Galina Brok-Beltsova

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Lieutenant Galina Pavlona Brok-Beltsova (Russian: Галина Павловна Брок; née Brok; born 1925) is a former Soviet bomber navigator and the last surviving member of Marina Raskova's all-female World War II air regiments, better known as the Night Witches.

Early life[]

She was born in Moscow in 1925 and raised there.[1] She was an athletic child, participating in volleyball, swimming, skating and skiing.[2]

World War II[]

In 1941, as Moscow was being bombed by Nazi aircraft, 16 year-old Brok-Beltsova volunteered to join her country's defense.[2] Along with approximately 300 other female Emergency Aviation Regiment trainees, she was evacuated east to Samara where they lived in primitive conditions and trained to be aviators.[1][3] In 1943 she was one of nine regiment members selected to train to navigate the sophisticated Petlyakov Pe-2 dive bombers.[3]

On 23 June 1944, by then a member of the 587th Bomber Aviation Regiment, she flew her first combat mission in the Belarusian campaign.[3][4] Nominally requiring a three-person crew, the Pe-2 often flew with only two, requiring the navigator to also act as radio operator and bombardier.[2] Along with pilot Antonina Bondareva-Spitsina, she flew thirty-six combat missions in total.[1][4]

Post-war[]

After the war Brok-Beltsova married Georgy Beltsov, one of the commanders of her regiment.[3] She was intent on completing her education and earned a PhD in history from Moscow State University in 1960, taught at several universities, and was head of the Moscow Power Engineering Institute's history department until her retirement.[5][6] She also worked at the KGB for some time.[2][6] She and her husband had three children and remained married until Georgy's death in 2005.[2][3]

Brok-Beltsova is often honored at annual events commemorating Russia's role in World War II. In 2020 she was invited to a brunch with Russian president Vladimir Putin to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the war's end.[3] She is the last living member of the Soviet Union's three all-female air regiments, referred to by their German enemies as the "Night Witches".[3]

As of 2020 she lives in the city of Mytishchi, just outside of Moscow.[3]

References[]

  1. ^ a b c Noggle, Anne (1994). A Dance With Death: Soviet Airwomen in World War II. Texas A&M University Press. p. 132. ISBN 9781585441778.
  2. ^ a b c d e Duncan, Phyllis Anne (May–June 2002). "How They Must Love Their Homeland". FAA Aviation News. 41 (4): 20–25.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: date format (link)
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h Dixon, Robyn (8 May 2020). "This woman flew Soviet combat missions in WWII. She is the last one left". The Washington Post. Mytishchi. Retrieved 15 January 2022.
  4. ^ a b Cook, Bernard A., ed. (2006). "Galina Brok-Beltsova". Women and War: A Historical Encyclopedia from Antiquity to the Present. Vol. 2. ABC-CLIO. p. 540. ISBN 9781851097708.
  5. ^ "Marina Raskova and the Soviet Women Pilots of World War II". Aviation Pioneers: An Anthology. Centre for Telecommunications and Information Engineering at Monash University. 11 February 2006. Retrieved 16 January 2022.
  6. ^ a b Pennington, Reina (March 1996). "'Do not speak of the services you rendered': Women veterans of aviation in the Soviet Union". The Journal of Slavic Military Studies. 9 (1): 120–151. doi:10.1080/13518049608430229.
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