The night passed quietly, and in the morning, as usual, we all went to our parking bays. We found a huge bomb crater not far away from the squadron dugout. An Airacobra stood several metres from it. It seemed to be intact from afar and we came closer. “This ‘Bellochka’ is quite a sight!” Arkhipenko muttered. “There’s not an unscathed spot.”
In fact the plane’s tail was bent by ninety degrees, in such a way that the tail might be a stabilizer now, and vice versa. The whole plane looked as if it had been starved. Its ribs stuck out everywhere. The panelling of the wings and fuselage had fallen off, and brought out the stringers of the fuselage, and the ribs and longerons of the wings. Any repairs were out of question. Only the propeller and engine remained intact, as well as the undercarriage poles. Strange as it was, the wheel pneumatics had not been damaged. All in all, the technicians obtained some spare parts.
The flyers walked around all the parking bays. One transport aircraft Li-2, a Douglas as it was more often called, had burned up. Another thousand-kilogram bomb had shattered the ‘frame’ that I’d noticed during my first landing on this aerodrome, but had never managed to have a closer look at. Now there was nothing to look at.
As there were no flights that day, we spent it in further familiarisation with the aerodrome. We had a look at several Me-109s and FW-190s pretty well battered in aerial fights, and obviously not flown, but transported here from the places where they’d fallen. We also dropped into an isolated hangar and found there a new ground-attack Il-2 aircraft. Obviously it had been forced to land on enemy territory. The Germans had brought it here, repaired and repainted it having daubed their black crosses, framed with white strips, on it and their swastika on the tail. Yet obviously they hadn’t managed to fly it.
In the meantime, the guys from the ground service battalion, when walking around the concrete airstrip, found a third thousand-kilogram bomb in the middle of it. Fortunately, it hadn’t exploded, otherwise it would have put out of service this, the only operating aerodrome of the 5th Air Force Army of the 2nd Ukrainian Front. There were rumours that another concrete strip was in Mirgorod, but no one knew for sure. Anyway, the main work of the Front aviation was done from the Kirovograd aerodrome. It was much closer to the operating ground troops. And for the previous several days the flyers of the 129th Guards Regiment had been carrying out a special task. They had been covering the Cossack Cavalry units sent into the breach. A special precision and reliability of cover was required there.
Whilst tanks would burn, or be put out of action, only after direct hits from the bombs or shells of ground attack planes, the horses would die, even from the blast waves from a very close bomb explosion. It was a hell of a task for the fighter pilots to cover the Cavalry. They were responsible for every horse that perished. The comments of Cavalry commanders, full of outrage, reproachful phone calls, cables, all would come immediately. There, the whole operation of covering the Cavalry, and the narrow crosspiece of the Korsun-Shevchenkovskiy pocket, near Zvenigirodovka, had been jeopardised. Detonation of that bomb would have left the Front with no aerodrome.
They sent a message to the Front Headquarters with a request to send us sappers. The sappers arrived next morning and immediately began to work. They couldn’t explode it on the spot, for it would have wrought the same destruction the enemy had counted on. They began to dig it out. It turned out that its fuse had worked, but nevertheless the bomb had not exploded! The sappers unscrewed the fuse and sand began to tip from the hole. Then they pulled the bomb out of the ground, since they’d understood there was no reason to fear an explosion.
They unloaded it, and found in the sand a small plywood tag, on which someone had written, roughly mixing the Russian and Latin alphabets, “The German Communists are doing what they can.” Thus, for the first time during the whole war, I came across help from the German workers. In that case, their help couldn’t have been handier.
13
An island in an ancient park
My plane suddenly broke out of the compact jumble of soggy air, wet snow and fog. I levelled up, raced for a bit above the ground, and landed near the Command Post, at the very beginning of the concrete strip. Shortly thereafter a second, a third and a fourth appeared, and landed just as suddenly. But just a few minutes previously, General Utin himself, the Corps Commander, advised us through the two-way, “If you can’t approach the concrete, land on your bellies.” And then he said, “Land on the airfield if you can.” He didn’t even think about demanding from us a normal landing on concrete. After all no flyer of the Corps had had to land in these conditions before. That was why the General reckoned that it would be better to sacrifice the planes, which might be repaired, than the flyers.
The narrow strip of concrete was only thirty metres wide. However, in this sector, it ensured the front line aerial operations, and the supply of armour and artillery units with ammunition and fuel. Moreover, out of all fighter planes, only Airacobras could operate from this tight strip. It had an excellent field of vision in front, due to its three-wheel undercarriage, and narrow nose. A flyer could see the airstrip a few metres ahead of him, immediately react to the smallest deviation of his plane during the start and after-landing run, and wouldn’t allow his plane to roll off the concrete. On an ordinary plane, with a tail skid, the nose is pushed up during both run-up to take-off, and after landing, and screens off the whole strip ahead of him.
During our first escort of a Li-2 transport, Korolev and I saw an attempt by a Yak-1 fighter to take off from this strip. It had lost direction a little bit during the run, the right wheel of the undercarriage rolled off the concrete into the mud. The plane smashed into a group of people who were dragging a five hundred kilogram bomb from the concrete. It hacked five men to death with its propeller, turned over, and burned up. The flyer burned with his plane. For an Airacobra’s take-off to turn out that way would have been impossible. But now, even the opposite side of the concrete strip only thirty metres away, was hidden in a foggy mush. The planes were landing, racing past an alarmed group of people standing near the Commanding Point, and disappearing into the leaden-grey haze.
“They’ve been in the air for an hour and a half. We came back without our auxiliary tanks.” Zemlyachenko began to speak, but Utin interrupted him. “So, they were in a fight and dropped off the tanks there. How did they manage to land? An hour and a half ago, our quartet of fighter planes had taken off to cover a river-crossing over the Dniestr River. The temporary bridge had just been set up. The bridgehead beyond the river was still quite tiny, and this flimsy bridge had to be saved at any cost. The aerodrome was situated very far away from the bridgehead and the Dniestr, as there was no closer place to set up a base. Of course, there were plenty of suitable fields. But the spring-time slush and mud, the greasy Ukrainian chernozem, saturated with moisture, had made them unfit for use by aviation. Only here was there a quite poor, but concrete, air strip. That’s why we had to be based on this aerodrome, left deep in the rear, and had to fly from it with auxiliary fuel tanks.
The situation for the aviation was hard, and strange as it was, the rapid advance of the Red Army that was responsible for it. After the liquidation of the Korsun-Shevchenkovskiy pocket, the troops of the 2nd Ukrainian Front brought up reserves, and on 5 March resumed their advance. It was too far, to also fly beyond there. This time they struck at the enemy’s Uman-Khristinovskaya group. After five days of fighting, fourteen German divisions were destroyed. On 10 March, Uman and Khristionovka were liberated, and the front line troops moved further westwards. The flyers had no time to plot out on their maps the quickly changing line of combat engagement. On 12 March, the crossing of the Southern Bug River was forced. On 16 March, the railroad junction of Vapnyarka was captured, and on 18 March, our troops forced the Dniestr crossing. Of course, the aviation regiments had moved west as well, and were landing on this aerodrome with its miniature concrete strip. But it was still very far from the Dniestr.
Our flight made a circle ove
r the aerodrome and the town, and set course for the south-west. There were black fields inundated by water, occasional roads clogged with motorcars, artillery pieces, and armoured vehicles abandoned by the Fascists. It happened during their too hasty ‘straightening of the front line’, as they liked to say in their communiques. All that began to drift under our wings. There was nothing to feast our eyes on. Black fields with grey spots of water, and dirty yellow-green Fascist equipment, and the same grey gloomy sky was above us.
The minutes of the flight were going by. A river flashed underneath. ‘The Southern Bug’, all four flyers made a note to themselves. Everything began to change beyond the Southern Bug. There were fewer puddles on the fields, the roads became drier. And there were changes in the sky. Blue gaps appeared between the clouds. And the clouds themselves became thinner and lighter. And then the continuous haze was replaced by individual cumulus clouds. It became much warmer in the air. We felt it, even in the closed cockpits.
The terrain itself was changing. It became hilly, rugged, with deep gullies and ravines instead of a flat plain. And the huge bends of a fast and full-flowing river appeared, and began to glitter in the distance. We were approaching our target.
“This is Number Ten reporting for work!” Arkhipenko reported to the Division Commander, who was down there at the ground control point. The fighter planes had come to work. To work as hard as the sappers worked, setting up and consolidating a crossing. To work as hard as the artillerists who pulled their guns from the mud on to the frontline roads. To work as hard as all the troops on the frontline. So, Arkhipenko had reported our arrival to the Division Commander.
After Nimtsevich, who had been sacked, and sent to the rear for the story of Major Sima, the job had been taken over by his deputy, Goreglyad. He was a tall, handsome young man, liked by the flyers as an attentive and sensitive Commander, and as a seasoned flyer. He also flew sorties after his assumption of the commanding position. On 17 December 1943, his group came across forty Ju87s, escorted by Messers and Fockers, near Novgorodka. They shot down five ‘clodhoppers’, one Me-109 and one FW-190. Goreglyad himself shot down a Junkers, which strengthened his prestige even more.
“Understood, Number Ten!” Goreglyad responded. “Bombers are coming from the south!”
“Got it, I’m on my way.” A bend of the river was underneath, and the thin thread of the crossing was clearly seen. The fighters began to turn south. Somehow the bombers came into view immediately. They had leapt out from behind a cumulus cloud and were already on approach to the river. There was no time to think it over. The crossing was jeopardised. We just managed to turn a little bit left, and ran into a formation of Heinkels. Fractions of a second passed and the Fascists were left behind.
“Turn left by one hundred and eighty! Drop off the tanks!” Arkhipenko ordered. Our quartet began to turn around energetically, right after the group of He-111s. Each fighter dropped a huge ‘bomb’ during the turnaround, i.e. the auxiliary tanks, depleted by that time, went down.
The sudden and bold attack, on counter courses, overwhelmed the Fascists. Their formation fell apart. Each of them was trying to get rid of his deadly load, disappear, and retire to his own territory. Here and there, black plumes of earth were heaving over the barren field, and smoke was swirling from explosions. I chose the Heinkel nearest to me, and began to close in. My engine was on maximum, and the long light-grey, nearly steel-blue body of the bomber was slowly growing in the gun-sight.
Victor was closing on a Heinkel, a bit ahead and to the right of me. As I got closer everything else withdrew and was lost from sight. The bomber occupied the whole front view. One-fifty, one hundred metres… Need to get closer to be sure of my shot. I saw the crewmen of the Heinkel press themselves against their machine-guns, and get ready to open fire once I was in range. Why go there? I’m alright here. I pressed the trigger and a fire-trace stitched through the bomber’s left wing and engine. And at the same time I heard Goreglyad’s voice in the headphones, “Leave off the Heinkels! They’re retreating! There’s five Fockers behind you!”
I moved right, losing altitude, lest I put myself under the gunners’ fire! Following Korolev, who had begun to turn around, I briefly noticed the Heinkel’s left engine emitting smoke. I had no time to keep my eye on it. A new group of Fascists was coming, five FW-190s. Were they the Heinkels’ escort that had come late? Or a ground attack group? Anyway, we had to drive them away from the crossing and prevent a ground attack.
The first attack was again head on. And again the Germans broke and turned away. They were not in a hurry to leave. Their numerical superiority increased their bravery. A transient aerial battle broke out over the very crossing, over the heads of our ground troops. I saw one of the Germans had caught fire and hit the right-bank of the river. Then Victor closed right up against a second one and shot out a short burst. Maybe the burst had been too short? Had he missed? Anyway the vulture reacted rather strangely. It swayed brokenly from one wing to another as if giving a signal, “I’m one of ours!” Then he turned over, and fell down into the water of the Dniestr, in nearly a vertical dive. Somewhat miraculously, his tail remained stuck above the water. The fight was over.
The way back, and a reverse in the order of landscape change, there was dust, wet ground, mud and puddles. But on approach to the aerodrome we were met by a new obstacle, a thick snowfall. Visibility reduced to nearly zero. We pressed close to each other, descended and leapt out over our aerodrome in a contour flight. We dispersed for landing. How to land? In front, to our sides and above, an unbroken shroud. Below, if you were hedge-hopping, the ground just showed through. But it was gradually getting covered with snow as if dissolving in this milk. The group made it home with almost no fuel.
What could we do? The alarmed Corps Commander and Regimental Commander rushed out of the Command Post towards the concrete strip. Our planes were shooting out of the unbroken mush with released undercarriage, rushing overhead, and disappearing out of sight. One, two, three times, each time the same way. And then Utin gave permission to crash-land. All of us heard that. But to land on our bellies? To smash the planes? What would we fly on then? No way! Whilst we had fuel we had to hold out. The pointers of the fuel gauges were falling lower and lower, red lights flared up. Willy-nilly, we’d have to come down soon. At that moment Victor’s voice resounded, “Boys! Approach from the Island of Love! We’ll get to it, take a landing course, and race back straight on to the concrete.”
Non-flying weather had hung around for several days in a row. Low clouds were clinging to the tree-tops. Grey sky above, drizzling rain in the air, impassable mud underneath. No sorties, the frontline had been moving further and further to the west. Down here, only guard duty, lazy chats in cold cabins, with huge chinks blown through by the wet March wind. There was the good-natured bantering of the regimental arms engineer Katseval. Newspapers and some tattered book would be a sensation. The chat was mostly about the town into which front line fortunes had thrown us.
The first and the second squadrons had been placed in the same cabin. No dug-outs were made. Soon we would have to move the planes on anyway. “It’s probably nice here in summer! There’s a God-given park here!” said Karlov. “We’ve seen it. A big one. We go through it to the mess-room, we fly over it when closing for landing.” Victor interrupted him languidly. And added, smiling archly, “And we’ve heard something else!”
“Sure, we’ve heard something hyar!” Arkhipenko laughed. “Would you mind sharing your experience with us? In case I meet a nun and don’t know what to say her! After all you came back full, drunk and with tobacco up your noses, and told your commander nothing about how it had happened! You’ve never introduced us to your beauties!”
Gulayev smiled too. “Beauties! Ho-ho! They are real Graces!” Karlov, Nikiforov and Zadiraka were embarrassed at first, but then laughed with all the others. As a matter of fact, the flyers knew all about it the very next day, but decided to listen to their comrades’ story once
again, for want of anything better to do.
The flyers were lodged in a village near the aerodrome, at three or four men per hut. We had to walk across the park to the mess-room for dinner. The second squadron headed to the mess-room the first evening after arrival, still by daylight. Nikiforov, Karlov and Zadiraka fell behind the rest. Three grannies stopped them half way through the park and invited them to dine on what God had sent. “You’re our liberators!” They were about seventy years old, as the guys said later on. Maybe it seemed that way to them. When you are young, anyone five or ten years older than you seems very old. The nuns said, “It would be a sin to refuse!” Actually, it seemed to the guys that it would be impolite to refuse. And curiosity had seized them. It would be interesting to know how the nuns lived, as the guys had only been able to read about it in books. They went.
God had sent a reasonable dinner. Obviously he was a dedicated gourmet. One way or another, the table was crammed with various dishes and snacks, placed amidst a whole battery of bottles. The guys exchanged glances, and silently moved to the table since there was no chance of seeing anything like that in the flyers’ mess-room! The dinner conversation was dedicated not to Bible themes, and not even to the future fate of the Holy Orthodox Church and nunneries. The flyers were conducting their usual table chat. “What a good hit I gave him! I see he’s closing in! I turned around and head-on into one! He ran off into the clouds, the bastard!” However, their expressions were much more lively.
Red Star Airacobra Page 15