Red Star Airacobra

by Evgeniy Mariinskiy

  “Doo-doo-doo-doo-doo…” my plane was shuddering from every shot of my cannon! “Ta-ta-ta-ta-ta!…” the machine-guns were rattling. A long, long burst of red balls, not bright as usual but pale, headed to the diving Messerschmitt which was clearly seen against the background of virginal clean blue of the skies.

  The distance was too great, and this braid of fire gradually dissipated and surrounded the Messerschmitt… Seemingly there were no hits… My trace passed by the ‘skinnie’ and curved down behind him. But the Messerschmitt was getting closer and the shaft of fire came across him. There was one hit! One, two, three hits… The Messerschmitt turned left in its dive, began to spiral, let out white smoke and caught fire. Then, after leaving behind a mournful tail of black smoke, the ‘skinnie’ slipped down and disappeared, spiralling chaotically. “O.K., number nine is ready!” I transferred fire on the supporting Messerschmitt, but it didn’t pick up the fight, and headed towards the sun in a battle half-turn.

  “I know what this one’s up to. He won’t chase me and I won’t catch up with him,” I thought, knowing the Germans wouldn’t engage the enemy if a wingman or a leader were lost. I began to turn around to catch up with my group. “Although… What joke won’t God play while the Devil is sleeping.” I paraphrased the proverb, and glanced towards the sun. The Messerschmitt was heading away southwards, but nearby two FW-190s were turning around for attack. “Where the hell have these two come from?” I thought, turning around for a head-on fight. “Just these two or are there more?” Four more Fw-190s turned up from behind my wing with which I had covered myself from the sun. “Six already! Any more?” I had a good look around. “No. Well, I can live with that!” I yet didn’t want to take the FW-190s seriously, considering them as second, or even third rank, fighter planes. The only bad thing was that they were much higher that I was. “If only I were on the same altitude with them!”

  Again, a head-on attack. One pair after another, the FW-190s dived on me, and I kept climbing, snarling at them with fire. One pair raced by, the second one, then the third… I might turn around and leave for my territory. No! The first pair is already on my tail. I had to go for a head-on attack again. A pair, another one… Where is the third one? Already on my tail? Yes… “Vit’ka was not wrong at all saying that the FW-190 could be different. I will have to mess around with these ones…”

  “Arkhipenko! Number four here. I have engaged four Fockers. Help me out!”

  I wasn’t calling Lusto anymore. Anyway he didn’t hear me. But Arkhipenko didn’t answer either…

  I didn’t know what kind of aerobatics I was doing. Were they real flying stunts or not? The day before yesterday, against my own will, I had to do a half-roll I’d known nothing about. Had I not done it I would have stayed there, would have met my end.

  But now, whatever I did, a pair of Fockers was always hanging on my tail, another one was making a head-on attack and a third one was waiting for its moment high above. Sweat was obscuring my eyes and the time had nearly stopped its run… Arkhipenko should have come back long ago, but he was still away. Why? “They are in a fight…” At long last I understood. “Who were they fighting? Bombers? No, Fockers as well… Where did so many of them come from? At this altitude, fighting without bombers?” Groups of FW-190 usually would fly out for a ground attack at altitudes up to a thousand and a half metres, or would escort bombers. They would rarely get engaged in an active dogfight. They acted under the rule, don’t touch us and we won’t touch you.

  Much later, analysing this fight, we came to the conclusion that those Fockers had come intentionally to sweep up the air, to tie up our fighters in a battle, and let the bombers do their job with no trouble. One group engaged with Arkhipenko, whilst I fought with another. And that pair of Messerschmitts played the role of advanced patrol, and aimed the Fockers at our fighters. But Figichev kept building up his forces, and the Junkers were met by Gulayev’s group…

  How much time had gone? One minute, two? A thousand years? The sun seemingly stood still without moving…

  “Arkhipenko, head towards me!” General Utin’s voice resounded.

  “One of your guys is not answering, but he’s been fighting with six Fockers already, for ten minutes!”

  “I’ve got three dozen of them as well!” Arkhipenko replied. “They won’t let me go…”

  “Ten minutes only… And Utin doesn’t hear me. It means the transmitter isn’t operating…” I was doing my best to shift the fight northwards over our territory, but I only managed to keep it above the same spot. And the “Fockers” were gradually dragging Arkhipenko’s group over here, to the frontline. From afar, I saw a bunch of fighter planes rolling in from the north. But there was no time to study them. I had a lot of problems myself, to meet them in a head-on attack and to get away from an attack from the rear… Again, a head-on, and again a getaway… At last two isolated dogfights merged into one. Straight off, I raced into the centre of the bunch made by the Fockers and Arkhipenko’s group.

  “I’m alright now!” I sighed with relief having found myself next to my comrades. “Somebody will rescue me, I’m not alone anymore!” I glanced back at Basenko who had raced past me and grew cold. Basenko was heading further away, but a Focker’s muzzle hung just over my tail. “Eh, you dozed off, you relaxed too early!” I threw my plane left and up so sharply that circles began to jump in my eyes, and managed to send a machine-gun burst at the German. At the same moment shells began to tap on my tail. My plane shook from the burst which pierced it. Dull pain filled my head. My plane slid down its wing in a left turnaround and went into a vertical dive.

  Glancing back, I saw a Focker turn around, following me in a descent. “Wants to finish me off, scumbag! Not going to happen!” I thought, and pulled the lever to me. The lever moved over suddenly easily and freely. But the aircraft kept diving as before, with no reaction. “The controls are destroyed… What am I supposed to do?” I thought and looked back again. The Focker kept diving, but one our fighters latched on to his tail. Then he shot out a burst and the Focker caught fire, but continued its dive, marking its track with a pillar of black smoke.

  “This one is done for. And what about myself? What the hell’s going on? The plane seems to be in one piece and not on fire… If I bail out I will hit the stabilizer. It’s going to break my back and that will be it… Better to stay in the plane… Where am I diving to? On to the Germans? Down with it! If I am to die I’d rather die on our side of the line…” I began to roll the plane by 180 degrees with the ailerons in vertical dive. As soon as I pressed on the lever I was thrown to the right, on the cabin board, so strongly that I nearly lost conscience. “Free fall, weightlessness… Fall in space…” I suddenly recalled a phrase read once upon a time. I didn’t feel any weightlessness, couldn’t notice it until I hit the cabin side. There had been simply no time to think about it before. And that was quite a common condition for a fighter-pilot.

  My plane chanced to roll around against all odds. Now it was diving northwards. Yet it was no use. One way or another, the plane’s nose was aiming nearly at the same point on the ground… I tried again to pull the lever to me as though something might have changed. No, the same stuff…

  The trimmer! How could I forget about it? Once I had to get out of a dive using it. Didn’t I? But then, it just managed to handle the load on the elevators? But now there was no such load at all. I began to rotate the steering-wheel of the trimmer towards me. More, more… The Bellochka gained tremendous speed, began to pull out of the vertical dive itself, and the combined efforts of the trimmer and speed had immediate effect. I even felt some overload. “Maybe, I’ll manage to make it home on the trimmer, how about that?” Once, in a dogfight, my ailerons had jammed, and I managed to get home and land the plane, using just the steering wheel and ailerons’ trimmers as small ailerons. Only I had to turn the trimmers’ steering wheel the opposite way then.

  “No, it’s not going to work…” The plane was diving, parallel to the slope of
a gorge, at an angle of thirty degrees. My eye made no mistake in defining the glide path. Over there, near that yellow hump I would hit the ground. The opposite slope of the small gorge kept running towards me. Huts and gardens began to flash past me. Here’s a garden ahead of me. I mustn’t hit the opposite slope. It’s certain death… Shall I try? I managed to turn the trimmer’s steering wheel a bit away from me, pressed the pedal of the main steering wheel, in order to avoid a head on collision with a huge tree which stood next to a stone fence at the beginning of a garden. Too late… Everything went dark in my eyes. Everything withdrew somewhere far, far away.

  “Here comes my death!” A last thought glowed limply and indifferently.

  17

  A hooligan on the road

  I did not come back the next day…

  Our planes took off at dawn when it was still dark. Batya saw us off to the aerodrome and half an hour later went out to breathe some fresh air. He didn’t want to sleep and felt drearily alone in his room. Too much reminded him of Victor in there and that he had not come back yet. His son’s backpack under the bed, his wooden bed itself, the bed he used to sleep in whilst other pilots slept on a common plank-bed, the table they often sat at in the evenings drinking light wine.

  “Vit’ka will be back today,” Batya thought confidently and raised his head noticing the approaching din of aircraft engines. Against the background of grey daybreak skies, six fighters went away to the south-west. “Where did they send them off to so early? Hot fighting is coming again… When is it going to end? Lebedev didn’t make it back yesterday. Actually he is alright. Everybody saw that he had bailed out over our territory when the con-rod of his plane had snapped. But anyway it was bad. If there was no war nobody would think about flying these worn-out battered machines. The flyers say so but still fly them and fight. They shoot down the Germans but come back on foot themselves. And sometimes they don’t come back at all…”

  Grigoriy Sergeevich cleaned the room and decided to walk to the aerodrome. His son would come straight there. There would be no point in him dropping in to the village, to go a long way round whilst he knew that everybody is there… First of all he would think about the guys, about his job, not about his father…

  He was approaching the aerodrome when the group that took off at dawn drew in for landing. Which squadron is that? Only five fighters were back. A sixth one wasn’t there…When he came up to the command post to ask Figichev about his son Arkhipenko and Lusto were there.

  “How come he’s not back?” The old man asked everybody.

  “He won’t be back…”

  “How come?”

  “He died… He hit the ground in a dive…”

  “Didn’t you tell me…?” Batya turned to Arkhipenko, went pale and grasped the edge of a desk edge so as not to collapse, “Didn’t you tell me he had transmitted that he was going north…?”

  “Who are you talking about hyar? Victor? It’s Zhen’ka who’s died…” “Zhen’ka?” Batya asked perplexedly.

  “Yes. I knocked off the Focker that shot him down. But he was diving down to the ground. He didn’t bail out and didn’t even try, said nothing through the two-way. Most likely he was killed… Nothing’s left there either of his plane or of him…” The old man sat on a chair given by somebody. This news had cut him down. The day before Vit’ka wasn’t back, today Zhen’ka, his wingman had died. A bad omen… How could he ask about Victor now? Wouldn’t be tactful…

  But Arkhipenko read Batya’s thoughts and answered the question he wanted to ask. “Victor’ll probably arrive hyar by nightfall. Go home, get ready to meet him… We’ll send him to you straight away!” Batya went out of the dug-out and saw Volkov in front of the entry. Nikolay was standing with red eyes, wet with pent-up tears and waiting for Arkhipenko.

  “What’s happening, Batya?”

  Grigoriy Sergeevich guessed that Volkov was asking about his commander.

  “What did they tell you?”

  “Nothing… He wasn’t back and that was it… I want to ask them to let me go there. Maybe he needs some kind of help…”

  “Eh, Kolya! Nobody will let you go there…”

  “Why?”

  The old man hesitated. To tell or not to tell? Maybe it was worth justifying it by the war, by the need for mechanics to be at the aerodrome and not searching for missing pilots… Then he made up his mind. Either way in a few minutes he would find out.

  “Zhen’ka is dead.”

  “What?” Nikolay glanced at Korolev somewhat wildly, understood that he was saying the truth as this was not the sort of thing you joke about, covered his face with his hands, turned away and ran along the parking lane.”

  “Eh, guys, guys! You should be starting your life just now, but you live through all this and die…” The old man was thinking this on his way back to the village. Nevertheless he tried to follow Arkhipenko’s advice. He called in at many places in the village to get ready to see his son. There would surely be the joy of return and a new grief… He filled a three-litre oxygen container with home brew and got a canister of wine. He was waiting all day long in vain and in the evening found the flyers with a firm resolution. How could he not have thought of it before?

  Look, Volkov immediately ran to ask them to let him go over there, to help out. And I, old fool, am sitting here and waiting… Maybe, he’s wounded… “Fedor Fedorovich”, he came up to Arkhipenko, “Let me leave tomorrow morning. I’ll go and look for Victor.”

  “What’s the point of looking for him? He’ll come back himself.”

  “Volkov was going to look for Zhen’ka. Who is Zhen’ka to him? Just a flyer. But this is my son!”

  “All right then. If he’s not back tomorrow, you’ll go on a search the day after.”

  Victor didn’t return in the night, nor come back the next day. Grigoriy Sergeevich was in utter despair. He slept hardly at all the last night, tossing and turning in his bed under a window and listening to every rustle. Maybe, he was coming? In the morning he called Lusto for a confidential talk. He had been senior in the barracks since the moment Victor was absent. Arkhipenko lived by himself. He wasn’t a drinker and frequently gave his comrades his hundred frontline grams, leaving alone any drink.

  “Misha, I’ve got a container of home brew and a canister of wine here, under the bench. If Victor comes and I’m not here give it to him. Little chance of finding any more. I barely found this stuff. I have to be going now.”

  “Hey, Lusto!” Arkhipenko shouted from a truck. “Where are you? Time to go!”

  “All the best, Batya!” Lusto ran to the truck, they pulled him up into the back and the vehicle took off.

  The old man stood for a minute, following the flyers with his eyes, until they disappeared around a turn. Then he entered the hut, took his trench coat, the sack with provisions. Then he went off in the opposite direction, to look for his son on the frontline roads, and in the hospitals. By that time everybody had become inclined to believe that the hospitals were exactly where they had to look for Victor. Had he been fit he would have already come back. Indeed, Lebedev bailed out a day after him, but had already come back. Actually, he had landed not far away from a high road and didn’t have far to go to get to it. But Victor might have landed somewhere in the foothills and got lost in the trackless countryside.

  Who could know where he was?

  18

  Galya cried again

  Consciousness was returning to me from time to time, but kept being replaced by a kind of delirium. My body would be enveloped in dark-blue haze, then it would grow lighter and dissipate, and I would regain consciousness, pulsating with one thought. “Here comes my death.” It seemed that it had come very close, squeezed my fingers to numbness, pressed on my chest so hard that I could barely breathe. Only my heart kept beating, struggling against the oncoming gloom, seemingly cried out in horror, and forced me to make the last effort and come to myself.

  The first thing I saw was the dashboard, behind whi
ch there was a greenish dusk. Overcoming my sickening numbness I wriggled my toes, then my fingers, then at last moved myself and suddenly understood that I was alive. A kind of serenity flooded my soul. Pictures from childhood appeared in my eyes. My quiet town of Balta in the Odessa province, the Kodyma River with shores overgrown by sedge and reeds, the large pear tree in our garden. That ripe fruit which fell down from the tree and left a huge bruise on me. My father then said, “Never mind, sonny, it’s your first one. Stand firm, there’ll be a lot more in your life.”

  Consciousness was returning slowly. I could barely distinguish the contours of instruments through a blurred shroud, but still tried to get readings. Strangely the pointers were at zero. “How can that be? I’m still flying.” Under the wings of my plane I could absolutely clearly see my native places, Balta, Kodyma. The village of Butory where my father used to be deputy chairman of the kolkhoz, the town of Ananiev where my family lived before the war slowly drifted under me as well.

  “Look, he’s alive! He’s breathing! Well done, flyer!” These words, said clearly next to my ear, smacked me in the head and returned me to reality. I fully regained consciousness, and saw a Major with artillery insignia on his epaulettes leaning over me. Two Captains and a few more officers and soldiers stood behind him. A cannonade was rumbling not far away, planes were droning in the skies. Was I still in this world or had I already left it, I couldn’t understand. But the Major having called up some of the soldiers kept inspecting my body, legs and head. In the meantime he continued admiringly, “What a flyer, what a hero, survived after all that.” When he touched my hand I shrieked.

  “Be patient, be patient, brother, we’ll get you out. Vasiliev”, he yelled to somebody, “take him under the armpits.” But I had already come to myself completely and grew confident that I was in one piece although wounded in the head and on one hand. “Thanks for your help, Slavs. From now I’ll get out of here myself. You need only move this bloody tree away.” In fact a huge thick branch of a fallen tree was pressing against my legs and wouldn’t let me move. The soldiers carefully shifted it away trying not to touch me and I managed to get out of the shattered plane myself.