Sergey Bocharov's portrait of the Night Witches and the 46th Guards Regiment's combat record

Group Portrait of the Heroine Airwomen of the 46th Guards Taman Night Bomber Aviation Regiment, Order of the Red Banner and Order of Suvorov, by Sergey Bocharov, 1985. The painting was acquired by the Central House of Aviation and Cosmonautics of DOSAAF, where it is on display to this day.

The portrait shows the legendary Night Witches, Soviet airwomen who flew 23,672 combat sorties in the Caucasus, the Kuban, the Crimea, Belorussia, Poland and Germany. The young women dropped 3 thousand tonnes of bombs and 26 thousand incendiary shells on the enemy, and destroyed or damaged 17 river crossings, 9 railway trains, 2 railway stations, 26 depots, 12 fuel tankers, 176 motor vehicles, 86 firing positions and 11 searchlights. This is the most heroic regiment in the history of the Great Patriotic War: between them, the Night Witches hold 23 Gold Stars of Hero of the Soviet Union, 2 Gold Stars of Hero of Russia and 1 Gold Star of Hero of Kazakhstan.

Every year on 2 May and 8 November the women of the regiment met in the garden outside the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow; their children and friends named their club accordingly: “2 May”. In 2017 the last of the Night Witches, Yevdokia Borisovna Pasko, born in 1919, passed away. The memory of these women is preserved in numerous memoirs, books, publications and films.