Aleksandra Akimova

Aleksandra Akimova was a squadron navigator in the 46th Taman Guards Night Bomber Aviation Regiment during the Second World War. In 1994 she became one of the few women awarded the title Hero of the Russian Federation.

Early life
Akimova was born on 5 May 1922 to a Russian peasant family in the village of Skopinksy withing the Ryazan Governorate of the Russian SFSR. After graduating from secondary school she entered history classes at the Moscow Pedagogical Institute in addition to nursing courses. After the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941 she applied to enlist in the Red Army but her request was initially denied and she was sent to assist in construction of defensive fortifications around Mozhaysk.

Military career
After Marina Raskova got Stalin to approve the establishment of three women's air regiments, women that had applied to join the military but were initially denied were sent for training. Many of them were sent to the Engel's Military Aviation School in Saratov, where women deployed into the 588th Night Bomber Regiment were trained before they were sent to the front. Akimova was put into the navigator's group where she studied an accelerated navigation course that lasted three years in peacetime but was compressed into just three months due to the war. After graduating from the courses the aviators were deployed to the Southern Front in May 1942, but Akimova was not appointed to be a flight navigator until March 1943. From then on until the end of the war in 1945, Akimova made 715 combat sorties on a Po-2 biplane. In April 1945 she was nominated for the title of Hero of the Soviet Union with references from Konstantin Vershinin and Marshal of the Soviet Union Konstantin Rokossovsky, but the nomination paperwork was misplaced before the Supreme Soviet could award her the title. Her nomination cited her having accumulated 805 flight hours in combat and 680 sorties by April 1945, in which she had dropped 94 tonnes of bombs, destroying two ammunition depots, two ferries, two searchlights, and seven cars as well as dropping over 450,000 leaflets.

Later life
After the end of the war Akimova was demobilized from the military in October 1945 and she soon returned to her studies at the Moscow Pedagogical Institute. In 1952 she began teaching at the Moscow Aviation Institute, where she taught for 40 years until her retirement in 1992.

In 1994 she was awarded the title Hero of the Russian Federation for her service in the military in WWII after it was publicized that her nomination for the title Hero of the Soviet Union was lost. She was an active member of the veterans movement and participated in victory parades. She passed away on 29 December 2012 and was buried in the Troyekurovsky cemetery in Moscow.

Awards and recognition

 * Hero of the Russian Federation
 * Order of Lenin
 * Order of the Red Banner
 * Three Orders of the Patriotic War
 * Order of the Red Star
 * Medal "For Courage"
 * Campaign and jubilee medals