The Night Witches

The New York Times has an article by Alison Klayman, a filmmaker who lives in Tokyo and who was named one of Twenty Directors to Watch by The New York Times film critics, about The Night Witch, one of five films commissioned in conjunction with The Times Magazine’s The Lives They Lived issue, which commemorates people who died this year:

As a granddaughter of Holocaust survivors, I devoured as much information as I could about World War Two when I was young. By middle school I had checked out every available book from the surprisingly vast canon of young adult Holocaust and World War Two literature at my local library. So when I read the obituary this year of Nadezhda Popova, known as Nadia, I was surprised that I had never encountered the story of the Night Witches before.
The women were part of the Soviet Union’s all-female 588th Night Bomber Regiment, and among the world’s first female combat flight pilots. In the dark, they’d cut their engines and fly close to the ground to hit their targets; the sound made the Germans think of a witch’s broom.
In making a short film to honor Popova, who died in July of 2013, I sought to emphasize the fairy-tale quality of the Night Witches’ story. I teamed with animator Dustin Grella, creator of a previous Op-Doc and a short film, Prayers for Peace, which memorialized his brother, who died in combat in Iraq). He draws each frame of his animations in pastels on slate, providing a stark quality that complements the historical narrative.
In interviews with Popova and other Night Witches, the women look back at their service in the world’s first unit of female combat flight pilots with a striking degree of matter-of-factness. They were adamant that their wartime achievements were made in the service of their country, aided by their love of flying. Yet many also commented that they would not wish to do it again. Rather than reading this as a sign of a weaker feminine constitution, as some critics of women in the military claim, I saw a courageous acknowledgment that war was terrible for all who experienced it.
As Reina Pennington wrote in Wings, Women, and War, the Night Witches were a useful propaganda tool for the Soviet Army. But the story of women who fought in World War Two was mostly played down after the war, and cultural perceptions of women as unsuited for combat remained unchanged. It wasn’t until 1993 that the United States Air Force lifted a 45-year ban prohibiting women from flying fighter jets and bombers. After twenty years under these new rules, female pilots now make up about two percent of Air Force fighter pilots at the rank of lieutenant colonel and below. Just this year, former Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta announced the end of the military’s ground combat exclusion rule. It is still not clear how this change will be reflected in military rules and practice.

Rico says he'd happily see the film, as he, too, by middle school had checked out every available book from the surprisingly vast canon of Holocaust and World War Two literature at his local library... (But, at first glance, Rico thought this woman was one of the famed Russian snipers, who did such a good job on the Germans at Stalingrad.)