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Wings, Women, & War: Soviet Airwomen in World War 11 Combat. By Reina Pennington. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2002. ISBN 07006-1145-2. Maps. Photographs. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Pp. xvi, 304. $29.95.
The women who fought for their motherland in the Great Patriotic War have waited a long time for a scholarly history of their experiences. Reina Pennington's thorough and meticulously researched account of Soviet airwomen in combat, based on extensive interviews with veterans and painstaking archival research, is the first monograph on the subject, joining Kazimiera J. Cottam's pioneering reference works. Organized on a regiment by regiment basis, Wings, Women, & War convincingly demonstrates that women pilots and crews were neither a Stalinist publicity stunt intended to demonstrate women's equality nor an act "born of desperation" (p. 2) after the devastating losses of the first six months of the war. Whether serving in all-female or "mixed" units, Soviet airwomen were part of the war effort from the beginning and subjected to the same brutal conditions as their male counterparts.
The relative novelty of the subject notwithstanding, this is a standard military history. On first reading, this reviewer (a cultural historian) regarded that approach as a weakness, but on second and third readings, as a great strength. Regiment...