Over Fields of Fire: Flying the Sturmovik in Action on the Eastern Front 1942-45 (Soviet Memories of War)

by Anna Timofeeva-Egorova

  “You may well laugh. You’re the sterner sex but I often see you standing guard by the headquarters dugout. But we – the fair sex – stand with our machine-guns by night at the outermost plane parks…”

  Generally speaking, the regimental and squadron Comsomol meetings usually occurred between combat sorties or in non-flying weather, late in the night. The agendas were such as: “All our strength for the destruction of the Fascist beast!”, “Strike at the enemy like the Comsomol crews of the Heroes of the Soviet Union Rykhlin and Efremenko!”, “Mutual help in combat is the Comsomol member’s law!”

  Once, the pilot Bougrov came back from a sortie in plane so damaged, that it would have been better to tow it to a scrap-heap: such holes yawned on its wings and fuselage that a man might have easily fallen through many of them, while the rudders and elevators were barely holding on. After having a look at the machine, the regimental Chief Engineer Koudelin addressed Bougrov: “Tolya, my boy! I am an old aviation engineer. I’ve seen a lot in my life but I’ve never seen anything like that. Not only were you flying a wreck not a plane, but what’s more you’ve landed it brilliantly! Honour and praises to you!” And straightaway Koudelin addressed this subordinates. “Shall we try it, guys? Shall we fix it up?”

  This appeal by the Chief Engineer played a positive role. The impossible was done – in a week the pilot Bougrov took off in that plane to strike at the enemy. Everyone knew that every repaired plane, its every sortie, meant death for dozens of Fascists!

  But in the tension of combat work my regimental comrades nevertheless knew how to find time for relaxation and rest. The aerial gunner Zhenya Berdnikov was an indefatigable and constant organizer of regimental amateur performances. A merry fellow and a live wire, he could tell all sort of cock-and-bull stories and jokes for hours. And when, goggling his eyes and turning his toes out sideways, Zhenya began to dance imitating Chaplin and singing songs from his movies, it was simply impossible to keep from laughing!

  Once, Berdnikov suggested putting on stage in the Stanitsa Timashevskaya’s club a sketch of Leonid Lench’s4 called ‘The Dream Comes True’. Most of the roles were taken willingly by the amateur performers, but no one wanted to act as the demoniacal Führer. Finally the Comsomol organizer Rimskiy had to accept it. The staging went off successfully, and then it was decided to show it to the locals. The concert in the club went well. The mechanic Vanya Koulikov danced the ‘Yablochko’5, then, together with the female armourers Nina Piyuk and Dousya Nazarkina, ‘The Russian Folkdance’. Masha Zhitnyak and Vasya Nazarov read aloud humorous stories, and Berdnikov and Panina sang the ‘Ogonyok’ song to the accompaniment of the flyer Pavel Evteev. Everybody liked how Vadim Morozov recited the poem ‘Wait for Me’6. Then the sketch ‘The Dream Comes True’ began, but at the moment of conversation between Napoleon and Hitler loud cursing resounded through the complete silence, and some object flew across onto the stage and accurately hit ‘Hitler’. The club audience burst out laughing but the actor didn’t feel like laughing: he’d got a good smack from a gumboot. Apart from that, his wig with its renowned forelock on his narrow forehead flew off his head.

  After that incident the sketch was not performed anymore: no one wanted to play the despicable person! And when after the concert a very old man came up to Rimskiy and began to apologize: “My boy! Forgive me, I didn’t mean to hurt you. I’d strangle Hitler with my own hands! The Fascists shot my two brothers, burned my house down…” How could we not sympathize with this human grief…

  29

  A heroic place

  O

  n 16 September 1943 our troops liberated Novorossiysk, on 9 October the Choushka Spit was cleared of Fascists and troops were landed North of Kerch on the Enikale Peninsula. Troops also landed near Eltigen. On the maps there is no such a place as Eltigen now, but there is a place named Geroiskoye (‘Heroic’). And back then, when on the night of 1 November 1943 huge waves were violently smashing the rocky cliffs, the fearless landing party went ashore there. They were to sail thirty-odd kilometres across the tempestuous Kerch Straits in unseaworthy tubs. Thirty-odd kilometres under endless artillery barrage, under the beams of searchlights…

  We airmen knew nothing about the Eltigen landing. The weather prevented flying and all our field aerodromes had become slushy. There were several attempts to take off but nobody had any success: the Ils’ undercarriage went into the mud up to the wheel hubs. We managed to join the combat only on November 7.

  The group was led then by the regimental navigator Major Karev. During the briefing before take off he instructed us: not to brake during the run-up – otherwise the six-ton Sturmovik would bog down, bury itself in the mud, and might turn over. The undercarriage might not retract for it would be jammed with mud and, even if retracted, might not extend before landing – the mud would suck it back. In that case one would have to lower the undercarriage with the emergency winch, making 32 turns with the right hand, while controlling the plane with the left. Karev warned that we would all would have to take off with the oil cooler’s shield shut, and open it immediately after take-off, or the mud would block the cooler’s cells, the engine would cook and break down.

  And off we went. A solid morass of mud lay under the wings. Not all of us managed to break out of its clutches. Seven machines out of nine took off for the combat sortie – two of them nosed over during the run-up…

  Our course lay towards Eltigen. This fishing village was situated between the Chourbashskoye and the Tobechikskoye Lakes – where the spurs of the coastal hills come up against the sea. The port of Kamysh-Bouroun was situated next to Eltigen, a little bit to the north of it. The Fascist naval ships were based in the port. But this time we carried not bombs but containers of ammo, food, medicine. Stormy weather was preventing the timely supply of reinforcements to the bridgehead, and this was weakening the Eltigen landing contingent. Our task was to drop the load precisely on the bridgehead. So as not to miss we would have to take everything into account: wind speed and direction, and the speed of our own planes. And meanwhile the Fascists were shooting at us from the ground with all kinds of weapons – so we would have to return fire as well. But that time we dropped the containers of ammo, food and medicine to the landing troops at Eltigen right on target!

  Now we would fly from the Taman Peninsula, cleared of the Hitlerites, to the Kerch Peninsula. One day I was ordered to lead a group of six Sturmoviks to the area of Baksy, north to the Mitridat Hill. But we hadn’t been assigned an actual target and had been set the task of flying along the frontline, finding a target of opportunity for ourselves and giving it a whole-group ‘workout’.

  And now we were flying. I stubbornly repeated through the radio the same word for my wingmen: “Manoeuvre, manoeuvre, manoeuvre!” I wasn’t snoozing either – I threw the Sturmovik from side to side, slowed down and sped up from time to time. I knew if the ack-ack guns struck, I as the leader would get the largest share. And now they opened up. It flashed through my mind automatically: that means something is concealed down there. I looked closely – down there, in the gardens there were disguised tanks! I went into a dive: there was a tank in my gun-sight and I launched rockets. “Attack, with a manoeuvre!” I yelled to my wingmen via the radio.

  Now I see a loaded truck in the gun-sight. I pressed the triggers and the fire of my automatic cannons poured onto the target. The earth quickly came closer: it seemed to be rushing towards me. Again my fingers touched the buttons triggering the launch of rockets, and at the very same moment the lethal missiles dashed towards the ground from under my plane’s wings. I pulled the control column and the Sturmovik obediently pulled out of the dive. Having dropped a batch of bombs, I switched the machine to climbing, and my aerial gunner Starshina Makosov began to strafe the Fascists rushing about below with his large-calibre machine-gun. Now that was an attack!

  Having finished working over the target we turned back but at the very same moment the Messers pounced on us. One of their groups engaged our escort
fighters, and another struck at the Ils. We formed a defensive circle stretched towards our lines. But there were only six of us against ten German fighters – the odds were clearly unequal. I saw two fighter-planes fall into the sea a bit aside from us: one with red stars, another with a black-and-white cross on its fuselage. Before my eyes an Il-2 hit the water and went to the bottom…

  We had to hold out, hold out all costs! And we shot at those who were heedless, who slid forward and exposed their bellies to our cannons. One Fritz emitted smoke and pulled aside. One more was struck so badly that he went straight to the ground like a stone…

  The Messers retired, but the German flak guns opened up at us again. A scorching splinter of flak passed in front of my face, having pierced the Plexiglas cheek of the cockpit. Glancing back I saw blood on the reinforced glass panel separating me from the gunner’s cockpit. Was Makosov wounded? And at the same time I felt the plane drifting to the right – the rudder control rods had been smashed. From bad to worse! My wingmen were on their way to the East, home, and my plane was no longer obeying me, it was turning west, towards the enemy. I felt shivers treacherously running down my spine…I was on my own.

  I strained all my strength and skills to straighten out my Il. And on top of that the ‘skinnies’, sensing easy prey, smothered me from all sides and kept peppering my badly damaged machine with the bursts of fire! Nevertheless, I managed to turn the Sturmovik towards our lines. The engine missed time and again but kept pulling, still pulling, holding on! Clenching my teeth, I held on too and keep steering my unruly machine. Losing altitude I flew at the lowest speed possible. The earth was coming closer and closer but I still needed to cross the Kerch Straits!

  Suddenly I saw some objects fly up from the trenches. Hand grenades? No, not that – it was helmets, thrown up by our soldiers who were rapturously greeting my red-starred plane. They were happy for me, for the infantry’s beloved Sturmovik. I’d made it to our lines after all. I’d made it after all…

  When I was above the Straits our fighter planes came in time to drive my pursuers away. At last I saw my aerodrome and landed the machine on the run without closing in by the rules. I didn’t care about the rules now: I just wanted to land my plane that was barely staying in the air!

  …Silence. How wonderful silence on the ground can be! But what was that? My hands were bloody for some reason, and my blouse was bloody as well…It appears that I hadn’t noticed being wounded by the shell splinter during the battle…And what about Makosov? He was alive, wounded but alive! My heart soared…

  Airmen ran across the aerodrome field to my plane, an ambulance car with a red cross rolled at full speed, a tractor followed it to tow the crippled plane away from the airstrip as soon as possible. Swallowing tears I held onto its wing and whispered: “Thank you, my friend Ilyusha”.

  They put Makosov on a stretcher. He tried to get up and repeated over and over:

  “Comrade Lieutenant! Don’t send me to hospital – let our doctor treat me. I’ll recover soon and fly again. Don’t get yourself a new gunner!”

  “Alright, alright, Makosov”, I calmed the gunner. “I’ll ask them to treat you in our [Aerodrome Services] Battalion medical unit. Try to get well quickly. I’ll wait for you!”

  The next day I went to see my gunner and suddenly heard someone sobbing. I came closer and saw the gunsmith Dousya Nazarkina sitting on a shell crate and crying bitterly, her face buried in her knees. “Someone’s insulted her!” I thought, but then immediately rejected my assumption. Dousya was loved very much by everyone in the regiment. The frolicsome, cheerful and very hard-working armourer had become highly-regarded by everyone. It was sheer pleasure to look at her when she was hanging bombs and rockets, loading cannons and machine-guns. Dousya would flash around a Sturmovik in her sun-faded but always clean and ironed blouse, with extraordinary speed and deftness. I’m still puzzled how she managed to hang hundred-kilo bombs under the fuselage by herself. But Dousya used to joke: “I used to work at the ‘Krasnyy Bogatyr’ Works in Moscow before the war and even trained in a weight-lifting club!”

  And now the ‘weightlifter’ was in tears…I shook Dousya by the shoulder but she did not respond. Then I sat next to her on the crate, took Dousya’s head in both hands, lifted it a bit and lay it on my knees. The field cap Dousya was squeezing in her hand was wet and crumpled. I silently stroked the armourer’s head. About ten minutes elapsed, and then she, not wiping away her tears, began to tell me about her love for Serezha Bondarev. Being a plane mechanic, he had flown today with the pilot Khmara as an aerial gunner. They hadn’t come back from the mission…

  “I don’t want to live without him! Just yesterday we told each other about our love, kissed for the first time, and decided to get married when the war is over. And now he’s no more. Serezha’s killed!”

  She fell on the ground moaning, covered her face with her hands and sobbed noiselessly. I ran to the headquarters dugout, brought her water and liquid ammonia from the medicine kit. Dousya began to calm down little-by-little, and then suddenly shouted: “Comrade Lieutenant! Anna Alexandrovna! I request, I beg you, take me on as your aerial gunner. I know all the aspect angles and estimations, I know the enemy planes’ silhouettes, I’m a good shot. Take me on! I want to avenge Serezha!”

  “But I have a gunner – Makosov”, I said, perplexed by Dousya’s unexpected request.

  “But he’s wounded. Will he be able to shoot after such a wound? His right hand’s broken.”

  I began to talk Nazarkina out of it, told her how scary it was to fly in a Sturmovik as a gunner, how many of them get killed1.

  “We pilots are protected by armour”, I tried to convince her, “but the gunner sits in front of a Fascist fighter-plane in an open cockpit. And your Serezha may still be alive. After all, you know many cases of our pilots and gunners “coming back from the dead.”

  But Dosya seemed not to want to hear me: “Take me on! Support my application before the regiment command, I’ll write the application now.”

  I failed to dissuade Nazarkina. And in about two weeks the head of the Corps Political Department Colonel Toupanov arrived, and the issue was decided: Dousya Nazarkina was appointed as aerial gunner in my crew. Thus the only all-female crew in ground-attack aviation was formed. Later I was to find out about another female crew for the Sturmoviks that had been formed in August 1944: it was made up by my abovementioned aeroclub friend Tamara Fedorovna Konstantinova (later Hero of the Soviet Union) and the aerial gunner Shoura Moukoseeva.

  Back then I was sorry to part with my seasoned gunner, and he didn’t want to go to another pilot. But an order is an order, and I obeyed it. I was to discover Makosov’s fate only after the war. During the reunion of the veterans of the 230th Kuban Ground-Attack Aviation Division, Twice Hero of the Soviet Union Air Force Major-General G.F.Sivkov, who had fought in the 210th Aviation Regiment of our division approached me and said: “You had a great gunner in Kuban. He was assigned to our regiment after Nazarkina was appointed to join you.”

  “Makosov?” – I exclaimed gladly.

  “Yes, Makosov. After the war your former aerial gunner quit the forces, got married and raised five sons with his spouse. But then what misfortune befell their grey heads. One of their boys was killed in action during the frontier conflict at the Ussury river in 19692…”

  And back then, in 1943, I began to fly with Dousya Nazarkina and was greatly surprised – from the very first combat sortie she handled her gunner’s duties not the least bit worse than Makosov. I heard her voice in the intercom time and again. Dousya became my second pair of eyes. Occasionally through the reinforced glass separating our cockpits in which we sat back to back, I saw her operating her machine-gun. Its barrel would now lift up, now dip at an angle, spitting fire. I was lucky with gunners!

  30

  Off the front

  T

  he fighting near Taman had ceased: now we were attached to the 1st Byelorussian Front. The relocation of the regiment to
Karlovka near Poltava went without incident. As usual, the HQ and the technical personnel met us with a prepared airfield, parking lots, and billets for the airmen.

  Somewhere in those parts Peter the Great defeated the Swedes.1 And just recently our troops had smashed a large Hitlerite force here. For our training, the HQ found us a natural bombing range near the ancient Russian redoubts, where the rubble of abandoned enemy materiel remained. They built an observation tower there, marked the trenches with wooden dummy ‘soldiers’, installed wooden ‘cannons’. On this dummy enemy defence line there were also tanks marked with crosses, and vehicles.

  Over the period of our action over Taman, our regiment had been reinforced by planes and flying personnel three times. And now a new reinforcement arrived – many new pilots, whom we would have to get into shape: to teach them how to bomb, to shoot, to seek out targets – in other words, all we’d been taught once upon a time by the veterans of the ground-attack regiment at the Ogni aerodrome. Experienced, though not battle-hardened pilots had arrived in our 3rd Squadron. All of them had come from the Far East: Stepanov, Sherstobitov, Khomyakov, Ladygin, Ivnitskiy, Khoukhlin, Moustafaev, Kirillov, Evteev, Ivanov, Tsvetkov, Konyakhin…We – the ‘oldies’ – did not enjoy working with the youngsters. Leaving the frontline we had hoped to have a short rest in the rear. Attacks on the bombing range dummies with cement bombs did not make the seasoned front-liners enthusiastic, and for the younger guys these exercises were only a continuation of their boring school lessons. They were striving to go to the front too. Only once did I come across a pilot who didn’t want to fly. I asked him: “Tell me honestly, what’s your problem?” And he said: “I’m afraid”. That pilot was released from the regiment…But in general the mood was: “Let’s go to the front!” We would fly with the young pilots in two-seaters two or three times – they were mostly well-trained, but it was required that they study the plane in detail! Moreover, many of them were used to open cockpits, but the Il’s cockpit was closed, and at first one felt sort of boxed in. We also got clumsy ones and we had to ‘polish’ them up. You would fly with them time and again, they would do their best but there would still be big problems…