Marina Popovich held over one hundred aviation records in forty different aircraft and yet she is probably the greatest pilot that the west has never heard of.
She was born Marina Lavrentievna Vasiliyeva in 1831 in the Smolensk Oblast in the west of Russia and was evacuated to Novosibirsk in south-central Russia during World War Two.
Her interest in flying began when she was a child but at that time the Soviet Union barred women from serving as military pilots. However, at the age of sixteen, Popovich wrote to Marshal Kliment Voroshilov asking to be admitted to a flying school. He intervened on her behalf and she was admitted to the Novosibirsk Aviation Technicum where she graduated in 1951.
She began working as an engineer and then as a flying instructor, and by the early 1960s had married Pavel Popovich. Both applied to become cosmonauts in the Soviet space programme but after two months training, Popovich was turned away while Pavel was accepted and became the eighth person in space on Vostok 4 in 1962.
She retired in 1984 and embarked on a career as an author, writing nine books and two screenplays as a member of the Russian Writers’ Union, but more intriguing was Popovich’s interest in UFO research. In 2003 she published ‘UFO Glasnost’ claiming that Soviet military and civilian pilots had confirmed 3,000 UFO sightings and that the Soviet Air Force and the KGB had recovered fragments of five crashed UFOs.
Popovich’s honours included the Order of the Red Banner and won the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale’s Great Gold Medal for the distribution of aeronautical knowledge in 1972.
She died in December 2017 at the age of 86 and a star in the Cancer constellation bears her name.
Very impressive. I’m impressed that other countries (other than the US) utilized their women well much earlier on
Very impressive. I’m impressed that other countries (other than the US) utilized their women well much earlier on
very impressive lady she was… wow …
Have a splendid, ♥-warming ABC-Wednes-day / -week
♫ M e l ☺ d y ♪ (ABC-W-team)
http://melodymusic.nl/22-p
Would that be 1931, Mr P, and not 1831?