Red Star Airacobra

by Evgeniy Mariinskiy

  This time nothing could prevent me being sure of the results of my shooting. All the crews in the flight, fighters and spotters, saw the ‘frame’ fall. Next morning a confirmation arrived from the ground troops, among whom the heroism of our fighter-pilots was highly praised. It was understandable. ‘Frames’ were the most hated type of German plane, being a forerunner of artillery and bomb strikes.

  8

  He slammed into the ground

  “No more flights for today, but be ready for tomorrow”, Arkhipenko told Chugunov the same day I shot down the ‘frame’. “It’s time for you to come to your senses, enough idling.” He still hoped to cure him of cowardice, to make this man fight, who’d been already given up on in the squadron. In the morning all were awakened by a dull booming coming from the west. It was the preliminary bombardment announcing the beginning of our advance towards Kirovograd.

  “We’ll have to fight today, just hold steady!” The flyers were saying this, and soon on the way to the aerodrome, working out which group each of them would fly in. “So, Aeneas, who will you fly with?” Victor asked Chugunov. “Fedor said he would take you.” “Whoever they send me with!” Chugunov snapped. He stood next to the cab of our three-tonner, looking sideways and protecting himself from the head wind with the raised collar of his flying jacket.

  “But today there’s going to be fighting, God willing!” Chugunov didn’t reply. He knew very well himself that the beginning of an active land operation meant the beginning of hot aerial fighting. Surely the Hitlerites would throw all their aviation into battle to bring to naught the Soviet offensive. Again he knew there’d be a lot of ‘skinnies’. He probably thought, “I wish it had always been as for Zhen’ka yesterday. One ‘frame’ met, shot down and that was it!” He didn’t stay on the parking bay. Luckily for him he had no plane yet, and went into the dug-out and lit up the fireplace. Soon other flyers were there as well.

  “Oh, you’ve set the fire already. Good man, but don’t take my place.” Chugunov silently ceded his place by the oven shutter to Bourgonov, to whom it had been allocated by the squadron. He was thinking hard about something and not following the general conversation. Only Arkhipenko’s arrival brought him out of his stupor. Alarm flashed in his eyes when he looked at the commander. What would he say?

  “What are you looking at, Chugunov? Nothing’s coming up, hyar… You may just get in on the second sortie, but now Bobrov will lead our squadron. He picked the group himself.” Chugunov seemed a different man. He had just been sitting hunched and vacant but now he straightened up and his eyes flashed. “Again? I’ll never have a chance to fly this way! You promised!” “What could I do? We’ll take you on the second one for sure.”

  Lieutenant-Colonel Bobrov sometimes liked to lead groups during sorties and flew with different squadrons. This time he decided to go with the first squadron, and led a group of eight planes to cover ground troops advancing south-east of Kirovograd. It had been quiet in the air for the last few days, but that day an encounter with the enemy could be expected. It would have been a miracle if such an encounter didn’t happen. And in fact, still approaching the frontline, all heard on the radio that enemy bombers were coming over. Soon they came into view, thirty-two Ju-87s escorted by four Me-109s and two Fw-190s.

  The Fascists were below our fighters and were still approaching the frontline from the sun. Due to our superior altitude all conditions were shaping up favour-ably for a successful strike on them from the tails of the bombers. But Bobrov waggled his wing, the “attention” signal.

  “For the Motherland! For Stalin! To the attack!” And he led the group into the attack from a very unfavourable position, at an angle of ninety degrees to the bombers’ course. The Cobras darted past the escorting fighters so the latter had no time to do anything. But the attack was futile. Our position was too disadvantageous for shooting, since the enemy planes went through our gun-sights too quickly. The ‘clodhoppers’ maintained their course as if nothing had happened.

  “You and your “For the Motherland! For Stalin!” I thought with fury. Those slogans had been flashing in newspapers but it was the first time I’d heard them. It looked like Bobrov’s fervent desire to become a Hero of the Soviet Union was the reason behind it. Once, after a successful day, when the Regiment had shot down twenty German planes and the flyers gathered in the mess-room he declared openly, “You guys, don’t get your hopes up for awards too much! None of you will get anything but a Red Star until I have a Hero’s Gold Star!”

  A convenient position had shaped up for a second attack. The fighters had found themselves above and behind Junkers. But Arkhipenko, Victor and other seasoned flyers had always rightly said that the first strike is always the most effective. This time our pair was the first to attack. I was about a hundred and fifty metres behind Victor. I saw that the bombers’ formation had closed up. Their leader had worked out their manoeuvre so as to allow his gunners to shoot. Smoky traces stretched away from the ‘clodhoppers’ towards our fighters. Victor was not shooting yet as he was closing in. Closer, closer… A shaft of fire traces burst out of his plane’s nose towards the outermost Ju-87. It caught fire and broke apart straight away. The plane’s debris, enveloped by fire and smoke, fell to the ground.

  Victor passed above the bombers’ formation at high speed and began to gain altitude for a new attack in a left turnaround. The bombers’ leader began to turn around after Korolev, closing on his tail… “A ‘clodhopper’ has two thirty-millimetre guns and machine-guns… He’ll knock him down now…” flashed in my mind. I even didn’t shoot at the bomber in my gun-sight, but threw myself at that one, their leader. “Vit’ka! Climb up steeper!”

  The German and I opened fire simultaneously. But Victor had been warned about this unwanted ‘wingman’ in time, and as for the Fascist, he simply ceased to exist. He somehow disappeared instantly down below under my plane. But I didn’t see the Junkers fall. I was too busy for that. The rapid dry crackle of bullet hits and shell bursts cut across the smooth hum of the engine. A long gun-burst lashed the fuselage and tail of my ‘Bellochka’. It got that nickname for the Airacobra Bell plane in the Soviet Air Force. It was a combination of ‘Bell’ and the Russian word ‘belochka’, an affectionate word for a squirrel.

  My plane jerked. It was thrown leftward and went into a vertical dive. My attempts to pull out of the dive were futile because the elevators couldn’t overcome the resistance of the stabiliser that was twisted and bent by a shell.

  Two thousand metres… One and a half… The Cobra was still diving vertically. I pulled the lever with both hands but in vain. No result… “Trimmer!” the thought flashed in my mind and I began to rotate the steering-wheel of the elevator trimmer in order to take the load off the elevators. Five hundred metres… Too low. I began to pull the lever with both hands again. The plane shuddered and its nose, till then targeted at one point on the ground, began to move. The white snowy steppe began to slide under my plane’s cowling. “What a lot of snow!” An unnecessary thought came. “Yesterday near Krivoy Rog there was none…” Very slow… and not enough height. I set my feet more firmly against the pedals and pulled the lever as hard as possible. And the plane began pulling out of the dive faster. More, more…

  The earth was approaching me at a catastrophic speed. Too late to bail out… I could already clearly see the spot I was going to hit with my plane… I only managed to pull out of the dive just above the ground. A snow cloud was raised from the ground by my propeller, it had touched the snow with its blades. The air compressed by the plane’s wings curtained everything around me for an instant. But the fighter-plane broke out of it straight away, and climbed up above where the fight was still on.

  However, it didn’t last long. Otherwise I would have been in trouble in my nearly uncontrollable Cobra. But the scene was good, with three ‘clodhoppers’ and a Messer burning out on the ground, besmirching the fresh whiteness of the snow with flecks of soot. Other Junkers were fleeing, one by one, dropp
ing bombs on their own troops. The Messers and Fockers had carried out this manoeuvre much earlier.

  Eight fighters were on their way home. Seven of them were in formation but the eighth one, mine, was lagging far behind. Once any increase in revs was attempted it was drawn into a dive. I had to fly at nearly landing speed and by no means could I catch up with the group. Fortunately there were no enemy planes around. Bobrov and the others had managed to land and taxied on to their parking bays when I was only approaching the aerodrome. I put the landing gear and wing flaps out and turned for landing.

  Later on I found out what had happened in the meantime, on the ground. Korolev turned off the engine, unfastened the straps of his parachute, opened the door and reluctantly climbed out on the wing. The scene of explosion there where his wingman had hit the ground was still in front of his eyes. There had been no parachuted flyers in the air, neither Russians nor Germans. It meant, that was it…

  Mechanics, motorists, armourers, immediately surrounded all the landed planes. The whole crew gathered around their own planes. My parking bay was nearby and it was empty. Victor had lost all hope of seeing my plane there again, or that I would come to his parking bay after a sortie, cheerful or gloomy depending on the result. Volkov was coming from there instead. What to say him? Victor lowered his head despondently. “Comrade Lieutenant, where is my pilot?” “Back there…” Korolev waved his hand towards the front line, sighed gravely and added, “He slammed into the ground…”

  My plane was “hanging on the lever”. It tended to dip its nose and go into a dive although the trimmer was fully pulled up. “No matter, a little bit more and I’ll land…” But then several red flares flew up from the ground. Permission to land denied. “What’s up? I’ve counted everything right!” I decided not to pay attention to the flares and go for landing. I couldn’t struggle with my barely controllable plane any longer.

  The earth was approaching me and I began to level the plane… In a few seconds my wheels would touch the snowy surface of the airstrip and the plane would roll over the aerodrome. I glanced at the “T” landing pattern for I had to check my reckoning. A man was lying on the ground near the black panels. For some reason he lifted his legs, began to clap on them with his hands, then jumped on his feet and shot from his signal pistol nearly at my plane.

  “The landing gear!” I guessed, and my hand pushed the gas by itself. The engine roared and the fighter plane went for another circle. Only now I looked at the undercarriage indicator lights. There were red lights on. “The undercarriage hasn’t come down… I’ll have to drop it by hand…”

  I had to make two circles over the aerodrome. Sweat poured into my eyes and on my face, and streamed down my back and chest. As the undercarriage was going out, the plane “hung” on the lever more and more. My hands were trembling horribly from the strain. But at last the green lights were on, the undercarriage had come down!

  The plane had been pulling to the left back at the beginning of the landing run. Even the right brake couldn’t help. Steering was out of the question. Having rolled off the landing strip indicated by sparse marker pegs I turned off the engine. I opened the door, raised myself a bit but then sat down again. All my body was aching and had became somewhat disobedient. At last I managed to pull out of the cockpit and nearly fell to the ground. I leaned against a wing and stood there resting, and enjoying the cold breeze pleasantly refreshing my red-hot face and sweaty shirt.

  Five minutes later Volkov, Ananiev and Karpushkin ran up to me. For some time I was silently looking at Nikolay’s smiling face and his light-blue eyes sparkling with cheer. His words did not made sense to me at first. “Slammed into the ground… Exploded… Who crashed?” “Comrade Commander, what did happen exactly?”

  “What?” “I was told that you’d hit the ground and the plane had exploded! Oh, what am I thinking of? You’re going to freeze!” Volkov, cheered by my return noticed only now that I was standing in the frost undressed and wet with sweat and my shirt was already covered by hoar-frost. “Take my jacket!” He began to take off his recently received and therefore still clean new jacket. I paid no attention to his suggestion to get dressed.

  “Like hell I hit the ground. You see I’m back…” I looked at my plane’s tail. Half of the elevator was gone and the left side of the stabiliser was somewhat deformed. “I’m back… Where are the rest?” Nikolay understood that I was asking about the pilots. “They all are at the CP, gone to have lunch.” “Well, then I’ll go to the CP too. Send my jacket there.” I walked across the airstrip. “Comrade Commander, take my jacket for now!” “It’s not far away, I’ll get there like this…”

  “Zhen’ka? Where did you come from?” Zemlyachenko, Deputy Chief-of-Staff of the Regiment met me near the entry to the CP. “And I’ve just reported to the Division that you shot one down and crashed into the ground yourself.”

  “And how’s that, do I look like a corpse?”

  “Why did Bobrov say that?”

  “I myself thought I would hit the ground. You ring the Division and let them raise me from the dead.”

  “I’ll have to… You go and have your lunch, you’re frozen. Where is your jacket?”

  “I haven’t been at the parking bay yet. Had to leave the plane back there”. I pointed at my plane standing forlornly on the airstrip and went down into the CP dug-out. Upon my appearance in the premises where the flyers were lunching, silence reigned for a minute. Then they all jumped to their feet and rushed to the door.

  “Zhen’ka?” “You’re back?” “When did you manage it?” Everybody knew well about comebacks of flyers counted dead. It wouldn’t have surprised anybody. Many of the ‘fallen’ had come back to the Regiment. But it had never happened that a flyer came back so quickly. They had just reported his death!

  “Come on now, Gipsy’s had two funerals but he’s still alright! You’d better look after your compote!” I had to break in. A famous compote lover, Voravko, aide-de-camp of the second squadron was in charge of the table left by the flyers. He was finishing his fourth glass and was about to start a fifth one.

  “Hey-hey-hey, keep your hands out!” Bourgonov yelled. He remembered how once Voravko had decided to drink up the whole lot of compote assigned to the squadron and, so they wouldn’t take it off him, he dipped his finger into each glass repeating, “Let’s see if it’s hot or cold!” After lunch we went back to the parking together. “Victor, how was the second squadron’s sortie?”

  “It was harder for them than for us… Gulayev with his quartet fought against twenty-seven Junkers, sixteen Messers and four Fockers. He knocked off a Junkers and a Focker. Bukchin, Nikiforov and Gorbunov took one Junkers each.”

  On the way Korolev put on a worried look and ‘lost it’ completely when he came up to my plane. He silently walked around it, counted the holes, examined where shells had exploded, shook his head, astonished, and turned to me. “It wasn’t a ‘skinnie’ that hit you, their shells don’t do that sort of damage. And the bullet holes are from a large calibre.”

  He wanted to smile, hug me and congratulate me on my miraculous salvation. The tail unit was smashed so badly that it was hard to understand how it had been possible to pull the plane out of a dive. From a young age he feared to reveal his feelings and thought, as the more experienced flyer, he always had to lecture his offsider, and curse him for his mistakes. “How much longer are you going to keep coming back with damage?” He started up angrily. “It’s time to shoot them down and stay in one piece!”

  “But I did shoot down a Junkers!”

  “I know. But who hit you?”

  “I didn’t see… Apparently there was no one behind me and shouldn’t have been. Bobrov’s pair was there…”

  “See, you let one get away!”

  “There was no time to look round. If I had seen it, everything would have been the same. I couldn’t escape it. You had shot down one and then pulling out of the attack, and the leading Junkers was turning to follow you. He would ha
ve knocked you down, the bastard!”

  “But you’d transmitted it on the radio. I would have escaped. And you wouldn’t have exposed your own tail.” Escaped! A ‘clodhopper’ is quite good at manoeuvring too. Victor didn’t know all those details. Bobrov told him that I was chasing the Junkers, although there was a ‘skinnie’ on my tail. He, Bobrov, shot down the Schmitt but that one had managed to down me. So that to understand everything one would need to question the other flyers, who most likely had seen everything. Meanwhile, Korolev decided to switch the conversation to something else.

  “Volkov!” he called the mechanic. “When will it be ready?”

  “The stabiliser and the rest will be replaced today. But the oil tank has a hole in it. There was a bit of fire but then it died out… Hopefully we’ll have it patched up by tomorrow.”

  “Come on, do it quicker. Otherwise there’ll be nothing to fly on. Let’s go, Zhen’ka.”

  We began to talk about the dogfight again, about my lucky pullout from the dive.

  “You say Bobrov was behind you? How could the Schmitt approach you? Look how badly your tail is twisted! I’d never have thought that the German cannons could do that. All Schmitt cannons are small-calibre. Maybe it was a Junkers that hit you?”

  “Hell knows… there was no ‘clodhopper’ after me… Maybe two or three shells hit the same spot?”

  “It doesn’t happen this way, although…” He didn’t specify “although” what. He simply couldn’t explain how fire from an Me-109 could have this result.

  While we were talking, standing next to the dug-out door, other flyers came up. They’d had time to examine my damaged plane and were happy that their comrade had come back in one piece, but were hiding their emotions under cover of some rather rough teasing.