The all-female members of the Soviet's 588th Night Bomber Regiment painted their planes with flowers and attacked Nazi forces across the Eastern Front. The women of the 588th Night Bomber Regiment of the Soviet Air Forces — better known as the Night Witches — had no radar, no machine guns, no radios, and no parachutes. All they had onboard was a map, a compass, rulers, stopwatches, flashlights, and pencils. Yet they successfully completed 30,000 bombing raids and dropped more than 23,000 tons of munitions on advancing German armies over the course of four years during World War II. Colonel Marina Raskova, The “Soviet Amelia Earhart” The all-female Night Witches squadron was the direct result of women in the Soviet Union wanting to be actively involved in the war effort. Many Soviet women had grown weary of playing a support role during the war and wanted to be engaged in combat on the front lines. From the very inception of the war, Colonel Marina Raskova, a pilot who was known a...