How many Russian fighter pilots can you name off the top of your head? How about the number of woman aviator heroes? If you can't pull off many (or even any) you aren't alone, but once you've heard the story of Lydia Litvyak that will change. Lydia Litvyak was more than just your run of the mill pilot, she was a decorated war hero by the age of twenty one years old, which also happens to be age at which she is believed to have died. Let's go back and take a look at how a girl so young ended up the worst nightmare of many a Luftwaffe pilot.
Lydia started flying in her early teens. Her first solo flight was taken at the age of fifteen, a year after she joined an aviation club. She did not stop at civilian training though, she also attended military flight school to further improve her skills. After going through flight school Lydia found employment as a flight instructor at Kalinin Air Club. She taught over forty pilots in her time as an instructor. Her reason for leaving her job was simple: Russia was going to war with Germany and she wanted to enlist. As the story goes, Lydia presented herself at a recruiting office only to be turned away for a lack of in-flight hours. Having been told that she needed 1,000 hours in flight to qualify as a pilot, Lydia knew what she needed to do. She went to another recruiting station, wrote down "1,000" as her in-flight hours and was accepted. She was nearly immediately shipped off for a brief stint at boot camp before being sent off to fly in defense of her country.
On her first ever mission Lydia became the first woman to ever make a kill. She was the first female fighter ace to exist, and there totaled only two at the end of the war, her wing-woman Maria Budanova being the second. While exact numbers are unknown, it is believed that she had between twelve and fourteen solo victories and between three and five assisted or shared gains. Lydia was a well-decorated war hero. She had earned the Order of Lenin, the Order of the Patriotic War First Class, the Order of the Red Banner and the Order of the Red Star by the time she died. Because the circumstances of her death were unknown, the highest possible honor of Hero of the Soviet Union was originally withheld and was posthumously awarded to her by Mikhail Gorbachev.
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How often do you get a chance to learn about young women who also happened to be ace Russian fighter pilots? Not often, unless you are already a big fan of Lydia Litvyak, a young woman aviator who became a decorated war hero and died at the young age of twenty-one.
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