Who was Marina Raskova and what was her contribution
Answers
Answer:
Raskova became a famous aviator as both a pilot and a navigator for the Soviet Union in the 1930s. She was the first woman to become a navigator in the Soviet Air Force in 1933. A year later, she started teaching at the Zhukovsky Air Academy, also a first for a woman.
Nationality: Soviet Union
Profession: Aircraft pilot
Marina Raskova, born in 1912 in Russia, was a pioneering aviatrix, an inspiration to millions of young Russian women, and the founder and leader of the only all-female fighting force in World War 2.
As a young girl, Marina was an aspiring opera singer, but illness and lack of money forced her to choose the more practical path of studying chemistry. She didn’t become interested in aviation until 1931 when she started working in the drafting department at the Air Force Engineering Academy. She joined the VVS (Voyenno-Vozdushney Sily — Military Air Forces) in 1933 and became the first Russian woman to qualify as an aviation navigator when she graduated from the Leningrad Air Force Scientific Research Institute in 1934. She also trained to become a pilot at a Moscow air club in 1934, and eventually became the first female pilot instructor at the Zhurouski Air Academy.
Fame
Raskova’s star was soon on the rise as she started to set several international aviation records. She became one of the most famous women in Russia and was commonly referred to as the Russian Amelia Earhart. She was even on a postage stamp.
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Her most celebrated pre-war achievement came as the navigator on the all-female crew that set an international distance record in an iconic airplane called the Rodina (Motherland). They successfully set the distance record of 4,031 miles of continuous flight by a female crew but ran out of fuel before they were able to land. Raskova had to bail out early because of her precarious position in the nose of the plane and was lost in the Russian wilderness for 10 days before she was found by rescuers and reunited with her crew members.
The record-setting attempt captured the popular imagination to such an extent that updates were published on the front pages of all the Russian newspapers and even in the New York Times.
(It is not commonly known, however, that 16 men died in an airplane collision during the rescue mission to recover the downed crew. It was decided at the time that publicizing this information would detract from the celebrations.)
All three women were awarded the Order of Lenin and the Gold Star Medal, becoming the first women to be endowed with the title, Hero of the Soviet Union.
