Evgeniya Maksimovna Rudneva, also known as Zhenya Rudneva was a Soviet military air navigator, a Hero of the Soviet Union, a member of the Moscow branch of the Astronomical-Geodesical Society of the Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics, and head of the Solar Department.
Education
She had completed three years as a student in the Faculty of mechanics and mathematics of Moscow State University prior to October 1941, when she volunteered for Soviet Army. She graduated from Navigator School and from May 1942 she fought at the front of World World War World War II
Career
She was Ukrainian, born into the family of an office worker There she served in the rank of Guards Senior Lieutenant as a navigator of the all-female 588th Night Bomber Regiment, which later was redesignated the 46th Taman Guards Night Bomber Regiment (325th Night Bomber Aviation Division, 6th Air Army, 2nd Byelorussian Front). Member in the Communist Party of the Soviet Union since 1943.
She flew 645 night combat missions on the old and slow Polikarpov Po-2 biplane, destroying river crossings, troop trains, troops and military equipment of the enemy.
She perished valiantly while flying her 645th combat mission near the village of Bulganak, to the north of Kerch. She was shot down by Flak along with her pilot Panna Prokofyeva.
In her letter to professor Sergey Blazhko, head of the Astrometry Department of Moscow State University, dated October 19, 1942, she wrote that her first bomb she promised the Nazis for the building of the Faculty of mechanics and mathematics, which was bombed by them in the winter.
Views
She wrote that she was defending the honour of the university.