Lily Litvak: The White Rose of Stalingrad
A
Soviet air ace during
World War II, Lily Litvak is likely to have shot down more planes than any other female fighter pilot, and she became by far the best known of the thousand women who received fighter training during the war. The story of Litvak's short but glorious career entered into the legend of the
Great Patriotic War.
Litvak was born Lidiya Vladimirovna Litvak in
Moscow in
1921, as the
Russian Civil War was drawing to a close. She had developed an interest in aviation as a teenager, and at the age of 14 joined the local
Aeroklub, making her first solo flight at 15 and joining the state paramilitary flying force, the
Osoaviakim. Before the outbreak of war, she worked as a flight instructor at the flight school where she had received her own training.
Litvak responded enthusiastically to the female aviation groups being established under the initiative of
Marina Raskova, the Soviets' answer to
Amelia Earhart who had already achieved national fame in
1937 with a world record non-stop flight to Asia. Previously, women who attempted to volunteer as pilots had been turned down, but Raskova organised three all-female units whom she trained at the
Engels air base near
Stalingrad.
All three detachments, including the
586th Women's Fighter Regiment to which Litvak belonged, were originally intended for support duties and as a reserve, but the deaths of many male combat pilots during the
Battle of Stalingrad found the Red Army anxious for whatever replacements it could find, and the 586th first saw action in the spring of
1942.
Litvak's
aerobatic skills were quickly noted, as were those of her comrade in the regiment, the equally illustrious
Katya Budanova, and both women were transferred into a regular male unit, the
296th Fighter Division - to the chagrin of a number of the men, whose Imperial Russian counterparts had been no less charitable towards
female soldiers during the
First World War.
Litvak shot down her first two German planes on her second combat
sortie in September 1942, and during her air force service recorded a total of 12 confirmed kills, although the number may have been as high as 20: German pilots are supposed to have shouted '
Achtung, Litvak' as her plane came into view. One German ace, with nearly two dozen kills to his credit, baled out of his aircraft, was captured by Soviet soldiers on the ground and refused to believe he had been downed by a woman until the pair were introduced.
Her
YaK-1 aircraft, slower but more manoeuvrable than the German
Messerschmitts and
Junkers, became, according to tradition, instantly recognisable thanks to the
white rose she painted on its side. In fact, the flower may well have been a
white lily, referring to her nickname, and no photographs exist of the emblem in any case.
Many accounts testify to Litvak's striking beauty,
although some might say she rather resembled tennis player Jana Novotna, which especially gladdened the Soviet propaganda ministry. She herself, on the other hand, was supposedly rather less than co-operative to an official film-maker who came to visit her base.
Litvak was wounded in action three times during the intense fighting of spring and summer
1943, and received the
Order of the Red Banner for her exploits: by July she was flying as the
wingman of the unit commander
Ivan Golishev. During the spring, she became engaged to another member of the 296th,
Alexei Salomaten.
Salomaten had taken Litvak, quite literally, under his wing on her arrival in the regiment, when its colonel
Nikolai Baranov had declared himself implacably opposed to sending women on combat missions in case concern for their welfare distracted the male pilots. His death in a
dogfight in May, closely followed by Budanova's, only made Litvak more determined, and quite probably somewhat reckless, in the air.
On August 1, 1943, Litvak's fourth mission of the day - the 168th she had flown - was to escort a unit of
Shturmoviks over
Orel, during which she became separated from her flight. Eight German
Messerschmitt BF 109s, as legend has it, caught sight of the white rose on her
fuselage: her body was impossible to find.
A marble monument to Litvak, who had died at the age of 22, was erected in
Krasy Luch, in the
Donetsk region, bearing twelve gold stars commemorating the aircraft she had shot down. Her remains were finally discovered in
1979 near the village of
Dmitriyevka, under the broken-off wing of her plane: she received an official funeral in
1989, and a year later was awarded the title of
Hero of the Soviet Union.
From time to time,
history is a screenwriter.
Read more:
Kate Muir, Arms and the Woman
Shelley Saywell, Women in War: From World War II to El Salvador
http://www.musketeers.org/Lilya.htm
http://vt.essortment.com/womenacespilot_rnsk.htm
http://www.elknet.pl/acestory/litvak/litvak.htm