thebadcgijoshening: This is part 1 of a three part documentary...

thebadcgijoshening:

This is part 1 of a three part documentary (on YouTube anyway) about the 588th Bombing Regiment, referred to by German soldiers as Die Nachthexen, or, in english, The Night Witches.

You may have seen a pretty cool post going around about them here on Tumblr, but if you haven’t, here’s the basic rundown (which I am unabashedly lifting directly from the Wikipedia page on the subject):

• They were an all-female Russian bombing regiment that operated from 1942 til the end of the war
• At its largest, it consisted of two 40-pilot units and 23 of them were awarded the Hero of the Soviet Union title
• It was the most highly decorated female unit in the Soviet Airforce, and each of its members flew over 1000 missions despite the embarrassingly faulty equipment at their disposal (they avoided the obsolete and noisy planes from giving away their position by shutting off their engines in proximity to their German targets and gliding into position)
• By the end of the war the unit had suffered 30 casualties but not a single one of them was reported M.I.A. - there are graves for each of them and none of them were ever captured as prisoners of war
• They’re pretty frickin cool

Here’s part 2 and part 3 if you’re interested