Valentina Stepanovna Grizodubova

Pilot, the first woman to be made Hero of the Soviet Union (2 November 1938), Colonel, and Hero of Socialist Labour (1986). Born on 27 April 1910 in Kharkov, the daughter of the aircraft designer and pilot Stepan Grizodubov; she first flew as a child. She graduated from the Kharkov technological institute and a flying school, and worked as a flight instructor and in a propaganda air squadron. On 24-25 September 1938 she captained the non-stop flight from Moscow to the Far East aboard the aircraft Rodina, with Polina Osipenko as second pilot and Marina Raskova as navigator: 26 hours in the air, more than 6,000 kilometres, and a women's world distance record. The crew came down in the taiga. From March 1942 to October 1943 she commanded the 101st Air Regiment of Long-Range Aviation. The regiment flew night missions behind German lines, carrying supplies to partisan formations, evacuating wounded and conducting bombing tasks. She remained the only woman to command an air regiment in Long-Range Aviation. After the war she worked in flight research and headed a flight test centre. She died in Moscow on 28 April 1993.