Lipstick Paladin

  The spirit of this collection of awesome women is well represented by Remedios Gomez-Paraiso, who was a local beauty queen and high school senior when the Japanese invaded the Philippines and took over her town. When her father was executed for trying to organize a resistance, Remedios then went berserk a la Buffy the Vampire Slayer. She and her brother swore total and immediate vengeance. They joined the resistance and she trained in military tactics and strategy at the Guerilla Officers Military Academy (GOMA). She took the nom de guerre Kumander Liwayway, which meant Commander Dawn and sounds like the name of a legit super-heroine. She quickly proved herself heroic and became a company commander, and within a year chief of the military provision division, which meant that she was in charge of getting food, supplies, and weapons for the resistance army. With the Philippines occupied by the Japanese Army, this essentially meant stealing everything from THAT army to supply her own. And as far as theft goes, stealing from an invasion army is one of the most dangerous types. But Kumander Liwayway led her men on countless courageous raids, killing the Japanese and stealing their stuff, throughout the rest of the war.
   And yet, the best part of Kumander Liwayway's story is that she was famous throughout the Hukbalahap because she would always brush her hair, put on makeup, and wear bright red lipstick before going into each battle! Not only did the bravery of such a femme fighter push her comrades to fight so much harder, but when a scraggly Huk dude told her that guerrillas don't wear lipstick, she said, “One of the things I am fighting for in the Huk movement is the right to be myself." She also challenged another comrade to a duel when she felt insulted by his sexual innuendos. What a babe!

Cute flower pattern or covert jungle camouflage?

After the Japanese surrender, she even continued fighting with the Huks against the corrupt postwar regime. At one point, so weakened by malaria that she physically could not resist, she was betrayed by a collaborator and captured. Accused of being a traitor and terrorist, she went up before the president himself and told him "No, Mr. President, you are wrong…We, the Huks, champion the rights of the peasants.” Almost inexplicably, the court dismissed her case for lack of evidence. What an incredible display of feminine power!
   Kumander Liwayway rejoined the Huks and fought for two more years until her husband was killed and she, briefly imprisoned, decided she could no longer risk the care and safety of her young son. Even after, she continued as an advocate lobbying to get pensions for all her old Huk comrades as compensation for their roles in resisting the Japanese Empire.

You can read more about her at this awesome site!

The War at Home

  Badass belles, big hair, rifles, fur. What else needs to be said? These ladies are Northwestern students drilling in Evanston, IL on January 11, 1942. As Chicago wasn't under any foreign threat, I can only assume these ladies were practicing for a bayonet charge against the fascists of the local totalitarian regime: patriarchy.

From left to right are: Jeanne Paul, age 18, of Oak Park, Illinois,; Virginia Paisley, 18, of Lakewood, Ohio; Marian Walsh, 19, also from Lakewood; Sarah Robinson, 20, of Jonesboro, Arkansas,; Elizabeth Cooper, 17, of Chicago; Harriet Ginsberg, 17.

Belles, Bombs, and Broomsticks

  Not long ago I praised Marina Raskova, who among so much else founded 3 women's air regiments in the Soviet Union. While many pilots aspire to the glamor of the fighter's cockpit, only one of these air regiments was a fighter group. But it was the 588th Night Bomber Regiment which gained the greatest fame and renown. And inspired the most fear in their enemies. The German air ace Johannes Steinhoff said in September 1942, "We simply couldn't grasp that the Soviet airmen that caused us the greatest trouble were in fact women. These women feared nothing. They came night after night in their very slow biplanes, and for some periods they wouldn't give us any sleep at all."
  The Soviet air arm having been decimated by the Luftwaffe almost immediately, the Soviets were forced to use every available aircraft for defense. This included the Polikarpov Po-2, which was a wooden biplane from the 1920s used as a trainer and crop duster. This outdated aircraft was expected to fly against the modern craft of the Luftwaffe, so there was a great need to develop new doctrines to address the obvious technological deficit. Thus the Night Witches were born. 

A reviewing general lamented that they all "looked like boys"

    Perhaps imagining it might dissuade some, the male commandant insisted that none could fly with hair longer than 2in, that they must cut it or the military barber would. The ladies instead elected to cut each others' hair, and thereby seemed to echo the Spartans at Thermopylae as those warriors combed each other's hair and prepared for their deaths.

Women of the 588th coven

   The Po-2 was far slower than the German planes, and had no armor whatsoever. It was thus employed at night because it would be an easy target in daylight, but these women made the most of their limitations to become veritable nightmares. The strategy they adopted was to cut their engines before reaching German lines, glide silently into range, and drop their bombs with no warning at all. Soon these ladies were giving the Germans around Stalingrad and the Caucasus night terrors nearly every night, and the Germans gradually learned to listen for the awful sound of the wind going through the wooden wings, which they said sounded like broomsticks in the sky.
  The Soviet witches flew 23,000 sorties during the war and dropped 3,000 tons of bombs. Because the planes were so light, they could carry only six bombs at a time, so multiple missions per night were often necessary. Moreover, due to the weight of the bombs and the low altitude of flight, the pilots carried no parachutes. Not a lot of options if your plane gets hit, especially considering the wooden frame will burn, burn, burn! Over the course of the conflict, 30 Night Witches died in combat. Nevertheless, it became the most highly decorated regiment in the entire Soviet Air Force: each pilot had flown at least 1,000 missions.

One Mean Mother

  Don't revolutionary movements always seem to include a semi-mythical woman warrior who aided the endeavor, sometimes with her very life? And unlike the seasoned, trained men who so often participate in conflicts, she seems to require a civil background to contrast with her martial achievement. Perhaps this is a modest nod to valor and martial prowess of that half of the population who are not considered to be fighters. This woman is fighting to overthrow the Nazi oppressors who have controlled her city for over three years.

 Her polka-dot dress and steel helmet complement her stick grenades perfectly.

I Can Not Resist

  This unnamed belle of the French resistance was photographed in Paris on August 29, 1944. She had killed two Germans already in the fighting.

French military styles are so fabulous!

Rascal of the Soviet Union

  It's difficult to over-emphasize the contribution of all the badass belles of the SU during the Great Patriotic War. No other nation was so desperate and so ostensibly egalitarian, and the kickass killer ladies who came forth gave those Nazis hell! WWII showcased new, 'modern' methods of murder and mayhem that often largely or entirely scrapped the classic excuse that women weren't as combat capable as menfolk because they lacked the physical strength of men. Ha! Marina Raskova was out to prove this misguided wisdom dead wrong, and she did it with the power of the newfangled flying machines of the 20th century.

Aviatrix goggles and riveted steel.

  Even before the war the women of the Soviet Union were setting world records, and Ms. Raskova was breaking barriers in her home country too. She was the first female navigator in the Soviet Air Force, and the first to teach at the Zhukovski Air Academy. Sure sure, everyone has heard of the American Amelia Earhart, who was the first woman to fly solo ~2,000 miles across the Atlantic Ocean, and of her infamous disappearance while later attempting to fly around the world with only her navigator Fred Noonan. Meanwhile, in Mother Russia Marina Raskova, opera singer turned chemist turned aviatrix, navigated a flight of three ladies nonstop across Asia from Moscow to the Far East. Count 'em, that's over 4,000 miles! This flight nearly ended in the same way as Earhart's ultimate endeavor because the crew could not find the landing strip in bad weather. Fortunately, they were able to crash land and all survived. Ms. Raskova parachuted out before the crash and found herself in the wilderness of Siberia with no food or water. She wandered for 10 days before finally arriving at the airfield she'd been flying to.

Polina Osipenko, Valentina Grizodubova, and Marina Raskova with trademark grin.

   When WWII broke out, Ms. Raskova naturally advocated for her fellow ladies to help defend the Motherland. She succeeded in convincing the military to form 3 all-lady air combat groups: a fighter regiment and two bomber regiments. And not only the pilots, but the ground crews, officers, gunners and mechanics were all ladies too! Ms. Raskova herself comanded the 125th Guards Bomber Aviation Regiment until her death in a crash landing near Stalingrad in 1943. She received the first state funeral of the war.

Ladies of the 586th all-female fighter regiment.

Women of Winter

 While the Allies were engaged in their "Phoney War" with the Nazis, Finland was getting invaded by the Red Army of the Soviet Union. Though the Red Army had more than three times as many soldiers as the Finns, thirty times as many aircraft, and a hundred times as many tanks, Finland defended itself for over three months in the Winter War. Not too shabby Finland!

  Why, I've never seen anything so... so... GORGEOUS.

  With their manpower stretched to the limit, Finland turned to woman power! The Lotta Svard was formed. It was the largest voluntary paramilitary force in the world, and it was composed entirely of women. They were officially unarmed, except for a women's antiaircraft unit guarding the capital of Helsinki.

I <3 this lovely lady with a Big Gun.