Nadezhda Vasilyevna Popova

Pilot of the 46th Guards Taman Night Bomber Aviation Regiment, Hero of the Soviet Union (23 February 1945), Colonel. Born on 17 December 1921 in the village of Shabanovka, Oryol province, and raised in the Donbass. Before the war she completed a flying club course and the Kherson aviation school. In 1941 she joined the women's air units being raised by Marina Raskova and was posted to the 588th Night Bomber Regiment, which became the 46th Guards in February 1943. The regiment flew the Po-2, a training biplane of wood and fabric with no armour and no radio, carrying about 200 kg of bombs. Crews worked only at night, approaching the target with the engine throttled back; the Germans called them "night witches" after the sound of their gliding approach. She flew 852 combat sorties, serving on the Southern, North Caucasus, 4th Ukrainian and 2nd Belorussian Fronts — the Donbass, the Kuban, Crimea, Belorussia, Poland and Germany. She was shot down more than once and returned to flying each time. After the war she worked with veterans' organisations. She died in Moscow on 8 July 2013, among the last of the regiment's pilots.