Ovchinnikov gathered us into a full parade formation straight after the take off. The planes were flying wing to wing. Our course was laid as a triangle. First to the frontline, that is towards the Dniepr, then eastwards along the Dniepr, and then a turn back towards our Karlovka aerodrome. Whilst we were flying straight everything was ‘alright’. All the pilots held their positions as if tied to them. Ovchinnikov even managed to show us a flat field stretching along the railroad near the large settlement of Kozelshchina and transmitted that our new aerodrome would be on it.
The wide strip of the Dniepr had been visible ahead of us for quite a while. It was time to turn left. It became clear straight away that the parade formation was only good for flying over the Tushino Aerodrome. It had been a popular place for aviation shows near Moscow before the war. It was fine too over Red Square, when large groups in parade formations turned by no more than 2-3 degrees, and didn’t break themselves up. But this time the wedge of thirty fighter planes had to turn left by more than 90 degrees. The wingmen on the right flank immediately fell short of engine power to keep up with the formation, and that’s why the right flank began to lag. Several individual planes fell behind too, i.e. those who had weaker engines. Three pairs of battle-seasoned flyers had to be detached to safeguard them.
Our bridgeheads were nearby, just beyond the Dniepr. According to the information from headquarters, large groups of Fascist bombers had always hung around the bridgeheads near Mishurin Rog and Perevolochnaya. There, once upon a time, the remnants of the Swedish Army of Charles XII, destroyed by Peter the Great’s troops, crossed the river. Fortunately, however, this time the skies over the Dniepr and beyond were clear. The flight along a straight line went quietly. All thirty fighter planes gradually took their places in a dense parade formation. After a new turn it all happened again. The regiment approached the aerodrome, not in a neat parade formation, but in a shapeless jumble. Nevertheless, break-up for landing and the landing itself went well. After landing we noticed that two planes were missing. Late that night we found out that they had lost touch with the group. Not knowing the exact course to the aerodrome, they went astray and landed on airstrips of the neighbouring 3rd Ukrainian Front, from which they flew back only on the next day.
In the morning we were informed that we would fly over to the Kozelshchina aerodrome that we had seen the day before from the air. The redeployment was dictated by the necessity for the fighter planes to be based closer to the bridgeheads. The frontline stretched along the Dniepr and went beyond it only south-east of Kremenchug, near the village of Mishurin Rog, and near Perevolochnaya. There the Soviet troops had captured narrow strips of the low right-bank. The main task for us was to give the bridgeheads and river crossings cover from attacks by German aviation.
The frontline or LOE, i.e. the ‘Line of Engagement’ as it was officially called in the Regimental Headquarters, was plotted out before the flight. This time the flight was carried out squadron by squadron and it went smoothly, with no trouble. The rest of the day was granted to the flying and technical personnel for setting up their new quarters. A dug-out was made for the CP and parking bays for the planes were fitted out.
It is worth noting that the Regimental Commander Bobrov, who had taken over the unit before the summer fighting, had done quite a lot to prepare the Regiment for combat over the Kursk Salient. However, his battle experience from the Spanish Civil War, for which he had been awarded the Lenin Order, was not of great use in this war. Significantly, he had worked out and taught the flyers a 180-degree ‘en-masse turn’ manoeuvre. In it a flyer doesn’t follow his leader in a dense formation, but turns around as if he is alone in the air. Of course, to implement this manoeuvre we had to abandon the parade formation. The fighter planes now flew with 100-150 metre intervals and 25-50 metres apart. As a result, a group of any number of planes could make a turn over the same period of time as a single plane. When doing it, no plane would lose altitude for lack of speed and there would be no stragglers either. The same way, an ‘en-masse’ turn at 90 degrees would be carried out as well as at any other angle. After these turns the group would find itself again straight away in the previous ‘front’ formation with the same intervals and gaps. It was a major achievement in fighter tactics and helped the pilots a lot during combat, especially at its earlier stage.
He also taught us to approach an enemy plane as close as possible, i.e. right up against it, and to shoot from the shortest possible distance, making it impossible to miss. This time the situation had not allowed training of the new regimental personnel on the spot. The new pilots had to learn from the older battle-seasoned fellows.
Next morning, after the redeployment, we were awakened unusually early. Not a single sunbeam had yet slipped through the forgotten planks and plywood sheets of the window. “Reveille!” the orderly yelled behind the door. The pilots woke up, but were not in a hurry to get up. But then the door half-opened and a reddish dot of fire trembling on the upper part of a flattened 37mm shell case showed up. The orderly brought into the room this ‘Katyusha.’ It was the nickname for a wick lamp hand-made from a flattened artillery shell. The reddish flame lit up the soldier’s hands, the trench coat hanging over his shoulders, his chin and the tip of his nose. All other details of his clothes and figure sank in the darkness. The weak flame of course couldn’t drive away the darkness but had still created some sort of bright spot.
“Reveille!” The orderly repeated a bit quieter. “The bus is already waiting! Quick, quick, get ready!” We got dressed quickly, by touch, and dashed outside in two minutes. A dark autumn night met us there. The bright southern stars twinkled only in the gaps between the clouds. An old bus was standing near the front steps, puffing. It had been battered by front line roads and was nicknamed the ‘Wildebeest’, after the vehicle glorified by Ilf and Petrov in their novel The Golden Calf. It was popular in the USSR before the war. Once upon a time it used to take holiday-makers from Simferopol, down to the Crimean coast and back. Then it had an awning above the back. Now there were only shreds of the straps left. We instantly filled the bus, some of us through the doors, some over the low back boards, and it rolled off through the dusty streets of Kozelshchina. Knowing there was a working convent nearby we decided to give the nuns a reveille and sang not quite decent verses composed, apparently, during the First World War:
Once upon a train
Rode a serviceman,
Just an ordinary one.
He used to be a merchant,
He used to be a dandy,
Now he was a First Lieutenant.
But of ladies’ hands
He was a General.
He sat on the edge and sang.
At one station a lady,
Serious and graceful,
Came in and the Lieutenant
Threw himself at her feet…
We never found out if we had woken up even one nun, or if we had passed by any nunnery at all, but sang heartily and at the top of our voices.
In the meantime, ‘Wildebeest’ rapidly ran through the streets of the town and soon stopped next to the regimental CP. All the passengers immediately jumped off and mobbed the entry into the dug-out. Everybody was eager to find out the reasons for such an early wake-up and about the plans for that day. But only the squadron commanders were invited into the dug-out. The rest of the flyers were sent to the parking area to receive their planes from their mechanics. However, we were told the group’s mission in general terms During the daylight hours the fighter planes were supposed to cover the ground troops on the bridgeheads and, especially, the river crossings used for supplying troops with ammunition, food and reinforcements. The exact times of take-off and tasks were to be conveyed by the squadron commanders who had stayed at the CP.
That was the reason why, that early autumn morning, Victor and I found ourselves at our Squadron CP, having a lively discussion whether it was worth setting a campfire, and whether the Germans had planes to bomb it. “Why the hell wouldn’t t
hey?” Victor was outraged. “We captured the bridgeheads and you reckon the Germans haven’t mustered any air force here? It’s merely their tactics. We always cover the frontline to stop a single bomb falling on the ground troops. But the Germans don’t cover the frontline. Or they might send a couple of ‘hunters’ over. But they wouldn’t attack a large group and would chase only single planes. Generally speaking they rarely fly over the frontline, but turn out in large groups. And a lot of bombers and Schmitts may come. But you won’t come across them on every flight.”
Other flyers of the squadron were coming up and Victor fell silent. “Valya, why did they wake us up so early?” I heard a question addressed to Valentin Karlov. I recognised Sergey Akinshin by his voice. We had joined the Chkalov USSR Central Aeroclub in Tushino together, and studied together, then found ourselves in the Ostafievskoe Aviation School near Moscow. We waited for ‘buyers’ in a Reserve Regiment based at the Severniy aerodrome in Ivanovo. When the buyers arrived we were taken up to the 27th Fighter Aviation Regiment, and firstly, to the same squadron, the 2nd one. But then a lot of things changed in the Regiment. After fighting over the Kursk Salient, it was given the rank of ‘Guards’ and was renamed the 29th Guards Fighters Aviation Group. The same day we found out that the Supreme Soviet had honoured Captain Nikolay Dmitrievich Gulaev, a flyer of the 29th Guards Fighter Regiment, with the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. He was deputy of the 1st Squadron commander, Chepinoga.
Then another event occurred. Groups of Heinkels and Junkers fell into the habit of bombing the river crossings over the Dniepr in the evenings, before nightfall. Apparently the Germans knew that we had no flyers trained to fly in the night, so they were free to fly over at twilight each evening. Then the Division Commander selected all flyers with some night flying experience. There were six of them, including the Regimental Commander Bobrov. Our flight of six aircraft took off shortly before the anticipated German raid. The flyers and technicians who had stayed on the aerodrome could clearly see our ‘sixer’ fly south, against the background of grey sky, with a climb up towards the river crossings. Just then nine Heinkel 111s flew towards them in a dense formation. One of our fighters pulled up his nose and opened fire at them. It didn’t impress the Germans at all. They dropped their bombs on a crossing, in the same dense formation, and quietly went back.
Our fighters began to come back. But the aerodrome was not ready to receive planes in the night. There were no landing searchlights. But six Airacobras were already circling over the aerodrome. Then the Chief-of-Staff, Lieutenant-Colonel Pilipchuk, ordered a T-shaped landing sign be laid out on the ground with ‘Bat’ torches, and the landing strip be lit up with flares. Because of that five planes landed safely, but the sixth flyer forgot to lower the landing gear and landed on the fuselage belly. Meanwhile, the first of the safely landed planes taxied up to the CP and turned the engine off. The regimental Commander Bobrov jumped out of the cockpit and immediately called up the plane technician.
“I got a hit, I got a hit, I got a hit! Draw me a star!” It was a custom at the front to mark every aerial victory with a star on the fuselage. The 1st Squadron commander Chepinoga couldn’t control himself. He told Bobrov to his face what he thought about him and his ‘shot down’ Heinkel. It ended up with a brawl. Next day he was swapped with Captain Arkhipenko, a squadron commander in a neighbouring regiment. After all, it was only a matter of taxiing planes in opposite ways as the regiments were based on the same aerodrome.
Just a few days later the commander of the 2nd Squadron, Captain Sheluntsov, didn’t come back from a sortie. Later we found out that, for an unknown reason, he had forced-landed on the bridgehead. Then, having checked the engine he decided to take off. His Airacobra turned over and burned during the take off. The flyer was burned as well, but two medals, ‘For the Defence of Moscow’, and ‘For the Defence of Stalingrad’, were found on his remains. None of the flyers who flew Airacobras, and there were two divisions of them, had these medals. Thus we found out that Captain Sheluntsov had died. Hero of the Soviet Union Gulaev, deputy commander of the 1st Squadron, was appointed to take over the 2nd Squadron. It caused the following rearrangement. Victor Korolev was appointed as Arkhipenko’s deputy. When Korolev moved to the 1st Squadron he took me with him. Valentin Kozlov and Akinshin stayed in the 2nd Squadron.
The question asked by Sergey was of no less interest to all the flyers. At the moment they were gathering near the CP, and on the way Akinshin asked his leader about the reason for such an early departure. “Who knows? He has probably got a mission and we will fly today. When the Commander comes he will tell us.” Karlov answered with no hesitation. The flyers sat down on empty petrol and oil-cans around the ashes of the bonfire, took out their tobacco pouches or metal boxes which were substitutes for cigarette-cases, and began to smoke.
Dawn came quickly as is common in the South. One after another the stars disappeared amidst the clouds, the planes’ silhouettes parked quite far apart showed up out of the darkness, the nearest first and then the whole aerodrome came into sight. At first everybody was silent. I didn’t want to smoke and I went aside. In a few minutes I returned with a bunch of dry corn and sunflower stalks. A burst of laughter resounded near the CP and then I heard Chugunov’s words.
A mechanic is checking the propeller backlash, but a pilot hears something rattling in the engine. “What’s that?” he asks. “Well, the crankshaft snapped and I tied it up with a rope, but obviously not well enough. It’s still rattling. I should have done it with wire but had no time. Doesn’t matter, you’ll fly with it today and tomorrow I’ll fix it up.” Well, now we’ll get “today you humped a goat, but tomorrow…”
At the beginning of the war, people unfamiliar with machinery and aviation terms joined the air force, and took over positions directly related to flying. This led to lots of different anecdotes. Some were based on real facts and others were the idle fiction of aviation cadets and young flyers. One of these had been told by Chugunov, who was choking with pleasure. Tall, skinny, flaxen-haired, with a freckled pug nose and light blue eyes, Chugunov was strikingly cheerful. He felt free in any situation and liked to be in the spotlight of any company.
I came up to the pile of ash, broke up the corn stalks and heaped up a small pyramid of them.
“Can I light it up now?” I asked Korolev. “Well, why not?”
A tiny tongue of flame began to flicker in the pyramid, then the fire blazed up, and it became somewhat warmer and jollier inside. Everybody moved closer to the bonfire.
“So are we flying today or not, Victor?”
“For sure. But where to?”
“Maybe your lot will go on your own again?”
When the Regiment had received a mission, to prepare a group to conduct a ground attack sortie, only battle-seasoned flyers had been selected for it. It made a bad impression on all of those who had not been included. Then that sortie never happened, but there still was a misgiving that we wouldn’t be chosen for the next task either. Victor was not in a hurry to answer my question. He sat down, made himself comfortable, smoothed down his breeches. Once again, for another time out of many, I thought why he liked these breeches so much. They had seen a lot and had even begun to shine through at the knees. But they were dark-blue, a relic of the pre-war style of air force uniform, fashionable ones, with full fronts. Victor painstakingly looked after them, darned up the smallest holes. He only didn’t dare to set about the knees because there was too much to do! And there were no real holes. Shining through? Well, it can wait. And in fact they would survive for much longer.
Victor’s face, swarthy and gypsy-like despite the pug nose, was turned to the fire. His big black eyes, framed by long, nearly girlish turned-up lashes, were smiling. His long, slightly curly hair was not just showing, but cascading from under his navy field cap edged with light blue. Not just a head of hair, but a whole haystack. One could see by his eyes, the smile that had just touched his chubby lips, that he understood his wingman’s i
mpatience and wanted to cheer him up in his own way.
“You don’t you think we’re going to fly on our own all the time? And you’ll just watch us? We won’t get too far on the ‘oldies’ only. Everybody will have to fly today.” The squadron commander Arkhipenko came up to the bonfire. “Come on, my little eagles, hurry up and draw up the ‘line of engagement’. We’re flying cover,” he said, as he sat down on an available empty can.
Arkhipenko, a small, sharp-nosed and lively guy in his invariable leather jacket, never could sit on one place, was always in a hurry and most of the time was busy with mending his Raglan. Whilst Korolev’s breeches were a subject of envy, this Raglan coat was the talk of the town. This Raglan had probably served its term out even before 1941. Now flakes would be torn off it whenever Arkhipenko caught on something. He wouldn’t sew it up, for thread wouldn’t hold the rotten leather, he would laminate it with emalite. “How about you copy out the LOE, hyar.” He handed the map over to Korolev. For some reason he liked the word ‘here’ and would insert it if it was needed, or even if it wasn’t. He had a special way of pronouncing it, hyar. Everybody was used to it and paid no attention.
The frontline remained uncomplicated. It stretched along the left bank of the Dniepr and the red line only cut away a narrow strip of the right-bank, between Derievka and Domotkan. The strip was a bit wider around the villages of Mishurin Rog and Borodaevka. The terrain over there was low and in front of it, beyond the bridgehead, it was hilly. “Life is hard for the infantry over there.” Korolev sighed. “We have to give them air cover to at least stop the Germans bombing them. That’s our people fighting there.” The Regiment set about its duties with the dawn. The 3rd Squadron was the first to fly off to the front, and it was followed by the 2nd. Then the time came for the 1st to fly.
Red Star Airacobra Page 3