I Fought in a Po-2. 'Night Witchers'

This book is about real men—aviators and navigators of the famous “cornplane” Po-2 (U-2). Special skills and abilities were not required to control this aircraft for initial training, yet it was not a fighter or a long-range bomber. Still, the tasks the crew had to handle demanded enormous personal courage and complete dedication. As one veteran recalled: “U-2 was mocked, but we were exploited mercilessly.” The crews of these aircraft flew sorties in almost any weather conditions when no other branch of aviation could take off from the ground. They carried out bombing, day and night reconnaissance, landing and extraction of scouts, supplying surrounded troops and partisans, evacuating the wounded: they performed radio communications flights and transportation of command personnel. The entire range of tasks fell on the shoulders of the aviators and navigators of this slow-moving biplane, flying at extremely low speeds by modern standards. Only true professionals—aviators and navigators who did their work, much of it undeservedly overlooked—could cope with this complex of tasks, changing one after another even within a single day.

Paying tribute to the courage of the flight crews of the 46th Guards Aviation Regiment, we must remember that during the war more than a hundred regiments of night bombers were created, and only one among them was a women’s regiment. That is why the main burden of the war on a small plane that did big things rested on the men—such as these twelve people whose memories are collected in this book.