High over the occupied territory, I saw Junkers in the air for the first time: a group of thirty Ju-87s had passed slightly below us at a counter course. They flew in a dense parade formation, their wings tip to tip and flights in a column. “Why don’t we attack them? Come from behind and strike to your heart’s content!”
“Victor! ‘Clodhoppers’ to the right!”
“I see them.” Korolev replied after a while. “Watch the air… None of our business at the moment…”
I remembered that we were not allowed to conduct a normal dogfight. We could only protect the bombers from attacks by German fighter planes and not shift even a step away from the Pawns. The encounter with the Junkers helped me to collect my thoughts, and made me watch the situation in the air more attentively. It was not hard. The sun had not risen, nor yet built a haze. Visibility was excellent, ‘a million by a million’ as flyers like to say.
“The aerodrome will be nearby now,” I thought, and saw a grey strip of concrete ahead of me.
Most likely, the Fascists had not expected an enemy raid deep into their rear in the daytime. No movement at all was seen on the airstrip. The planes, fighters and bombers, were located along the edges of the aerodrome. Most of them were still under soft covers as no play of reflected light was seen on the cockpits.
As our group was moving over the aerodrome itself a flare came up from underneath. “They will begin to take off now,” I guessed. But the take-off of the German fighters was being delayed. Only after about three minutes the silhouettes of two Messers began to slide along the concrete strip. Their first pair was taking off. They’ve taken their own sweet time!
“Victor, the ‘skinnies’ are taking off!”
“I see them. Watch out, no dozing off! They’ll be approaching soon.”
Silence reigned for some time. And suddenly someone’s trembling voice broke it.
“Number ten, number ten! My engine’s playing up badly! It’s jolting, the con-rod’s probably snapped!” Who’s that? It must be from our squadron since he’s calling Arkhipenko, but who is it? Arkhipenko didn’t reply immediately and the same voice yelled again, even more panicky.
“This is Chugunov, my engine is about to fall apart!”
It was Chugunov! I would never have thought that Chugunov could yell in such a disgusting trembling voice. But it sure would be bad to have to bail out into the Fascists’ clutches.
“Will you get back on your own or shall I send someone with you?” Arkhipenko asked at last.
“I’ll make it back…” “You go then. Just be careful there…”
Chugunov turned around and headed towards the Dniepr by the shortest route to the frontline.
The second, third and fourth pair of the Fascists followed the first one. But I wasn’t watching the aerodrome anymore. We were close to the target and an attack of fighter planes flown from other airstrips might be expected now. The bombers dropped part of their bombs straight off and went further west. Their second approach had been planned to occur on the return path.
This attempt didn’t go as smoothly as the first one. Flak guns opened fire during the approach. Shell bursts surrounded the bombers with a dense ring and stood before them, seemingly an impassible wall. I saw such a strong concentration of flak for the first time, and understood that it was really a dangerous thing. So far, I had come across only solitary shell bursts, as the Fascists almost never shot at fighter planes. They were too small and agile a target. I wondered how would they get into this fire. They needed to turn and bypass it. But the Pe-2s were going perfectly straight. They were on the warpath and no force in the world could have made them turn away. And the wall of shells bent, fell back, and instantly disappeared.
“Watch out, Zhen’ka, the ‘skinnies’ will be around shortly!” Victor transmitted through the two-way. He knew the flak gunners would only stop firing once their fighter planes were on the way. They were not too long in coming. Me109s were climbing up steeply, at low speed, towards the Pe-2s.
The inner line of escort fighters engaged the enemy. I’d never seen the Fascists so helpless before. Strictly speaking I had seen them hardly at all, but I’d known from the stories of seasoned flyers that they would always strike, from above, at high speed. They would hit and retreat upwards again. This time, with no speed gathered, lacking a chance to manoeuvre, the Messers were becoming targets for our Cobras. I watched as one of them went ablaze in the air after a burst from Gulayev at point blank range. A second one, shot down by someone else, dived into the ground with no smoke or fire. Most likely its pilot had been killed. Messerschmitts were burning on the ground in three huge fires. Gulayev managed to knock out one more.
The second squadron hadn’t entered the fight yet. But Messers kept coming over. The Hitlerites were obviously sending all available planes into the air. They kept climbing up towards the Pe-2s with no speed and falling down. But some pairs took their experience into consideration and began to gain altitude off to the side so as to attack from above. The moment had come when the crack group, the first squadron, had to enter the fight.
To the right, south of us, two Me-109s were gaining altitude. Korolev turned around and went into attack. “Cover me, Zhen’ka!” That was all he said through the two-way. I saw the silhouettes of the German fighters growing ahead of me, as the nose of Victor’s plane began to wrap itself in fast disappearing puffs of smoke. A fiery red line of bullet and shell traces stretched out towards the Messers. I also saw the leading Me-109 catch fire and begin to fall down, turning over. I also wanted to open fire but had no time as the second Fascist quit the fight in a roll.
More and more new pairs of ‘skinnies’ kept climbing into the heights. Soon we had to fight ‘on a level playing field’. The speeds of our planes became approximately equal, and the Me-109s switched to manoeuvering vertically. They hadn’t yet understood the performance characteristics of our fighter planes, so they hoped to win the fight vertically, as they used to with ‘Lavochkin’ and ‘Yak’ fighters. In vain! Our planes had equal abilities and were even faster in diving. On top of that, the Fascists were demoralised by their ever higher losses. But the fight went on. Now a long tail of white smoke drifted behind one of our fighters, but the plane didn’t catch fire and stayed in formation. I saw its number from afar. “Fourteen! Semen’s been hit again! Don’t you doze off!” And a Messerschmitt passed next to my plane’s nose as if warning me!
Everything stopped somewhat suddenly. The Me-109s quit the battlefield, retreated. At first I didn’t believe it and kept waiting for their return, this time from above. But no one else appeared in the air. Only above the very front line we came across a group of some Soviet fighter planes. The fight was over. And there were no losses on our side. I felt myself the victor, although I hadn’t shot down a plane. I hadn’t even fired a shot but the feeling of supremacy over the Fascists didn’t leave me. It didn’t matter that it hadn’t been my personal victory. The Messers had been catching fire before my eyes. I had seen the Fascist fighters running and understood that they wouldn’t endure a fight ‘on a level playing field’. It meant that the main thing was to notice them in time, and not let them take a position above you.
The Dniepr flashed underneath and straight away Semyon’s voice resounded in headphones.
“Bukchin here, going for a forced landing…” It means one of ours won’t come back. But it didn’t darken my mood. Bukchin apparently managed to cross the frontline, and the Dniepr, on his nerves, and now he could land peacefully. Semyon will come back and the Fascists won’t! I came up to Victor’s plane at the parking bay. Korolev noticed my shining face straight away.
“Well, how is it? Feel better now?”
“You know, these Schmitts are easy to beat!”
“Did you think they were under a spell? I told you!”
“You told me, but today I’ve seen it myself! And I’ve seen your one. Pity I haven’t shot one myself.”
“You will”.
“It’s
a shame though. When you knocked a ‘skinnie’ down I could have done it too. It was in my gun-sight. I glanced back at yours, saw it falling, but mine got away by rolling over. Then another one whizzed just past my nose, flashed through the gun-sight, there was about ten metres between us.”
“Did you shoot?”
“No.”
“Why not? Didn’t I tell you, keep your guns ready?”
“I was afraid we would collide.”
“Doesn’t matter, shot up he would have whizzed past you just as well as in one piece. It’s better to shoot him down and then to turn away, than to turn away from an intact one. You never know where an intact one will turn to. And a shot one has only one way to go, down.”
“All right, I’ll bear it in mind. And what about the confirmation now? They used to send ground troops for confirmations of kills. What about now? Ask the Germans?”
“Well, they still can get confirmation from the flyers, from the bomber crews. And then from the locals when this territory is liberated. That’s the way it’s always been done.”
The roar of a gunned engine stopped us talking. The technicians were looking for a reason for Chugunov’s return from the sortie. The flyers were gathered around the bonfire and having a lively discussion of the ups and downs of the sortie just completed. The joy of victory rang in their words. Chugunov was more active then the rest. Constantly turning back and glancing at the technicians mobbing his plane, he took a keen interest in all that had happened during the fight, delighting in the results of the flight, and continually repeating, “Eh, pity I wasn’t there… Eh, the engine let me down… I wouldn’t have got flustered and would have shot down one or two. The engine failed…” Such a sincere regret sounded in his words that I couldn’t help thinking, “He was really unlucky. Such a fight and he wasn’t in it…”
But then the squadron engineer Cherkashin came up to the fire and addressed Arkhipenko. “Comrade Commander, the engine of Chugunov’s plane has been tested in all modes of operation. She’s working like a horse.”
“Can’t be! Chugunov returned from the mission because of the engine!”
“Maybe it was playing up at a high altitude? Needs to be flight-tested.”
“What the hell is it about the altitude! We didn’t even hit two and a half thousand.”
“Needs to be tested at that altitude.”
“Alright. Victor, do a flight-test.” Arkhipenko turned to Korolev.
Korolev stood up and without haste walked towards the parking bay.
Chugunov went pale with fury. “You don’t believe me, do you?”
“Why wouldn’t I? I have to find a reason. They have not found it on the ground. Maybe it’ll be found in the air. Korolev will fly back and we’ll know”.
“I flew, I told you what happened!”
“It’s time we know planes are tested by experienced flyers, by commanders!” The usually unflappable Cherkashin flared up. Then he added more quietly, “We can’t do anything until the reasons are known.”
“The engine was playing up.” Chugunov couldn’t shut up.
“Then it worked alright. Maybe now it’ll work as normal.”
“We’ll see. Malfunctions don’t get fixed up themselves. Korolev will find something.”
In about twenty minutes Korolev taxied back to the parking. He was met by apprehensive silence near the fire. All these long minutes, they had been listening attentively to the smooth song of the engine coming down from the skies. By the sound of it the engine was working fine. What would Korolev say? Victor spoke even before he came up to the fire. “Oh, poor you, Aeneas! How does it go, Zhen’ka? ‘He fled from Troy at breakneck speed!’ All you can do is to rub your heels with lard and wage your war here by the fire.” It was a quote from the Ukrainian humorous poem, Eneida, a satiric statement on the Trojan War by Ivan Kotlyarevskiy. (1769-1838)
“I would, I would have struck, I would have killed, I wasn’t there! Pah!”
Korolev spat and turned away from Chugunov. “Comrade Commander,” he officially reported to Arkhipenko, “there’s nothing wrong there. The engine works like a good watch. Nothing to report. His bum played up. Sometimes a parachute can pass through it, sometimes there’s no room for a needle. He quit when the Schmitts started to come up.”
“How come, Chugunov?” Arkhipenko even became flustered. Such an open cowardice is rarely known among flyers. Moreover, everyone had formed the opinion that Chugunov was a brave, determined man.
“The engine was playing up. I don’t know what was wrong with it. Maybe there was some water in the carburettor.”
Everyone seized on this. Maybe there was water in the carburettor. You can’t change your opinion about a man just like that. Although the mechanic said that there had been no water in the drip box, some could have made its way into the carburettor. The day before, perhaps.
4
To the bridgehead
That day we flew another mission. Korolev led a quartet to cover the ground troops who had broken into Krivoy Rog. “Look how far they’ve gone, more than a hundred kilometres beyond the Dniepr!” The flyers cheered. We were covering a narrow strip of bridgehead on the right-bank of the river only a week before. But now there was a shortage of fuel for giving cover to the mobile sectors of the front. And there were fewer and fewer aircraft available. There were combat losses and some planes had been falling out of action due to engine failures. The Allison engines installed on Airacobras had been designed to fly from permanent aerodromes with concrete surfaces. We flew from a field aerodrome. Dirt and dust would get into carburettor intakes, and along with air, into the cylinders and oil systems of engines. Sand had been destroying crankshaft bearings, evidenced by shavings in oil filters. The engines had been failing.
We were flying with fuel tanks attached. Nothing had changed on the bridgehead over the two hours since the bomber escort sortie. Only the sun was shining brighter, haze had covered the horizon and made the details of the landscape vague. But for some reason the smoke of fires typical for the frontline had moved nearer from the west. Why? Nobody even paid attention to it. There was a war on. Artillery fire, aviation… Do you need to look for reasons for fires around the front line?
Krivoy Rog emerged from the haze in all its beauty. We were astounded by the absence of people. No movement was seen in the streets, amidst grey smoke-grimed stone buildings clustered within a relatively small space. Mining settlements were widely scattered around this centre and along the Ingoults and Saksagan rivers. Who had the town? We or the Germans? No one could answer these questions as the flyers didn’t know the precise position of the front line.
We’d been sent to cover the Krivoy Rog area and to contact a ground control point. Currently no one was answering Korolev’s radio inquiries. There was either no ground control point here or it couldn’t reply. Most likely our troops had not reached the area yet since there were none of the fires usual for the front line…
What decision could Korolev take? And could he really take an independent decision? We’d been sent to cover Krivoy Rog. No one had re-directed us through two-way. It meant we had to carry out our mission. The fighters were flying alternating courses over the silent city spread underneath. Were we seen from the ground? If so, who was seeing us? The group returned without resolving this issue. No one in the regiment headquarters knew anything either about the situation around Krivoy Rog. By that night, Arkhipenko had been called to the CP and ordered to fly all available aircraft to a new base on the bridgehead. It had become too far to fly to cover the ground troops.
“We’ve got orders hyar to fly to the Zelenoye aerodrome,” Fedor declared. “Four planes will go from our squadron, Tsygan and I, and you, Korolev, with Mariinskiy. The Regimental Navigator Ovchinnikov will lead us.” Tsygan, i.e. Gipsy, was the flyer Bourgonov’s nickname, by the principle of contradiction. He was a light blond fellow, his hair white, almost like an albino’s. His face was also pale, with no traces of the tan common among flyers who s
pend most of their lives on aerodromes, in the sun and wind. We were all used to this nickname, and neither in the air nor on the ground was he called anything else.
“Ovchinnikov?” Korolev was surprised. “Can’t we get there by ourselves?”
“You see, it’s already late, the sun’ll be down soon. That’s why Bobrov has decided to send his deputy as leader.” Half of the crimson disc of the sun had already gone behind the horizon when Victor and I took off. The group did a circle around the aerodrome, made a formation, and headed towards the new spot.
The sun set. All landmarks became unrecognisable in the gathered dusk. The Dniepr flashed as a grey leaden-coloured strip and then disappeared in the thickening gloom. This was my first time in the air at this time of the day, and I could not really tell what places we were flying over. What use would my knowing have been? I didn’t even know where we were flying to, or where the new aerodrome was situated. Only the leader would know for sure. This guy will get us there. He’s an old wolf, a night flyer. After all, he led us along the route from Yanov so well.
According to schedule, the group should be approaching the new aerodrome. But the sun had already gone down, and a purple haze had covered the terrain. The leader had not found the aerodrome straight away, and began to make large circles, leading the group a fair way west and then coming back. Typically for the South it was getting dark quickly. The stars appeared in the sky. Ovchinnikov gave the order to turn on the aero-navigation lights so as not to lose each other in the darkness. But we didn’t yet know the cockpit well enough to find the toggle switch for these lights, in the darkness. I pressed my plane closer to Victor’s plane, positioning myself by the fires bursting from his exhaust jets. A bluish strip of exhaust fire showed up the side of an adjacent plane pretty well in the darkness. Actually this fire would be lost from sight with the slightest increase in distance and I had to look for my leader ‘by touch’. We had to stick closer together than we had flown for a long time. There was no way around it. It was getting darker and darker. We were already losing hope of finding the aerodrome
Red Star Airacobra Page 6