscow to Komsomolsk, Raskova parachuted out of the aircraft when her crew was forced to make a crash landing. Separated from her pilot and copilot, she was stranded in the Far East with no food or water for ten days before being rescued. All three crew members were decorated with the Hero of the Soviet Union award upon their return to Moscow.

When war broke out with Germany, Raskova used her fame and influence to form three female aviation regiments. The 586th Fighter Aviation Regiment flew Yak-1s, Yak-7s, and Yak-9s; the 587th Bomber Aviation Regiment (later renamed the 125th Guards Bomber Aviation Regiment) flew Petlyakov Pe-2 dive bombers; and most famously, the 588th Night Bomber Regiment (later renamed the 46th Taman Guards Night Bomber Aviation Regiment) flew Polykarpov Po-2 biplanes.

All three regiments were effective frontline units and flew combat missions on a daily basis. Raskova died on January 4, 1943, when her Pe-2 crashed while attempting to make a forced landing on the bank of the Volga River.