Olga Golubeva was the navigator of the only female aviation regiment during the Great Patriotic War. From technician to regiment commander - only women and girls. The Germans nicknamed them "Night Witches" - as it turned out, Soviet girls have a firm hand and an iron character.
Biography
Olya Golubeva was born in the Omsk region in 1923. Her father Timofey Vasilyevich was an active partisan during the formation of Soviet power in Siberia and even organized an uprising against the White Guards. Since 1920, Timofey Vasilievich served in the justice authorities. This activity involves frequent change of residence. Therefore, Olga traveled almost all of Siberia as a child. She went to first grade in 1931 in Omsk, and graduated from school in Tobolsk in 1941. There were several other schools between them. But despite the frequent change of school collectives, the girl studied well, she was especially successful in exact sciences. Olga considered physics to be her favorite subject.
Olga was greatly helped by her cheerful character and sociability. She easily established contact with children and teachers. She participated in all possible circles where it was possible to show acting talent. Therefore, I chose a creative direction for admission.
A few days after the graduation, the news of the beginning of the war came. Olga's first desire was to immediately go to the front. She even visited the military registration and enlistment office, but there she was sent home. Volunteer girls have not yet been taken to the front, and Olga left for Moscow. Soon she entered the VGIK at the acting department, only she did not study there for long.
The front line was moving inland, the Soviet troops were experiencing enormous difficulties, including with the number of soldiers. The evacuation process began at the institute. Already on the train going inland, Olga, together with her friend Lydia Lavrentieva, saw an ambulance at one of the stations. The idea immediately came to get a job there for any job. They were received by nurses.
The work was hard and almost round the clock. The matter was further complicated by the bad character of the head of the train, who found fault with any trifles. Therefore, Olga and Lida at the first opportunity were transferred to Saratov, where the formation of an air regiment just began.
The women's regiment was assembled by the famous Soviet pilot Marina Raskova. Subsequently, it will be the famous 46th Guards Night Bomber Regiment. Lavrentieva did not have any problems with the device - she went through the flying club program before the war. Golubeva did not have such knowledge, so they could only take her as an electrical equipment master at Po-2. During the year of her work in this position, Olga provided 1,750 sorties, and in none of them there were no complaints about her actions. Due to her fault, there were no electrical failures on the planes.
However, the girl dreamed of something completely different. Since she was persevering, she passed the navigator exam in August 1943. She went through most of the training on her own, spending invaluable hours of relaxation on it.
Night Witches
The girl needed only three training flights - and now she was allowed to take off for combat missions. By the beginning of the fall of 1943, Golubeva had already flown eight combat missions. The courage and skill of Golubeva manifested themselves from the very first assignments. For example, on one of the sorties, the Po-2 crew managed to bomb a fuel depot for a German tank regiment. This is despite the fact that bombing at that time was carried out almost blindly, and the crew was in no way protected from direct and shrapnel hits.
The Germans nicknamed the women's air regiment the "Night Witches". The Po-2 was a slow-moving aircraft, which made it possible to fly over enemy positions at low altitude. And the pilots made flights mainly at night. Hence the great damage inflicted by the aviation.
Olga quickly acquired the nickname "Dragonfly" in the regiment, which stuck to her with the light hand of Colonel Pokoevy, the division commander. Presenting the Pigeon Order of Glory, III degree, he remarked: "It looks like a dragonfly, but when it comes to a fight - a lioness."
Olga Golubeva was one of the first in the regiment to receive the Order of the Red Banner. And she was only nineteen. She flew about 600 sorties during the entire war, and the last one fell on May 4, 1945. The number of bombs dropped by it is close to 180 thousand tons.
After the war
Olga Golubeva did not return to the acting department of VGIK. With her fighting friends, she entered a military university at the department of foreign languages. Then he served as an interpreter in military intelligence, the GRU. She translated from English and Spanish.
Then she worked as a teacher at the institutes of the Far East, in schools. Gave lectures from the All-Union Society "Knowledge".
After marriage, she took a double surname and became Golubeva-Teres.
Golubeva wrote her first book in a hospital, where she treated the consequences of a military spinal injury. It was Stars on the Wings, which came out in 1974.
In 1975 Olga Timofeevna became a member of the Union of Journalists.
Even after the end of her working career, Olga Golubeva-Teres remained an active public figure. She helped veterans, taught young people, and continued her writing career. She published 12 books, mostly memoirs and war chronicles. But there are also children's books: "Khlebushko", "From the labyrinths of memory."
Olga Timofeevna spent the last years of her life in Saratov. Here she died in 2011 at the age of 87.
