[1] Known as "Madame MiG", for her work in the Soviet fighter, she set more than one hundred aviation world records on over 40 types of aircraft over her career.

[1][2] Marina Vasilyeva was born on 20 July 1931[3] in the Velizhsky District of Smolensk Oblast, but evacuated with her family to Novosibirsk during World War II.

[4] She began learning to fly as a child but, following the war, the Soviet Union barred women from serving as military pilots.

At the age of 16, presenting herself as 22 years old, she wrote to Soviet Marshal Kliment Voroshilov asking to be admitted to a flying school.

[6] Marina Popovich, a Russian Writers' Union member, authored nine books, including the poetry collection Zhizn – vechny vzlyot (Life's An Eternal Rise, 1972).

[10] Her second husband was Boris Alexandrovich Zhikhorev, a retired Russian Airforce Major general, Deputy chairman of the Central Committee of the Union of the Soviet Officers.