In 1938, one year after Amelia Earhart disappeared in an attempt to circumnavigate the globe, three Soviet female pilots narrowly escaped death in pursuit of their own record-breaking flight.
On November 2, Valentina Grizodubova, Polina Osipenko, and Marina Raskova became the first women in Soviet history to be awarded Heroes of the Soviet Union, the highest honor in the country. Their achievement: setting the non-stop long-distance flight record for women at 26 hours 29 minutes flown and 4,008 miles covered (3,671 miles in a straight line).
Plans for the women’s flight commenced three months earlier in August 1938. Valeriy Chkalov, famous Soviet pilot, had conducted the first non-stop flight from the Soviet Union to the United States in 1937. Inspired by his feat, Grizodubova appealed to Soviet leader, Joseph Stalin, to recreate the flight with an all-female crew.
Stalin agreed, although decided to cast the flight as a Soviet endeavor, changing the destination from New York to the Soviet Far East in Komsomol’sk-on-Amur. The three-woman team would fly a twin-engine ANT-37, nicknamed Rodina (motherland). Grizodubova led the flight as pilot, Osipenko as co-pilot, and Raskova as navigator.
All women had broken flight records in the past. Only two months before the proposed flight, Raskova and Osipenko had established the women’s non-stop long-distance record at 3,695 miles.
The flight, however, seemed plagued with bad luck.
Raskova developed appendicitis, delaying the flight date to late September. By the time she recovered, a state commission recommended canceling the flight due to poor weather conditions in the frigid Far East.
Unperturbed, Stalin ordered the flight to continue, and the Rodina took off at 8:16am on September 24, 1938, from the Moscow region.
Problems continued after take-off.
About 93 miles into the 4,000 mile-flight, the aircraft entered clouds and lost visibility. The radio equipment onboard failed, probably because of the extreme cold: the temperature plummeted to -32 degrees Fahrenheit inside the cabin and -34 degrees outside.
In either case, the Rodina was flying blind.
On the second day of the flight, as the crew neared their destination, an emergency light flashed on the controls. The crew only had 30 minutes of fuel remaining. With visibility still poor and unable to locate the airfield, Grizodubova decided to make an emergency landing.
As the navigator’s cabin was inaccessible to the rest of the aircraft and located towards the front section—a precarious position in a crash landing—Grizodubova also ordered Raskova to parachute out of the plane. From an altitude of approximately 7,546 feet, Raskova jumped to the taiga below.
Grizodubova and Osipenko landed safely, and after checking their watches, realized that their crew had broken the non-stop long-distance record. Now they had to wait for rescue and hope that their navigator had survived the jump.
Apart from injuries to her legs, Raskova weathered the landing relatively unscathed. In the chaos of bailing out, however, she had forgotten her emergency kit, meaning she had no water and only the two chocolate bars that she had previously tucked away in her clothes.
After ten days of wandering the forest, Raskova found her way back to the Rodina crew, which had been located by rescue services days earlier. The navigator had somehow survived below freezing temperatures with little supplies, foraging for berries and drinking melted snow.
For the Soviet population, long fascinated by the stories of Jack London and survival tales, Raskova became the stuff of legend.
When the Rodina crew returned to Moscow, they were met as celebrities: escorted to the Kremlin in open cars and greeted by cheering fans. After the media spectacle of the flight and rescue operation, the three women became household names, with full-length issues in periodicals and radio plays based on their thriling flight.
The three-women crew hoped to inspire more women to fly. Yet, Soviet leadership had a complicated relationship with women in male-dominated fields, particularly those with connections to the military, like aviation. Stalin lauded the Rodina, but actual flying clubs limited the number of female students.
By the time that Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, the military had not ruled on women’s ability to enlist. In October of that year, Raskova successfully petitioned Stalin to create three all-women’s air regiments, including the famous Night Witches, a unit that completed nighttime operations in low-flying planes.
Women could not officially enter other divisions of the military until April 1942, meaning that Raskova was able to employ her popularity and sway with Stalin to allow women into the air force before they could enter other military branches.
Even today, state officials and militaries struggle with the question of women’s place in “masculine” occupations, such as aviation and the military. The Red Army prohibited women from enlistment in 1945, establishing a precedent that continues to influence the Russian military, where women’s reproductive capabilities are prioritized over their combat abilities.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has long co-opted the memory of World War II for his political agenda, particularly to foster support for the 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine. It is revealing that he has not similarly employed the accomplishments of the Rodina crew and Raskova’s three-women’s air regiments. Russian female pilots mainly participate in transport missions, rather than in combat.
During his visit with female pilots of the Krasnodar Aviation School in 2023, Putin questioned whether women should place themselves in danger by participating in the special military operation (how Russia refers to the Russo-Ukraine war). He advised that women—military personnel and civilians—return to their families and duties at home.
The Ukrainian military, conversely, more willingly utilizes female combatants. In fact, an all-female air defense unit, called the Witches of Bucha, works under the cover of night to shoot down Russian attack drones. In this case, women continue to demonstrate their ability to succeed in male-dominated fields.
After all, two of the three-women Rodina crew were Soviet Ukrainian. 
Learn more:
Charon Cardona, Euridice and Roger Markwick, Soviet Women on the Frontline in the Second World War. Palgrave Macmillan, 2012
Krylova, Anna, Soviet Women in Combat: A History of Violence on the Eastern Front. Cambridge University Press, 2010.
Pennington, Reina, Wings, Women, and War: Soviet Airwomen in World War II. University Press of Kansas, 2002.
Rainsford, Sarah, “’It’s scary – but so’s giving birth’: The Female Unit Gunning down Russian Drones,” BBC, October 15, 2024. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c62gx6rvv5wo
“Rodina sets a nonstop record for the Motherland,” Aviation History 19, no. 2 (2008): 15.
Shevchenko, Nikolay, “How Three Soviet Women Nearly Died Chasing their Aviation Dream, Gateway to Russia, October 21, 2022. https://www.gw2ru.com/history/1151-long-range-bomber-rodina-grizodubova
Strebe, Amy Goodpaster, “Marina Raskova & The Soviet Women Aviators of World War II,” Russian Life 46, no. 1 (Jan.-Feb. 2003), 42.
Vernitsky, Anton, “Prezident vstretilsia s vypusknitsami Krasnodarskogo aviauchilishcha i poproboval sebia v roli pilota,” Pervyi kanal, March 7, 2024. https://www.1tv.ru/news/2024-03-07/472272-prezident_vstretilsya_s_vypusknitsami_krasnodarskogo_aviauchilischa_i_poproboval_sebya_v_roli_pilota
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