Talk:Meri Avidzba

There is something physically impossible for the claim that a pilot flew 477 sorties in a Po-2 aircraft (capable of carrying max 771 pounds of bombs per sortie) and dropped 63,000 tons of bombs (63,000 x 2,000 lbs/short ton, say) on the enemy. This means she dropped an average of 132 tons of bombs per sortie. A Po-2 itself, fully loaded, weighs only a little over a ton. Further, Avidzba's unit, the Night Witches, collectively only dropped around 3,000 tons of bombs throughout its entire wartime career. So something is fishy with the 63,000 ton claim. This is not to disparage Avidzba's contribution to the war. It's just that the 63,000 ton figure is physically impossible. A thousand plane raid of B-17 bombers could not do that, let alone a Po-2.

Just because there is an external written reference making that 63,000 ton claim, doesn't make the claim physically possible. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 138.88.133.113 (talk) 01:38, 27 September 2020 (UTC)

63,000 tonnes? I ... doubt it.
The text of this article, incorporated into the DYK for 27 Sept 2020, says she "dropped 63,000 tonnes" of bombs on the enemy while flying 477 combat sorties. Do the math: that's over 130 tonnes of bombs per sortie. Considering that the plane she was flying (Polikarpov Po-2) barely weighed one tonne itself, I rather doubt this. Even if "tonne" is a mistranslation of some source's word for "kilogram," so that the tonnage is overestimated by a thousand, it's way beyond the normal bombload for a Po-2.

An error like this should never, never, NEVER appear in a DYK. -- Bill-on-the-Hill (talk) 01:28, 27 September 2020 (UTC)

I saw that and agree with you 100%. Jackfork (talk) 01:43, 27 September 2020 (UTC)


 * I checked the original reference, and it said 63 тыс. килограммов, that is, 63,000 kilograms. 63 metric tonnes over 477 sorties would be credible - that's about 300 pounds each. Mahousu (talk) 11:27, 27 September 2020 (UTC)
 * It's still rather pushing it, requiring her tiny Po-2 to fly at a fair fraction of its very limited maximum payload capacity on each and every mission and successfully drop whatever it carried. Neither of these happened all the time on WWII bombing missions, particularly harassment missions.  However, it's "credible enough."  I see the DYK has been fixed, but I repeat: an error like this should never occur on a DYK. -- Bill-on-the-Hill (talk) 17:24, 27 September 2020 (UTC)


 * Hi - just a not to say hello! I put the DYK forward, so its my mistake. I'm not familiar with the payloads, and trusted what I believed the translation to be. There's a lesson for me there in scrutinising translation! Thanks for flagging it, and working out the discrepancy. I agree mistakes like this shouldn't happen, but I made the DYK nomination with good faith that all was well. I've taken all the feedback seriously. Happy editing. (Lajmmoore (talk) 18:49, 27 September 2020 (UTC))