Battlefields #4 (2017), page 6 by Braun

"The Fall and Rise of Anna Kharkova" by Garth Ennis, 2017, Dynamite.

Anna wants to show the stupidity of restricting Soviet female pilots to defense patrols over the airbase and show their battle worthiness by flying over enemy territory to attack Nazi troops. Her engine stops during her strafing run against a convoy of retreating German trucks loaded with soldiers and ground fire chews her up. This excellent page shows her crash landing in the trees. She is courtmartialed but saved by a Soviet female major's testimony of her achievements and medals.

After the war she remains in the Soviet air force, despite her superiors' conviction that women shouldn't be pilots. During the Korean War she's only permitted to fly prop biplanes that she flew at the start of her World War II service. She steals a MIG-15--at the time an advanced Soviet fighter--disables a US fighter and on landing is arrested. She is imprisoned and ends up working as the cleaning woman for a political commissar/major who has hated her since World War II.

She steals a MIG-21, again the most advanced Russian fighter at that point, to embarrass the major, who is in charge of its testing. She flies towards the West, encountering US fighters. She doesn't want to return to Russia to be executed and doesn't want to defect. She isn't ready to betray her country. The book ends with her continuing to climb in the MIG.