Serafima Amosova

Serafima Amosova (Серафима Амосова; 20 August 1914 – 17 December 1992) was the Deputy Regimental Commander of the 46th Guards Night Bomber Aviation Regiment during the Second World War.

Early life
Serafima Amosova was born in central Siberia on 20 August 1914 to a working family; her father worked at the local Chernorechenskaya railway depot. Her grandfather, Anton Amosov, had moved to Siberia in the late 19th century from Byelorussia. After graduating from school in 1929 she joined the Komsomol and found work as the leader of a pioneer detachment. In 1933 she was a delegate to the All-Union Conference of Pioneer Workers in Moscow. With dreams of becoming a pilot, she entered the OSOAVIAHIM but crashed her glider on the day she was due to graduate flight training. After recovering from her injuries she attended the Tambov Aviation School. In 1936 she graduated with honors and received her pilot's license, after she worked for Aeroflot as a pilot a Moscow - Irkutsk route. After escalation of the Second World War in January 1941 she was appointed squadron commander to train military-aged men at Yanaul Airport in Bashkortostan.

Military career
Just several days after the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941 Amosova and several other female instructors sent a letter requesting to be sent to the warfront. While male students were deployed to the warfront the female flight instructors were told to remain in Bashkortostan to train new cadets. After further persistence they were referred to Marina Raskova, the founder of three women's aviation regiments. After receiving that letter she immediately flew to Moscow to meet with Raskova, who accepted her into the regiment. After graduating from Engels Military Aviation School in May 1942 with the rank of lieutenant she was deployed to the Southern Front as a squadron commander. Due to being one of the most experienced pilots of the regiment she quickly rose through the ranks and was awarded the Order of the Red Banner in September 1942, becoming among the first members of the regiment to receive the award. She was described as an excellent and cautious pilot by her colleagues who remembered she never raised her voice or got angry. On her first sortie she flew as with navigator Larisa Litvinova who later became a Hero of the Soviet Union, carefully following the plane of regimental commander Yevdokia Bershanskaya and Sofya Burzaeva.

On one mission when Amosova was flying as pilot to bomb an Axis headquarters, she delayed dropping her bombs because of the lack of anti-aircraft fire when she flew over the target, having expected anti-aircraft fire from such an important target. Suspecting they were over the wrong location she flew back to an aerial checkpoint and made another approach but was again met by a lack of anti-aircraft fire. Shocked that such an important target for bombing would not be protected by antiaircraft artillery, she returned to the checkpoint again and made a third approach, after which they released the bombs and waiting to see if there would be any counterattacks. Only after dropping the bombs did the Axis launch anti-aircraft fire, likely because they did not want to indicate the position of the target.

In addition to flying bombing sorties she trained navigators to become certified pilots and was eventually appointed to be the Deputy Regimental Commander and maintained strict discipline in the regiment.

She made a total of 555 missions in the war, having participated in night bombing campaigns in the North Caucasus, Stavropol, Kuban, Novorossiysk, Crimea, Kuban, Kerch, Belarus and Poland as well as airdropping supplies for the Eltigen landing and daylight missions in search of areas to use as airfields because the Po-2 light bombers were not assigned airports. Throughout the war she was awarded two Orders of the Red Banner, the Order of Alexander Nevsky, the Order of the Red Star, and an Order of the Patriotic War.

Later life
Not long after the end of the war she married fellow airforce pilot Ivan Andreevich Taranenko and took his surname. Together the couple raised three sons, and all them grew up to work in aviation or serve in the military. She worked as a magazine editor and spoke to youth about patriotism. She passed away in Moscow on 17 December 1992.