Not too long ago, I tweeted that the last known surviving WWI vet from any side, a woman who served RAF, passed away.  Shortly before that, pop culture scholar Jess Nevins (who writes those great essays in the back of Ed Brubaker & Sean Phillips’ Incognito, Fatale etc.) wrote a great blog post on the mystery of Amy Johnson, the British Emilia Earhart. 

There must be something in the air, as writer Kelly Sue DeConnick (Osborn, Castle) has been blogging about women pilots as well.  This post and the above pic concers “The Night Witches”, women WWII Russian bomber pilots with ovaries of steel (Garth Ennis did an arc about them in my favorite war comic that is not Graveyard of Empires, Battlefields).

kellysue:

queernonymoose:

timelessalice:

goddamnitreddas:

gatheringbones:

wrathofprawn:

lostsplendor:

stalins-princess:

Nightwitches

Die NachtHexen

Ночные ведьмы

for those not in the know, night witches were russian lady bombers who bombed the shit out of german lines in WW2. Thing is though, they had the oldest, noisiest, crappest planes in the entire world. The engines used to conk out halfway through their missions, so they had to climb out on the wings mid flight to restart the props. the planes were also so noisy that to stop germans from hearing them combing and starting up their anti aircraft guns, they’d climb up to a certain height, coast down to german positions, drop their bombs, restart their engines in midair, and get the fuck out of dodge.

their leader flew over 200 missions and was never captured.

HOLY SHIT THIS IS RAD AS FUCK

HOLY SHIT

omg that is just so cool aaaa

Russians get shit done apparently.

Ennis did a comic about the Night Witches.