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Clara Immerwahr (21 June 1870 – 2 May 1915) was a German chemist of Jewish descent.[1] She was the first woman to be awarded a doctorate in chemistry in Germany. She was also both a pacifist and a women's rights activist.[2] From 1901 until her suicide in 1915, she was married to the Nobel Prize-winning chemist Fritz Haber.

Immerwahr, who was a pacifist, and was troubled by Haber's work on chemical weapons, shot herself in the chest using Haber's military pistol. She died in her son's arms on 2 May. The morning after her death, Haber left to stage the first gas attack against the Russians on the Eastern Front.[11][12] Her suicide remained largely in the dark. Six days after her death, only the small local newspaper Grunewald-Zeitung reported that "the wife of Dr. H. in Dahlem, who is currently on the front, has set an end to her life by shooting herself. The reasons for this act of the unhappy woman are unknown."

Though women were initially barred from combat, Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin issued an order on October 8, 1941 to deploy three women's air force units, including the 588th regiment.[1] The regiment, formed by Colonel Marina Raskova and led by Major Yevdokia Bershanskaya, was made up entirely of women volunteers in their late teens and early twenties.

The regiment flew harassment bombing and precision bombing missions against the German military from 1942 until the end of the war.[2] At its largest, it had 40 two-person crews. The regiment flew over 24,000 missions and dropped 23,000 tons of bombs.[3] It was the most highly decorated all-women unit in the Soviet Air Force, each pilot having flown over 800 missions by the end of the war and twenty-three having been awarded the Hero of the Soviet Union title.

The regiment flew in wood-and-canvas Polikarpov Po-2 biplanes ... Although the aircraft were obsolete and slow, the pilots made daring use of their exceptional maneuverability; they had the advantage of having a maximum speed that was lower than the stall speed of both the Messerschmitt Bf 109 and the Focke-Wulf Fw 190, and as a result, German pilots found them very difficult to shoot down. An attack technique of the night bombers was to idle the engine near the target and glide to the bomb release point, with only wind noise left to reveal their location. German soldiers likened the sound to broomsticks and named the pilots "Night Witches."[1] Due to the weight of the bombs and the low altitude of flight, the pilots carried no parachutes

StarFire wrote:All moms. Every. Single one.

tovarisch wrote:

StarFire wrote:All moms. Every. Single one.

Why just single one? Married ones deserve recognition too...