Red Star Airacobra

by Evgeniy Mariinskiy

  The quartet of fighters took off, climbed and headed, as all usually did, in the direction of the bridgehead. A painful time began for everyone who had stayed on the aerodrome, awaiting their return. The third squadron came back. It came back with no losses, but the flyers reported that the Germans had been more active over the bridgehead than some days before. There were more bomber groups turning out and more enemy fighters. The uneasiness over the fate of the quartet from the second squadron intensified. But everything, even a tedious wait comes to an end.

  My thoughts were interrupted by the din of engines. Our guys are coming back, judging from the sound. I looked towards the frontline. Commonly, all fighters when coming back would sweep over the airstrip at full speed, and with a ‘whiz,’ then climb up vertically into the autumn blue, and only then disperse for landing. This time the group went down for landing straight away, from a high altitude. Something had happened. Everyone who sat around the bonfire understood it, and began to watch attentively the landing of the fighters. They were back, but in what condition?

  The plane of the squadron commander, Hero of the Soviet Union Nikolay Gulayev, was first to land and rolled over the flat dirt of the airfield. Then the pair of Valentin Karlov and Sergey Akinshin landed. They were already taxiing to the parking when plane number14 of the Gulayev’s wingman Semyon Bukchin was only beginning to conduct his fourth turnaround in order to land between the landing marks. His plane was turning around somewhat hesitantly but nevertheless straightened its course. It glided somewhat unconfidently, as well as shuddering and swaying. However, it landed safely and rolled over the field past the parking bays of the first squadron. Everybody saw that the plane was literally riddled with Fascist gun bursts. Bullet holes were not seen from afar but shell holes with ragged edges were clearly seen. Not only the fuselage was shattered but the wings with the fuel tanks in them too. The dregs of the fuel were pouring out of them. Everybody was surprised how the fighter had managed to make it home and not caught fire. Why didn’t it burn up instantly during that very fight?

  The landed planes of the second pair had no battle damage.

  “Most likely they came across a pair of ‘hunters’.” Chugunov suggested.

  “What makes you think that?” Arkhipenko asked.

  “There was no large group. Only Bukchin came back with holes.”

  “You reckon everybody would have got holes in a big fight?”

  Chugunov said nothing. He just didn’t know what to answer. In his mind he was sure that each dogfight would entail losses. But he had understood by the intonation of the question that the commander thought differently. Arkhipenko didn’t get an answer. He stood up, wrapped his raglan tighter, threw a couple of dry corn stalks into the fire, having broken them beforehand into three parts, and began to talk looking into the fire.

  “In combat, hyar, you have to keep your eyes open. If you see a German, well you won’t let him hang on your tail. But generally speaking one may be shot down only early in a fight. To be precise, before it, when the ‘skinnies’ hang on you unnoticed. It’s hard to knock down a fighter during a dogfight. He’s always on alert, always sees everything.”

  “Not everybody sees. I didn’t see then where the Schmitts and Korolev had gone…”

  Meanwhile, Arkhipenko kept talking. “Even bombers usually get shot down in the first attack. If a first attack is unsuccessful it’ll be harder to carry on the fight. Their gunners will get ready and the flyers will fly in a dense formation to enable their gunners to help each other. But if you shoot down a couple of bombers from a first strike, their group will fall apart, they’ll drop their bombs wherever, and bolt, everyone for himself.”

  “Listen up, Zhen’ka, Fedor is right.” Victor, who was sitting next to me, whispered.

  “Learn to notice all planes from afar, then they won’t come up nearby at all.”

  “That means Bukchin missed seeing one?” I asked just as quietly.

  “Who knows what happened then. They’ll tell us…”

  Korolev glanced at the parking area of the second squadron and began to talk about a different matter. “The main thing is to keep your chin up. You’ve been hit once! Keep learning, and watch the sky. The Schmitts are good teachers. Better than any school. As long as you are a good student. I’ve seen some tremble at the knees, and you seem to have some kind of uncertainty.”

  “What sort of uncertainty?” I was sincerely surprised. After the first sortie, when I had seen the shot-up Cobras, I really felt some kind of twinge deep inside. I myself brought back a shell hole and several scratches on my leg from my second sortie. And, strange as it might seem, I had calmed down. Somewhere in my subconsciousness I had acquired a sensation of confidence, that it was feasible to avoid the fire of Schmitts, and that not every burst from their guns reached the target. I understood that it wouldn’t be that easy for the Fascists to shoot me down. What about me? It was in my own strength that I lacked confidence. Victor decided to push me into speaking my mind.

  “So what’s the matter?”

  “It’s just a shame. Everybody fights, everybody’s in combat, but we… What kind of confidence can one have without fighting? I’m not afraid for myself. But will I get to shoot one down?”

  “There will be more fighting. There’ll be more than enough. You’ll get yours. Do you write home?” Victor changed the subject.

  “I do. But I don’t write that I’m at the front. What’s the point of worrying my mum? She’s tormented with two smaller ones, they’re starving. One is at the front. The oldest one either died at the beginning of the war, or hadn’t been drafted to the army, and stayed in Ananiev, in occupied territory. It’s in Odessa province and the border was nearby. There have been no letters from him since then. What’s the point of my troubling my mum about me?”

  “I see. What about your father?”

  “He died in 1940…” I didn’t want to enlarge upon this issue and didn’t specify where and how my dad died.

  Gulayev came up to the bonfire and my talk with Korolev was interrupted, to my relief.

  “Come on, fellows, let me warm up by your fire”. Gulaev began to talk excitedly. “The wind is cutting right through. I haven’t got a raglan like yours, Fedor!”

  A short guy, impetuous in his motions, with a long fair Cossack forelock poking out from his peaked cap, he shoved aside the other flyers, without ceremony, and sat by the fire.

  “So, Nikolay, you had to fight, didn’t you?” Arkhipenko asked Gulayev.

  “I did! If not for Semyon they would have shot me down too! Imagine, he protected me with his own plane! He took the whole burst upon his plane and there was not a single hole in mine. And I saw those ‘skinnies’ and could have dodged it. But I had just knocked down a ‘clodhopper’ and another one was in the gun-sights. I radioed him to drive the Schmitts away but there wasn’t a peep out of him, no reaction.” ‘Clodhopper’ was a nickname given to the Ju-87, due to its massive non-retractable landing gear, a reminder of shoes made of bast in old Russia. The Junkers 87 dive bomber was commonly nicknamed the ‘Stuka’ by English and American speakers.

  “I never heard a command from you!” Semyon Bukchin, Gulayev’s wingman, responded.

  “I was sending him a message about the Schmitts as well!” Valentin Karlov, the leader of the second pair of Gulayev quartet, added. “But he didn’t hear me.”

  “It’s his ‘Bendics’ English two-way!” Sergey Akinshin suddenly began to speak. “You can’t hear anything through it unless you’re talking in the same room and take your headphones off.”

  “G-o-o-ot i-i-t!” Gulayev drawled. “And I just thought my little Jew mate had chickened out and had cold feet… I saw the Messer had already opened fire and was about to stitch my Cobra up! And then I saw he’d thrown himself across the burst and covered me! There’s a Jew for you, I thought, he put himself last!”

  “What else could I do?” Semyon Bukchin began to talk at last. “I’d heard nothing through the two-way.
I saw the Messer when he was already pointing his nose and aiming. It was too late to cut him off with fire. Well, I thought, the wingman is the shield of his leader. And the shield is supposed to take hits on itself. Then I threw my plane in front of his nose!”

  “That’s right!” Gulayev concluded. “The wingman is the shield of his leader. But we don’t take it so literally! The wingman’s manoeuvres, the fire of his guns on an attacking enemy, these are his leader’s shield. To throw yourself across enemy fire to protect your leader is kind of over the top, and only shows the wingman hasn’t kept his eyes open, hasn’t noticed the enemy in time, and failed to drive him away with his fire!”

  Semyon drooped at these words. Gulayev noticed his reaction and went on, “I’m very grateful to you, Semyon, for your self-sacrifice and help. I think you and I will fly together some more, and you’ll become a real wingman. I’ll help you develop that way. Good deeds are never forgotten. Only evil tongues babble on that the road to hell is paved by good intentions. Only, the ‘skinnies’ did punish you for your good deed today. But we learn from our mistakes and my guess is, Semyon, with time you’ll learn to keep your eyes open. In the meantime, I’ll requisition you a replacement two-way, with an American one from one of those planes which are out of order and not repairable.”

  We questioned Gulayev until he was called up to the regimental CP. “Yes, Semyon is the sort of fighter you need,” Chugunov summed up after Gulayev had gone. “Not like our lot.”

  “Alright, that’ll do. We’ll see what sort of fighter you are. Sure you’re a hero, no point arguing. But you haven’t come across the Germans yet, eh?” Korolev asked Chugunov venomously. Chugunov blazed up. He knew he had been regarded by all as a seasoned flyer, and it had elevated him so much in his own eyes that he had been using the simplicity of the frontline customs quite freely. “So I haven’t. It’s not my fault, is it? When I do come across them I’ll fight no worse than the rest!” He would have replied with the same aplomb, not only to the deputy squadron commander Korolev, but to the Regimental Commander as well.

  I flew a lot those days and felt more sure of myself in the air. In fact, it was a confidence different from at the beginning. I didn’t think that I would just be shooting the Fascists down and stay intact. Anything might happen. The losses in the Regiment were eloquent evidence of that. But I began to fly a different way, not the way I had been taught. I paid much less attention to the instruments’ readings. I’d learned to define the speed of my plane by its behaviour, and the work of the engine by its sound. I watched the air much more and began to understand the leader’s intentions better. We were constantly together on the ground, we flew regularly, and it began to influence the results. “I’d love to shoot down at least one Fascist. We can fight in these machines. And Gulayev has knocked down his fourth one”.

  Of course we could fight. We just needed to know how. Others fought successfully, even on machines seemingly quite unadapted to active aerial fighting. That day the Division Commander Nimtsevich, nicknamed ‘the Beard’ by the flyers, for his little black goatee, flew to the regiment and told us about an interesting dogfight. On 29 October, fighters of the neighbouring Division escorted eighteen Pe-2 dive-bombers, led by the Guards Colonel Polbin, to strike the Alexandria railroad station. They attacked from a height of six hundred metres, as there was unbroken cloud cover above that. After withdrawal from the target, the first nine Pe-2s came across twenty Ju-87s at a transverse route. The pair of fighters escorting the Pawns attacked the Junkers and shot down two of them. Polbin led his Pawns into attack behind the fighters. They shot down one more Ju-87. The rest of the Fascist planes scattered in all directions, began to retreat into the clouds and deeper into their territory, dropping their bombs. ‘Pawns’ was the frontline nickname for Pe-2 bombers, as the original name corresponded to the first two letters of the Russian word ‘peshka’ or pawn.

  Meanwhile, another group of eighteen Ju-87s escorted by six Me-109s came over. The Pawns immediately attacked the bombers and a crack group of our fighters, led by Captain Gruzdev, engaged the Messerschmitts. The Pe-2s fought with steep turns and soon they dispersed this group of Junkers. The fighters charged with direct escort, fought alongside the Pawns. Soon there were no more Fascists in the air, but the crews of the Pawns became so keen on the fight that they began to strike the parked planes on an aerodrome, and the enemy fighters that were taking off. Our pilots shot down twelve planes in this dogfight. And four of them were shot down by the Pawns!

  Well, so even bombers encounter Junkers and wage war as fighters, but we’ve still had no luck, I thought, sitting by the fire in my customary place. And the weather was as good as if we’d booked it… The flyers preferred overcast weather when the sun didn’t dazzle and the enemy planes were easily seen against the background of clouds. My reflections were interrupted by the arrival of Arkhipenko and Korolev. They’d been called up to the Regimental CP about half an hour before.

  “What’s new? What kind of sortie have they planned?”

  “Well, get ready. Tomorrow morning we’ll head off to escort Pawns to Kirovograd”, replied Arkhipenko, instead of Victor, to whom I had addressed my questions.

  “Kirovograd!” Chugunov marvelled. “It’s about ninety kilometres beyond the frontline!”

  “And we’ll go even further than that.” Chugunov said nothing.

  “Yes, in the morning we’ll all be on escort. We’ll be in the crack group, above the rest.”

  “What about today?”

  “That’s it for today… Well, tell Volkov he’ll have to prepare the plane for night flying.”

  “Nimtsevich is making up a group of night fighters, a ‘sixer’. They’ll cover the river crossings at twilight. Figichev will fly in your machine.”

  “Understood.”

  Again, the Fascist He-111 bombers had been coming over the river crossings after sunset, for several nights in a row, and bombing them without hindrance. The Hitlerites knew that there were no Soviet night fighters at this sector of the front and were absolutely insolent. They would come at the same time and make several approaches each. They were eager to wipe out the only possible way to supply our troops on the bridgehead. So far they had not managed it, but who knew how that day’s raid would end, unless we held back the Fascists!

  I slowly dragged myself along to my Number 4, i.e. my plane’s registration number on its fuselage, as well as the official call letter, which by the way, was almost never used. We have to give the Fascists a lesson, but why on my plane? Although Figichev was a seasoned fighter, the Divisional Navigator, a Hero of the Soviet Union, I didn’t really want to lend him my fighter plane even for one sortie.

  Volkov was a skinny, medium-tall fellow with a sharp nose, of the same age as me. He was only two months older than his crew commander. Together with Ananiev, the motor-mechanic, he was checking up the oil filter and didn’t notice a flyer had approached.

  “What’s happened, Nikolay?”

  Volkov glanced back, quickly stood up, looked at the filter he was still holding in his hands, gave it to Ananiev and reported.

  “Comrade Commander, we’re checking up the oil filter.” Then he added inquiringly, “No flights today. Can we open the plane?”

  In technicians’ language, ‘to open the plane’ meant to remove all possible cowlings, and to overhaul the engine, fire-arms, two-way, and all systems very thoroughly.

  “No. Make it ready for night flights. And quickly, they said.”

  “Night flights? And who’s going to fly?”

  “Figichev.”

  3

  These ’Schmitts are easy to hit!

  “Well, everybody go to bed!” Arkhipenko ordered after dinner. “Don’t forget, tomorrow’s flight is a hard one. There’s an aerodrome en route, and there are Messers down on it. So, keep a good eye out. There’ll be a dogfight for sure!”

  Clouds two thousand metres high would be good… I wished fervently, as I laid myself down on the plank-bed. Bu
t once I touched the pillow, although it was hard, and stuffed not with straw but some kind of coarse weeds, a young and healthy slumber overcame me. And the clouds, Junkers, Heinkels, ‘skinnies’ and the war itself were gone. Nothing left. Only in the morning I began to feel shoves from Chugunov who was tossing and turning next to me.

  We got up early as always, long before dawn. And we immediately saw outside an illustration of Pushkin’s verses from Poltava. There was everything, the stars, the calm and the poplars. There were no clouds though. Such an idyllic scene was not what we wanted. Somebody even cursed colourfully. “This is not bad either”, Korolev reassured us. “We’ll approach the target from the east, from the sun. The Germans won’t have time to get ready. Their fighters will be taking off when we are flying over them…”

  Our bombers came over the aerodrome shortly after sunrise. We were waiting for them at full readiness. The fighters began to take off, pair after pair, and in several minutes the group set course. The bombers’ route had been worked out, not straight to the target, but with bends in order to deceive the Fascists. It seemed that we had just left the aerodrome, but the wide glossy strip of the Dniepr already stretched on both sides as far as one could see. Its mirror-like surface was crossed by the thin threads of temporary bridges. Ahead of us, in coppices edged with the smoke of fires, the long tongue of the bridgehead stretched towards Krivoy Rog.

  But that day our target was not there on the frontline, and soon the Pe-2s turned straight westwards. The same country, the Ukraine, lay spread out underneath us. Nevertheless it was not the same. Just try landing! You’d find yourself in the Fascists’ clutches straight away. But, from above, nothing was different. The same high Ukrainian skies, the same fields divided into huge squares and rectangles…