June 8, 1995 - Episode 314 - Women of Achievement and Herstory

      More "How It Really Was," or what HIStorians don't tell you:

      Event 06-08-1942, Soviet women pilots flew their first combat
mission.  Three UNARMED bombers went out at night to bomb a
German headquarters.  Navigation was by stop watch and map. 
Nearing the target they had to cut their engines because of the loud
distinctive pop-pop of their tiny PO-2s engines and they glided over
the targets.  
      Getting home again was almost as harrowing.  The exhausted
pilots (sometimes making six or more bombing runs per night) had to
find the airfield's landing light system that was masked to be visible
at very low altitudes.  There were no navigational aids to find the
field, no radar, or radio homing beacons...no radio with the planes
from the ground. They had to depend on their own eyesight.  Mid-air
collisions with defending fighters and others bombers in the
darkness were common.
      The PO-2 was a basic training aircraft that had been slightly
modified to carry bombs.  It was never intended for combat. 
      -- Some of the information taken from Bruce Myles' _Night
Witches - the untold story of Soviet Women in Combat_.  California:
Presido Press, 1981. ISBN 0-89141-125-9.  Myles' book has some good
information but unfortunately he tends to tell romantic stories of
young girls' infatuations rather than give much insight into the
horrors of combat and bomber pilots in the air war.  In fact, it['s
rather patronizing towards women doing a man's job.
      The story of Soviet women fighting in ground and air combat
is one of the most suppressed tales of World War II in the U.S.      
Yes, Soviet women were in combat during WWII as bomber pilots and
fighter pilots and mechanics (often working in the open in sub-zero
weather) and there were a number of aces. There were any number
of women who fought alongside male soldiers on the ground. More of
these brave women in later episode of WOA.

06-08 Anniversaries ...............................................

      B. 06-08-1816, Mary Lucinda Bonney, educator and reformer
who organized and headed a successful women's school in
Philadelphia as well as the Central Indian Committee, which
campaigned for the US to honor its Indian treaties. Under her
leadership the plan to allot land to individual Indians was developed
and approved by Congress.

      B. 06-08-1858, Charlotte Angus Scott, English educated head of
mathematics at Bryn Mawr. Because she and several other women had
scored so high on college examinations which were generally
forbidden to women, public examinations were finally opened to women
and she entered Cambridge in 1876 and gained her doctorate of
science in 1885.

      B. 06-08-1907, Billie Pierce, boogie-woogie piano player with a
distinctive blues shouting style that was unforgettable and much
copied.

      B. 06-08-1922, Alexis Smith*, actor of film and stage. 

      Event 06-08-1943, Lucile Petry was named director of the U.S.
Cadet Nurse Corps. She was the first woman administrator in the U.S.
Public Health Service (1941), the first dean of Cornell University, New
York Hospital School of Nursing, and the first woman to serve the
Public Health Service as assistant surgeon-general.

      Event 06-08-1959, Kathryn F. Cook is named president of the
Mother Church, First Church of Christ. 

Quotes du jour ...............................................

      "If a man is vain, flatter.  If timid, flatter.  If boastful, flatter. 
In all history, too much flattery never lost a gentleman."
      -- Kathyrn Cravens

>>>(C) 1995 Irene Stuber, PO Box 6185, Hot Springs National Park, AR
71902, irenestuber@delphi.com. Distribute verbatim copies freely with
copyright notice for non-profit use. Don't let anyone tell you there
weren't notable and effective women throughout history.  They were
always there, but historians failed to note them in our histories so
that each generation of women has had to reinvent themselves. <<<