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In this video:

Throughout the 1930s pilots around the world were continually trying to push the limits of anything that had been done before in the air. While the likes of Charles Lindbergh and Amelia Earhart are more familiar names in the Western World, the Soviets had their own equivalents such as Mikhail Gromov who, in 1937 along with his two man crew, managed to break the world distance record for non-stop flight, flying 6,306 miles from Moscow to California via a rather dangerous North Pole route. Hailed as heroes upon their return, Premier Joseph Stalin decided the Soviet Union should follow this up in 1938 by having a group of women pilots attempt to set the distance record for non-stop flight for a female crew. The selected trio, who each already held one or more world records for female aviators, were Polina Osipenko, Valentina Grizodubova, and the woman who would ultimately form the squadron that is the subject of today’s video, Marina Raskova.

Want the text version?: https://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2019/10/night-witches/

Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_Witches
http://armedforcesmuseum.com/wwii-night-witches/
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=202401669
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/07/night-witches-the-female-fighter-pilots-of-world-war-ii/277779/
http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/flight-of-the-night-witches-wwii-s-all-female-fighting-force
http://www.defensemedianetwork.com/stories/night-witches-soviet-female-aviators-in-world-war-ii/
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sponsored/rbth/features/8610709/Russian-women-pilots-the-Nazis-feared.html
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2360652/The-Night-Witch-carried-hundreds-bombing-raids-Russia-s-elite-women-World-War-Two-air-squad.html
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/nadezhda-popova-soviet-pilot-known-as-the-night-witch-8711677.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/15/world/europe/nadezhda-popova-ww-ii-night-witch-dies-at-91.html?_r=1
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/nadezhda-popova-celebrated-soviet-night-witch-aviator-of-world-war-ii-dies-at-91/2013/07/13/5561fb1a-ea3c-11e2-a301-ea5a8116d211_story.html
http://thefemalesoldier.com/blog/marina-raskova
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polikarpov_Po-2#Operators
http://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/operation-barbarossa
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hero_of_the_Soviet_Union
https://www.nationalmuseum.af.mil/Visit/Museum-Exhibits/Fact-Sheets/Display/Article/196261/focke-wulf-fw-190d-9/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2019/03/01/fierce-feared-female-wwii-pilots-known-night-witches/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marina_Raskova
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yevdokiya_Bershanskaya
https://airandspace.si.edu/stories/editorial/airspaces2ep10
https://bridgeofwings.com/historical-flight/
http://www.ctie.monash.edu.au/hargrave/soviet_women_pilots.html
https://sites.psu.edu/womeninhistory/2016/08/24/thenightwitches/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tupolev_ANT-37
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikhail_Gromov_(aviator)
https://www.thisdayinaviation.com/tag/rodina/
https://tass.com/defense/1029111
https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Hero_of_the_Soviet_Union
http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/b17.htm