Olga Sanfirova

Olga Sanfirova (Ольга Санфирова, 2 May 1917 – 13 December 1944) was a Guard Captain in the 46th Taman Guards Night Bomber Aviation Regiment, 325th Night Bomber Aviation Division, 4th Air and Air Defence Forces Army, 2nd Belorussian Front during World War II. She was posthumously awarded the title Hero of the Soviet Union on 23 February 1945.

Civilian life
Sanfirova was born in 1917 to a working family; she was an ethnic Tatar. She went to secondary school in the Uzbek SSR before she moved to Moscow to attend flight school in Kolomna. After graduating flight school she worked at the Department of Aviation in Moscow before transferring to Tatarsk, Novosibirsk in 1940 to train pilots of the 78th squadron of the West Siberia Civil Aviation Directorate. She enlisted in the military in December 1941 and was a member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union since 1942.

Military career
Sanfirova joined the Air Force at the encouragement of Marina Raskova. She trained at the Engels Military School of Aviation, and after graduating the Bataysk Military Aviation School in 1942 she joined the 588th Night Bomber Regiment (nicknamed the "Night Witches" by their German opponents), which was renamed the 46th Taman Guards Night Bomber Aviation Regiment in February 1943.

During a training flight at Engels where she was flying as pilot-in-command, the plane struck high-voltage power lines, damaging the aircraft. An Engels tribunal sentenced her to ten years imprisonment, but that ruling was later amended and she was asked to join the Night Bomber Regiment to atone for damaging the plane.

She rose up through the ranks from link commander to deputy commander before achieving the rank of squadron commander. Having participated in bombing campaigns against German forces in the North Caucasus, Crimea, Taman peninsula, Kerch-Eltigen and Byelorussia, she was awarded the Order of the Red Banner and the Order of the Patriotic War 1st Class for her service.

On 1 May 1943, the Polikarpov Po-2 she and Rufina Gasheva were flying was shot down by a German fighter over Soviet lines in Crimea, but both of them managed to survive after evacuating the aircraft and were rescued two days later.

On 13 December 1944, the plane flown by Sanfirova and Gasheva was shot down again over a minefield. Normally the squadron did not pack parachutes to save weight, but on that mission they had parachutes available. Sanfirova parachuted out of the plane safely but was killed immediately when she landed and stepped on a mine. She was buried in a mass grave in the city of Grodno, Belarus. Gasheva survived the ordeal and switched to navigating with Nadezhda Popova.

In her career, Sanfirova executed 630 night combat missions with 875 flight hours in combat, dropping 77 tons on bombs on enemy-controlled territory; destroying a warehouse, two Nazi platoons, five cars, three turrets, and two ferries as well as supplying Soviet land forces with 25 resupply drops of food and ammunition. Her squadron made of total of 3,270 sorties in the war.

Sanfirova was posthumously awarded the title Hero of the Soviet Union by decree of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR on 23 February 1945 by the "for exemplary fulfillment of combat missions as commanded on the face of battle against the German invaders and overall courage and heroism shown". Along with the title Hero of the Soviet Union, she was also awarded the Order of Lenin, Order of Alexander Nevsky and the Medal "For the Defence of the Caucasus".

There is a street bearing her name in Samara, as well as statues of her at the Kolomna aviation institute where she studied, in Grodno, and in Samara.