Said that way I only imagine this woman wandering around and yelling "ALINA! KATYUSHA! ZVETLANA! GET OUT! THE WAR IS OVER!". I shouldn't be laughing. I am laughing.
Throughout the war, witches lost 32 pilots. By the end of the war, each witch had 700-800 sorties, 5-10 flights every night. These girls are legends. The men called them - sisters, angels and night swallows. Due to the fact that they did not take parachutes, they burned to death in a downed plane, so the girls were never captured.
Considering that they flew so low, a parachute would have made no difference, there would have been no time for it to open. I also remember reading that the type of plane the witches used is the only biplane credited with a kill versus a jet aircraft. It happened during the Korean war where the north again used them for silent night bombing, and in one case a allied jet fighter pilot forgot to keep track of his stall speed and crashed due to too low speed earning him the (dubious) record as having lost a fight in a jet aircraft against basically a WW1 biplane....
If you had women infantry it dos not work with the monthly problems and the infrastructure of the supplies especialy back then. Other then that if millions of women die how can you repopulate your country. Don't get me wrong a have respect for the women that went into battle, but reality is what it is.
@@VloggingThroughHistory During WW2 those women were basically conscripted and forced to fight by the Soviet Union, other Countries as well were doing Military Drafts but they wouldn't draft women because it was seen as cruel to do so when there could be the chance of drafting both parents of a family leaving their children without parents. Personally I wouldn't praise the Soviet Union considering the amounts of their own people they killed and the numbers of countries they screwed over in WW2 but eh.....
@@Ami-vh7sr at least the 3rd Reich did not kill as many civilians as the soviets did. Furthermore the leadership of the NSDAP was against a specific group of people ( jews, roma, sinti and political enemies) while the Soviet Union had gone after everyone and even sent people to the gulag for saying things like “planting trees is not winning us the war“. A teacher once said that and got sent to the gulag while being in her 8th month of becoming a child. It was taken away from her and probably killed because she had never seen it again. The 3rd Reich was better than the Soviet Union in my opinion.
When I was a kid I had a neighbour named Franz , he told me about fighting on the eastern front . I still remember the look of fear in his eyes when he told me about the night witches
My grandfather was a fighter pilot in the Red Army. After being shot down in 42, he was assigned to the male night bombing unit using same plane. He spent 6 month there, before going back to the fighters. He always said, that was the craziest and scariest thing he did during the war.
There's a line in Wikipedia about the Po-2 being the only biplane credited with a jet kill. A Lockheed F-94 Starfire stalled and crashed while trying to engage a Po-2 back in the 50s. This is mentioned on both planes pages.
Fun Fact (maybe not so fun) about the Night Witches: Their Po-2 had a very limited carrying capacity (6 110lbs bombs), that some of them chose to forgo parachutes and even defensive weaponry for carrying a heavier bomb load.
When theyre gliding in at night they were probably hard as fuck to see anyway, I believe the Germans gave out medals if someone actually managed to shoot one of them down
There have been a few German Soldier Biographies where soldiers had close encounters with "The NachtHexen" and considered themselves lucky not to have been killed.
They would also sew colorful silk into their helmets. They were given a cow shed to live and sleep in, but they didn't let it stop them, decorating and outfitting it to make it livable.
I love the animation of the one pilot getting furious at the sight of her downed comrade and taking pot shots with her pistol before throwing the gun itself. Animators knocked it out of the park with her expressions.
Vlogging Through History "So today I'm going to talk about the Night Wi..." Sabaton Fans: "FROM THE DEPTHS OF HELL IN SILENCE, CAST THEIR SPELLS EXPLOSIVE VIOLENCE" V: "... the Night Witches, the female bomber reg..." SF: "RUSSIAN NIGHT TIME FLIGHT PERFECTED FLAWLESS VISION UNDETECTED"
Love your reactions and history content. And as a Swede, I love my Sabaton. You should check Primo Victoria, about D-Day and Ghost Division. Those were my first tunes with Sabaton :)
One of my favourite story involving a Russian woman from World War Two is Maria Oktyabrskaia. Her husband was a regular in the Red Army and was killed in action, and she sold all their possessions to buy a T-34 with a request that she be allowed to drive it. The GKO agreed, she completed a tank driver/mechanic course, and spent two years at the front before being killed herself in action near Vitebsk in 1944 - she was posthumously awarded the Hero of the Soviet Union. To add a little history that isn't in the video, Maria Raskova was a famous pilot/navigator in the Soviet Union before the war, and she wrote to Stalin in 1941 asking to form three air regiments from women who she knew or had written to her volunteering to fight. They were the 586th Fighter Regiment, the 587th Light Bomber Regiment and the 588th (later 46th Guards) Night Bomber Regiment. In theory they were all to only have female personnel and they all started that way, but the other two regiments admitted male personnel later - only the 588th was entirely female through the war.
Man night witches what a fantastic story. If I wasn’t a poor college student I would support you as much as i could. I just found your TH-cam channel literally an hour ago and i love your content keep up the great work.
If you want another really good sabaton song resist and bite is probably my favorite song. It really breaks the stereotype of French people always surrendering and or retreating. being part French myself from my dad’s side of the family the song and the story show that the French really didn’t back down without a fight. It really hits home for me I hope you enjoy it. Ils ne passont pas!!!!
I'd recommend their song "Hearts of Iron", talking about Walther Wenck and his 12th Army, alongside the 9th Army, in the Battle of Berlin and their rescue operation there. Onions show up near me when I listen to that.
The outdated nature of their planes had actually the same advantage that the Swordfish had: since they were made of wood and canvas AA shells usually pierced the planes completely rather than exploding like they would with more 'modern' planes. Also as you stated their low speed was so low that most fighters would stall when trying to shoot them down.
This is such an amazing story. I saw Sabaton's Night Witches Official Music Video several months ago and loved it. But when Sabaton posted this collab with Yarn Hub, telling more of the story, I have to admit it made me cry. And I have a lump in my throat even now. What truly brave women! They deserved so much more than they received from the Soviet military. At least their story is still being told by Sabaton...💖🤘💛
12% unit casualties from twenty-three THOUSAND sorties is amazing. In comparison, I believe Kurt Tank had at least 6 tail gunners killed in his one Stuka!
While im not all that educated about the second world war i find it really strange that this story is so unknown as its such an unusual one as women wasnt fighting much at those days atleast not in most countries. I mean i live in Sweden and have never heard the story about the night witches before i heard the Sabaton song. I really do hope it gets more widely known as its such a good story and the girls/women that faught does deserve it.
I really enjoy the story of the night witches. I think allot of women wanted to fight in the war and I think this proves they were more than capable. I think this shows though the determination and resilience of women from that era.
I wrote part of my Masters thesis on the Night Witches, they are without doubt one of the most badass stories of female military prowess in history. So glad you did this video.
wiki : "Throughout the course of the war the regiment accumulated approximately 23,672 sorties in combat, including in the following battles" Battle of the Caucasus - 2,920 sorties Kuban, Taman, Novorossiysk - 4,623 sorties Crimean Offensive - 6,140 sorties Belarus Offensive - 400 sorties Poland Offensive - 5,421 sorties German Offensive - 2,000 sorties "In total, 261 people served in the regiment, of whom 32 died of various causes including plane crashes, combat deaths and tuberculosis. 28 aircraft were written off" I'm actually surprised of the low casualty rate, one would think that the po2 would be an easy target for mgs and light AA but damn they did good
Is an awesome story and amazing that they only suffered minor losses given how many stories they flew and the dangers they faced. Posted on an older video but Blood of Bannockburn, The Last Stand, and Rourke's Drift are all awesome and older history
There is the Russian language found on the internet called "Night Swallows" that was about the women flyers. It is worth the effort to find it. Also, "The Attackers" is a similar Russian language program for Soviet fighter regiments. Both have English subtitles and very addictive fictional accounts of real events.
They were vulnerable to ground fire, but as I understand it the German AA guns weren't sighted for planes that slow, which made them quite challenging to actually hit. That's why they only had 32 deaths out of hundreds of missions (and that's including pilots lost to tuberculosis, not just combat deaths).
Btw, there was a female batallion in a Russian Imperial army, during the ww1! And they fought braverly. There even was a film about that (a bit controversial one) named "Batallion" (Батальонъ). If you want to know more about women in the ww2 I would definately recommend watching "And dawns here are quiet" (the Soviet film and a book), which is a masterpiece (avaluable on youtube with subtitles, А зори здесь тихие - russian name for easier search) and a more modern film "Batle of Sevastopol" about the most succesful female sniper of the ww2.
The planes could take off from anywhere. There are accounts of the women being arrested for stealing wooden posts from fences to build a makeshift runway.
This was the first Sabaton song I ever heard. I don't know if this was mentioned or not yet but there were some pilots in the 588th that got the soviet equivalent of the medal of honor.
I really enjoyed learning more about these very brave women, as well as your positive comments regarding them. I remember learning as a child that the Soviet Union was the first to send a woman into space. She was Valentina Tereshkova in 1963. The U.S. didn't send a woman into space until 1983 when they sent Sally Ride up on the shuttle. The U.S. should be ashamed that NASA took 20 years to catch up to the Soviets in this. After all, we were trying to beat them in everything else in the Space Race, but not this. HMPH!!
The flight simulator game IL-2 added the PO-2 to the warplanes you can fly, and yes, the pilot is a woman. It's caused a lot of people in the sim community to become very aware of these brave women.
There is a 1981 Soviet movie called "Night Witches in the sky" (В небе "Ночные ведьмы"). I don't know if you can find any translation but it's worth checking out.
Like two hours ago I found this channel, after listening to Sabatons Bismarck(I only discovered how great sabaton is like yesterday and now I'm obsessed lol) and now I'm gonna binge this whole channel and it's sister channel >:) History, WW's in particular are so damn fascinating to me!
@Vlogging Through History I've watched many reaction videos for Sabaton but you instantly made me sub and bell. The others mostly react to the music which is ok. But you react to the music, the message in the songs, the history and even explain some more things about the events they sing about. Which is very refreshing and got me interested right away! Well done!
Thank you for acknowledging what a great place Wikipedia is to start researching a topic. Because they cite all of their sources, they're a wonderful place to begin a search for information. Wikipedia got a bad reputation years ago from how people misused it, and that reputation has sadly stuck.
I mean, it's usually cited if it's activity used/visited, I've seen a few missing some cited evidence? But still good to use if you need to quickly search something up
Congrats, nice reaction video!!!. I want to tell you that not many years before WWII there was another european war with women involved in combat. It was the Spanish Civil War were Hittler, Mussolini and Stalin also took part. Inside Republican army thousands of women fought shoulder by shoulder with men. 1936.
Big Sabaton fan here...also a fan of WW2 planes. I remember reading somewhere that the engines had to be hand started by manually spinning the propeller. They even showed a brief scene of the woman starting the engine and kind of being scared of it. Anyways...so since the engines had to be started by hand, after their run was finished one of them had to climb out onto the front of the plane and spin the propeller. Crazy fucking bravery these women had. "Good for them" indeed.
Man, when you talk about Stalin and what happened on eastern front - you must understand that it wasn't the same baby game as western front, Germans didn't just occupied the lands and the cities of Motherland, but they also killed civilians, millions of women, and children were killed, Germans wanted to leave only 15% of slavic people alive to serve to the Germans as slaves. Those men and women who could work Germans took by the trains to labor (death) camps. Soviet Union loose over 20 000 000 people a lot of them were civilians. That is exactly why women allover the Motherland volunteer to fight the Nazi everyway they could. Snipers, Pilots, Doctors, infantry, drivers and so on. Because the war on eastern front wasn't just war - it was extermination of people, no matter civilians or soldiers.
Read at least about just one Soviet city Kiev (Capital of Ukraine) there is a place called "Babyn yar" where Nazi killed over 70 000 jewish civilians. Before saying that Stalin sent everyone to the front and how bad he was...
One of my favourite WW2 facts, real honourable women with bigger balls than most men. They prepared their planes for each mission which meant loading heavy bombs, dropping them on target then going back to base to do it all over again. They would have dozens of flights each night. There is a great documnetary about them by Gunilla Bresky. Recommendation for reaction, Ghost division.
My recollection is that very few of the Night Witches were killed in battle. Their tactics made it virtually impossible for the Germans to figure out they were attacking them. Ground fire against them would be highly effective but they attacked at night with no illumination with their engines turned off. Imagine it's pitch black and the first indication they're attacking you is the bombs hitting the ground. It'd be very difficult to figure out where they are since you might not even assume you're being attacked by bombers. 32 for that many sorties now that I've gotten further into the video, they were practically invincible. That's one of the lowest death rates for a bomber group that I think I've ever seen.
Highly recommend 'The Last Battle' which not only is an amazing song but the actual event it's based on is astounding to read up on. That aside thank you, I stumbled across this channel literally an hour ago and I really appreciate the side information alongside the reactions!
Definitely recommend both “the final battle” and “hearts of iron” by sabaton describing the last few weeks of the war and the heroic actions of German soldiers abandoning the nazi party, saving civilians and political prisoners from the Russians and the SS
I found out about you like maybe 4 or 5 days ago by watching your reaction to Sabaton's Bismarck, you are a very fun person to watch. I mostly just watch reactions and then mostly just never watch videos from the channels again, but you're a pretty nice guy. Happy early new years from germany!
We always talk about how the Russian army was basically a bunch of potatos with guns but funnily enough they had some of the most elite soldiers during the war just looking at the 588th and for example Vasily Zajcev
I know very little, but I think this is what's great about Sabaton, the actaul songs don't contain much teaching, but what do I do when they release a new track? Head to wikipedia and start learning about something I may not have even heard of before.
This is one of my cousins favourite stories to tell her classes (she's a history teacher), she loves seeing the look on the girls faces when she talks about the nightwitches. She does use Sabatons music a lot in her classes, since it provides easy openers for subjects and stories.
I never knew you speak for Rachels Challenge. Im related to the Scotts and was born on that day and went to Columbine freshman year....also yes Sabaton Night Witches
"Not allowed to fly in the Victory parade given their planes were so slow" Imagine the French Foreign Legion (marching 88 steps/min while other troops march at 120 steps/min) not being allowed to march during Bastille Day """because they march too slowly""" That's such a dumb excuse.
It's almost like most of these historical "progressive" moments were actually under great protest at the time and people were keen to revert back to the status quo as soon as they were no longer a necessary "evil" to win the war.
@@Loutral How do you mean to pull that off? The Night Witch planes top speed was lower than the stall speed of the other planes in the air force, meaning other planes physically cannot go slow enough for them to catch up. What the could have done is given them planes to fly during the parade that were up to speed. Loses the spirit of them a bit, but let's them get the recognition they deserve
An amazing thing the Night Witches did was during bombing runs the Navigator would have to climb out of the plane onto the wing and then release the bomb by hand as the latch would sometimes get stuck. I can't imagine having to do that at full speed and low to the ground. This requires an amazing amount of onions to do this.
Sabaton are actually pretty cool with using their content for reaction videos. Afaik you are allowed to monetize them and Sabaton themselves will never put a DMCA claim on you.
after all the times i watched the video... now i realice the BF110 Nightfigter has the 70cm Raderunit "Matratze" ... i wonder if they could really made use of it
During the Great Patriotic War, there were 3 all-female airforce regiments, 586, 587, and 588. 586 was a fighter regiment equipped with Yak-1, which was Soviet's best fighter at the time, toe to toe with Bf-109F-4. 587 was a dive bomber regiment equipped with Pe-2, which was the most produced bomber in Soviet at the time. 588 was the night bomber regiment here.
React to the guy who made the animation , he's animation about "Fighting girlfriend" , another badass Soviet woman , and for WW1 react to Great War channel video about the most decorated woman of WW1 Milunka Savic
I just recently found your channel while watching SABATON HISTORY, I have to say I do enjoy the reaction video of SABATON HISTORY, I LEARN FROM both you and indy however I would love for you to do a reaction to INMATE 4859,
Maybe not entirely relevant, but you mentioned that the Red Army had women serving in ground combat roles. One of the most successful snipers of WWII was Ludmilla Pavlichenko. I believe there's a Wikipedia page about her.
This a story that absolutely screams for Spielberg to tell it. There have been films made by Russia but it needs to be more widely known. There were also women fighter pilots too. Perhaps the most famous was called the White Lily of Stalingrad. She was just 21 when shot down and killed. 😢😢
I would not be hard on the Soviets loss of man power it wasn't a choice they where being invaded by one of the most powerfiul land forces in history an holding their own but at great cost
"Technical" nuance of Night Witches effectiveness has interesting paralell on Western Front, in FAA`s Fairey Swodfish, the "stringbags". Although it seems it wasn`t so difficult for fighters to shoot down Swordfish as Polikarpov, it is quite widely accepted, that somewhat obsolete concept and construction of Swordfish helped their apparent ability to pass through AA barrage; projectiles designed to kill "modern", strongly build planes didn`t iniciate upon hitting canvas-covered Swordfishes. Also there some claims, that modern aa fire-control systems were not well suited to shoot at such slow targets (case oftenly related to Swordfish attacks during hunt for Bismarck or Channel Dash). Regarding women-only units, there was also 586th Fighter Rgt and 587th Bomber Rgt (non designated as "night"). Also there were some mixed units; there is russian TV-series based on this motif, available also on YT, eng. "The Attackers". Not ceratain about land army, but I`ve heared about some smaller size (battalion / company) units also compozed only of female soldiers. Apart from that - of course large number of snipers, filed medics, liason officers/NCO`s and other support roles (but considered part of military structure).
Salute to the Commisar who went to find all her women who never returned.
Said that way I only imagine this woman wandering around and yelling "ALINA! KATYUSHA! ZVETLANA! GET OUT! THE WAR IS OVER!". I shouldn't be laughing. I am laughing.
@@Momo_Kawashima idk why you are finding this funny really
@@olgafeanaro3865 for the same reason I find funny the phrase "americans can't play Clash Royale since they don't know how to defend the Towers"
Commisars got a bad rep and in many cases it was deserved. But most of them were soldiers first.
o7
Throughout the war, witches lost 32 pilots. By the end of the war, each witch had 700-800 sorties, 5-10 flights every night. These girls are legends. The men called them - sisters, angels and night swallows. Due to the fact that they did not take parachutes, they burned to death in a downed plane, so the girls were never captured.
Considering that they flew so low, a parachute would have made no difference, there would have been no time for it to open.
I also remember reading that the type of plane the witches used is the only biplane credited with a kill versus a jet aircraft.
It happened during the Korean war where the north again used them for silent night bombing, and in one case a allied jet fighter pilot forgot to keep track of his stall speed and crashed due to too low speed earning him the (dubious) record as having lost a fight in a jet aircraft against basically a WW1 biplane....
32 losses over the course of the war is extremely low casualty. This is really impressive!
@@daedalron: Especially given that the overall casualty rate of the Soviet Union during the war was 97% (both wounded and killed).
I honestly didn’t know they would burn to death as well.
“Shame on all the other countries for not taking advantage of women” I’m gonna take that out of context
Yikes!
If you had women infantry it dos not work with the monthly problems and the infrastructure of the supplies especialy back then.
Other then that if millions of women die how can you repopulate your country.
Don't get me wrong a have respect for the women that went into battle, but reality is what it is.
@@VloggingThroughHistory During WW2 those women were basically conscripted and forced to fight by the Soviet Union, other Countries as well were doing Military Drafts but they wouldn't draft women because it was seen as cruel to do so when there could be the chance of drafting both parents of a family leaving their children without parents. Personally I wouldn't praise the Soviet Union considering the amounts of their own people they killed and the numbers of countries they screwed over in WW2 but eh.....
@@Ami-vh7sr at least the 3rd Reich did not kill as many civilians as the soviets did. Furthermore the leadership of the NSDAP was against a specific group of people ( jews, roma, sinti and political enemies) while the Soviet Union had gone after everyone and even sent people to the gulag for saying things like “planting trees is not winning us the war“. A teacher once said that and got sent to the gulag while being in her 8th month of becoming a child. It was taken away from her and probably killed because she had never seen it again. The 3rd Reich was better than the Soviet Union in my opinion.
Almost choked when he said that 😆
When I was a kid I had a neighbour named Franz , he told me about fighting on the eastern front . I still remember the look of fear in his eyes when he told me about the night witches
My grandfather was a fighter pilot in the Red Army. After being shot down in 42, he was assigned to the male night bombing unit using same plane. He spent 6 month there, before going back to the fighters.
He always said, that was the craziest and scariest thing he did during the war.
Wow...amazing. He must have had some incredible stories.
@@VloggingThroughHistory He sure did.
There's a line in Wikipedia about the Po-2 being the only biplane credited with a jet kill. A Lockheed F-94 Starfire stalled and crashed while trying to engage a Po-2 back in the 50s. This is mentioned on both planes pages.
It happened during the Korean War. The jet pilot failed to watch his airspeed and stalled.
Fun Fact (maybe not so fun) about the Night Witches: Their Po-2 had a very limited carrying capacity (6 110lbs bombs), that some of them chose to forgo parachutes and even defensive weaponry for carrying a heavier bomb load.
When theyre gliding in at night they were probably hard as fuck to see anyway, I believe the Germans gave out medals if someone actually managed to shoot one of them down
I would recommend Sabatons "Fields of Verdun" and "Great War"
Especially the music video for fields of verdun cause it looks amazing
i think the best song of great war album is THE RED BARON i waiting son react that
There have been a few German Soldier Biographies where soldiers had close encounters with "The NachtHexen" and considered themselves lucky not to have been killed.
They would also sew colorful silk into their helmets. They were given a cow shed to live and sleep in, but they didn't let it stop them, decorating and outfitting it to make it livable.
You should listen to "The Last Battle". It's criminally underrated.
im agreeing with this
It's a really good story
Excuse me, He already did
@@ronaldpagar6513 Bro, this comment was posted 5 months before he did.
I love the animation of the one pilot getting furious at the sight of her downed comrade and taking pot shots with her pistol before throwing the gun itself. Animators knocked it out of the park with her expressions.
I'd be furious too for losing sisters.
Vlogging Through History "So today I'm going to talk about the Night Wi..."
Sabaton Fans: "FROM THE DEPTHS OF HELL IN SILENCE, CAST THEIR SPELLS EXPLOSIVE VIOLENCE"
V: "... the Night Witches, the female bomber reg..."
SF: "RUSSIAN NIGHT TIME FLIGHT PERFECTED FLAWLESS VISION UNDETECTED"
You’re GOD DAMN right!
my fav part of the song
Love your reactions and history content. And as a Swede, I love my Sabaton. You should check Primo Victoria, about D-Day and Ghost Division. Those were my first tunes with Sabaton :)
I remember there was a Russian lady that got 303 confirmed kills as a sniper
Lyudmila Pavlichenko would be the name you are looking for
small correction, 309 kills, just to be accurate
@@thomashoffman8916 And she was friends with Eleanor Roosevelt!
And there is a song about her, too, from Woody Guthrie.
@@Pavel-Geleznov thanks for the real number
One of my favourite story involving a Russian woman from World War Two is Maria Oktyabrskaia. Her husband was a regular in the Red Army and was killed in action, and she sold all their possessions to buy a T-34 with a request that she be allowed to drive it. The GKO agreed, she completed a tank driver/mechanic course, and spent two years at the front before being killed herself in action near Vitebsk in 1944 - she was posthumously awarded the Hero of the Soviet Union.
To add a little history that isn't in the video, Maria Raskova was a famous pilot/navigator in the Soviet Union before the war, and she wrote to Stalin in 1941 asking to form three air regiments from women who she knew or had written to her volunteering to fight. They were the 586th Fighter Regiment, the 587th Light Bomber Regiment and the 588th (later 46th Guards) Night Bomber Regiment. In theory they were all to only have female personnel and they all started that way, but the other two regiments admitted male personnel later - only the 588th was entirely female through the war.
Man night witches what a fantastic story. If I wasn’t a poor college student I would support you as much as i could. I just found your TH-cam channel literally an hour ago and i love your content keep up the great work.
Appreciate it! Just keep watching, commenting, liking. Each time helps.
If you want another really good sabaton song resist and bite is probably my favorite song. It really breaks the stereotype of French people always surrendering and or retreating. being part French myself from my dad’s side of the family the song and the story show that the French really didn’t back down without a fight. It really hits home for me I hope you enjoy it.
Ils ne passont pas!!!!
I'd recommend their song "Hearts of Iron", talking about Walther Wenck and his 12th Army, alongside the 9th Army, in the Battle of Berlin and their rescue operation there. Onions show up near me when I listen to that.
You also have a problem with those? The bastards Always screws up my metal cred!!🤘🤘
You can also watch the sabaton history channel, they go over in more details.
The outdated nature of their planes had actually the same advantage that the Swordfish had: since they were made of wood and canvas AA shells usually pierced the planes completely rather than exploding like they would with more 'modern' planes. Also as you stated their low speed was so low that most fighters would stall when trying to shoot them down.
This is such an amazing story. I saw Sabaton's Night Witches Official Music Video several months ago and loved it. But when Sabaton posted this collab with Yarn Hub, telling more of the story, I have to admit it made me cry. And I have a lump in my throat even now. What truly brave women! They deserved so much more than they received from the Soviet military. At least their story is still being told by Sabaton...💖🤘💛
The Fairey Swordfish torpedo bomber used against the Bismarck and Prinz Eugen were of a similar age by that mission
And had similar strengths and weaknesses - too slow for fighters to take a proper shot, but very vulnerable to flak.
@@paulsmith5752 did not include in original post because I knew that at some point someone would ad the knowledge
12% unit casualties from twenty-three THOUSAND sorties is amazing. In comparison, I believe Kurt Tank had at least 6 tail gunners killed in his one Stuka!
While im not all that educated about the second world war i find it really strange that this story is so unknown as its such an unusual one as women wasnt fighting much at those days atleast not in most countries. I mean i live in Sweden and have never heard the story about the night witches before i heard the Sabaton song. I really do hope it gets more widely known as its such a good story and the girls/women that faught does deserve it.
I really enjoy the story of the night witches. I think allot of women wanted to fight in the war and I think this proves they were more than capable. I think this shows though the determination and resilience of women from that era.
Sabaton History goes pretty deep into this one. Along with the video you watched covers the 588th pretty well.
Greetings from Germany . These Girls has my big Respect . Yes , I am an German . And thanks to Sabaton for the Good historical Job .
I wrote part of my Masters thesis on the Night Witches, they are without doubt one of the most badass stories of female military prowess in history. So glad you did this video.
wiki : "Throughout the course of the war the regiment accumulated approximately 23,672 sorties in combat, including in the following battles"
Battle of the Caucasus - 2,920 sorties
Kuban, Taman, Novorossiysk - 4,623 sorties
Crimean Offensive - 6,140 sorties
Belarus Offensive - 400 sorties
Poland Offensive - 5,421 sorties
German Offensive - 2,000 sorties
"In total, 261 people served in the regiment, of whom 32 died of various causes including plane crashes, combat deaths and tuberculosis. 28 aircraft were written off"
I'm actually surprised of the low casualty rate, one would think that the po2 would be an easy target for mgs and light AA but damn they did good
Is an awesome story and amazing that they only suffered minor losses given how many stories they flew and the dangers they faced. Posted on an older video but Blood of Bannockburn, The Last Stand, and Rourke's Drift are all awesome and older history
I've gotta ask does anyone else get a heavy heart feeling whenever they hear the story of the night witches?
There is the Russian language found on the internet called "Night Swallows" that was about the women flyers. It is worth the effort to find it. Also, "The Attackers" is a similar Russian language program for Soviet fighter regiments. Both have English subtitles and very addictive fictional accounts of real events.
They were vulnerable to ground fire, but as I understand it the German AA guns weren't sighted for planes that slow, which made them quite challenging to actually hit. That's why they only had 32 deaths out of hundreds of missions (and that's including pilots lost to tuberculosis, not just combat deaths).
omfg Night witches could be such an epic movie!
Btw, there was a female batallion in a Russian Imperial army, during the ww1! And they fought braverly. There even was a film about that (a bit controversial one) named "Batallion" (Батальонъ).
If you want to know more about women in the ww2 I would definately recommend watching "And dawns here are quiet" (the Soviet film and a book), which is a masterpiece (avaluable on youtube with subtitles, А зори здесь тихие - russian name for easier search) and a more modern film "Batle of Sevastopol" about the most succesful female sniper of the ww2.
The planes could take off from anywhere. There are accounts of the women being arrested for stealing wooden posts from fences to build a makeshift runway.
This was the first Sabaton song I ever heard. I don't know if this was mentioned or not yet but there were some pilots in the 588th that got the soviet equivalent of the medal of honor.
23 women of the 588th Night Bomber Regiment were awarded the Hero of the Soviet Union -- the Soviet equivalent to the US Medal of Honor.
I really enjoyed learning more about these very brave women, as well as your positive comments regarding them. I remember learning as a child that the Soviet Union was the first to send a woman into space. She was Valentina Tereshkova in 1963. The U.S. didn't send a woman into space until 1983 when they sent Sally Ride up on the shuttle. The U.S. should be ashamed that NASA took 20 years to catch up to the Soviets in this. After all, we were trying to beat them in everything else in the Space Race, but not this. HMPH!!
The flight simulator game IL-2 added the PO-2 to the warplanes you can fly, and yes, the pilot is a woman. It's caused a lot of people in the sim community to become very aware of these brave women.
There is a 1981 Soviet movie called "Night Witches in the sky" (В небе "Ночные ведьмы"). I don't know if you can find any translation but it's worth checking out.
These women were nothing short of badass. I'd totally have a crush on them if I had served in Russia with them lol.
Like two hours ago I found this channel, after listening to Sabatons Bismarck(I only discovered how great sabaton is like yesterday and now I'm obsessed lol) and now I'm gonna binge this whole channel and it's sister channel >:)
History, WW's in particular are so damn fascinating to me!
Welcome! I was like you a few months ago, discovered them and instantly obsessed. I was just jamming to the Great War album in the shower!
10:05 Ah yes, "yes" bookmarked.
@Vlogging Through History
I've watched many reaction videos for Sabaton but you instantly made me sub and bell. The others mostly react to the music which is ok. But you react to the music, the message in the songs, the history and even explain some more things about the events they sing about. Which is very refreshing and got me interested right away! Well done!
the PO-2 is i believe the only bi-plane credited with killing a jet fighter
Thank you for acknowledging what a great place Wikipedia is to start researching a topic. Because they cite all of their sources, they're a wonderful place to begin a search for information.
Wikipedia got a bad reputation years ago from how people misused it, and that reputation has sadly stuck.
I mean, it's usually cited if it's activity used/visited, I've seen a few missing some cited evidence? But still good to use if you need to quickly search something up
Congrats, nice reaction video!!!.
I want to tell you that not many years before WWII there was another european war with women involved in combat. It was the Spanish Civil War were Hittler, Mussolini and Stalin also took part. Inside Republican army thousands of women fought shoulder by shoulder with men. 1936.
Big Sabaton fan here...also a fan of WW2 planes. I remember reading somewhere that the engines had to be hand started by manually spinning the propeller. They even showed a brief scene of the woman starting the engine and kind of being scared of it. Anyways...so since the engines had to be started by hand, after their run was finished one of them had to climb out onto the front of the plane and spin the propeller. Crazy fucking bravery these women had. "Good for them" indeed.
Man, when you talk about Stalin and what happened on eastern front - you must understand that it wasn't the same baby game as western front, Germans didn't just occupied the lands and the cities of Motherland, but they also killed civilians, millions of women, and children were killed, Germans wanted to leave only 15% of slavic people alive to serve to the Germans as slaves.
Those men and women who could work Germans took by the trains to labor (death) camps. Soviet Union loose over 20 000 000 people a lot of them were civilians.
That is exactly why women allover the Motherland volunteer to fight the Nazi everyway they could.
Snipers, Pilots, Doctors, infantry, drivers and so on.
Because the war on eastern front wasn't just war - it was extermination of people, no matter civilians or soldiers.
Read at least about just one Soviet city Kiev (Capital of Ukraine) there is a place called "Babyn yar" where Nazi killed over 70 000 jewish civilians.
Before saying that Stalin sent everyone to the front and how bad he was...
Amen.
@@ShadKS18XL Stalin was bad though. Even if you're a fan of the bolshevik rebellion Stalin is bad.
Imagine saying that D Day was baby game... LUL
@@georgemanize it was, compared to the eastern front
One of my favourite WW2 facts, real honourable women with bigger balls than most men. They prepared their planes for each mission which meant loading heavy bombs, dropping them on target then going back to base to do it all over again. They would have dozens of flights each night. There is a great documnetary about them by Gunilla Bresky. Recommendation for reaction, Ghost division.
My recollection is that very few of the Night Witches were killed in battle. Their tactics made it virtually impossible for the Germans to figure out they were attacking them. Ground fire against them would be highly effective but they attacked at night with no illumination with their engines turned off. Imagine it's pitch black and the first indication they're attacking you is the bombs hitting the ground. It'd be very difficult to figure out where they are since you might not even assume you're being attacked by bombers.
32 for that many sorties now that I've gotten further into the video, they were practically invincible. That's one of the lowest death rates for a bomber group that I think I've ever seen.
9:45 I'm not crying, you are crying (I AM crying T_T)
Highly recommend 'The Last Battle' which not only is an amazing song but the actual event it's based on is astounding to read up on.
That aside thank you, I stumbled across this channel literally an hour ago and I really appreciate the side information alongside the reactions!
Definitely recommend both “the final battle” and “hearts of iron” by sabaton describing the last few weeks of the war and the heroic actions of German soldiers abandoning the nazi party, saving civilians and political prisoners from the Russians and the SS
YEEES castle of itter, i love this story
Fun Fact: Johannes Steinhoff (the "We couldn't grasp" guy) later became a friend of Franz Stigler (The BF-109 Pilot from no bullets fly)
My recommendation "Shiroyama"
Maybe the ballad of bull? I don't know if he would watch it since it isn't as metal as the other songs Sabaton has made
60 to 1 the sword face the gun
First time I heard that it brought a manly samurai tear to my eye at the loss of the warrior lol
Just joined your Patreon group. My first one! Sabaton is a really great band. I'm glad you like them.
I found out about you like maybe 4 or 5 days ago by watching your reaction to Sabaton's Bismarck, you are a very fun person to watch. I mostly just watch reactions and then mostly just never watch videos from the channels again, but you're a pretty nice guy. Happy early new years from germany!
Thank you so much! Happy new years!
We always talk about how the Russian army was basically a bunch of potatos with guns but funnily enough they had some of the most elite soldiers during the war just looking at the 588th and for example Vasily Zajcev
It's like RTS - you need to lose many soldiers, for rest to reach elite status.
Since when we call obsolete and useless bombers with tiny bombs elite?
They didnt do much, its a cool story but thats all
"Shame on other countries for not taking advantage of women"
*softly* don't.
"For fighting"
I never noticed that the band's signature S was imprinted on the propellers of the planes
Cool reaction, I just recently stumbled on your channel few days ago, and I got to say really cool content, have a wonderful day from Morocco
Thank you! Wonderful to have someone from Morocco here.
I know very little, but I think this is what's great about Sabaton, the actaul songs don't contain much teaching, but what do I do when they release a new track? Head to wikipedia and start learning about something I may not have even heard of before.
Exactly! It makes you want to find out more.
That their commissar took it on herself to find the crashside of each of 'her girls' that were downed always gets me.
This is one of my cousins favourite stories to tell her classes (she's a history teacher), she loves seeing the look on the girls faces when she talks about the nightwitches. She does use Sabatons music a lot in her classes, since it provides easy openers for subjects and stories.
Love your reactions! Please do The Last Battle a very underrated Sabaton song imo
I never knew you speak for Rachels Challenge. Im related to the Scotts and was born on that day and went to Columbine freshman year....also yes Sabaton Night Witches
Awesome. I love the Scotts. Some of my favorite people on earth.
I cant wait for you to be a huge youtuber!
"Not allowed to fly in the Victory parade given their planes were so slow"
Imagine the French Foreign Legion (marching 88 steps/min while other troops march at 120 steps/min) not being allowed to march during Bastille Day """because they march too slowly"""
That's such a dumb excuse.
Imagine planes flying max 60mph on parade with planes flying min 80
@@alexwelp7418 in both situation you let them close the march, so they don't block faster troops/planes.
@@Loutral they are too slow to follow other planes, and if you put them to take off before faster planes they will block them
It's almost like most of these historical "progressive" moments were actually under great protest at the time and people were keen to revert back to the status quo as soon as they were no longer a necessary "evil" to win the war.
@@Loutral How do you mean to pull that off? The Night Witch planes top speed was lower than the stall speed of the other planes in the air force, meaning other planes physically cannot go slow enough for them to catch up. What the could have done is given them planes to fly during the parade that were up to speed. Loses the spirit of them a bit, but let's them get the recognition they deserve
Hello from Russia again)
Merry Christmas
Merry Christmas!
An amazing thing the Night Witches did was during bombing runs the Navigator would have to climb out of the plane onto the wing and
then release the bomb by hand as the latch would sometimes get stuck. I can't imagine having to do that at full speed and low to the ground.
This requires an amazing amount of onions to do this.
So happy I found this channel!! 🇸🇪🇸🇪
I'm glad you did too!
Oh a fellow swede
This is a great video bud.
I LOVE THE NATCH HEXEN! THESE RUSSIAN LADIES ARE BAD ASS. TRUE INSPIRATION TO ALL YOUNG WOMEN ACROSS THE WORLD.
2:00 “Their tents in neat rows”. I heard something else entirely that I won’t repeat
Sabaton are actually pretty cool with using their content for reaction videos. Afaik you are allowed to monetize them and Sabaton themselves will never put a DMCA claim on you.
TH-cam does it automatically.
Loved it! Brave Ladys!!
Great video, thank you very much!
Someone who does this right! It's good that you allow Sabaton to claim the money off of their content. Good on you.
These are the most badass women in history and nothing can change my mind on that xD
after all the times i watched the video... now i realice the BF110 Nightfigter has the 70cm Raderunit "Matratze" ... i wonder if they could really made use of it
This version of the intro is so epic.
I recommend the Sabaton song Soldier of Three Armies.
I believe that around 400,000 women served in combat roles during WWII, tankers, pilots, snipers, and imfantry
During the Great Patriotic War, there were 3 all-female airforce regiments, 586, 587, and 588.
586 was a fighter regiment equipped with Yak-1, which was Soviet's best fighter at the time, toe to toe with Bf-109F-4.
587 was a dive bomber regiment equipped with Pe-2, which was the most produced bomber in Soviet at the time.
588 was the night bomber regiment here.
React to the guy who made the animation , he's animation about "Fighting girlfriend" , another badass Soviet woman , and for WW1 react to Great War channel video about the most decorated woman of WW1 Milunka Savic
Fighting Girlfriend refers to the T-34 tank driven by Mariya Oktyabrskaya. It is quite the story that I stumbled into by accident.
React to War Thunder's Trailer: "Victory Is Ours". (DAY 4)
I just recently found your channel while watching SABATON HISTORY, I have to say I do enjoy the reaction video of SABATON HISTORY, I LEARN FROM both you and indy however I would love for you to do a reaction to INMATE 4859,
I have read sometime ago that the majority of these brave women were sleeping inside their cockpits fully geared
PO-2, also known as OP-2 😉😂
Maybe not entirely relevant, but you mentioned that the Red Army had women serving in ground combat roles. One of the most successful snipers of WWII was Ludmilla Pavlichenko. I believe there's a Wikipedia page about her.
The Lady death with 309 confirmed kills with a mosin which is a 1891 bolt action
There was also the 586 and 587 regement
WW1 also had a women Russian battalion of death
This a story that absolutely screams for Spielberg to tell it. There have been films made by Russia but it needs to be more widely known. There were also women fighter pilots too. Perhaps the most famous was called the White Lily of Stalingrad. She was just 21 when shot down and killed. 😢😢
I would not be hard on the Soviets loss of man power it wasn't a choice they where being invaded by one of the most powerfiul land forces in history an holding their own but at great cost
If I had to recommend a song, I'd very much recommend "Future of Warfare". It's about the first major usage of mechanized warfare in WW1
Great reaction! Please check out ”The Last Battle” about when the American and German army fought side by side against SS.
"Technical" nuance of Night Witches effectiveness has interesting paralell on Western Front, in FAA`s Fairey Swodfish, the "stringbags".
Although it seems it wasn`t so difficult for fighters to shoot down Swordfish as Polikarpov, it is quite widely accepted, that somewhat obsolete concept and construction of Swordfish helped their apparent ability to pass through AA barrage; projectiles designed to kill "modern", strongly build planes didn`t iniciate upon hitting canvas-covered Swordfishes. Also there some claims, that modern aa fire-control systems were not well suited to shoot at such slow targets (case oftenly related to Swordfish attacks during hunt for Bismarck or Channel Dash).
Regarding women-only units, there was also 586th Fighter Rgt and 587th Bomber Rgt (non designated as "night"). Also there were some mixed units; there is russian TV-series based on this motif, available also on YT, eng. "The Attackers".
Not ceratain about land army, but I`ve heared about some smaller size (battalion / company) units also compozed only of female soldiers.
Apart from that - of course large number of snipers, filed medics, liason officers/NCO`s and other support roles (but considered part of military structure).
Comes to show you should never underestimate a woman
Great reaction man. React to their absolute classic Primo Victoria about D-Day