Six fighters headed for Kirovograd without climbing. Heavy leaden-coloured clouds stretched out at about five hundred metres, not allowing us to go higher, turning the middle of a short winter day into dusk. In places, slanting strips of falling snow drew out of the clouds to the ground. The horizon was hidden behind a thick haze, or did it only seem that way to me?
I was the outermost on the left. From habit I was looking around, but without the strain usual on approaching the frontline. All around me it was, or only seemed, curtained by fog. My head ached again during the flight. I took it indifferently even when a ground control station transmitted about the approach of sixty Ju-87s and ten Me-109s. I automatically followed Arkhipenko’s order to turn left by ninety degrees, and found myself with Korolev on the right flank after the manoeuvre. Almost at the same moment the dark bulks of Junkers emerged from the blue haze. “Attack!” Arkhipenko transmitted, and led the group head-on into the ‘clodhoppers’.
The silhouettes of Junkers were growing in my gun-sight. One of them was a bit off the central mark. Turn a bit, just a little bit and strike! But I had no strength to do this microscopic movement. “Just don’t let me lose Vit’ka!” It was the last thought left in my mind and then another one flashed, “I shouldn’t have flown this sortie. I’m no use here.” But it was too late to think about it.
The fighter planes darted past the ‘clodhoppers’, and immediately turned around one hundred and eighty degrees. Then, everything merged into some muddled dream, in which mist covered everything, and I hadn’t even the strength to lift a finger. The Junkers were flashing in front of me, they were even passing through my gun-sight, but I couldn’t press the trigger. The tail of Victor’s plane was the only target I was afraid to lose. “Just don’t let me lose him!” My eyes were dimming after each manoeuvre. I kept losing everything from sight. Then the tail of Korolev’s fighter would emerge from the black fog and, further beyond him, the hulls of Junkers. At one of these moments of illumination I saw a bright flare against the dark background of clouds, a bit to the side of me, and I didn’t even understand at first that it was one of the ‘clodhoppers’ burning. Then a similar torch blazed a bit further away, and I heard Bourgonov’s voice in my headphones, “Messers to the right!”
“I just need to hold out!” I knew that I’d have to manoeuvre a lot more energetically when struggling with fighter planes. Korolev turned right sharply and went into a dive. Darkness… I saw swirling bright-orange flame disappearing in black puffs of smoke against the background of white snow. There was no Korolev in sight. “I’ve lost him…” Immediately I saw Victor turning, climbing left. Darkness, brightening… Nothing else was left in my memory of the ongoing aerial battle…
At last the engine was turned off… I wiped sweat from my forehead with my shirt sleeve since I couldn’t reach my pocket under the strap. Then I began to unbuckle the latch-hooks of my parachute. I opened the door, tried to get out on to a wing but failed.
“What’s wrong with you, Comrade Commander? You’re not wounded?” Nikolay climbed up on the wing. “Need help?”
“Nothing’s wrong… Help me out…” “Maybe, you’d better stay there for a bit, cool down in the cockpit, or you’ll be out damp in the frost.”
“It’s alright, we’re not too far…”
Volkov and Karpushkin helped me get down on the ground.
“Now I’ll manage by myself…” and staggered away barely shifting my uncontrollable numb feet.
“Are you going to the CP?” Nikolay caught up with me. “All the flyers have gone over there.”
“No, I’m sickening for something…”
There was nobody in the dug-out, the fire-place had gone out long ago, but I didn’t notice anything. Again I climbed on the plank-bed, lay down and fell into oblivion…
“What’s wrong with you?” Korolev poked me in my side. I moaned barely audibly with my eyes shut. “Do you hear me or not? What’s happened to you?” Victor carefully shook my shoulder.
“What’s up? A sortie?” I raised myself from the plank-bed. My hand accidentally touched Korolev’s palm.
“What sortie? You’re simply burning. Volkov told me that you’d got sick but I didn’t believe it. You held out well during the combat, and now look at you.”
“Never mind… I feel better now.”
“Like hell you’re better! Fedor, we have to send someone for Ivan Ivanovich.”
“Come on, Gipsy, send somebody.”
Bourgonov went out and immediately came back. Korolev was still talking to his wingman.
“And I wondered why you didn’t come to the CP. I have to talk to you. Did Oreshchenko talk to you?”
“He did…” “All right, let’s talk about it later.”
The Regimental Surgeon Ivan Ivanovich Smolnikov arrived in about fifteen minutes.
“Well, where is the patient? What’s wrong with you, Zhen’ka?” He came up to the plank-bed.
“So you’ve decided to get sick? No point. You can always to find time for that”, he joked while feeling my pulse. “Oh, you’ve got quite a temperature. You can’t fly being like this, can you? I don’t think so! Let’s measure it. We’ll give you the thermometer and it will all go away! You know, someone said, “Doctor, use your stethoscope: it’ll draw everything off. When you use it I feel better at once!”
Ivan Ivanovich had always been among the flyers, taken part in all their funny tricks and genuinely loved these young people who before the war wouldn’t have been allowed into a plane’s cockpit for being under-aged. The flyers felt his love and repaid it mutually. And now he momentarily joined the common chat, was laughing, but when he was looking at me uneasiness was flashing in his eyes. He was asking casually, as if by the way, how the illness had started.
“So, you felt fit, then flew back and fell sick?”
“I probably got a chill yesterday. I had a headache last night.”
“Correct! That’s how it always is”. This, “that’s how it always is,” he said with such a look, as if referring to a person’s normal condition and not the symptoms of a disease. “Why didn’t you come straight to me? Or this morning? Why did you fly?”
“I thought it would go away… And I felt all right before the sortie.”
“Sure it will go away! Give me the thermometer.”
He took the thermometer, walked to a window with it and gave a whistle. “Well, such a trifle! I thought it was something serious, but it’s only thirty-nine point three. At that temperature you can dance. Perhaps later. In the meantime, we’ll take these powders and stay in bed. That’s it.”
Ivan Ivanovich stayed with us for a bit longer and left.
“Why the hell did you fly?” Korolev cursed luridly. “Wasn’t there anybody else?”
Either Ivan Ivanovich’s powders or my young body did their duty, but next morning I stood up fully fit. Maybe Victor’s medical efforts had helped. He’d brought some vodka and made me wash down the powders with it. What had helped stayed unknown but the result was there. That day there were no sorties because of bad weather and everybody was in the dug-out. Ivan Ivanovich dropped in for a minute. “How is my patient? Didn’t I say you could dance?” He stayed for a bit and left.
Almost no official analysis of aerial fights had been done recently. Arkhipenko probably thought that the squadron flyers had been completely put into operation and it wasn’t worth pestering them with formalities. Successful and unsuccessful techniques had been analysed in common conversations, as if by the way. Suggestions how to operate on such occasions in future had been discussed. Such an analysis was done the previous day, but I had heard none of that conversation, and wanted to know details of the fight.
“Victor, tell me what went on yesterday. I hardly saw anything.”
Korolev immediately guessed what I was talking about. “What can I tell you? Fedor and Pupok shot down one ‘clodhopper’ each. Gipsy shot down a Schmitt. And, well, the others scattered.”
“It looked lik
e there was hell of a lot of them.”
“And what of it? Haven’t you seen how they can run? And visibility was lousy yesterday, so they didn’t know how many of us there were. And you know what the eyes of fear can be. You’d do better to say what you agreed on with Oreshchenko. What did he tell you?”
“He said he wanted to have my application today.”
“Why don’t you do it?”
“I’m probably not ready for that.”
“Ready?” Victor was surprised. “Who is ever ready for that?”
“I’m only twenty. I’ll have time for it. I can stay in the Comsomol for six more years.”
“And so what if you can? It’s not mandatory! I’m twenty as well. I’ve even said at the Bureau that your time was coming.”
Korolev was a member of the Regimental Comsomol Bureau.
“You shouldn’t have,” was all I said, but I thought to myself so, it’s my friend who has got me into hot water.
“Why not?”
I pondered, kept silent, then waved my hand and said, “Now I’ll have to do it anyway. Let’s go, I’ll tell you.”
“What will you have to do?” Victor asked, following me out of the dug-out. “You don’t seem happy that they’re accepting you.”
“Happy! But they won’t accept me anyway.”
“Explain to me exactly what the problem is.”
“My father was a Scout Platoon Commander during the First World War. According to his service book he accomplished ‘wonders of bravery’, was awarded with all four Crosses of St. George, and the Order of Anna and Vladimir with Swords. He rose to the rank of Staff-Captain, became a battalion commander. During the Civil War he started as a regiment commander, then a division commander near Tsarytsyn. During the war against Poland he nearly reached Warsaw. His political commissar was Lepse. Have you heard about him?” “I have.”
“Then he took part in scotching the Kronstadt mutiny. He hunted Makhno, the famous anarchist of the Civil war era who fought German and Austrian occupiers, the Whites and the Reds as well. So then, in 1937, when the arrests of the officers had begun he was taken too. Who was after him? A merit pensioner, he had lost ninety percent of his work capacity, he had been wounded fourteen times. And where could he have done any harm? In our town of Ananievo? Fifteen kilometres from the rail road. My mother was left alone with five children. On the advice of one of the NKVD men she sold our house and left for her birthplace in the Kirovskaya Province. There were no major repressions there.” “And how did you join the Comsomol?”
“In Arkul, at school. I lived at my uncle’s after my father’s arrest. It was easy there. Everybody knew that my father had been arrested. I was not the only one like that. Later on, in Urzhum, Kirov’s home town, they had a long discussion in the District Committee, but accepted me.”
“Why do you think they won’t accept you now? You’ve been fighting well, proved your faithfulness to the Motherland?”
“But it’s the Party! Had I shot down a few more they might look at me differently. Should I go to Ulyanov and tell him everything?”
“You’ll have a chance to tell it to the Party Bureau. Listen, how did you manage to join the Air Force when people like you weren’t being taken?”
“I said then that my father had died. He did actually die in February 1940, only in jail.”
“And that’s what you should tell them now. Your father died in 1940, your mother lives in her hometown in Kirovskaya province. You won’t lie to anyone, but if you refuse to apply they’ll begin to dig up what’s what. They’ll find out that your father was subject to repression, and you’ll be discharged from the regiment and from the Air Force. You know that. The SMERSH will sniff it out and say, “How hard would it be for him to fly over to the Germans”. They’ll kick you out and palm Chugunov off on me. That’d be a joy for me! So sit down and we’ll write you an autobiography.”
“That’s it! Everything’s going to be alright”! Victor read my application and autobiography one more time. “Look at you, not wanting to join the Party of Lenin and Stalin. For things like that they’ll send you far, far away, to the back of beyond.” Victor took the two sheets of paper away. Several days later a meeting of the Regimental Party Bureau occurred. I was asked only questions about the number of my sorties and aerial victories and accepted as a candidate into the Communist Party.
11
‘Terkin’ in captivity
Terkin was the leading hero of an enormously popular wartime poem written by Ivan Tvardovsky, ‘a cheerful and smart soldier’.
One frosty day in January, Arkhipenko led a quartet, consisting of himself, Gipsy, Korolev and me, to a new aerodrome. Its concrete airstrip, covered by snow, still stood out against the flat white background. I guessed that Messers used to take off from here during the Pe-2 raids on the Kirovograd railway junction, and the bridge over the Ingul River. And now fighter planes with Red Star markings were landing there, for our troops had taken the aerodrome and moved further west.
I put out the undercarriage and wing flaps, checked my calculations and examined the aerodrome carefully. It was the first time I had had to land on an aerodrome from which the Fascists had been flying only recently. There still were some German planes, in places on the edges of the airfield. On the line of the airstrip was a ‘frame’ FW-189. Most likely they were out of order and had not been able to fly away. There was no time to think about it. There would be a chance to have a good look at everything there.
Altitude… time to level off… this way… The plane smoothly touched down on the concrete and quickly rolled forward with none of the bumps and shocks typical for field airstrips. “It’s going to be a pleasure to fly from such an airstrip.” I taxied up to Arkhipenko’s, Bourgonov’s and Korolev’s planes standing with turned off engines. Lusto and Trutnev who had landed later were taxiing behind me. Apart from us, nobody had landed yet on this aerodrome. We were the first group to have flown over to the new air base.
I turned off the engine, climbed out of the cockpit and walked towards Arkhipenko’s plane, since all who had arrived were gathering around it. Mechanics from the advance team, who had driven up here only half an hour ago, were already tinkering with the fighter planes.
We were smoking and looking around. Where to go? Where is the regimental CP? Where will our dug-out be? Does it exist or hadn’t the Germans dug one? Would we have to do it ourselves? The mechanics knew nothing, for they’d been sent straight to the parking bays to receive the planes.
“Let’s go and have a look at the ‘skinnie’,” I suggested to Victor, pointing to an Me-109 standing nearby. The Fascist fighter plane had no engine, and was short of one undercarriage leg. It seemed to be leaning on the ground with its right wing and had a pathetic look. Now we had a chance to touch it, examine it from all sides, climb into the cockpit to study the conditions the German flyers flew in, to compare the field of vision on our planes, and on the Fascists’ ones. That’s why Victor immediately agreed with my suggestion.
“Hyar, wait”, Arkhipenko stopped us. “We have to be ready for combat now.” It had been planned that way, back before the flight. “Ready for what? The planes haven’t been refuelled yet,” Korolev started to say, and immediately broke off, as a fuel truck was nearing the parking bays. “They got through quickly,” he finished, implying the personnel of the ground service battalion.
The Regimental headquarters was not sleeping either. A messenger came up to Arkhipenko and reported. “Comrade Captain, your squadron has been ordered to be battle ready in full strength. The take-off signals are as before.”
The squadron… It sounded formidable. But there were only six fighter planes left in it. Some flyers had been sent to get new planes. Ippolitov had left too, but when would they be back, who knew?
“I know. They’ll finish refuelling and we’ll take our seats.”
“They said as soon as a pair is ready they should get on board.”
“Alright.”
; And now we were in the cockpits ready to take off immediately. We didn’t have to wait too long. Half an hour hadn’t gone by since the moment of landing on this aerodrome. Now three green flares soared from the ground, one after another, near the CP. It meant take-off for the whole squadron. The last flare was still burning out in the air but the fighter planes had already started their run for another take-off. We got our mission through the two-way.
“Number 10, this is Bobrov. Two groups of bombers are on their way from the south-west to Kirovograd.” “Understood.” Six fighter planes were climbing, forcing the engines. Now the city was behind us. The steppe, white with snow, with occasional spots of thickets and settlements, stretched in front of us. But we had no time to watch the ground. Our encounter with the enemy might happen any minute, or second.
The silhouettes of Heinkels appeared ahead of us against the background of the clouds. There were only twenty kilometres left for them to cover, and then to drop their bombs on the city. The first head-on attack began! A man with weak nerves can’t endure it. The planes raced towards each other and it seemed they were just about to collide, and turn into a huge puff of fire and smoke. The bombers’ formation wavered. We were racing towards them and not opening fire, reducing the distance to the minimum. Maybe the fighters would rush through the bombers’ formation bringing them no harm? No! The fiery traces of bullets and shells sparkled through the leaden sky. One of the Heinkels sort of stumbled in the air, tilted and rushed towards the ground, leaving a black smoky spiral in the sky.
The Fascists’ nerves couldn’t stand it. Their formation fell apart. But the Hitlerites had not given up on completing their mission. They tried to break through to the city one by one. It wasn’t easy for six fighters to hold back the Fascists. The Messers, that had not managed even to react during the first attack, now joined the action. And another group of bombers had flown over. The Junkers tried to fly around the area of fighting to break through to the city with no interference. But they did not succeed.
Red Star Airacobra Page 12