Natalya Meklin
(September 8, 1922 - June 5, 2005 )
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://ww2incolor.com/gallery/colorizations/44107/natalya-meklin
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://ww2incolor.com/gallery/colorizations/44107/natalya-meklin
Yes, very nice. I recall putting up another 'photo of this lady, in uniform and wearing her (more important) decorations. She was a member of the famous “Night Witch” squadrons, which specialised in launching harrying night bombing raids in old Polikarpov Po-2 biplanes. Luftwaffe forward fields were a particular favourite target. The Po-2 was, on the face of it, pretty obsolete as a military aircraft by WW2; it was slow, very stable and versatile (one of its nicknames was “the crop duster”). However, the “night witches” took advantage of these features. They developed a technique of flying very low, cutting their engines some way off the target, gliding in (with the air whistling eerily through the rigging struts), dropping their bombs and restarting their engines to fly away. In the event of their encountering German fighters or night-fighters, the latter had great difficulty in shooting them down because to Po-2’s stalling speed was much lower than that of any German fighter, giving a fighter little opportunity to lay its guns on them.
In developing their rather unusual tactics, the "night witches" would have been helped by the fact that many of them originally learned to fly in gliding clubs organised by the Komsomol Soviet Communist youth movement.
The “night witches” may have done relatively little physical damage to the Germans - but German accounts witness their significant impact on the morale of German targets just trying to get a good night’s sleep. Best regards, JR.
Another great work, W39. Congrats
Thank you!