WWII Russian Women Pilots

[pilotpierre]

http://www.darkroastedblend.com/2014/05/drb-history-issue-world-war-two.html

[Pail]

  

   Tell me more, Mr Pierre....

Edited January 27, 2018 by Pail

[Finkeren]

Nice little article, but I absolutely disagree with this opening statement: “There are many things wrong with putting women and war together in one terrible reality”.

 

Insofar as there is something terribly wrong with war in the first place, I see no problem what so ever with women taking an active part in it.

 

In WW2 a few women actually got to shoot back instead of being relegated to the role of home maker, work horse, birthing machine or victim, as was the norm in virtually every prior war. How is that a bad thing?

 

It’s not like wars generally just leave the women out of it. In many conflicts they make up the majority of victims. I say: Give them a gun and a fighting chance.

Edited January 26, 2018 by Finkeren

[HagarTheHorrible]

Here we go again, I'm staying out of this one.

 

Modern wars have too many rules anyway.

[6./ZG26_Custard]

Women and men very much excel in different fields.  Women tend to be good organisers and men tend to be more industrious. Throughout history men have been 99.9 the “warriors” protecting the future (Childbearing women) of their “tribe.” I’m not taking anything away from Women, because they excel and surpass men in some fields. Women are better long-distance swimmers than men for instance . What it basically comes down to is sexual dimorphism and biology.

 

Can women make good soldiers, yes, are they better soldiers (on average) than men?

It’s doesn’t seem so.

 

 

Does this make men “better” than women, no. What it means is that men excel at some things better than women and vise a versa .That's evolutionary history and biology for you.

 

If some in society want equality of outcome instead of equality of opportunity we are going to end up with a situation where you won’t get the “best” men or women for a particular role or job.

 

I’m not expecting any women to get in the kitchen and make me a sandwich, but in the army or any job, it makes perfect sense to put the best and most able candidate forward regardless of their sex. Putting individuals in a job to meet some quota is a recipe for disaster.

 

At 6’ 4in and weighing in at 17 stone, tongue-in-Cheek, I know who I’d rather have rescuing me in this video.

 

 

 

 

Edit: 

 

 

 

PKK

 

 

It's interesting to note that female fighters are indeed included in the ranks of the PKK, It's also interesting to note the PKK has also been listed as being drug traffickers by Interpol. The European union officially lists the PKK as having "been involved in terrorist acts" and the European Union Institute for Security Studies deems the PKK to be a terrorist group. (That's good old radical leftists for you  )

Edit: 
Moving back to WWII Soviet female pilots, I hope one day the Devs make some female pilot models for the VVS aircraft.

Edited January 26, 2018 by 6./ZG26_Custard

[unreasonable]

Nice little article, but I absolutely disagree with this opening statement: “There are many things wrong with putting women and war together in one terrible reality”.

 

Insofar as there is something terribly wrong with war in the first place, I see no problem what so ever with women taking an active part in it.

 

In WW2 a few women actually got to shoot back instead of being relegated to the role of home maker, work horse, birthing machine or victim, as was the norm in virtually every prior war. How is that a bad thing?

 

It’s not like wars generally just leave the women out of it. In many conflicts they make up the majority of victims. I say: Give them a gun and a fighting chance.

 

Throughout history most of the casualties of war are on the losing side, either in the immediate aftermath of a battle or when a losing territory is invaded.  The general rule has been that the men get killed (or worked to death as mine or field slaves), the women get raped. You may think that being raped is a fate worse than death, I am not so sure, not being dead yet. If women are equally likely as men to be armed, they are equally likely to be treated the same way.

 

I admire the courage of individual women who wish to fight.  I can also quite understand why Kurdish women, for instance, might wish to fight the Islamic State rapists.  I remain unconvinced that it is a good thing for our societies in general to allow or encourage them to do so.  Sperm is cheap but eggs are dear. Women deserve and need special protection under the law because they are more vulnerable than men, putting women into combat roles undermines this principle.  Throughout history men have been more likely to die in war - but women make up for this with mortality in childbirth. This imbalance is reducing in our societies, due to the scientific advances of the Enlightenment, but who is to say how long that will last? Rome fell. Constantinople fell. 

 

I am not sure that I know of any wars in which "the majority of victims" of a war are women, examples?  

[6./ZG26_Custard]

 

 

I didn't intend to trigger you.

 

Ahhh dear old chief, you never have and never will "trigger me"  

[6./ZG26_Custard]

 

 

This imbalance is reducing in our societies, due to the scientific advances of the Enlightenment, but who is to say how long that will last? Rome fell. Constantinople fell. 

 

History repeating itself.   

[Finkeren]

I am not sure that I know of any wars in which "the majority of victims" of a war are women, examples?  

 

You can be a victim of war in other ways than getting shot with a gun. There is famine, disease, slavery, rape and destitution, all of which tend to hit civilian women and children the hardest, and civilians routinely make up somewhere between 50 - 95% of casualties in war. 

[pilotpierre]

My bad, I posted this purely as an interest article, not to start another bloody war.

[=X51=VC_]

My bad, I posted this purely as an interest article, not to start another bloody war.

The article is interesting and of course the stories are awe inspiring. Unfortunately however the language used, especially in the attitude of the opening but also throughout, is heavily tainted with an underlying sexism despite describing great female achievement. It's no surprise that was picked up on and stirs strong opinions.

Edited January 26, 2018 by VC_

[Herne]

My bad, I posted this purely as an interest article, not to start another bloody war.

 

I enjoyed it, thanks for posting !

[216th_Lucas_From_Hell]

There have been many studies on the suitability of women for combat aviation roles. A 2006 one from the Brazilian Air Force, using additional active duty data from the American and Israeli Air Forces, shows that in fact women in some parameters women exceed men's performance, though most results are the very same. That's academic research, not wordy ramblings on "women are this and men are that and we like it as in the good old days".

[unreasonable]

You can be a victim of war in other ways than getting shot with a gun. There is famine, disease, slavery, rape and destitution, all of which tend to hit civilian women and children the hardest, and civilians routinely make up somewhere between 50 - 95% of casualties in war. 

 

Those things hit women and children hardest - only because they are more likely to be alive to experience these effects. The men are more likely to be dead - and of course most men are civilians too. An example of a demographic shift due to a shortage of men due to war: France after WW1 - a generation of women found it hard to find husbands.  Welsh women have a very similar range of chromosomes to English women: Welsh men have an entirely distinct Y chromosome: they were killed off and the women kept during the Saxon invasion.    As I said, I would like to see an example of the opposite case. The demographic imbalances with a shortfall of women that I know about are all due to abortion/exposure of the unfavoured girls.

 

If, as you claim, children of both sexes are also the predominant victims of war, why not allow them to fight too, if they want to?  If women are allowed to fight in these (for western societies) peaceful times, why should they not be compelled to fight - as men are - if times get rough again? There are some nasty unintended consequences of this type of policy.

 

I understand the case for allowing women to fight: I just do not think it as cut and dried as people make out.    

There have been many studies on the suitability of women for combat aviation roles. A 2006 one from the Brazilian Air Force, using additional active duty data from the American and Israeli Air Forces, shows that in fact women in some parameters women exceed men's performance, though most results are the very same. That's academic research, not wordy ramblings on "women are this and men are that and we like it as in the good old days".

 

Indeed - but it is not the point that I am making. 

[Y-29.Silky]

They were good at certain roles. Almost all the AAA units during the initial stages of Stalingrad were women, Lyudmila Pavlichenko had 309 kills as a sniper, the night witches bombed in the Po-2.

But there are instances like when the back gunner needed to help the Pe-2 pilot to lift the plane on takeoff because most women weren't strong enough.

 

Claiming women exceed men or do just as well in physically demanding areas is just virtue signalling. Men are strong, women are smart. It's been that way since we lived in caves.

Edited January 26, 2018 by Y-29.Silky

[Gambit21]

Without getting involved in any stupid debates...this is a good book.

 

 

 

A Dance With Death

 

https://www.amazon.com/Dance-Death-Soviet-Airwomen-World/dp/1585441775

[6./ZG26_Custard]

 

 

Claiming women exceed men or do just as well in physically demanding areas is just virtue signalling. Men are strong, women are smart. It's been that way since we lived in caves.

 

 

Quick Silky duck, I hear beta's incoming!

 

Equality of opportunity trumps equality of outcome every time. If a woman has a skill set or is better suited to a job than a man then I’m all for her getting it. Using that same logic, if a man has a better set of skills or is more suited to a job than a woman, then it should go to him.

 

That’s why in Scandinavia, who have one of the most “progressive” views on gender equality in the world, we see when men and women are given a choice, you get women choosing nursing say, as a career at a rate of 20-1 over men and approximately the same rate (20-1) of male engineers to females.

 

When society is left to its own devices, men and women tend to sort themselves into distinctive groups and can make wildly differing career choices. I am certainly not against women entering any kind of career if they are capable and the best candidate for the job but I tend to agree with Silky that men and women through biology and evolution tend to excel in different roles.

 

Certain sectors of “society” currently seem obsessed with some sort of 50/50 demographic with completely equal representation across the board. There seems to be a resolve from some circles that are insistent that because 97% of construction workers are men, we should insist on 50% men and 50% women. Just look at the Canadian government as an example where they seemed to throw meritocracy out of the window for a 50/50 split.

 

Are we moving into a situation now where we have to cajole women (or men) to do the job even if they didn’t want it to just to get gender equivalence in the workplace? Those same circles have an unhealthy obsession to promote women in stem fields, directorships and large corporations and companies. Funnily enough, they do not seem to be too worried about a 50/50 split say of refuse collection jobs or sewerage workers – both these sectors are almost completely dominated by men.  

[56RAF_Roblex]

I have seen it said that if women were the warriors they would be less likely to go to war in the first place as they don't have the mistaken view that war is fun or a question of honour. They would try harder to sort things out with diplomacy.  On the other hand those same people say that once the women do decide a war is necessary then it will be brutal and merciless for the same reason,  war is fought to defeat an enemy not to have fun or play at being honourable.

[Pail]

 

 

What happened to the picture ? Was there a copyright issue or some nonsense ? Just curious ?

 

Replying to myself here but would like some further info for future reference...

[unreasonable]

Could you link to the science for that please? I would be interested to read it.

 

As with anything at this level of abstraction, I am simplifying, and in science nothing is certain. But to show I have not just made this up:

 

https://academic.oup.com/mbe/article/19/7/1008/1068561

 

http://www.khazaria.com/genetics/welsh.html

Edited January 27, 2018 by unreasonable

[56RAF_Roblex]

As with anything at this level of abstraction, I am simplifying, and in science nothing is certain. But to show I have not just made this up:

 

https://academic.oup.com/mbe/article/19/7/1008/1068561

 

http://www.khazaria.com/genetics/welsh.html

 

It does seem to make a very basic error in its assumptions.  It says that North Wales could not have been left untouched by the Saxon invasion because of its greater distance because the five English towns showed no change caused by  their distance from each other and from that infers that some act of man must have artificially stopped Welsh males from contributing to the English gene pool.      Have they not looked at a map?  North Wales was, and still is, remote due to its geography and unfriendly natives.   The Saxons, even if they felt confident about defeating and subjugating the North Wales population in their own mountains,  would have had little interest in such inhospitable land.   North Wales is the 'Afghanistan' of the UK :-)    25% of North Welsh natives are descended from one of 20 Dark Ages Welsh warlords.

Edited January 27, 2018 by 56RAF_Roblex

[unreasonable]

Thanks, I wasn't thinking it was made up, I was just interested to see the source, as yes, I did question in my mind the theory you were referring to.

 

But It does not seem to say that it was some 'death of Welsh men at hands of Angle Saxons' that caused the variation, unless I missed it; the article is even called 'Y Chromosome Evidence for Anglo-Saxon Mass Migration' not evidence for 'war activity'), and I can't see any mention of women being different genetically to men as a consequence of war between Celts and Anglo-Saxons.

 

Any comparison of Y chromosomes versus X would seem bizarre in this way to me, I would have thought they would have to use bases on the a chromosome that is essentially the same in order to compare relative diversity of the genetic makeup, else things like the number of bases present, differences during meiosis etc. may play their part too.

 

(It was a quick read I had, so I'll check in depth later for what I may have missed)

 

I never saw a picture in your post, it just had an icon like a broken link, or failure to load.

 

That is essentially what they are doing - comparing bases - but since they Y chromosome is male only, while mitochondrial DNA is inherited only from the mother, it is possible to make some inferences about what happened differentially between the two sexes from the incidences. Of course these are only inferences - as are any hypotheses to the contrary: but they strongly suggest that the pre-Saxon population had it's male population replaced, at too fast a rate to be accounted for by migration. Which is explicitly stated in the article. Which is in also accordance to all the near contemporary documentary evidence.  If you know of any other mechanism, other than migration or war that could account for this, please share.

 

 

It does seem to make a very basic error in its assumptions.  It says that North Wales could not have been left untouched by the Saxon invasion because of its greater distance because the five English towns showed no change caused by  their distance from each other and from that infers that some act of man must have artificially stopped Welsh males from contributing to the English gene pool.      Have they not looked at a map?  North Wales was, and still is, remote due to its geography and unfriendly natives.   The Saxons, even if they felt confident about defeating and subjugating the North Wales population in their own mountains,  would have had little interest in such inhospitable land.   North Wales is the 'Afghanistan' of the UK :-)    25% of North Welsh natives are descended from one of 20 Dark Ages Welsh warlords.

 

That is great, you should ask the OUP to be be a peer reviewer, clearly they are in need of your help to get the very basics right.  North Wales is indeed remote and inhospitable - so is South Wales come to that, as anyone who has spent days walking over it's hills would know. The point is exactly that - after a certain level of invasion, it was simply not worth the risk and effort to invade the rest of Wales and kill off the remaining men. The Saxons already had taken all the good land -  and all the women on it. That is the most logical inference from the difference in Y chromosomes compared to the uniformity of mitochondrial DNA. 

 

I do not know quite why invasion as a method of population replacement should be so hard for some people to accept as a possibility - perhaps you should consult with a North American Indian, or an Australian Aborigine.

Edited January 27, 2018 by unreasonable

[6./ZG26_Custard]

"different interests and strengths/weaknesses" argument being used to limit women to subservient roles or underpay them, those who are pursuing more equality of opportunity might be forgiven for going a little overboard.

 

It's not an argument, its biology and evolution and the fact that men and women excel at different things has nothing to do with sexual harassment or assault.

 

Pursuing equality of "outcome" won't solve anything and almost certainly will lead to unhappiness and or tyrannical situations.

 

 

Edit This may interest some.

 

Edited January 27, 2018 by 6./ZG26_Custard

[Pail]

I never saw a picture in your post, it just had an icon like a broken link, or failure to load.

 

Weird it was there for me...for a while. maybe I''l try to put it back and see what happens.

 

For me it is now there twice for some reason but better than not at all.....despite what happened after

Edited January 27, 2018 by Pail

[6./ZG26_Custard]

Things are the way that they are because they have been the way that they have been. For women to practically experience 'equality of opportunity' in many fields, they will have to get a foothold

 

I have no issues with any women who has the skill or ability to do any particular job be that what it may in some cases say (Medicine) women are outperforming men and for want of a better "phrase" are over represented in that field. In UK universities Women now make up  60-65% of undergraduates.

In law, women made up 60 per cent of individuals qualifying to practice and admitted on to the roll of solicitors since 2010. The same year, 56 per cent of places in UK medical schools went to women, and now in the UK female doctors GP's are in the majority.

 

Women dominate veterinary science with around 90% being women. It seems in many fields  "critical mass" has been reached, and surpassed. 

 

The main thrust (and central focus) of certain sectors seem to want to rabidly promote women into stem, directorships and CEO's of large companies. There doesn't seem to be any real concern  that men are vastly over represented in oil rig work,road sweeping, Industrial  and machinery fields, mechanics, construction and sewerage workers. Its also interesting to note that 90% of workplace fatalities are men.

 

 

 

the recent Hollywood Weinstein shitshow is any indication, that day won't be any time soon.

 

What is even more sicking is "Hollywood" knew and were active participants in turning a blind eye or sucking up to him. 

 

 

 

And please understand that I like and respect you even when we disagree

 

Healthy discourse never hurt anyone, and feelings mutual.

 

With that I'll leave you with my favourite feminist (not everyone's cup of tea but I really like her.

 

Edited January 28, 2018 by 6./ZG26_Custard

[unreasonable]

Ok I've read it in more depth, my interpretation is that the modern welsh in the sample towns actually are more distinct than the Friesland and English ones are distinct from each other; Anglo Saxon genes actually stopped short of North Wales.

 

This seems the opposite of the the Welsh men being killed off, rather that they retreated back to the extremes of Wales and maintained their males.

 

Edit: I'm just not convinced by your point in the earlier context, we'll just have to agree to disagree, I don't expect to change your interpretation. Nice to read something about a topic that I'm interested in though.

 

Edit2: I can see how the paper supports the idea that as far as the Saxons got across Britain the male Y became 'saxon', but I don't see it as proof this was from some form of genocide, nor is there representative any results that I could make out that showed that women in the east/center remained distinct from those in freisland. So like I said, we just seem to get something different from that paper.

 

The women (as measured by mitochondrial DNA) in North Wales are on a single gradient with women in the rest of England and across the North Sea - the men (measured by the Y chromosome are not.  It is the difference between the gradients for men and women that is the issue.

 

If the process involved extensive violence, then the idea that some British men retreated to the Welsh hills (and other areas of Britain like Galloway) is entirely reasonable: if there was not extensive violence, why would they have done this? Certainly not for the soil - or the weather.    But the idea that all the males in Britain did this is nonsensical - these areas simply cannot support such a large population.

 

Anyway - trying to disentangle what happened a thousand years ago in an age where literacy almost disappeared will of course involve drawing some inferences. The same cannot be said of the French demographic shortage of males post WW1.  I posted these examples as counters to Finkeren's claim that women are the majority of victims in many conflicts. I can quite understand why he might have got that idea BTW - NGOs and charities exploit it in their fund raising advertising, knowing full well that we are all more likely to put our hands into our pockets when presented with pictures of suffering women and children than if shown suffering men.

 

The more that women are allowed to take combat roles the more this (partially) protected status is a risk. A similar example would be medical workers. They are supposed to be immune to being deliberately targeted by the civilized rules of war - you cannot even take them prisoner: but only if they are unarmed. As soon as they bear arms they lose that protected status: not only do the specific individuals lose protected status, but the whole credibility of the limitation on violence represented by the Hague rules gets undermined. 

 

It is a question of balancing the rights of individuals to take whatever job they want with larger concerns for the nature of society, in which complete freedom is not an absolute good.   

 

Here is another example - in this case of a recent genocide - that supports my view:  https://knoema.com/atlas/Rwanda/topics/Demographics/Population/Male-to-female-ratio

Edited January 28, 2018 by unreasonable

[unreasonable]

That is an unusually good Wikipedia page, Chief. What strikes me when reading it is how circular many of the historical and linguistic accounts and theories can be, and how "X is possible" slides onto "X happened" or "X is the consensus". 

 

There is also some similarity to the controversy in geology between theories of gradual and punctuationist change. In geology, the gradualist model was a reaction to a literal reading of biblical accounts of the formation of the world - but it ignored the fact that there were real, sudden and violent events that had major consequences, which are now beginning to be understood scientifically as part of a broader synthesis.  It seems to me that archaeology has gone through the first stage, of replacing historic accounts which emphasize dramatic events with the idea of gradual change over time: but is struggling to come to terms with the second.  Quite why this is so is an interesting question: like many modern anthropologists, many archaeologists seem to have an extraordinary aversion to the idea that warfare is a frequent state of events that has serious consequences on a population level. 

[Soarfeat]

 

 

Claiming women exceed men or do just as well in physically demanding areas is just virtue signalling. Men are strong, women are smart. It's been that way since we lived in caves.

 

A video is worth a thousand words and a little alignment check ( for some )

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEslPcX8Vs0

 

--sf--