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Female Vs Male Pilots In WW2

2021; RELX Group (Netherlands); Linguagem: Inglês

10.2139/ssrn.3946412

1556-5068

C Berman, Alexander Fleiss,

Engine and Fuel Emissions

This night’s bombing mission of the 46th Guards Regiment was horrific. It was a nightmare for the two surviving crews flying Soviet built Po-2s. That returned to land on a grass field lit only by kerosene lanterns. Thirty minutes earlier, six of the biplanes, each laden with 200 kilograms of bombs, struggled up and into the warm air of a July night.The wooden airframe and cloth covered the Polikarpov biplane. Looked more like a relic of the First World War than a modern attack aircraft. In addition, she only had a top speed of barely ninety miles per hour. These planes-some unarmed and some fitted only with a single 7.62 mm rear machine gun. Fired by the plane’s navigator, flew into combat. Instead of veteran Soviet airmen at the controls. Young girls-eighteen, nineteen, and twenty years of age were flying night bombing missions to repel the Nazi invaders.