Red Star Airacobra

by Evgeniy Mariinskiy

  “Keep your eyes open, Ivan! A second one must be nearby!” I was descending, by two hundred metres, to see the bottom of the clouds better and then coming up again. Where was a better place? If I was just under the very bottom I could see only myself. But no one would attack me from above. If I was to descend, the visibility would be better but there would be a threat of a strike from the Fascists leaping out the clouds. In this case, I had to fly at a high speed to level up the chances, but it meant an extra expenditure of fuel.

  “Figichev! Watch above yourself. If a ‘skinnie’ appears, let me know!” I decided to stay just below the clouds. But the Fascists weren’t coming over any more. And the aerial fights ceased for several days completely, although that same day they were quite intense. Goreglyad had flown a sortie, in a group of eight, shortly before our flight. Over the same area, they came across forty-five Ju-87s and two Me-109s. They shot down thirteen ‘clodhoppers’ and made it home with no losses.

  But when I came home I found out a sad piece of news. Bekashonok and Koshelkov had made a sortie before us and had had a fight against Messers. Bekashonok had shot down one. Koshelkov shot two ‘skinnies’ but had himself been killed.

  The funeral of Nikolay Filippovich, ‘Filippovich’ was his patronymic. He was only twenty years old. He was called simply Kol’ka or Nikolay at the funeral ceremony. He had managed to distinguish himself in aerial battles which fully overshadowed my memories of this routine sortie. I didn’t even ask if Figichev had finished off that Messer. But two days later, Figichev called me up at the parking bay. He was talking to some Lieutenant-Colonel from the Corps headquarters.

  “Listen, Mariinskiy, did you report then to the operations officer that you’d shot down a ‘skinnie’? The one that leaped out of the clouds?”

  “No. I did send you a message then, to terminate him, as he was diving on you. I myself was looking for a second one.”

  “What was the point of terminating him? He dived past us down to the ground. Apparently the pilot had been killed. The Lieutenant-Colonel says that a ‘skinnie’ crashed. Utin himself saw it but no one’s reported it! I forgot to tell the operations officer because there were other things to do.”

  “But I didn’t see him fall. How could I report it? Once I hadn’t reported, no one was sent for confirmation.”

  “Alright, you can go.”

  “What’s that all about?” Victor asked when I came back to the plane.

  “He says I shot down a Schmitt back then.”

  “When?”

  “When he led a group. The day Koshelkov was shot down.”

  “You said there’d been no action? And you didn’t hit him, just shot at him.” That day I flew Victor’s plane and he saw the armourers shake out only two empty cannon shells, and about a dozen and a half machine-gun shells.

  “You know I don’t test my guns. It’s a useless expense. Karpushkin gets them ready perfectly. He’s received lots of gratitude for it. And back then what a fight it was. A Schmitt had leaped out of the clouds, I shot a burst at him, and that was all.”

  “Did you hit him?”

  “I did, but he didn’t even budge. He was diving, and kept going down the same way, and Figichev says he dived into the ground and never tried to pull out.”

  “But you yourself didn’t see it, did you?”

  Korolev even stood up with astonishment from the cloth bags he was sitting on under a wing, as he was used to the fact that I had learnt to notice everything during combat.

  “There was no time to look at him, as I had to look for another one. They don’t fly one by one.”

  “And what is a wingman for? Ippolitov was supposed to look for a second one. And your duty is to strike and strike again until you see him finished.”

  “Well, how could I rely on him? He probably doesn’t see a thing in the air yet. You know yourself one can see only his leader’s tail during the first flights. Generally speaking, with such a wingman you do attack, but watch your rear in case your wingman is shot down.”

  “You have to teach him. You were taught, weren’t you?”

  “Teach? You can’t do it at once. More than one flight is needed for it. And his flying record is about ten times longer than mine. He wouldn’t listen to my advice.”

  “Record! His record is ten times longer than yours, but your combat record is one hundred times longer. Alright! In a couple of days I will begin to fly again. Will you go again as a wingman?” Victor asked me disingenuously. He had no doubts that I would fly with him but he simply wanted to tease me. How would this newly-made leader take this proposal?

  “What the hell? Sure I will!”

  15

  He didn’t make it home

  The consequences of the operation were still making themselves felt. Victor didn’t reckon to find himself in the thick of fighting, saying that he would start flying in a couple of days. He reckoned the lull that had set in would last several days. But during a flight to Jassy, Misha Lusto for some reason broke off from his group, butted under the clouds and found himself in a Focker’s gun-sight. Diving steeply down to the very ground he landed his burning plane. Next day Maslakov didn’t return from duty. During a fight, an armour-piercing shell went through his left foot. He managed to bandage it with his belt, but failed to make it home because of a major loss of blood, and landed on the aerodrome of a neighbouring Corps. The plane remained in one piece, but Maslakov himself found himself in hospital and they amputated his foot.

  Generally speaking, fighting intensified to a new level. Our ground troops had not managed to bring up reserves and were advancing with small numbers. Of course, the flyers didn’t know the commanders’ intentions, but one had an impression that a reconnaissance of the enemy’s defence was being done, to define its weaker points. There was fighting sometimes in Romania north of Jassy, sometimes in the direction of Tyrgu-Frumos. Every attempt of our troops to advance was facing massive raids by the Fascist aviation.

  Victor took off in these conditions for the first time, after a month’s break. Figichev led a group of ten, to cover ground troops around the Vulturul-Jassy area. Thick cumulo-nimbus clouds were tangling out of the unbroken dark-grey shroud above us. I saw a pair of Cobras flying about a thousand and a half metres above the main group, against this gloomy background, as if in a silent movie. Suddenly, two Fockers leaped out of a cumulus cloud and straight away latched on the tails of one of our pairs.

  “Ivanov, Fockers!” Someone yelled into the radio but it was too late. A mighty stream of fire burst out of a Focker, towards our fighter plane, dug into its fuselage and wing, and pieces of duralumin, distorted by explosions, began to break off Ivanov’s aircraft. Flame splashed out and the pilot slipped through it, then kept falling, with no parachute, but then, apparently, pulled the ring and began to sway under the rectangular silky cupola. “Ivanov’s flying in his new jackboots again!” As if on purpose, Ivanov had received new jackboots on the aerodrome, only that morning.

  The Corps Commander’s voice resounded in the headphones.

  “Figichev! Fockers are pounding the ground, attack them!”

  “I see them!” About three dozen Fockers were keeping themselves busy down below in the dusk of the cloudy day.

  The fighters engaged the enemy straight away. I was still diving, when Victor began to pull out of the attack in a battle turn. I wanted to repeat his manoeuvre, but saw that a pair of Fockers was heading towards him in a head-on attack. My leader was surrounded. Three hundred metres. Fire! I pulled the steering lever energetically, simultaneously rolling the plane left on the wing. The FW-190 didn’t manage to open fire. I saw, as my trace was truncated in the centre of its front cowling, that it sharply turned over, as if with one movement, regardless of the laws of aerodynamics and speed. It completed the first half of the Nesterov’s loop, or the ‘death’ loop, as it was still customarily called by airmen, and fell down, losing pieces of its engine.

  The battle didn’t last long. The Fockers were d
efending passively and quit the battlefield quickly. Obviously the planes were piloted by bomber-flyers. There were rumours at the front that the Germans had been shifting bomber pilots on to FW-190 fighter planes. They were hanging bombs on Fockers, installing extra cannon on them, and using this aircraft as a dive-bomber and a ground-attack machine. Probably, this time we had encountered these kinds of ‘aces’. This opinion was confirmed soon.

  On 25 April, Gulayev’s ‘sixer’ came across twenty-five Fockers. They flew in columns. Even their flights consisted not of four planes each, like fighters, but of three as bombers would do. Gulayev himself, shot down all three Fockers of the trailing flight, in the first attack. Then shot down two more. And the whole group shot down eleven Fockers all up! And what about the Fockers? They rendered almost no resistance, dropped the bombs and did their best to flee as fast as possible. Day by day, sortie after sortie, our fighters were coming across larger and larger groups of Fascist aircraft. Korolev’s quartet had to engage sixty Junkers, twenty Fockers and ten Messers, and the next day when they flew along with Gulayev’s squadron, fifty Fockers!

  “Well, Vitya, Fockers are good for us! They’re as easy to fight as ‘clodhoppers’.” I came up to Victor after the fight.

  “Don’t say that! This time they fought really well. Look, Gurov and Bukchin came back with damage.”

  “And what about those fights?”

  “What do you mean ‘those fights’? Different pilots. I guess, both fighter and bomber pilots fly them. It depends who you come across. They can show such a ‘clodhopper’! They showed Ivanov. He lost his foot, full amputation. And they might have shown you this time as well. Why didn’t you pull out of the attack straight away? Didn’t I transmit to you?”

  I had been carried away in this fight by chasing a Focker and hadn’t noticed that I was under attack from four more. “Zhen’ka, left battle turn needed, the Fockers are on you!” Victor yelled to me. I looked left, saw the attackers but, they were still far away, and here there was a German nearby, in the gun-sight. I managed to shoot him down and threw myself into a battle turn to meet the attacking planes. And I managed it.

  “So, Victor, I did manage to do it. And why didn’t you cut them off?”

  “I couldn’t. You know it’s not always feasible. So, you watch out! ‘Clodhoppers’ once set you on fire, didn’t they, and you had to make a forced landing, so these guys will knock you out easily.

  “I know. They’re not afraid if they are in big numbers.” I had to agree.

  “Tell me where there are few of them, and we’ll hunt them over there!” Victor laughed.

  Where were there few of them? The Germans had mustered so much aviation, at this sector, that there were enough for mass raids. They flew large groups of forty to sixty Junkers, escorted by twenty to thirty fighter-planes, or Fockers themselves operated in groups of twenty-five to fifty planes. After all, they were not busy with covering their ground troops but restricted themselves to separate mass raids.

  After the sortie, I tumbled down on the cloth bags piled under the wings, and fell asleep in the shade. I woke up when the sun shifted and began to bake me again. Volkov and Karpushkin were scrubbing the wings and fuselage, brushing away every speck of dust to improve the planes’ streamlining, and to help their commander at least with this. Bourmakova was lying under the wing leaning on her elbows and pensively nibbling a blade of grass. I stood up, took a rag, and began to help the guys.

  “Comrade Commander, we’ll handle it ourselves, you have a rest,” Nikolay begged.

  “That’s fine, three of us will have it done faster! You say Galya cries when I’m not back in time, but doesn’t want to do anything to help me out.”

  “Comrade Commander! I…” Galya was tossed up as if by a spring. With tears in her eyes, she snatched the rag from my hands.

  Herewith is an extract from the operations report of our Division as on 2 May 1944. “On this day our troops undertook an offensive again. This time fighting broke out west of Jassy in the direction of Tyrgu-Frumos. Four of our fighters, under Arkhipenko’s command, covered the ground troops in the area of Kyrzhon, Hermenestij, Beichenij. They were directed on to a group of sixty Ju-87s and twelve Henschel 123s escorted by thirty Me-109s and FW-190s”…

  The silvery meandering strip of the Prut River flashed underneath, lit by the bright spring sunbeams. “And the country’s frontier left behind,” I thought. I used to fly here, I had been over Romanian territory. Three Fockers I had shot down slouched on the ground, as piles of burnt metal, somewhere north of Jassy. And the first of those flights had occurred, after a long break, in a group of flyers unused to each other, over unfamiliar countryside. There had been no time to think about anything directly unrelated to the flight. Then gloomy weather came over and this narrow strip of the river, which marked the country frontier, was unnoticeable underneath. Now the river was clearly seen over a long stretch and, for the first time, I felt proud of my 2nd Ukrainian Front which was the first to carry the fight across the border of our Motherland. But in the air, one has to think only about the flight and the mission. A conversation between the group leader and ground control brought that to mind.

  “Gusev, Gusev, this is Arkhipenko. I’m reporting for work.” Gusev was General Utin’s call sign.

  “Arkhipenko, this is Gusev. Understood. Go to the prescribed district. A large formation of bombers is approaching it from the south.” The familiar chill of the anticipation of battle entered my chest around the heart. I gripped the joystick and began to look around more attentively: an encounter with the enemy fighters sent to sweep the air space could be expected.

  “Understood!” Arkhipenko called Utin back and addressing the wingers, immediately ordered, “Attention! Speed up!” Airacobras moved southwards gradually increasing speed. The front line here stretched nearly east-west from Prut north of Yassy and up against the Carpathian foothills beyond the town of Paskany. Clouds appeared ahead of us, somewhat below the flight altitude.

  “Arkhipenko, this is Gusev. The bombers are under the clouds.”

  “Understood. Coming down.”

  We dived under the clouds and saw the Germans nearly simultaneously. It was hard not to notice such a group. And the feeling of nervous strain that had appeared during the approach to the front line disappeared without a trace. It was replaced by quiet battle-lust. Yes, by quiet fervour! Real fervour and calm cold calculation of oncoming action intertwined here.

  About sixty ‘clodhoppers’ were in the front, followed by twelve more Henschel-123s. These ones bore nearly no difference from Henschel-126s, and we called them ‘crutches’. Both Junkers and ‘crutches’ always bombed from a dive. They had no bomb-sights for attacks from horizontal flight. Both types were nearly defenceless against fighter attacks. “Well, now we’ll give it to them!” It looked as if the bombers had come on their own. There were no fighters nearby. Arkhipenko tossed his plane from one wing to another calling us to “attention!” Straight after that he transmitted, “Attack the Junkers, and then straight off, the Henschels!”

  Our position was not quite convenient, but the decision was the only right one. The Ju-87s were straight in front us on a transverse course, and the ‘crutches’ were behind them on the right bearing. They would have to come under the fighters’ fire themselves, when the latter rushed through the formation of ‘clodhoppers’.

  The fighters were racing towards the bombers from aside and slightly from the front, at a three-quarters angle. All the crews of Junkers could see them but the gunners could do nothing to stop the attack. Nor could the Hitlerian pilots use cannons and machine-guns, directed forward, without breaking the formation.

  We usually attacked ‘clodhoppers’ from behind. We would be met by heavy fire from the rear-gunners. But once we had rushed through this screen of fire and broken into the middle of the bombers’ formation we were relatively safe. Neither gunners nor pilots of Junkers would shoot for fear of hitting friendly aircraft. In the meantime they
would veer away from us, creating a risk of collision with each other, dropping their bombs anywhere, and the formation would break up. And we, on the contrary, felt free amidst such a melee. Shoot and you would hit a target for sure, as some bomber would be sure to come under your tracer. Only when a formation had been broken up, we would find ourselves open, and lead and fire would start pouring in from all sides. But before that, as a rule, they would have managed to shoot down several Fascists. The others would be still fearing the ‘berserk’ flyers, and their fire would not be too accurate.

  The same method was used in fights against large formations of enemy fighters. We would thrust into the thick of the formation, where the Germans impeded each other, and could not fully apply their numerical superiority. Yet we had no choice this time. The Junkers were approaching the front line, and we had to strike immediately. And with such an attack, from the front and from the side, we could straight away, without shooting down one plane, disrupt the flight order of both groups and prevent them from dive-bombing. After all, the feeling of their own defencelessness had to affect the Fascists especially strongly, undermining their battle spirit. And we had to prevent well-aimed bombing at any cost.

  While still approaching, the flyers noticed huge fires, bright even in the light of a May day, with the thick greasy smoke of burning diesel. Even without it, our tanks were ablaze on the battlefield. Obviously, the Fascists’ anti-tank artillery had done a crack job. Arkhipenko was leading the group on to the head of the German bombers’ column. The distance was shrinking with lightning speed. At first we saw a solid mass in our gun-sights, then it broke up into separate aircraft. Individual details became distinguishable, ‘clodhoppers’ sticking out, gulled wings, angular shapes of glazed cockpits, with pilots and gunners, tail units etc.