[11] After the German attack on the Soviet Union in June 1941, Litvyak tried to join a military aviation unit, but was turned down because of lack of experience.

After deliberately exaggerating her pre-war flight time by 100 hours, she joined the all-female 586th Fighter Aviation Regiment of the Air Defense Force,[12] which was formed by Marina Raskova.

On 10 September she moved along with Yekaterina Budanova, Mariya Kuznetsova and Raisa Belyaeva, the commander of the group, and accompanying female ground crew, to the regiment airfield, at Verkhnaia Akhtuba, on the east bank of the Volga river.

[15] Boris Yeremin (later lieutenant general of aviation), a regimental commander in the division to which she and Budanova were assigned, saw her as "a very aggressive person" and "a born fighter pilot".

Meier parachuted from his aircraft, was captured by Soviet troops, and asked to see the Russian ace who had shot him down.

[1] But according to other authors, the first air victory by a female pilot was achieved by Lieutenant Valeriya Khomyakova of the 586th Regiment when she shot down the Ju 88 flown by Oblt.

[5] Litvyak, Belyaeva, Budanova and Kuznetsova stayed in the 437th Regiment for a short time only, mainly because it was equipped with LaGG 3s rather than Yak-1s, that the women flew, and was lacking the facilities to service the latter.

From October 1942 till January 1943, Litvyak and Budanova served, still in the Stalingrad area, with this famous unit, commanded by Lev Shestakov, Hero of Soviet Union.

[24] On 23 February, she was awarded the Order of the Red Star, made a junior lieutenant and selected to take part in the elite air tactic called okhotniki, or "free hunter", where pairs of experienced pilots searched for targets on their own initiative.

She managed to shoot down a Messerschmitt and to return to her airfield and land her plane, but was in severe pain and losing blood.

[27] While in 73rd Regiment, she often flew as wingman of Captain Aleksey Solomatin, a flying ace with a claimed total of 39 victories (22 shared).

She insisted and described for her commander her plan: she would attack it from the rear after flying in a wide circle around the perimeter of the battleground and over German-held territory.

The female ace downed a bomber and shared a victory with a comrade, but her fighter was hit and she had to make a belly landing.

As the Soviets were returning to base, a pair of Bf 109 fighters[28] dove on Litvyak while she was attacking a large group of German bombers.

Soviet pilot Ivan Borisenko recalled: “Lilya just didn’t see the Messerschmitt 109s flying cover for the German bombers.

Schleef claimed a LaGG-3 (often confused in combat with Yak-1s by German pilots) kill on the same day, in the southern Ukraine area where Litvyak's aircraft was finally found.

[36][37] In an attempt to prove that Litvyak had not been taken captive, Pasportnikova embarked on a 36-year search for the Yakovlev Yak-1 crash site assisted by the public and the media.

[citation needed] Cottam, an author and researcher focusing on Soviet women in the military, concludes that Litvyak made a belly-landing in her stricken aircraft, was captured and was taken to a prisoner of war camp.

[41] In her book published in 2004, Polunina lists evidence that led her to conclude that Litvyak was pulled from the downed aircraft by German troops and held prisoner for some time.

[42] Gian Piero Milanetti, the author of a recent book on Soviet aviatrixes,[43] wrote that an airwoman parachuted in the approximate location of the alleged crash landing of Litvyak's aircraft.

The Russian aviation historian Anatoly Plyac, a former KGB major, told Milanetti: "Litvyak survived and was taken prisoner..." [44] A television broadcast from Switzerland was seen in 2000 by Raspopova, a veteran of the women's night bomber regiment.

Russian historians Andrey Simonov and Svetlana Chudinova were able to confirm five solo and three team shootdowns of enemy aircraft plus the destruction of the air ballon with archival documents.

[48] Despite the predominantly male environment in which she found herself, she never renounced her femininity and she carried on bleaching her hair blonde, sending her friend Inna Pasportnikova to the hospital to fetch hydrogen peroxide for her.