Facts and Stories from WWII That We Won’t Find in History Books

The Night Witches were a formidable all-female unit of the Soviet Air Forces during WWII, who turned the tide of the war on the Eastern Front through their daring nocturnal raids. Piloting obsolete Polikarpov Po-2 biplanes, originally used for training and crop dusting before the war, these women executed precision bombings on German trenches.

Their tactic of silently gliding over their targets with engines off minimized their planes’ noise, earning them their ghostly nickname from the terrified German soldiers. Once over the trenches, they would release their bombs, then bravely exit the cockpit mid-flight to manually restart the engines by spinning the propeller, a maneuver fraught with risk.