She and her navigator Vera Belik were posthumously awarded the title Hero of the Soviet Union after their plane was shot down by the Axis forces over Nazi-occupied Poland.

Makarova was born on 25 November 1920 to a working-class Russian family in Moscow; her father was a postal worker who had been injured during World War I, and her mother was illiterate.

[3] Less than a month after the creation of the women's aviation unit by Marina Raskova in early October 1941, Makarova volunteered to join and was accepted in.

[9] During the war participated in bombing campaigns in against German forces in the North Caucasus, Crimea, Kuban, Taman peninsula, Byelorussia and East Prussia.

In total she flew 628 sorties, during which she dropped 96 tons of bombs, resulting in the destruction of two ferries, two anti-aircraft guns, one searchlight, two ammunition depots, and killing more than two platoons of enemy soldiers.