I have written here before about my deep abiding love for comic books which I have been reading for most of my life (35 years I'm sure - we had Archie and Disney comics when I was very very small.) As I got older although I'm still a sucker for superhero comics (Justice Society of America, New Avengers and hey - Power Girl is finally getting her own monthly!) another genre I really enjoy is war comics. When it comes to these, Garth Ennis is pretty much the modern master and I read basically every war comic he writes. I just finished The Night Witches, a trilogy about female Soviet bomber pilots in WWII (based on the 588th Night Bomber Regiment) and have started Dear Billy, about a British nurse who survives capture by the Japanese in the Pacific. (That one is a classic PTSD title and is ripping my heart out - more on it when I read the final part of the story.) I found an old interview with Ennis today on these books at Newsarama that really blew my mind. I was looking up some info on the Night Witches (how true was the whole idea, that kinda thing) and this is what Ennis had to say:

In the case of the Night Witches, however, I was drawn to the exceptional nature of the characters involved. Young women in their late teens or early twenties, piloting obsolete biplanes on night-bombing missions against a vastly superior force, that's interesting enough- but when you consider the bullshit they had to put up with from their male counterparts, and even worse, the potentially ghastly consequences of capture that they faced, the story becomes downright fascinating.

I think there's a fair amount of information on the Night Witches available, in print and online, but it still seems to be pretty much specialist knowledge. No one I've spoken to is aware that the Russians employed women in combat roles- not just the Night Witches, but as bomber and fighter pilots, tank crew, medics, line infantry, snipers etc.

I did go looking for more info on them and learned a ton - and that Ennis had followed history perfectly. Here's a bit from Wikipedia which follows similar articles found in multiple other more scholarly sites:

The regiment flew harassment bombing and precision bombing[2] missions from 1942 to the end of the war. At its largest size, it had 40 two-person crews. It flew over 23,000 sorties and is said to have dropped 3,000 tons of bombs. It was the most highly-decorated unit in the Soviet Air Force, each pilot having flown over 1,000 missions by the end of the war and twenty-three having been awarded the Hero of the Soviet Union title. Thirty-one of its members died in combat.

The regiment flew in wood and canvas Polikarpov Po-2 biplanes, a 1928 design intended for use as training aircraft and for crop-dusting. The planes could carry only two bombs at a time, so multiple missions in a night were necessary. Although the aircraft were obsolete and slow, the pilots made daring use of their exceptional maneuverability; they had the advantage of having a maximum speed that was lower than the stall speed of both the Messerschmitt Bf 109 and the Focke-Wulf Fw 190, as a result, the German pilots found them very difficult to shoot down. A stealthiness technique of the night bombers was to shut the engine off near the target and glide to the bomb release point, with only wind noise to reveal their location.

There are so many things about the Night Witches that drives me nuts about how we collectively teach (and learn) history that I barely know where to begin. The biggest thing though is that we simply don't learn this kind of history. Of course plenty of folks would argue that it is Soviet history and thus really only needs to be a footnote to US WWII history lectures except this is about women who did an amazing job - a job that would be unbelievable regardless of the genders involved. There were so many times in my classes when the male students would explain that combat was just not an appropriate or comfortable place for women (the first excuse was always biological which I continue to think is hysterical and the second was always that men would feel compelled to protect them and might get themselves shot in the process). While I had a few examples to refute this idea it would have been extraordinarily helpful to have known about the Night Witches then. My argument was always that the best person to do the job should be allowed to do it and the rest - well the rest is just a bunch of society bullshit that we all need to get over.

I mean really - do we remember the Tuskegee Airmen and how the country thought they couldn't fly?

Whenever I read something like The Night Witches comic I am reminded both of how little we all know about everything and further, about how easily we dismiss the many ways in which we can learn. I get asked a lot why I "waste my time" with comic books. My response is always the same - because they are good. Now with Garth Ennis as an example I can also say because more often than not they teach me something new and valuable. If that's not a reason to read anything, then I don't know what is.

These women were awesome, just awesome.