We were flying in the ‘front’ formation. The planes of the leading pairs, Arkhipenko’s and Korolev’s, raced ahead by twenty to twenty-five metres. I was on the right flank. I swivelled my eyes slightly left and saw the nose of Arkhipenko’s plane become shrouded in quickly disappearing puffs of white smoke, and the red balls of large calibre bullets and shells dashed off towards the Junkers.
“Still a bit early… although…” I nearly followed the example of the squadron’s commander. The earlier you open fire, the more panic it will set amongst Fascists. But out of habit, I cast a glance at the space around the plane. Behind and beside me the sky was empty. Only above me, pairs and quartets of enemy fighters were diving into breaches amidst the clouds. Lots of them! They’re hailing like peas from a torn sack. No matter, we’ll be alright! But nevertheless I transmitted by two way.
“This is Number Four, the ‘skinnies’ are diving from above!”
Arkhipenko called back without breaking the attack, “We’ve got time!”
The Hitlerite bombers are racing towards us. All four fighters are already shooting. Solid red skeins of gun tracers stretch towards the Fascists. It seems, very shortly, our fighters will collide with them and several huge puffs of fire and smoke appear in the air.
The fighters are in a better position. They hope to clear the way for themselves by gun-fire. Shoot them down, and the way is open! The bombers will not shoot from such a position. They can stop the attacking fighters only by getting rammed. But it means certain death. And the Germans have never been inclined to risk their lives that way.
And the bombers’ formation wavered. Moreover the fighters’ gun-fire at last reached the target. One of the Junkers plunged down leaving behind a black smoky spiral. It was the signal. The bombers ran in all directions in panic, and the red-starred ‘Bellochkas’ raced between them without throttling back. We were merely shaken, in the whirlwinds left behind by the bombers which had passed by. Yes, I noticed Victor had nearly collided with a Fascist, while trying to shoot, point-blank, at a Junkers that had blundered across him. Fortunately that one, with one of his wings shot away by a shell, managed to dive under Korolev’s plane.
A new target, a group of Henschel-123s appeared ahead of us. The ‘crutches’ taught by the bitter experience of the ‘clodhoppers’ preferred not to wait to be shot from short range. As if under orders, they dropped their bombs from horizontal flight. “Whose territory is this? Seems to me it’s not ours,” I just had time to think. They rushed in all directions to the clouds to escape deep into their territory without interference.
“Turn right one-eighty degrees!” Arkhipenko ordered. He was thinking about having another attack on the Junkers before the enemy fighters joined the battle. But this time a concentrated attack didn’t work. Most of the Junkers had dropped their bombs already during the encounter with us. Who would want to blow up if a bomb detonated? They scattered, one by one, and only two or three flights of the bombers held compact groups, and were heading towards the front line.
Some single planes dragged on behind them. Thus a formidable attacking force could have formed up again, and that shouldn’t have been allowed under any circumstances. Currently every air strike would have hit our land forces hard. There was no point in attacking small groups with all four planes. Arkhipenko understood that straight after the U-turn.
“Attack in pairs.”
“Understood!” Korolev called back. “Zhen’ka, watch out!”
“I’m watching.”
Anyway, I kept turning my head surveying the air space. Just before, there had been only bombers in the air, but at the moment almost all of them were fleeing southwards. In turn, the skies were swarming with pairs and quartets of Me-109s and FW-190s. About thirty enemy fighters headed to rescue their bombers, although with a delay. But they were still relatively far, and seemingly didn’t see us, and the Junkers were right here. A flight of Ju-87s was right ahead of our pair. There were only a hundred or a hundred and fifty metres from us. Closer, closer… One could already discern the dark flashes of spent oil on grey-green silhouettes. Rows of coarse rivets showed up… Closer, still closer…
Red lightning-bolts dashed from Korolev’s plane to the leading Junkers. It caught fire, jerkily turned over, and vanished underneath, spiralling around the axis of its dive. The other two bombers had not yet managed to react at all to the fall of their leader, when I opened fire on them.
“Zhenka, on your right! The ‘skinnies’ are on your tail!” Korolev’s yell, resounding in the headphones, interrupted my burst. It was transmitted in such a way that I didn’t bother about clarification where the ‘skinnies’ were. One would be warned this way only in case of a mortal threat.
I still managed to see shells exploding in the left wing and the fuselage under the Junkers’ cockpit and threw my plane to the right still looking back over my right shoulder. There, dangerously close to my plane, the yellow shaft of the Messerschmitt’s propeller was rotating. The German flyer was already turning the nose of his plane ahead, to set a lead, so as to strike my fighter with a precise burst. One more second, and…
Still moving the joystick I made a wing-over, and my plane started to turn around, leftward instead of rightward. The headphones flew off my head because of the strong drag and I tried to reach for them, fumbling my hand about the cockpit floor and looking back at the Messerschmitt. The Fascist also rolled the Me-109 leftward. Now both planes were separated by only five to six metres. They were at the same altitude, but I was keeping my eye on the actions of the Hitlerite, looking over my right shoulder as though downwards, if you took my cockpit floor as a guide. The Me-109 flyer, on the contrary, threw his head up and watched my Cobra continuously. I could see the strap of his throat microphone cutting into his neck, and the German’s freckly pug-nosed face getting redder and redder, and the locks of red hair that spilled from under his gauze helmet sticking to his forehead.
“That Schmitt was good!” The cheerful voice of Burgonov resounded in the headphones that at last I had got back on my head, with an effort.
“Gipsy shot down a ‘skinnie’ but this bastard’s pestering me. U-h-h, scumbag! How much longer is he going to hang on my tail? Aha, it didn’t work!”
I slowed the engine down, and the Me-109 which, after a dive, was at a much higher speed, quickly found itself ahead of me. “So, a bit more… Good!” The Messerschmitt was now in front of me. I pushed the lever slightly away from me, in order to reduce the angular velocity of the turn, and caught the German in my gun-sight. He obviously understood what kind of trouble he was in, in this position, and energetically started to get out of the turn with a climb.
Too late! My point-blank burst tore his fuselage from engine to tail. The mortally damaged Me-109 shook. His right wrenched-up wing sharply turned flat to the onrushing air-flow. The plane turned around with its tail to the front, and began to fall apart. “Gosh!” I just managed to breath out having thrown my plane out of the way of a fragment of the Me-109’s tail flying alongside. A nasty vibration went through the plane, warning of a possible plunge into a spiral. In the heat of battle, I had nearly completely throttled back to let the Fascist ahead, and now I nearly paid for my lack of concentration. The headphones fell off again because of the drag.
The debris of the Fascist’s plane was left far behind and below. But where were Victor and Arkhipenko? Schmitts and Fockers were racing around. I evaded their fire dozens of times more, shot at them myself, kept losing and finding the headphones, and pulling them back on my head with an effort. During those short seconds, when the treacherous headphones were on my head, I heard the voices of Arkhipenko, Burgonov, Korolev, but these seconds were too short to perceive the situation my comrades were in. Anyway, I knew that they were in the same situation as I was…
The fight gradually began to quiet down. I understood it at once. Now I had to dodge attacking German planes much less often, and I saw fewer and fewer Hitlerites in front of me. The bombers had left, ba
ck at the beginning of the battle. Now the fighters were retreating southwards towards their territory, in a dive. Despite their huge numeric superiority they were not very keen on fighting to the end.
“Where are our guys? Aha, here’s one pair. It’s Arkhipenko and Gipsy. And a third one is joining up, Korolev…” The squadron commander’s pair was flying a bit to the north, and a third plane was approaching them from behind and below. “Why does it have such a long and thin fuselage? It’s a ‘skinnie’!”
“Arkhipenko! A ‘skinnie’ on your tail!”
“Knock him off!”
I opened fire at the Hitlerite infatuated by the attack. The Me-109 immediately ceased his attack, and switched to a shallow dive with no change of course, and followed by white smoke.
“Arkhipenko, you finish him off!”
In fact the Messer hit the ground having not tried to pull out of the dive.
I joined up with Arkhipenko’s pair. I felt uneasy. The fight was over, but where was Victor? However hard I turned my head around, not a single plane was in sight. What’s happened? It can’t be. Victor wouldn’t have let it slip. Finally I lost my cool. “Korolev, this is Number Four, can’t see you. Where are you?”
Arkhipenko responded instead of Victor.
“Korolev transmitted that he’d been hit and was going north. Most likely he’s sitting somewhere after a forced landing.”
“How long ago did he transmit?”
“Back when the fight was still finishing.”
I calmed down a bit. My worst fears hadn’t materialised. Shot up? He’ll manage to land! The Schmitts wouldn’t have chased him at the end of the dogfight. He’ll be back to the aerodrome today or tomorrow! It means we’ve fought well in this battle. And Victor will return! But my concern for the fate of my friend did not leave me.
“Bloody headphones!” I thought. “If they hadn’t been coming off I would have heard everything, and might have helped somehow.” But it was hard to imagine how I could have helped him in such a melee. I didn’t fly straight in the fight, even for a second. Battle turns were followed by turnovers, steep curves and spirals. And when carrying out this constant cascade of aerobatics I had to watch out, spot out, figure out the Fascists’ intentions and counteract with my own will and skill in ruling my machine, shoot and still cope with my headphones constantly coming off. Had I seen Victor endangered I couldn’t have done much apart from transmitting to him about it.
Batya was not at the parking bay when we were taking off. He wasn’t there now either. Lately he’d been permanently on duty in the squadron hut, cleaning the plankbed and sweeping the floor. Generally speaking, he’d been trying to make our home cosier.
Nobody told him anything about Victor, and by night he came to the parking himself, for want of anything better to do. Firstly he didn’t even notice that his son’s plane was not on its site, for the flyers had been often flying in combined groups with other squadrons. Grigoriy Sergeevich was going to head back but then saw me. “How come? Victor’s not here but this guy is around? They’ve always flown together. Victor wouldn’t have flown off alone…”
“Zhenya, where is Vitya?” he whispered with lips instantly turned white.
“He was shot up, Batya… He forced-landed…”
“Whereabouts?”
“Don’t worry, on our territory.”
“But where, on which spot?”
“I don’t know, he transmitted that he was shot up and leaving northwards. We fought only two or three kilometres beyond the frontline.”
“Beyond the front line?” The old man grew even paler.
“But it’s nearby! Once he’d transmitted that he was going north it meant that he would have crossed the front line. The altitude was about a thousand and a half, even two. He might have glided on to our territory, even with the engine off.”
“Did he transmit anything else?”
“No.” I responded not quite confidently. Maybe he did, but I heard nothing due to the constant struggle with my headphones. Arkhipenko and Gipsy seemingly didn’t hear anything else. Anyway they said nothing. “He’ll come back. After all, others have.”
I said the last phrase with more confidence. And it worked.
Grigoriy Sergeevich quickly calmed down. After all Lusto had come back on foot twice during the last few days! The second time there was a lot of laughing! Misha had bailed out, and the flyers told the head of the Divisional parachute service that he couldn’t land. He, they said, was too light and kept dangling at the same height without moving. “And where is he now?” The Chief parachutist asked. “He’s still hanging up there. We kept circling around him for about ten minutes, and he was still at the same height. We were short of fuel and left…”
“Which way was the wind blowing?” The parachutist was scared. He took the joke for real and feared that the wind could have blown Lusto beyond the front line. “The same as here – southwards, towards the front line.” The flyers continued fooling him. And then they ‘calmed’ him down.
“Don’t be afraid, it was far away from the frontline, about twenty kilometres! Lusto had bailed out on the way back after the duty had been carried out.”
“Why didn’t he pull up the straps… Then he would have lost altitude by gliding!”
“Don’t worry, he won’t stay there! There’ll be no ascending air streams in the night, and he’ll land!” Only after a good laugh, did the flyers inform the Chief parachutist that Lusto had landed safely, although he was a really long time descending. Misha came back in a day… Recollection of this case, when the flyers were joking about their missing comrade, calmed the old man down.
“Will he return tomorrow, what do you reckon?” Batya asked, although he knew himself that it would be impossible to get back in one day. He’d have to walk, and ride on passing cars for two hundred and fifty kilometres. And you just try to stop a passing vehicle! The frontline drivers ride at full speed and are always in a hurry. And if one stops he would say that he was going in another direction.
“No, he won’t. The day after, I suppose.”
And this is what happened the day after …
16
Here comes my death
“Here comes my death!” A last thought glowed dimly and indifferently. My Bellochka kept losing altitude, despite my desperate attempts to get out of the dive. That day, 4 May, we arrived at the airstrip at dawn, as usual. But instead of breakfast we were sent to the aircraft.
“You will have your breakfast after the sortie,” Figichev said. “At the moment there’s no time for it, you have to take off. You will fly out to cover the districts of Dumbrevica, Hzlshteni, Tyrgu-Frumos, Beichenij…”
We took off in a flight of six, Arkhipenko and Bourgonov, a pair of Basenko and Glushenkov from the 3rd Squadron, Lusto and me in the rear. I used to land in dusk or in the night. For the first time I had to take off at dawn, well before the sunrise. We took off, counting on reaching the front line when the sun was up.
At first, the outlines of white roads became clear, then villages and gardens. When we were crossing the frontier everything became quite familiar. There was only dove-coloured haze above the ground, just like last night after sunset. Soon the sun came. It rolled from behind the horizon, splashed on our eyes, and lit up the murky cockpits and began to play on their plexiglass, and dazzle the flyers who were trying to look eastwards. I was flying on the left flank, lifting up my left wing from time to time, so as to cover myself from the sun, and view the eastern hemisphere. The German airfields were not far from the frontline. Their fighters and maybe bombers could be expected at any time. They wouldn’t have sent us to fly so early for no reason!
Usually, when on patrol, our fighters had been following the front line overlooking the whole assigned area. This time Arkhipenko, having taken into consideration the small size of our group, had chosen a different route. We were penetrating the German territory by about ten kilometres, then going back, crossing the frontline. Flying in by five ki
lometres, then turning around southwards perpendicular to the frontline. Thus, the sun shone from the side all the time, from the left or from the right, but not from the rear. I was finding myself either on the left flank, when we were flying south, or on the right one, when we were flying north. But I was constantly only on the eastern side of the group. Time and again, I would screen myself with a wing from the sun, climbing the skies, and kept looking over this most dangerous direction. And not in vain! After another northward turnaround I saw a pair of Me-109s turning into my rear.
“Lusto, I am under attack by ‘skinnies’.” Silence. The Messerschmitts were getting closer and I had to take a decision immediately. “Pupok, here are the ‘skinnies’!” No answer, no manoeuvres. Even Basenko and Glushenkov showed no reaction, although a duty of their pair was expressly to cover Arkhipenko’s four crack fighters. No time to hesitate! The rest didn’t see and didn’t hear anything. To see something they would have to cover themselves from the sun with their wings.
“Bloody Pupok! Vit’ka would have heard me or seen it himself!” The thought flashed while I was turning around to meet the Messerschmitts. And Fedor is silent… Do they hear me or not? At full speed I was climbing up, keeping the rapidly enlarging leading Messerschmitt in my gun-sight. I managed to have a rearward glance. The group was quietly proceeding in its flight. “Do they see that I’ve gone away? Are they bloody blind?” The Me-109 opened fire. A smoky trace of bullets and shells drifted towards my Bellochka. “Ha, bastard, you couldn’t wait any longer! Well, now wait…” I was muttering, having leaned closer to the windscreen. “A bit early… Now it’s alright…”
Red Star Airacobra Page 19