Galina Brok-Beltsova
Native name
Галина Павловна Брок-Бельцова
Born1925
Moscow
Allegiance Soviet Union
Service/branch Soviet Air Force
Years of service1942–1946[1]
RankLieutenant
Unit125th Guards Bomber Aviation Regiment
Battles/warsWorld War II
AwardsOrder of the Patriotic War

Galina Pavlovna Brok-Beltsova (Russian: Галина Павловна Брок-Бельцова; born 1925) is a former Soviet bomber navigator and the last surviving member of the women's aviation regiments founded by Marina Raskova.

Early life

She was born in Moscow in 1925 and raised there.[2] She was an athletic child, participating in volleyball, swimming, skating and skiing.[3]

World War II

In 1941, as Moscow was being bombed by Nazi aircraft, 16-year-old Brok-Beltsova volunteered to join her country's defense.[3] Along with hundreds of other volunteers who were accepted into the women's aviation group founded by Raskova, she was evacuated east to Samara, where they lived in primitive conditions and underwent further flight training.[2][4] In 1943 she was chosen for retraining on the Petlyakov Pe-2 dive bomber.[4]

On 23 June 1944, by then a member of the 125th Guards Bomber Aviation Regiment, she flew her first combat mission in the Belarusian campaign.[4][5] Nominally requiring a three-person crew, the Pe-2 often flew with only two, requiring the navigator to also act as radio operator and bombardier.[3] Along with pilot Antonina Bondareva-Spitsina, she flew thirty-six combat missions in total.[2][5]

Post-war

After the war Brok-Beltsova married Georgy Beltsov, a fellow air force officer.[4] She was intent on completing her education and earned a PhD in history from Moscow State University in 1960, taught at several universities, and was head of the Moscow Power Engineering Institute's history department until her retirement.[6][7] She also worked at the KGB for some time.[3][7] She and her husband had three children and remained married until Georgy's death in 2005.[3][4]

Brok-Beltsova is often honored at annual events commemorating Russia's role in World War II. In 2020 she was invited to a brunch with Russian president Vladimir Putin to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the war's end.[4] She is the last living member of the Soviet Union's three all-female air regiments.[4]

As of 2020 she lives in the city of Mytishchi, just outside of Moscow.[4]

References

  1. ↑ pamyat-naroda.ru
  2. 1 2 3 Noggle, Anne (1994). A Dance With Death: Soviet Airwomen in World War II. Texas A&M University Press. p. 132. ISBN 9781585441778.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 Duncan, Phyllis Anne (May–June 2002). "How They Must Love Their Homeland". FAA Aviation News. 41 (4): 20–25.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Dixon, Robyn (8 May 2020). "This woman flew Soviet combat missions in WWII. She is the last one left". The Washington Post. Retrieved 15 January 2022.
  5. 1 2 Cook, Bernard A., ed. (2006). "Galina Brok-Beltsova". Women and War: A Historical Encyclopedia from Antiquity to the Present. Vol. 2. ABC-CLIO. p. 540. ISBN 9781851097708.
  6. ↑ "Marina Raskova and the Soviet Women Pilots of World War II". Aviation Pioneers: An Anthology. Centre for Telecommunications and Information Engineering at Monash University. 11 February 2006. Retrieved 16 January 2022.
  7. 1 2 Pennington, Reina (March 1996). "'Do not speak of the services you rendered': Women veterans of aviation in the Soviet Union". The Journal of Slavic Military Studies. 9 (1): 120–151. doi:10.1080/13518049608430229.
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