Her mother worked as a washerwoman and was poorly educated, but Aronova went on to complete secondary school in 1938, and became a recipient of the Voroshilov Sharpshooter badge.

[2] Several months after Germany invaded the Soviet union with the launch of Operation Barbarossa, Marina Raskova was granted permission to form three women's aviation regiments.

[5] During a bombing mission on 28 March 1943 over the village of Kievskaya in Krasnodar she was wounded by a shell fragment fired by ground-based anti-aircraft artillery.

[4][6] Her bombing missions destroyed an estimated four artillery batteries, three searchlights, three ferries, two warehouses of fuel and ammunition, and eight cars.

After graduating from the Military Institute of Foreign Languages in 1952 she held various positions in the Communist party and the Soviet government, becoming a senior officer in the Ministry of Internal Affairs in May 1953.