Nadezhda & A Few Musings
Hello everyone - apologies for my absence lately. Illness and the stresses of running a history nonprofit have meant that sharing about Soviet women has been put on the backburner. I’m hopeful that going forward, I will get back into the swing of things with a monthly newsletter and regular social media posting. Thanks for your patience and understanding. -Hayley
Nadezhda Vasilveyna Popova was born on December 17, 1921. When a plane landed near her town when she was a child, Popova was fascinated. At 15, she enrolled in gliding school. The next year she made her first parachute jump and solo flight. Popova later attended the Kherson flight school and became an instructor.
With the German invasion of the Soviet Union, 19 year old Popova volunteered for service but was initially rejected. After Marina Raskova created her women’s aviation regiments, Popova was allowed to enlist. Motivated by her brother’s death, Popova joined the 588th Night Bomber Regiment and became a Night Witch.
Popova flew many missions from 1942 and was one of the few to escape the war without serious wounds despite bring shot down several times. On one instance on August 2, 1942, she was flying a mission near Cherkessk and was attacked by Luftwaffe fighters. They forced her to make an emergency landing, and joined a motorized column while attempting to rejoin her unit. In that column, she met wounded fighter pilot Semyon Kharlamov, whom she later married after the war.
Popova, along with her navigator Yekaterina Ryabova, achieved widespread acclaim in the Soviet press after completing 18 bombing sorties in one night over Poland during the Axis retreat. Throughout the duration of the war, Popova completed 852 sorties, was awarded the Hero of the Soviet Union on February 23, 1945, and featured on the cover of Komsomolskaya Pravda.
After the war, Popova served as a flight instructor for twenty years, married Kharlamov and had a family. She died on July 8, 2013.
Last month I had the opportunity to assist a few middle school girls in Maryland with their National History Day project all about women in WWII. I wasn’t sure what to expect since I just received an email out of the blue with a plea for an interview about women in WWII. Happily I obliged. The focus of their project was American women and I discussed that side of the war with them, but I couldn’t help but bring up the Soviets. They had no idea that women served in combat and at such high numbers on the eastern front. Interactions like these just reinforce the power that history storytelling can have and why I continue to share about these amazing women. These middle school girls were impressed, and even though their project wasn’t about the Soviets, they were still eager listeners and thanked me for sharing this unknown piece of the war. It’s one of the reasons I do this and what keeps me coming back for more. Who knows if those young women will grow up to be historians but maybe they’ll help me share these stories.