Neither Cuban Nor American, Her Life Impacted Everyone
Nadezhda Popova died this month, -- on July 8th, 2013 -- at age 91. Everyone who has lived since World War II owes her a huge debt and we should salute the unique ethos that made her so special.
On Sept. 1-1939 Hitler's Germany attacked Poland to start World War II.
Hitler's ally in the attack on Poland was Stalin's even larger and more powerful Soviet Union army. Together they swiftly and brutally captured Poland and shortly, with Stalin as his ally, Hitler had captured Europe, including France, and then had England and America in his sights. History's two greatest fiends -- Hitler and Stalin -- had armies, especially combined armies, very capable of conquering the world because England was alone and the United States was at least two years away from attaining a suitable war capacity.
But Hitler made a fatal mistake and double-crossed Stalin, believing he could capture the vast Soviet Union prior to turning his Nazi sights back on England and America. Hitler's capacity to win the war ended with his attack on Russia...and the rest is history. Nadezhda Popova was a large part of that history.
Still a teenager, Nadezhda "Nadya" Popova -- a Ukrainian national -- was appalled at what she witnessed when the Nazis attacked her homeland. She saw Nazi pilots machine-gun helpless women and children as they fled their bombed-out homes; she saw Nazi soldiers surround villages and then herd every male, including young boys, into one group and then machine-gun them all to death; and she saw Nazi solders laughingly rape young girls and women. She begged the Russian army to let her fight.
At age 19, Nadya was arguably already the best fighter-pilot in the world!
Flying planes like this one, and with a machine-gun in the pilot's seat and small but deadly bombs attached to the plane's belly, Nadya spent all of her days and most of her nights searching for Nazi soldiers. If she saw isolated pockets of Nazis she would fly low and attack them with her machine gun. If she knew where Nazi patrols or armies were located, Nadya would use maps and reconnaissance information to fly toward them, cutting off her motor so she could glide silently over them to release her bombs. Each time she believed she would kill Nazis but "I assumed I would die too because of their return fire or because my motor wouldn't restart on my ascent out of the glide." But hundreds and hundreds of times, in that manner, Nadya killed Nazi soldiers and lived! Cutting off her motor to glide, and being right above the Nazi soldiers, they could see that the deadly pilot was a female -- dropping bombs on them and shooting at them with a machine gun! She out-fought and out-flummoxed the Naxis!
This is Nadja's squad reading about a successful attack on the Nazis.
This is one of the planes that Nadja flew.
This is Nadya's squad just before a night attack on Nazi soldiers.
Nadya trained other Russian women to fight with the determination and skill that, in reality, only she possessed. And soon the Nazi soldiers had given the female fighter-pilots a now-famous World War II nickname -- "The Night Witches." Nadya became a legend as a solo pilot but when she created squads of Witches she used co-pilots in each plane: "Better to do some machine-gunning." She had many close calls. It is documented by historian Albert Axell that Nadya once returned with exactly 42 bullet holes in her plane, including holes in the map she had in her lap and the gloves she wore on her hands. After that flight, Nadya told her co-pilot/navigator who was counting the bullet holes, "Why bother, Katya, my dear? We will live long." But the next day Nadya watched four planes in her squad shot out of the air. "What a nightmare," she tearfully recalled decades later. "Poor girls, my friends. Yesterday we had slept in the bunks together."
Nadezhda Popova
1921 - 2013
The Washington Post this month had a huge article written by Emily Langer recounting the 91 years Nadya Popova spent on this earth, reflecting on the perils she had endured and her contributions to civilization. Not long before she died, the still very alert Nadya said: "At night sometimes, I look up into the night sky, close my eyes and picture myself as a girl at the controls of my bomber. And I think, 'Nadya, how on earth did you do it?'" But she did do it. As a girl...a teenager...she saw evil and she did something about it.
Those eyes that saw so much as a girl are closed forever now.
Those eyes saw the Nazis attack her homeland.
And her reaction to what she saw deserves to be remembered forever.
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