Originally posted by Ranoncles
If female ferrying pilots were jumped by trained fighter pilots they would be slaughtered. Ferrying pilots are basically transport pilots and do not have any training or learned skills in air combat maneuvering. It is a basic fallacy to think that any experienced pilot will do well in air combat simply because they know how to fly. Germany made that assumption (in desperation) when they switched bomber and transport pilots to their jet fighter units. Those poor sods were killed in droves without achieving much.
The Soviet female pilots were mostly a p.r. stunt. Initially a few managed to get into cockpits due to the desperate times in '41-'42 and a handful were indeed very good pilots (as there will always be a few talented specimens in any group) but the majority were not that good. Perhaps because they lacked the physical strength/stamina necessary in WWII fighters?
The all-female units were quickly relegated to quiet sectors where they were less likely to run into opposition (after '43 there were only 300 German fighters covering the entire Eastern front). Most of the women were assigned to a night bomber unit (the famous Night Witches squadron) because the Soviet authorities deemed it less likely to run into trouble at night.
The all-female units (only 3 or 4 IIRC) received a lot of p.r. attention (far beyond their immediate military worth) because they acted as inspiration for the Soviets in general and Soviet women in particular.
As observed also by other posters (in respect to ferry pilots) I think the problem that it was necessary an adequate training for fighter pilot, and this needed time and experience, an example that also happened was during the late stages of the Pacific War when after the disaster at Midway, the IJN lost not only 4 carriers, also a large number of veterans of the Sea Eagles, the elite pilots of the IJN, this degradation (combined with the japanese philosophy of making a very elite corps using very long time training, IIRC the japanese technics of training to made elite pilots costed a lot of time more than the time used by US in training pilots) was accelerated by the losses of pilots during the battles around Guadalcanal.
It is no doubt also that by 1944 the technology gap between japanese airplanes and americans was also dramatically in favour of the USN, but during the Leyte land battles, the japanese made a great last use of his airplanes showing that with veteran pilots (in this case from the army air force that maintained a far large number of veteran pilots than the IJN because the far less losses in combat) the japanese airplanes could give some nasty surprises -it was the last great employment of conventional airforce by the japanese against the allies IIRC-.
So more than the technology gap was probably the very high number of japanese rookies present in 1944 (the japanese desperate because tha large losses of Sea Eagles not seems capable to could change his philosophy of training and because the quick needs they made quick trainings to pilots with a system not adapted to made this kind of quick trainings: the result was that it seems japanese rookies could be very valiant and with great will but combined with obsolete airplanes they were less trained than the average US rookie) against veteran or at least an average better trained US pilot that mades easy to understand situations like the Turkey Shoot over the Marianas.
This shows what happens if you not put an adequate training for fighter pilots.
So a solution would be the depicted in the scenario that I showed in post 34: the first experimental women air regiments appear in the 1930´s because a different Soviet Union (not stalinist, so not purges and not so traditianalist and static view that Stalin made in the militaries), this permits not only an adequate training (bettered also because a factor that have to be in count is that in OTL one of the sectors more affected of the purges was the aviation, possibily because as a sector that needed a high degree of innovation and R + I was one of the more touched by the paranoia of Stalin to eliminate any possibility of independent thinking in the Armed Force, not only the commands like Alaknis or Lapchinsky were executed, a large number of technicians, pilot trainers and technology investigators were purged -executed in the most part- in TTL the soviet air force not purged is precisely the sector more open to innovations and some experimentations) also permits to know of all the possible female candidates who were good and very good pilots, who average pilots and who simplily would be refused, a thing that in peace times is easier to make than in a desperate war time when you could be don´t have the sufficient time to decide in only chose the better and the risky but necessary and quick solution is to get any with some kind of experience although it was little.
When these different women pilot regiment entered experimentally in combat against japanese in a war in 1939-40, these regiments are in fact elite regiments because they have had a lot of time of training and to chose only the good and very good female pilots, the success of the experiment showed in 1939-40 in TTL (combined also that the soviet airplanes are technically better than in OTL because the lack of purges against the airforces -so not only well commanded, also a far better R + I in airplanes) permits an ampliation of this.
It is clear, naturally, that there will far less number of air regiments manned by women than by men -because not only the possible difficulties of strengt/stamina comparisons between men and women, also because the fact that surely there will far more men that will decide to serve in the armed forces than women by all a serie of causes (need to care of the children -if you was dead who cares of your children if also your husband is at war-, traditional views presents in societies in 1930´s and 1940´s even in TTL Soviet Union...)- but by 1941 the moment of an ATL Barbarossa there is 6 air regiments of women (4 of them fighters and 2 of bombers) and all these regiments are far better trained and have far adequate pilot personnel than OTL -also there is two experimental tank battalions that will have an interesting valiant and sacrificed paper in an ATL battle of Smolensk, than in TTL would be the site where the germans are stopped by the end of 1941, when the sacrifice of these battalions equipped with T-50 (with a similar design than in OTL but also with better improvements and not so expensive to build although in TTL T-50 would not be produced in large quantities although far more than in OTL, in fact it was named some exageratedly the "women tank" because the most part of women tank battalions formed in this ATL were equipped with different versions of the T-50) will have an interesting paper in the battle of Smolensk -at the end won by risky and some kind mad play of Rommel, the kind of risky play than in OTL he used in North Afrika, capable of surprise even a veteran planner as Iona Yakir-.