Khiuaz Dospanova was born in the village of Ganyushkino, Atyrau Oblast, on 15 May 1922.

In 1940, she graduated secondary school №1 in the city of Uralsk with distinction – she was awarded the gold medal. Simultaneously, she was handed the pilot identification document by the local aviation club. She headed for Moscow and tried to enter the Zhukovsky Military Aviation Academy. However, she wasn’t enrolled. Then she went to the Fist Medical Institute, where she was admitted without examinations.

In 1941, Khiuaz made an appointment with Marina Raskova, who was in charge of forming female aviation regiments. Khiuaz went to the town of Engels on the Volga River, where the regiments were stationed.

Khiuaz Dspanova was taken on as aircraft controller in the 588 night bomber aviation regiment. Her combat missions were in the Southern Front, the North and South Caucasus, Ukraine and Belarus.

During the war it was customary to join the Communist Party of the USSR prior to embarking on a combat mission. So did Khiuaz. She handed over her request to become a Communist Party member to the regiment’s Communist Party organizer and went off on a mission. A bomb hit the target on the ground as she made her first combat flight under a heavy artillery barrage. Khiuaz completed the mission. The regiment suffered losses on that first fighting night. Night after night, Khiuaz Khiuaz and her comrades set out on combat flights that brought them both joys and worries.

The regiment was stationed in the village of Asinovskaya outside the city of Grozny. The enemy put up a strong defense along the Terek River, in particular in the town of Mozdok, aiming to create a foothold for accumulating and further advancing the troops in the Caucasus. Meanwhile, Soviet bomber aircrafts were armed with a new kind of weapon – flare bombs used for reconnaissance. During one of the flights on the outskirts of Mozdok, Khiuaz and Polina Belkina kept this weapon ready but didn’t use it because all at once dozens of enemy projectors lit up. They were faced up with a difficult choice, either to fly forward into the light and be shot down or to return. They had a few seconds to make the decision. Luckily, an aircraft flying above them diverted the enemy attention and they had time to get away. They did their bombing raid and safely returned.

As time went on, Germans stopped moving along the Caucasus roads eastward and began to retreat in the opposite direction. Khiuaz and her comrades decided to attack the road and the railway line running parallel to each other. Once they bombed a train heading westward. Every night their task was to track down hastily retreating German units and destroy them. The information, to which extent those night raids were successful, was gathered by the ground reconnaissance and reported to the division or army headquarters.

In summer 1943, the great battle of Kursk took place on the Kursk Bulge. It marked the beginning of the ultimate and definitive turning point in the Great Patriotic War. The WWII outcome was predetermined. The night bombing raids intensified to wear down the retreating enemy. Bombs fell on Germans wherever they congregated – on the roads, at the railway stations etc. The airwomen did their part with great enthusiasm. Each of them had more than 100 combat flights under their belt. All in all, Khiuaz made over 300 flight during the war. It’s no accident that Hitler promised his soldiers the Iron Cross and a short leave of absence for every shot down aircraft piloted by an airwomen. “Night Witches” were very much sought after by anti-aircraft gunners and strike pilots. The Soviet troops liberated the Cossack villages of Krymskaya and Slavyanskaya and others.

In spring 1943, while preparing for landing after a successful combat mission Khuiaz and Julia Pashkova’s bomber collided in air with another aircraft from their regiment. Its crew (two persons) died instantly and Julia died in hospital. Only Khiuaz survived and was sent to the hospital in the rear. Her habit not to get buckled up with safety belts saved her life.

Soon after, significant changes came about in Dospanova’s life: she was granted her third combat decoration – the Order of Patriotic War, Second Grade. While in the Crimea, Khiuaz was decorated with the Order of Red Star and the Medal “For the Liberation of the Caucasus.” As military activities in the Crimea were coming to an end, Khiuaz and her comrades were sent to Ukraine and Belarus, which were being liberated. At all fronts – from the Black Sea to the Barents Sea – the Soviet army waged a successful offensive. (from Khiuaz Dospanova’s book “Under Raksova’s Command”)

Khiuaz was severely wounded twice but each time she stepped back into the ranks. She met the Victory Day in Berlin.

Khiuaz worked her way from an instructor at the local Communist Party committee in her native Western Kazakhstan to the secretary of Kazakhstan’s Central Committee of Leninist Young Communist League. In 1951, she was elected deputy to the Supreme Soviet of the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic and then its Presidium’s secretary at the first meeting of the Supreme Soviet.

In 1959, Khiuaz had to resign due to health reasons.