The fighter didn’t leave the ground again. For some time it slid on the front part of the fuselage, raising its tail and trying to flip. Then the tail fell and silence came. A ditch half a metre deep and about twenty metres long was left behind. I leaped out of the cockpit and saw the blazing engine behind me. I opened the cowlings and chutes with my gun ramrod and tried to put the fire out with earth but nothing came of it.
A light communications PO-2 plane, a ‘crop duster’, flew over, sent by ground control.
“Leave it, you won’t put the fire out!” The PO-2 pilot stopped me. “The fire is under the hoods, how will you get there?”
“Well… let me save the two-way…”
Using the ramrod as a screw-driver I opened the lid over the two-way compartment. Fire burst out of it. Nevertheless, I managed to drag the radio set out. The transmitter had burnt out completely.
“Run away! She’s about to blow!” The pilot yelled mixing Russian and Ukrainian words.
I looked back. Fire was already nearing the fuel tanks. Having grabbed the radio-set and parachute I ran away to the PO-2 plane. “Whoo-oof!” one of the fuel tanks exploded behind me.
Off we went…
We didn’t have to fly too far, only two kilometres. Three other fighters stood next to the ground-control radio-station on the fine paved air-strip. Later on it became the aerodrome of our regiment. The PO-2 taxied right up to them. Goreglyad was walking to the plane from the radio-station. I jumped out of the cockpit and reported. “Comrade Commander! Sub-lieutenant Mariinskiy, damaged during aerial combat, carried out a forced landing. The plane burned out… I failed to put the fire out…”
“Well, well. Good work… Wounded?” Goreglyad asked with distress, pointing to the blood spilled all over the right side of my face and tunic. He saw the wound, of course, but with this one word he was asking if the wound was serious, incurred during combat or landing, how was the flyer feeling?
“Ah, just scratched a little bit.”
“Scratched? Well, they’ll dress it. Then they’ll take you and Korolev home. Just let them get the packet ready.”
“I’m going with Victor. What’s wrong with him?” I turned towards the fighter planes and saw Victor who was squirming on the ground and moaning. It turned out that, still in the air, he had had a bout of appendicitis but didn’t abandon his comrades. He held it till the end of the battle, landed his plane and only here, on the ground, collapsed.
I found out from Arkhipenko and Lusto, that the ground troops were happy with the air cover. At the moment, the river crossing was a life and death matter for them, as there was no equipment on the bridgehead. Only on that day had they managed to drag across the first small gun. And this was considered a huge achievement! “So without us,” Fedor Fedorovich went on, with unexpected boastfulness, implying under the word “us”, himself and his squadron, “they would have been completely flattened hyar long ago.”
Arkhipenko, proud of the battle we had been through, was exaggerating. He had been in combat since the beginning of the war and knew too well that an operation’s success could be achieved by the concerted action of all army branches, and not only by aviation. Of course, the Fascists might have wiped out the crossing. But the bridgehead had already been captured and it wasn’t that easy to liquidate it. And the sappers would have set up a new crossing, instead of the destroyed one, and the Hitlerites would be unable to do anything to it. It was 1944, not 1941! Just yesterday, Bekashonok and Koshelkov alone, engaged eighty Ju-87s and four Me-109s over the crossing. They’d shot down three ‘clodhoppers’ and one Messer, and made it home safely.
“Have you been refuelled already?”
“You’re in a hurry! Where would any fuel get here from? We’ll sit around for a couple of days until they bring it up. We’ll open a sanatorium with Pupok. People say there is wine here. They drink it instead of water! And you and Korolev will have a lift home now.”
In about ten minutes Victor and I were on the rear seat of the Po-2 flying to our aerodrome. We had to fly for a long time in this light low-speed plane. The sun was rolling down, but we were still in the air. At last the town came into sight down below, and the so familiar ‘Island of Love’ flashed underneath.
‘Island of Love.’ We didn’t crash-land back then. Back then it helped, didn’t it? But anyway I had to crash-land not next to the aerodrome but in the middle of nowhere by the front line. It seemed to me that a thousand years had gone since that landing in the blizzard, as the just-ended battle had shifted everything far into the past. I didn’t even think at that moment that the ‘Island of Love’, or, to be exact, our curiosity that had led us into the park, had helped to save the planes back then and to make another sortie. Otherwise the river crossing wouldn’t exist any more.
I was slowly plodding on, picking the driest path. I had already crossed a narrow field separating the aerodrome from the town we lived in, and was now beating my way along the fences to our hut. I saw Grigoriy Sergeevich Korolev, Victor’s father, running towards me heedless of the road. He had arrived at the Regiment only recently. Before that he had fought in tank units, had been wounded during an attack, suffered burns and found himself in a hospital. Victor had found him there through the mail and secured his transfer to our Regiment. The old man had been nearly demobilised on the grounds of wounds and age, but wanted to serve with his son. Since then we’d lived together, Grigoriy Sergeevich, Victor and I.
He had visited the ground service battalion, and they told him the group his son had flown off with had not returned from the sortie in full strength, and he was running to find out the details. I stopped him. “Stop, Batya! Where are you running?” All the flyers and technicians of the Regiment called him ‘Batya’, it was a friendly name to a father or to an old man.
Grigoriy Sergeevich raised his head, looked at me with a blank look and asked as if accusingly, “You’re back? And where is Victor?” I felt uneasy from this question. The old man was kind of blaming me. “You made it back but Victor…” Anything could happen in a fight. Fortunately this time it had turned out alright. What if something bad had happened? How would he look at me, what would he say? It seemed to me that it had sounded like, “it would be better for you not to have made it back.”
“He’s riding behind…” I managed to say. I didn’t think at all that Victor or I were in danger when flying together. But we were not always side by side, as it had been today, after we had separated from each other during the fight. That’s why I responded in a not very friendly manner. “Riding?” The old man rushed forward.
“Where are you going, Batya? No rush! They’ll bring him down. He’s not wounded, he’s got appendicitis!”
“Not wounded?” Grigoriy Sergeevich looked back, glanced at my bandaged head, waved his hand as if to say, “tell me about it!” and ran on.
The same evening Victor was operated in hospital. And the doctors said it was on time. Even Ivan Ivanovich had to provide some of the sulfidine powder he’d got, with great difficulties, in Kirovograd, for one flyer who had fallen ill with pneumonia. Then they got by without sulphidine and now Ivan Ivanovich cherished it like the apple of his eye. Although Korolev’s father calmed down, he didn’t let us sleep for a long while that night, asking about the last battle, and about other ones fought together with his son.
14
In combat again
At last, the vehicle pulled out of the thick Ukrainian mud, after Vapnyarka, and rode quickly over a dry, well rolled-up country track. I smiled, for nothing had changed. Everything was still the same as during our last sortie, although more than twenty days had gone. Back then, on approach to the target, we also saw dried up earth and dust on the roads instead of puddles.
I had not been flying since then because of my wound. The Regiment had managed to change two aerodromes, barely keeping up with the runaway frontline. And anyway we had to fly far away. Five days after that memorable battle, near the crossing over the Dniestr, on 26 March 1944,
our troops reached the USSR border, the Prut River, and on the next day the river crossing was forced. By 9 April, the Seret and Suchava River crossings had been forced on the territory of Romania, and the front line had reached the Carpathian foothills, right up against the town of Jassy. Further advance had paused, as the enemy had put strong reinforcements into operation, and in places had mounted counter-attacks.
Meanwhile, the vehicle rode up to the field the Regiment was based on, and stopped near the Command Post dug-out. I stood up, and stretched my muscles, which had become numb from long sitting on crates with Staff belongings. At the same moment I saw our four fighter planes closing for landing. I determined from the numbers that they were Arkhipenko, Bourgonov, Lusto. “Our guys!” I picked up my bag, jumped off the vehicle and ran to the parking bay where the just-landed planes were taxiing. “Who’s the fourth one?” I was very much concerned. The plane number was unfamiliar, thirteen.
“Good day, Batya!” I greeted Korolev’s father on the run. “Where’s Victor?”
“Good day. Over there.” The old man waved his hand towards the parking bay. “Under his plane.”
I ran further, although there was no need for it since all the squadron flyers were on their way to the Command Post. I slowed down and came up to Arkhipenko.
“Comrade Commander, Sub-Lieutenant Mariinskiy reporting.”
“How’re you going?” Arkhipenko reached out his hand. “How was your way back? Have you had your lunch already? No? Come with us.”
“Let me hand my bag to the mechanics.”
“Give it to me.” Victor took my bag. “We’ll get it organised.” He called up his mechanic. “Petro! Take the bag to the plane!”
Korolev and I lagged behind the rest and were walking in silence for a while. Victor began to talk first. “So, we’re together again.” He pronounced it in such a way as if we’d parted not two days ago, when he flew to this aerodrome in a Li-2, but at least two months ago. “Do you recognise the place?”
“Sure I do! Well, who was the fourth man with you?”
“Lebedev. There is nearly no fighting and they’re retraining him after his break.” Lebedev had had a really long break. On 24 October, back during the fighting for the Dniepr, he was shot down, and bailed out over enemy territory. The flyers who’d been in that battle reported it so. Nothing had been found out about him after that. “Missing in action.” Such information was sent through all official channels.
In February, he came to the aerodrome himself, and said that during that fight, the foot steering of his Cobra had been disabled, and the plane fell into a spin. He couldn’t pull it out of the spin because of low altitude and bailed out. He hit the ground hard during landing, as the parachute had not fully opened, and lost consciousness. “Well,” everybody thought then, “even a fully opened parachute is not designed for such a guy.” Sergey was about one hundred and ninety pounds, and sturdily built. He regained consciousness, only after the Germans had already taken his pistol and documents from him. He was captured. But during a journey from Gulyay-Pole, he managed to escape, and was hidden by a collective farmer, Isakov, in the village of Freileben, until the Red Army troops arrived. Then he returned to his Regiment.
Zhora Remez returned to the Regiment at about the same time. But in his case everything was simple. He was shot down on 17 December 1943. He bailed out and escaped. He fought in a partisan detachment and came to the aerodrome with a German rifle, and a red band sewn across his flying helmet. He brought in a reference from the partisans, and was taken on to flying duties straight away. But Lebedev. He had to undergo additional tests. Then new reasons appeared not to let him fly, such as no available plane for him, heavy fighting etc. “Lebedev? Well, his time to fly came long ago! It’s been a pity to see him down on the ground.”
Our ground troops kept advancing. They captured a bridgehead on the right-bank, in a bend of the Dniestr near Grigoriopol, and threatened Kishinev from it. The 5th Guards Army was advancing here. At nearly the same time, the 27th Army began to advance on Jassy, in Romania. Air cover was needed here and there, since the enemy’s counterattacks were supported by the intense operations of large bomber groups transferred there from the Crimea. There the Fascists concentrated up to one thousand two hundred aircraft. Out of them, more than four hundred and fifty were fighter planes. Yet by 1 April, the 7th Fighter Aviation Corps covering the advancing armies, had only sixty-four available aircraft.
Apart from that, the Hitlerites used their usual tactics. Their planes wouldn’t come over the front line for hours, but then hundreds of bombers and ground attack planes would rise from nearby aerodromes and strike at the Soviet troops. But our fighters could stay over the front line only for ten minutes, as their airstrips were too far away. Therefore they had to operate in small groups of two, or four planes, at most. Sometimes larger groups were mustered. Thus the permanent cover of ground troops was achieved, although by smaller forces.
The Corps led by General Utin operated very successfully. In April, its airmen claimed eighty German planes, having lost only seven. Even some funny things happened. A Fascist armada was on its way to the front line. The Hitlerites were about to start bombing and pounding our troops. There were no Soviet fighters in the air, and no anti-aircraft guns in this area either. What should be done?
“Comrade General, let me spook them!” A signalist of the ground control applied to the Corps Commander. “How?” Utin was surprised. “I’ll transmit on their frequency that our planes are in the air.” “Go on, try it,” the General agreed. The signalist rushed to the microphone. It turned out that his station had already been tuned to the frequency of the German bombers. “Achtung! Achtung! Four Cobras in the air.” And a miracle happened. The Fascists dropped their bombs, even before they reached the front line, on to the positions of their own troops, and began to dive in retreat.
Korolev was not yet flying after the operation, and for the first few days I was a ‘supporter’. I flew as Lusto’s or Arkhipenko’s wingman, and then they gave me Ippolitov as my wingman. I wasn’t happy at all about my ‘promotion’ into a leader. I’d felt fine as Korolev’s wingman. They had offered to make me a leader before, but I had refused. I used to say to Victor, “We’ll fly together till the end of the war!” Actually lately, the notions of ‘leader’ and ‘wingman’ had been quite relative for us. We both had been the wingman and the leader in combat. But Ippolitov… He had not been flying combat sorties almost at all, for sometimes there’d been no planes. Sometimes he’d been sent to the rear to bring up fighter planes. And his habit of flying individually and his hope of fighting only by his own strength… “He’ll be watching only his own tail… And he’ll see nothing. I’ll have to watch out for myself and for him…” I thought, when we were walking back after receiving orders, but said something different.
“Watch out, Ivan! You’re going to be the wingman and the rear hemisphere must be secure. I won’t have time to look back.” I had been given a hard task for this sortie. Figichev led the crack group. I was going to fly my pair a thousand or a thousand and a half metres above Figichev’s ‘sixer’, and provide him cover from sudden attacks by ‘hunters’.
“And what? it’s my duty to look back?”
“Stay in your place, to let me see you at any time, otherwise they’ll shoot you down and I won’t see it.”
Victor heard the end of our talk.
“Where are you heading?” He hadn’t been at the CP, and didn’t know that we’d received a mission.
“We’re going to chase the ‘hunters’. Over here.” I pulled out the map from inside the top of my boot and showed him a bend of the Dniestr. “Grigoriopol, Speya.” I smiled and added, “I used to live here in Butory, and Grigoriopol, from 1930 to ’32.
“Yes, it seems your hometown has been already liberated?”
“Long ago! Ten days have gone. Balta was liberated on the 7th and then Ananiev.”
“Going to see the place?”
“When
? You see what sort of fighting is going on. And after all,” I sighed, “I have no one there. My mother lives in Arkul, in Vyatka, with my brothers.”
There was fine weather along the whole route, but we had to descend a bit above the target. A smooth layer of thin clouds stretched at a height of three thousand metres. My pair flew just below the bottom of it, so that we were even touching the drooping tangles of fog. Ivan was doing alright. Although he had been flying a little before then, he apparently took into account that conversation in Nikiforovka, when other flyers’ opinions were expressed during flight analyses, and also our chat just before the sortie. Figichev was about a thousand metres below. The Germans were not showing up. “We’re not going to come across anybody like this,” I thought, but soon the ground control two-way transmitted. “Figichev! Be careful! A pair of ‘skinnies’ has been coming out of the clouds from time to time.”
“Understood. Number Four, watch out!”
“I am…”
Two or three minutes more were gone. I rushed through a tangling shred of clouds and glanced back at Ippolitov. He was in position. Now right and back. A Messer leaped out of a cloud we just passed and began to dive on Figichev’s group. He didn’t see my pair.
“Move right, Ivan!”
I caught the Schmitt in my gun-sight, and at an angle of about three-quarters opened fire. My trace passed a bit behind his engine, and stitched through the cockpit and the tail of the Me-109. But the Messer for some reason was not reacting to the fire. He kept diving on Figichev’s ‘sixer’ at the same angle. “Figichev, finish the ‘skinnie’ off! He’s diving on you!” I transmitted, being confident that he wouldn’t let it slip, and would finish the enemy off. I began to look around as another Messer had to be nearby. I didn’t care about the first one since Figichev was there.
We had had a chance to get to know our new Regiment commander well, over the last two months. He had begun the war over here in Bessarabia near the border. He’d served in the same regiment with Pokryshkin, who was the second best Soviet fighter ace of the Second World War. He’d flown MiG-3s, one of earlier models of the Soviet fighter planes of WW2, I-16s, IL-2s. He’d shot down a dozen Fascists, made more than five hundred sorties, burned up a hundred vehicles, six tanks, etc. People said that he used to fly even a Messer. Sure, he’d do the job and finish the Messer off! Most important was not to let another one go. And maybe somewhere around there was another pair or two. They wouldn’t report us about it.
Red Star Airacobra Page 17