Red Star Airacobra

by Evgeniy Mariinskiy

  Suddenly several flares at once soared from the ground. Ovchinnikov understood that it was a sign from the aerodrome and led the group there. Yes, it was the desired aerodrome. But how were we to land on it in full darkness? Neither take-off nor landing lights were used on the aerodrome. We had found the aerodrome but what next? It was so dark, that only with difficulty could I make out the silhouette of Korolev’s plane, flying next to me, by the bluish lights bursting from his exhaust jets. Were they to go, I would be left to face this impenetrable darkness alone.

  But is it the aerodrome? No landing marks, no planes to be seen. A black hole underneath, and one flare after another taking off from there. At last a fire, and then a second, a third, a fourth blazed up against the black background. Bright spots stretched along a straight line.

  “We’re coming in to land! I’m breaking off!”

  “Breaking off…”

  “Breaking off…”

  Four times the same words were repeated by different voices.

  Now here was Victor’s voice. “Breaking off…”

  And in a few seconds, “Come on, Zhen’ka!”

  “I’m turning around.”

  Neither I, nor Victor, had been taught night flying. The flying school’s programme did not envisage this. Who would have thought that front line pilots, who would fly only in the daytime in simple meteorological conditions, would have to land at night-time? The enemy aviation hardly ever operated against frontline targets at night, or in bad weather. And if it did there was no possibility of chasing single planes over the whole endless front line. As for large cities, they were protected by the air-defence flyers, specially trained pilots. And now young untrained airmen had to land by themselves, to learn night flight techniques and landing without even any advice from the sidelines.

  Coming in to land along the line of lights turned out to be not that hard a job. I put the landing gear and wing flaps out and began to glide. It seemed that the plane was sinking into a sort of bottomless pit, and the lights were only shining far ahead. For some reason the lights began to rise higher and higher, and move away. “It’s too far, I have to pull up!” I gathered and pushed on the gas. The lights immediately moved closer. The first one was just nearby. “Time to pull back on the stick… This way… More…” A fire flashed near the console and the plane gently touched the ground and rolled into darkness. I stepped on the brakes. Who knew what was there ahead of me? Where were the planes that had already landed? I was unable to see anything for a long while, being dazzled by the lights flashing next to my wing. Then, on the left, came a light from a pocket-torch. Someone was waving to me. This way, they were telling me. Drive up. And I taxied up to that light and turned off the engine.

  Calling out to one another, the landed pilots gathered together and walked towards a faintly flashing light. We came up to it, and it turned out that there was already a regiment equipped with La-5 fighter planes. The faintly flashing light belonged to mechanics who were working on one of them. They told us which way to go to find the CP. At the CP of the La-5 regiment we were told that nobody had expected the arrival of an Airacobra group, but they walked us to the mess-room anyway. No dinner had been cooked for us.

  “What can I do?” The aged Sergeant-Major who ran the mess-hall said, “You see what’s happening?” In this huge hall, tightly packed with tables an unimaginable noise hung. “I had no time to cook dinner for our own guys. They just arrived at nightfall too…”

  “So what are we supposed to do hyar? Are we meant to go to bed hungry?” Arkhipenko was outraged. “That’s if we find a place to sleep,” Korolev added.

  “The Regimental Commander will arrange night quarters for you”, the Sergeant-Major made himself heard again. “There he is in the corner. You know what”, he added after some hesitation, “I’ll tell them to cook dinner for you as well, and you send somebody to the catering officer, let him put you down for rations. I suppose you’ll get your ‘frontliners’, i.e. your spirits ration, won’t you? Anyway you’ll have to see him.” “Frontliners? Sounds good”, Arkhipenko smiled. “Come on, Victor, take your wingman along and go!”

  The kingdom of the catering officer was nearby, two houses away.

  “It’s lucky you got here in time”, the catering officer smiled after hearing Korolev out.

  “The storekeeper and I were already going to close up and leave. You would have found damn all then. I’m still learning the ropes myself. We only got here today and been in a spin since. Have you got a list for the vodka?”

  “No, we’ve just flown in. We have no aide-de-camps, only flyers here…”

  “M-m-m… Was it you who landed in the night?”

  “Yes, that was us.”

  “Alright then. Here is paper, sit down and write it out. Sign up and get it.”

  “Write it down, Zhen’ka.”

  I wrote about a dozen and a half of the first surnames that came to my mind.

  “Here, Victor, sign it off.” Victor silently signed the paper and gave it to the catering officer. He looked at the result and threw the list to the storekeeper. “Hand it out.”

  “Well, you thought on your feet!” Victor began when we got outside. “You put in all those who stayed back at the old spot, and the technicians as well!”

  “I wrote what came into my head. The catering boss didn’t care. He didn’t know any of them…”

  We found only our guys in the mess-hall. Others had had their dinner and gone.

  “Where have you been? Everything’s gone cold already”, Arkhipenko growled at us.

  “Oh, are there snacks already? Well, you keep eating and we’ll have a drink for you,” Korolev replied smiling archly.

  Morning found the whole Regiment of La-5s on the aerodrome. Our mechanics and the forward team from the ground service battalion had not arrived, and the planes were not yet fuelled up. Fuel for the ‘Lavochkin’ fighters didn’t suit the Airacobras as the former flew on B-78 fuel, and the Airacobras needed B-100. That’s why the La-5 Regiment technicians didn’t risk fuelling the Airacobras with their petrol.

  Work was in full swing at the La-5 parking bays. Their Regiment had already begun its forward operations. One group of La-5s after another was taking off and heading westwards. Suddenly a powerful buzz of aviation engines sounded from the frontline. It was easy to tell by the characteristic whine that these were German bombers. They flew in a column, three groups of twelve Heinkel 111s each, then twelve Junkers-88s and a group of twenty-four Junkers 87s brought up the rear of the column. There was no escort of fighters with them.

  The whole armada was moving straight to the aerodrome. “They’ll give us hell now”, I thought. “And there’s nothing to fly on…”

  “I wish I could take off now, Vit’ka.”

  “What on?”

  “Would we have time to gain altitude?”

  “We would… Anyway… they wouldn’t have left in one piece…”

  “Why aren’t the La-5s taking off? Their parking bays were situated beyond a hillock down by which the airstrip stretched and I couldn’t see what was happening in their Regiment.”

  “Who’s going to take off? They’ve all gone on a mission…”

  Before they reached the edge of the aerodrome the bombers had turned, and were now flying parallel to the airstrip. Seemingly they wanted to drop bombs on the La-5 parking bays. We could clearly see black drops begin to break off from the front planes and head down with growing speed. The Heinkels were releasing their loads of bombs one after another. Black puffs of smoke from explosions and incipient fires were rising to meet the falling bombs from beyond the hillock. It turned out that the Fascists were bombing the village where our side had stayed overnight. And there were none of our fighters in the sky… Yes, there were! A pair of La-5s appeared on the way back from the mission. But what could a pair of fighters with spent fuel and, possibly little ammunition, do against sixty bombers?

  The La-5s dived steeply on the trailing group of Heinke
ls that had not dropped their bombs yet. “Rat-tat-tat”! The rapid-fire cannon array sounded. The last supporting Heinkel caught fire. It tilted, its left wing came off and it began to fall, revolving in the air. Two parachute cupolas opened up above the falling bomber. The third German bailed out and opened up his parachute too early, and it caught on the tail of the falling plane. And that’s how they fell, the wing separately, the fuselage with one wing, and the Hitlerite along with it whirling around the Heinkel’s tail at the distance of the parachute’s sling. And so all the way to the ground. “Hyar, you see”, Arkhipenko remarked, “never pull the ring straight away. Wait a few seconds at least.” That Heinkel was still falling…

  The Heinkels left. They were replaced by the Junkers. They were obviously supposed to dive-bomb but, scared off by the pair of La-5s, dropped their bombs from horizontal flight and began to retreat westwards in a dive. The La-5s didn’t pursue them. Kozhedub, was the leading Soviet ace of WW2. We found out half an hour later, that it was he, together with his wingman, who landed shortly after, on their last drops of fuel. In literally two minutes a quartet of fighters appeared above the aerodrome and dispersed for landing. It was a group from the third squadron which, led by Bekashonok, was continuing the relocation which the previous day had started so unsuccessfully.

  “You should have arrived five minutes earlier. You would have come across the bombers.” Victor sighed. Over five and ten minute intervals, one after another, all the other groups arrived and the ground services followed them. The Regiment was together again. Only a few inoperative machines had stayed on the previous aerodrome. Chugunov’s plane was amongst them for some reason.

  “What’s wrong with the plane?” Arkhipenko asked Cherkashin.

  “I don’t know, I’d taken off earlier. He should have flown.”

  The arriving flyers said Chugunov had actually taken off and flown some way with them, but then returned to the old aerodrome.

  5

  You’ve done your duty

  We didn’t have a chance to fly that day, as the ground service battalion had brought up fuel enough only to top-up the arriving planes. But the La-5 Regiment was worked at full swing. One group after another was taking off. They were coming back, getting refuelled and leaving again.

  We were all gathered together near a straw barn, replacing for now the Regimental CP, as they had only begun to dig a dug-out for it. Only in the evening did the reason for tension become clear. It turned out that the Germans had thrown into action several fresh infantry and panzer divisions. On 28 October, in the morning, they counter-attacked our troops. Their counter-attacks were supported by active operations of the enemy bombers. The attempt of our troops to advance near Noviy Starodub had not yet succeeded. The enemy was threatening to cut off a portion of the bridgehead wedge and a dangerous situation had obviously built up.

  “So”, Bobrov concluded, “now we’re going to the village where everything is ready for us, but we’ll have to sleep in our clothes. They say the German tanks broke through around Pokrovka. If anything happens, we’ll fly back to the previous spot during the night. They’ll be on constant alert over there, and lay out night-lights for landing. Those who have never flown at night will have to fly across the Dniepr and bail out.”

  “If that’s our situation why didn’t we fly out before dark?” I asked Victor when we were getting into a vehicle. “Pokrovka’s only about thirty kilometres away. The tanks’ll be here in an hour.” “Only hell knows. It’s not as bad as he’s saying. The commanders wouldn’t have taken the risk. The neighbours are staying put too, they’re not taking off. And it’s a lot harder to take off and land an La-5 at night than on our ‘Bellochka’. Either way our leisure time was spoiled. Nobody wanted to be caught with their pants down, and the flyers didn’t sleep, as such, but mostly listened to the noise of engines in the darkness.

  In the morning the weather changed sharply. Instead of a dark blue starry sky it brought the flyers low clouds, drifting just above the ground. We rode to the aerodrome on our ‘Wildebeest’, in silence, with no songs. Everybody was listening to the sounds coming from the steppes. But what could we hear through the strained whine of the engine, and the rattling of our vehicle battered by country roads?

  Our parking bays met us with the rattle of engines. The mechanics were preparing for a sortie. It turned out that they had not rested during the night, but had been warming up the engines in turn, to keep them ready for a sudden departure. Nobody knew exactly what was going on, and that was intensifying the strain. The mechanics were openly envious of the flyers. “If something happens you’ll fly away, even in this weather, but we won’t get away from the tanks on foot.” “Comrade Commander, the plane is ready to fly!” Volkov reported when I had come up to my parking bay.

  “Fine. Only the weather seems to be non-flying today. Why are the rifles here?” I asked pointing at firearms gathered on a pile of cloth bags. “These are our wives – ‘the loaded rifles’! We’ve slept with our arms around them all night.” “I haven’t noticed that you love your ‘wives’ too much. Especially Karpushkin.” I was hinting that Karpushkin once came to guard duty with no rifle. “But that was ages ago!” Karpushkin smiled. “And they say now the Germans have broken through.” “I’ve saved some ammunition for you as well, Comrade Commander,” Volkov added. “Get it out, Sergey.” Karpushkin dug around under the bags and pulled out a black cardboard box.

  “There are three hundred rounds in here”, he said handing it to me. “Where did we get so many?”

  “Some tommy-gunners went by here. They gave it away, so as not to carry too much extra weight. So we took it.” The ammunition for PPSh, i.e. Soviet-made submachine-guns, was the same as for the TT pistol, i.e. a Soviet-made pistol usually given to officers. Extra weight? I had not been at the front for long enough and couldn’t imagine that soldiers would make a gift of three hundred rounds. I had got used to conditions where we had to report every spent round and to return empty cases. However, we didn’t get the chance to continue a discussion of this issue.

  “Comrade Commander!” Galya Bourmakova, a tall sturdily-built swarthy girl, our crew’s fire-arms specialist shouted from afar. “Korolev’s calling you to the CP!”

  “What’s up?”

  “Don’t know. A sortie, maybe…”

  I ran to the Regimental CP.

  “Well, Zhen’ka, we are heading off for a ground attack. You were wanting to get back in Karlovka. Now’s your chance!”

  “Where are we going?”

  “Here.” Korolev showed quite a large area on the map. “We’ll pound whatever we find.”

  Generally speaking, a ‘free hunting’ flight was planned but we would have to attack not individual targets, but gatherings of tanks and vehicles well defended by anti-aircraft weapons. We flew off in a pair, as the clouds were too low and visibility too bad for a large group. We headed due south to Krivoy Rog. Clumps of tall weeds and small thickets were flashing underneath. “How can we orient ourselves here? No time to look around…” I was flying at a low altitude, for the first time. Nearly everything I did then, at the front was for the first time. However, to my own surprise I managed to notice that we flew over Iskrovka and Neday-Vody. Then we turned west, and came across a road with a column of vehicles on it.

  “To the attack!” Victor transmitted and approached the column at a narrow angle. We were not diving, as the altitude was too low, but descending at a shallow angle. I saw my leader’s plane about three hundred metres ahead of me. Beyond it, vehicles and more vehicles. I caught one of them in my gun-sight. It was projected into it as a tiny bar. The bar was growing, zooming in and shortly it became clear that it was a big covered truck.

  “Pull out!” Korolev’s voice sounded. “In a second!” I pressed the trigger, made sure that bullets and shells stitched through the target and began to pull out. Firstly I thought that the shells had been shot in vain, as the vehicle I’d shot at was still rolling down the road. But then dense b
lack smoke broke out from under the driver’s cab, fire blazed out and the vehicle swerved and fell into a curvette. Got one! Another one lit up by Krorolev was burning further ahead. “Stick to me! We’re going on!”

  Again the black-grey steppe cut by ravines began to flash under the wings. We sped across some village. “Gurovka!” Victor transmitted. “Turn around by one hundred eighty!” Immediately after the turn we came across a large gathering of motorcars and tanks. Korolev opened fire straight away. A fuel truck caught fire and I saw a high explosive shell destroy a field-kitchen, apparently leaving the Fritz with no dinner. Whilst he was gliding not a single shot came from underneath, but as soon as he pulled out from attack the earth came to life. Dozens of fire traces stretched up to the low clouds, to the fighter plane.

  “You bastards!” I began to strafe the Fascists’ flak positions. The ground fire stopped. When my leader disappeared in the clouds I transferred my fire on the vehicles. I kept shooting almost without aiming until I realised there was no altitude anymore and it was time to pull out. Good! I pulled out of my glide as well and immediately found myself walled in by fire. To the left, in front, behind me, hundreds of red balls were whizzing around. The tapping of bullets perforating the fuselage and wings could be clearly heard. “I need to manoeuvre…” I had heard that bombers had an anti-ground fire manoeuvre. They would change course and altitude. I didn’t even think that at this altitude the flak gunners were shooting into my tail, and if I turned away I would increase the target area for the Hitlerites.