Soviet aircraft began to be fitted with radar equipment in 1942, but pilots and radio engineers weren’t fully capable of using it until 1943.
* * *
The ground staff was by now equipped with radar, and the deputy chief navigator, Nina Slovokhotova, was able to update Tamara and Raya by radio to tell them where to find the German attack planes.
Suddenly Tamara called back: “I see the enemy aircraft!”
“There are quite a few of them!” added Raya’s voice over the radio.
Commander Aleksandr Gridnev was there to answer them himself.
“Attack!” he told them.
Then the radio cut out. The regiment had lost contact with Tamara and Raya.
DEPUTY CHIEF NAVIGATOR NINA SLOVOKHOTOVA AND PILOT ZULEIKA SEID-MAMEDOVA IN THE CONTROL ROOM FOR THE 586TH FIGHTER AVIATION REGIMENT
Aleksandr ran to his own plane, which he’d just jumped out of after the previous air raid. As soon as the planes were refueled, Aleksandr and three other fighters took off to support the two young women who were already in the air.
They reached Kastornaya. They flew over the busy railway station where the Soviet troops bound for Kursk were gathering, surrounded by a mess of smoking bomb craters in the dirty snow. But the only trace of an air battle the aviators could see below them was a fragment of a Soviet aircraft wing on the ground. Its red star marking was clearly visible.
Tamara and Raya didn’t come back that night. No one in the 586th slept, hoping against hope that Tamara and Raya had somehow survived their battle.
When they’d taken off, Tamara and Raya had flown to Kastornaya looking for a single German spy plane to shoot down. They’d been unprepared to run into two full formations of German bombers. There were so many of the Luftwaffe planes that at first the young Soviet pilots thought the black dots in the southwestern sky must be birds.
But they were too high to be birds. They were enemy bombers, approaching a railway station filled with trains and soldiers.
Tamara and Raya had the advantage of height and the sun behind them, which would dazzle the enemy pilots if they looked in their direction. So the two young women in their Yak fighters, rapidly firing their guns, dived straight into the middle of the first group of German bombers.
Two of the aircraft they fired at fell in flames beneath them, and the bomber formation scattered.
But there was another group of planes in the sky ahead of them. Tamara and Raya each flew at this group from a different side, and Tamara managed to destroy another bomber.
“By that time my guns were empty, and I decided to ram one of their bombers with my aircraft,” she said. “I came so close to the enemy that I could see the face of the pilot. . . . I was about to ram him when my plane was hit with gunfire, the wing separated from the aircraft, and I fell into a spin.”
With her plane plunging through the air in flames, Tamara was thrown around so forcefully that at first she couldn’t get her seat belt unfastened so she could use her parachute. She managed it at last, and with the cockpit canopy open she was thrown from the plane by accident. She was only 150 meters (about 500 feet) above the ground—terrifyingly low—when her parachute finally opened.
But lucky for Tamara, she hit the ground safely. She was bloody and battered, but she was alive. When she looked up at the sky, she saw Raya’s plane circling around to make another attack on the bombers.
Tamara struggled to her feet. She knew she would have to make her way back to her regiment somehow, and the first thing she decided to do was find the nearest telegraph station to report that her plane had been destroyed. After walking for some time she saw, crossing a snow-covered field in her fur boots, Raya herself.
They ran to meet each other and hugged frantically. It felt to Tamara “that we had both been given birth again.”
Raya explained that when she’d seen Tamara’s plane falling in flames with its broken wing, she’d been so overwhelmed with rage and despair that she lost all sense of reason. She flew straight at the nearest German bomber and filled it with gunfire. She had the satisfaction of watching it dive earthward in black smoke before she realized that she, too, had been hit by gunfire.
Raya’s plane had been damaged, but she could still control it. She managed to glide to earth and made a crash landing on a hillside, where local people greeted her armed with pitchforks, sticks, and rifles—they’d thought her falling plane might be a German fighter. They were relieved to see the red stars on the wings, but stared at Raya in amazement when she climbed out of it—a woman flying a fighter plane!
Raya and Tamara’s meeting in the snowy field didn’t happen by chance. Raya, like Tamara, was heading for the telegraph station to report that she’d been shot down. Both of them felt terrible about the damage to their planes. Tamara thought she should be punished because her plane had been destroyed. Raya’s had forty-three bullet holes in it.
Back in Voronezh at the 586th’s base, word finally came through at dawn the next morning: Raya and Tamara were both alive.
The commander of the front himself sent a telegram to the regiment, congratulating the two pilots on their fearlessness and airmanship: they had turned away forty-two enemy bombers, and shot down four of them.
Tamara and Raya were both awarded the Order of the Red Star. The battle was reported over the radio throughout the nation. The encounter received attention even outside the USSR; two weeks later the young women were both mentioned by name in American newspapers, the first time an official news release from Moscow gave special recognition to its women fighter pilots (though they were referred to as “junior airwomen”). The two valiant pilots of the 586th were sent gold watches through the Soviet minister of foreign affairs, said to be gifts from George VI, the king of England.
Tamara’s plane had to be replaced; but the bullet holes in Raya’s Yak were completely repaired, and soon she was able to take to the skies in it once more.
26
A New Start for the 587th
Marina Raskova’s other aviators were battling just as hard against the German invaders as the fighters in their Yaks. Her lasting legacy to the 587th Bomber Aviation Regiment was in choosing the challenging Pe-2 dive-bomber planes that they flew, and the 587th’s commitment to those planes would have made her proud. Maybe some people thought the Pe-2s were “flying coffins” for their three crew members, but the 587th were making the most out of their Peshkas.
From April until July 1943 they flew their aggressive missions from a base in a village near Krasnodar, a city on the Kuban River. They were about 150 kilometers (90 miles) northeast of the Black Sea, where the Germans had been hammering the Soviet’s navy and its Black Sea fleet. Few men were left in the war-torn Soviet villages—they were all at war, leaving the women to drive tractors, manage livestock, and raise crops. The local people seem to have been happy to host the women aviators.
Now Commander Valentin Markov flew with the 587th on many of their missions, leading the First Squadron with his navigator, Nikolai Nikitin. Zhenya Timofeyeva, as deputy commander, led the Second Squadron, with her navigator, Valya Kravchenko. Valya had come a long way from stealing cabbages!
In their bombing runs, the Pe-2s came under enemy fire from every possible direction: submachine guns fired by soldiers on the ground, antiaircraft guns and ground artillery pointed at them in the sky—and of course, German aircraft attacking them. Each aircrew risked two or three of these bombing flights in a day.
But the regiment was given an injection of pride and spirit when, on May 4, 1943, they were awarded a new name. Now they became the 587th M. M. Raskova Bomber Aviation Regiment, in honor of their beloved Marina Raskova. They truly had become “Raskova’s regiment.”
The 587th was involved in six massive air battles while they were at Krasnodar, including, on a dismal and cloudy day in early June, probably their most dramatic engagement of the entire war.
On June 2, 1943, in back-to-back missions, Zhenya Timofeyeva led a formation of nine Pe
-2 dive-bombers, each with its aircrew of pilot, navigator, and gunner, into combat toward the front line at the Kuban River.
Masha Dolina was at the head of one of the flights in the squadron. Masha flew with Galina “Galya” Dzhunkovskaya as her navigator, and with a male tail gunner and radio operator, Ivan Solenov. Masha always tried to get Galya to distract her in the air on the way to a mission, to take her mind off the hard and terrifying work that lay ahead. If Galya stopped talking—which was easy to do when she was busy juggling maps and pencils and the flight log—Masha would scold her.
“Why aren’t you saying something? Tell me some kind of a story, or perhaps sing us a song. Only don’t forget to turn off the radio.”
That was so they wouldn’t get in trouble if anyone with a radio receiver overheard them casually chatting to each other in the air!
PILOT MASHA DOLINA OF THE 587TH BOMBER AVIATION REGIMENT (LATER THE 125TH GUARDS) WITH A PE-2 DIVE-BOMBER
But all distraction was put aside as they approached the front line, flying low to avoid the clouds on this mission.
The fighting at the front that day was so ferocious that Masha thought it looked like “a continuous curtain of fire.” The planes bounced and shuddered from the force of the explosions in the air around them. Masha followed Zhenya Timofeyeva steadily through the chaotic sky toward the target where they were supposed to drop their bombs.
Then one of Masha’s twin engines began to hiccup. Her wingmen, Tonya Skoblikova and Masha Kirillova, following Masha in their flight of three planes as part of the full formation of nine aircraft, saw what was going on and matched their speed to cover for Masha’s lagging plane.
They reached the target, everybody dropped their bombs, and the squadron soared around to fly home, still in tight formation after Zhenya.
But the clouds had now become so thick that the Pe-2s were flying lower than they’d planned. They got separated from the fighter planes of another regiment that were supposed to escort them and provide them with protection from enemy fighters. Zhenya’s formation of nine Pe-2s was open to attack.
Suddenly the antiaircraft guns stopped firing—a sure sign that Luftwaffe planes were nearby. The German ground troops didn’t want to hit their own aircraft.
Without delay, eight Luftwaffe fighters swooped down on Zhenya’s formation of Pe-2s.
The German fighters tried to break up the Soviet formation. It would be much easier to pick on a single plane than on nine, whose pilots and navigators and tail gunners were all furiously firing their own guns and hurling grenades out of their cockpits.
But the nine pilots of the 587th stayed tight together. “We were all as if in a ‘fist,’” said Klavdiya “Klava” Fomicheva.
One of Masha’s engines was hit and caught fire. In the Pe-2 behind her, pilot Tonya Skoblikova blasted her machine guns at the German fighter planes to try to give Masha and her crew a chance to escape.
On the other side of the formation, pilot Klava Fomicheva also saw what was going on. She knew that if Masha left the formation, she’d be easy prey for the Luftwaffe fighters. And if Masha and her crew tried to parachute out of their burning plane, they would surely be killed by the enemy’s guns as they fell. Their best chance of survival was to stay in formation as long as they could before they tried to land or abandon the plane—and to get back over the front lines into Soviet territory, if at all possible.
Now Tonya Skoblikova’s Pe-2 let out a plume of white smoke as it, too, was hit by gunfire.
Behind their machine guns in Masha’s Pe-2, her navigator, Galya, and their tail gunner, Ivan, had both run out of ammunition—but not before Ivan had managed to shoot down one of the Luftwaffe planes himself.
As Masha’s burning plane sank lower, one of the German fighters flew so close that Masha could see his grinning, freckled face. He raised one finger, then another.
What he meant was: Would Masha prefer him to shoot her down in one attack, or two?
At the time, Masha didn’t understand what he was trying to ask her, and probably wouldn’t have answered if she did. But apparently he decided on two attacks. He hit Masha’s second engine and swooped away to line up for the next round.
Now both her Pe-2’s engines were on fire. As the German pilot came in for a killing blow, Galya and Ivan, in desperation now that they were out of ammunition, threw lighted signal flares at him.
Amazingly, this scared him—he fled the air battle!
But now Masha’s Pe-2 was flaming “like a torch.” If she didn’t get her plane back on the ground or jump out of it, she and her crew would all burn to death in an airborne inferno.
The moment Zhenya’s formation of nine Pe-2s crossed into the safety of Soviet territory, Masha was the first to break away. Klava Fomicheva’s navigator, Galina “Galya” Turabelidze, strained to keep her eyes on Masha’s blazing plane so she would know where it went down.
Other damaged planes began to peel away from the formation as well. Both of Olga “Lelya” Sholokhova’s engines were trailing smoke. Pilots Tonya Skoblikova and Katya Fedotova were able to waggle their wings in farewell as they flew off to find emergency landing places.
Klava Fomicheva and her crew flew in silence as they followed Zhenya Timofeyeva back to their base. Nobody felt like talking. Of the nine Pe-2s that had taken off on that mission, only five returned, and everyone was sure that Masha and her crew must be dead.
There was no way the squadron was going to be able to fly home in air-show formation as they usually did. For the first time since Valentin Markov had established the tradition, they landed without their low-level victory pass over the airfield.
Nobody felt like sleeping, either, and the survivors of the battle didn’t go back to their quarters after they landed. They waited anxiously all night for a telephone call that might give them news of their missing aircrews. Everyone agreed that only Masha’s plane had been on fire—surely the others had managed to crash-land safely somewhere?
Then, just after daylight broke, Katya Fedotova’s Pe-2 came flying in and touched down confidently on the runway. Katya and her devoted aircrew, navigator Klara Dubkova and gunner Tonya Khokhlova, all jumped out safe and sound!
After the happy greetings with the other aircrew and the ground crew, Katya and Klara and Tonya explained what had happened to them after the battle. With bullet holes in their fuel tanks, they’d found a friendly Soviet airfield to land on. They’d repaired their plane themselves, sticking wooden plugs into the holes.
As everyone stood there on the field firing excited questions and exclamations at each other, another Pe-2 came in to land. It was Tonya Skoblikova’s plane, and squeezed into it were Masha Dolina’s crew as well—three in the main cockpit, with Masha lying on the floor, and three in the tail gunner’s tiny cabin!
Masha, Galya, and Ivan were now able to fill the rest of the regiment in on the end of their own harrowing story.
When they left the formation in their burning plane, Masha ordered Galya and Ivan to use their parachutes.
Ivan told her, “Keep going, Commander; we are bound to make it. On the other hand, if we must perish, at least let’s go together!”
Galya, standing behind Masha, pulled Masha’s goggles down over her stinging eyes to protect them in the smoke-filled plane so that she’d be able to see to glide in to land. Masha brought down the Pe-2 on its belly in grass that was a meter high (a little over three feet). The pilot and navigator’s cockpit was now ablaze; Masha and Galya’s clothes caught fire, and so did the long grass around the plane.
Behind Masha and Galya in the tail gunner’s cockpit, Ivan had been wounded in the leg. But after the landing he was able to crawl free of the aircraft, only to see that Masha and Galya were still trapped in the front cockpit of the burning Pe-2.
Ivan attacked the jammed canopy with a screwdriver and managed to pry it open. Galya’s clothes were in flames as Ivan dragged Masha and Galya from the wreckage of their plane.
“When he pulled us from the
cabin, we fell on the ground, and the grass around us was burning,” said Masha. “We had to roll about to put the fire out around us and on us.”
Fortunately they weren’t hurt when their plane blew up—“a fountain of fire and smoke.”
But the disastrous flight had a happy ending. Masha and her crew were picked up by friendly Soviet antiaircraft gunners, who drove them to a medical post. There, to their joy, they found Masha’s friend Tonya Skoblikova and her aircrew! After Tonya had managed to land her plane safely, she and her crew had come to the same place to get their wounds treated.
Lelya Sholokhova and the rest of her aircrew turned up in an ambulance aircraft later that day.
All nine flight crews survived the June 2 battle, and while they’d been in the air they shot down four of the enemy fighters themselves. Their tight “fist” of a formation was so spectacularly successful that the air force commander used it as a strategic example for all Soviet bomber regiments. It even got the 587th a mention in the Fourth Air Army’s official history.
And Ivan got a bonus of 1,000 rubles for shooting down a German plane—worth about $2,500 today!
Ivan, as the tail gunner in a Pe-2, had a job that was probably even more harrowing than the pilot’s or the navigator’s. The tail gunner’s cockpit at the back of the plane stuck out and made an easy target for enemy fighters. The Pe-2’s machine guns often jammed, and their bullets weren’t always strong enough to penetrate the armor of Luftwaffe fighter aircraft. Most Pe-2 tail gunners were men, like Ivan Solenov, because it took so much strength to recharge the guns.
The athletic Tonya Khokhlova was one of a few women with enough upper body strength to do this dual job of tail gunner and radio operator for the 587th. Her pilot, Katya Fedotova, described Tonya as “quick and boisterous. She had a boyish haircut and grey, cunning eyes.” Katya was one of the four friends who’d written a letter together begging Marina Raskova to help them get to the front; now she found new close friends in her Pe-2 aircrew, including Tonya and their navigator, Klara Dubkova.
A Thousand Sisters Page 16