Nina Raspopova's Night Witches Analysis

To the “Night Witches” of the 588th, their femininity was the focus as much as much their dedication to their dangerous missions, as shown in snippets of true stories that members went through. Although definitely not the only one to experience such dangers, Nina Raspopova’s near death stories highlight some of the many dangers that the 588th faced, and she stresses in her account that she was never not afraid (Noggle, 2001). During one of her missions in 1942, she and her navigator, Larisa Radchikova, crashed into the neural territory between the Russians and the Germans. This neutral area was an area of death, filled with mines that had taken the life of another colleague (Bhuvasorakul, 2004). In the dark with the Germans able to see them …show more content…
Her plane crashed, barely stopping before falling into a deep trench along a destroyed village road (Noggle, 2001). Similarly to Raspopova, Zhigulenko and her crewmate also had luck on their side when they were hit out of the sky in the Crimean Peninsula during a mission to constantly bombard the German troops to keep them from being able to get their own planes in the sky. Initially, Zhigulenko thought that her crewmate had, in the confusion of having the plane stall while upside down, fallen to her death. Much to her relief, her crewmate had been kept in the plane by having her leg stuck in the bottom boards of the aircraft by pure luck when her chair collapsed beneath her in the PO-2 (Noggle, 2001). The major injury that day, according to her navigator, was a bump on the head that ruined her image for any potential grooms (Noggle, 2001). A moment of levity after horror. Recalling a general mission, Popova described dodging death itself in the form of searchlights as her plane maneuvered in missions to allow other crafts to unload their bombs before she could unload hers (“Nadia Popova”, …show more content…
Polina Makogon, Zhigulenko’s initial pilot during her work has a navigator before becoming a pilot herself was killed in a mid-air collision with a German plane (Noggle, 2001). Popova herself lost many of her friends on one, singular mission, seeing them burn up in the sky in front of her eyes. She later recalled crying at the sight of her fallen crewmates’ empty bunks that had half-written letters on them that would never be finished (“Nadia Popova”, 2013). Overall, thirty other air crew were also killed in action over the course of World War II (Noggle, 2001). Surviving the missions left their own obvious marks on the airwomen. Raspopova recalled in later interviews the images she saw, including the near dead in field hospital where she recuperated and the slaughter that she flew above in another mission in graphic detail, comparing the gory field to worms on human carcasses in her statement (Noggle, 2001). Through her statements describing death, Zhigulenko herself reveals that she became more supernaturally focused during to the war. She told an interviewer that her own survival was due to destiny, detailing that she suspected that Makogon was fated to die at a young age and the Zhigulenko herself was the link that kept Makogon alive as long as she did (Noggle, 2001). Finally, Popova’s wartime experiences etched in her a sense of toughness that even surprised her when she noticed. This