The Night Witches: Stalin's Female Bomber Regiment

The 588th Night Bomber Regiment, composed entirely of women pilots, flew over 23,000 sorties during WWII. They flew obsolete wooden Polikarpov Po-2 biplanes — crop-duster designs — and attacked by cutting their engines and gliding to their targets at night, making them nearly silent and undetectable by radar. German soldiers nicknamed them 'Nachthexen' (Night Witches). The sound of their planes was compared to broomsticks. Twenty-three received the Hero of the Gold Star award. They faced triple discrimination: as women from commanding officers who didn't want them, from Soviet society at large, and from the German enemy who put a high bounty on their heads.