Valeria Khomyakova

Valeria Khomyakova (Валерия Ивановна Хомякова) (1914-1942) was a Soviet aviatrix and military commander who was killed in action during World War II. She was reported as being the first woman to shoot down an enemy aircraft; however, that was later changed to state that she was first to do it in a night battle.

Biography
Valeria Ivanova Khomyakova was born in 1914 in Moscow, completing her primary and secondary education there. She went on to graduate in 1937 from the D. Mendeleev University of Chemical Technology of Russia and took a position as an engineer at the Frunze Plant in Moscow. She began flying at the local flying club and became certified as a flight instructor. She was deputy commander of her squadron of the 586th Women's Fighter Regiment.

On 24 September, 1942, while flying night patrol over Saratov, Khomyakova shot down Oberstleutnant Gerhard Maak, of the 76th Bomber Group, a decorated German fighter pilot. Ogonek, a youth-magazine, published that it was the “first time in history that a woman fighter pilot had shot down an enemy aircraft”. The story was repeated for decades in both Soviet and foreign press. The record has since been amended and now states that she was the first female to shoot down an enemy in a night battle. Shortly after that kill in late September 1942 exhausted by the runs to protect the railway bridge over the Volga and supply lines, Khomyakova was sleeping in the dugout. Woken to make another run, she crashed on take-off.