Raisa Nefedovna Surnachevskaya (Russian: Раиса Нефедовна Сурначевская; 8 August 1922 – 18 December 2005) was a Soviet fighter pilot and squadron commander during World War II, as well as one of the very few pregnant women to have flown in combat.
[1] After the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941 she volunteered to join a women's aviation regiment founded by Marina Raskova and underwent training to fly Yakovlev Yak-1 fighters at Engels military Aviation School.
She was assigned to the 586th Fighter Aviation Regiment for the war; on a mission with Tamara Pamyatnykh she shot down two Junkers Ju 88 bombers while patrolling a railway junction after a formation of 42 bombers approached.
After they each shot down two planes and Pamyatnykh attempted to ram a third the formation turned around without dropping their payloads on the railways.
[2][3][4] This Russian biographical article is a stub.