Red Star Airacobra

by Evgeniy Mariinskiy

  It was already on the ground. I jumped out of my cockpit. “Volkov! Give me a screw-driver! Where is the radio man?” Nikolay turned pale and handed me a screw-driver. “What’s happening, Comrade Commander?”

  “Nobody can hear me on the radio! Gipsy was shot down because of that!”

  I opened the small hatch above the radio compartment.

  “Well, can’t you see it? The frequency is two megahertz over! You haven’t tuned it up after yesterday!” I quickly changed the frequency to the right level.

  Boris Golovanov couldn’t fall asleep for several nights in a row after his arrival at the Regiment.

  “How can you sleep here?”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “The fleas!” Indeed myriads of tiny steeplechasers lived in the poor earthen-floored Romanian hut.

  “The fleas? What about them?”

  “They bite.” “Do they? Well, you’ll do some flying, you’ll sleep well and you won’t get bitten.”

  Firstly, Arkhipenko doesn’t take Boris for sorties. How could one take a young inexperienced flyer into such a meat-grinder?

  “Fedor Fedorovich, take me up! Everybody’s flying and I haven’t come to the front just to eat the fifth ration! Everybody’s flying.” Gromov and Evsyukov who came to the front together with Boris have already died…

  “Alright, alright. Stay down here and be on watch. Once the flare is up, take off. And I’ll have a rest.” Arkhipenko lies down on his old faithful raglan, under a wing, and Golovanov taxies out for a watch with the whole squadron. A flare is up. Everybody starts his engine and is due to take off. I can see Boris smile from the neighbouring plane. “I’m going to fly!”

  “Golovanov! Taxi to your parking bay!” Arkhipenko has taken off straight from the caponier. “Follow me, my eaglets!” Boris gloomily taxies into the caponier.

  Day by day, and the tension of fighting begins to decline. Maybe the Fascists’ nerves can’t stand it, or maybe they’ve run out of planes? Golovanov begins to fly. “Well, how did you sleep?”

  “Excellent, but not long enough. I wouldn’t mind having six hundred minutes more!”

  “Do those guys still disturb you?”

  “Who? Ah, the fleas? No! I felt nothing at all!”

  On watch. I sleep in the cockpit. I’ve had no chance to sleep my fill for a while. Someone’s fist smacks on my shoulder. I start the engine and gas up with eyes shut. I wake up completely only during the take off. It was Volkov who woke me up having seen the flare. Although they had replaced my plane’s engine before the fighting commenced, almost nothing’s changed. The new engine turned out to be good-for-nothing.

  The group on the watch are fed right there in the cockpits. The temperature inside went over fifty long ago and they serve hot sizzling borsch. The mechanics have their lunch under the wing.

  “How are things, Zhenya? Aren’t you cold?” The Regimental arms engineer Katseval asks me from the shade. “Listen, Fedor, go take a running jump,” I was only held back by the presence of the waitress, “or this borsch will be on your head!”

  Before the sortie I pull out of a pocket my bankbook and turn it in my hands. I do want to tell Volkov, “Well, Kolya, send it to my Mum.” Forty-five minutes of a dogfight would deplete any athlete. And such dogfights happen during every sortie. Everybody is tired to exhaustion and not just physically. The permanent strain of nerves shows up as well. I guess only idiots can feel no fear. Fear is peculiar to every mentally fit man. Some reveal their cowardice, some overcome it and go into fighting. But they know what they are going to face. I always felt strain on the way to the front line. But once I saw the Germans this feeling would disappear and I would calm down. To be precise, the fight itself would take all my attention. However, I didn’t think I would survive these dogfights. That’s why I decided to give my bankbook to Nikolay. But then I felt ashamed and hid it in my pocket.

  Lunch again. I’m in the parking bay. The flyers sit on the ground and dig lazily in their dishes. Nobody has any appetite, even Golovanov. The constant overwork is showing.

  “Where is your short fellow, Misha?” The waitress asks.

  Lusto doesn’t want to have lunch and sleeps quietly under the awning of a caponier.

  “Pupok? He saw you bringing the lunch and ran off over there”, Lebedev waved his hand towards the opposite bank of the Zhizhiya, “up on the hill”.

  The waitress took his words seriously.

  “How will I get up there? There’s no bridge across here…”

  Pre-dawn twilight. The flyers have been driven to the aerodrome.

  “Comrade Commander, lie down and have a sleep.” Volkov carefully smooths out covers spread on the ground beforehand. He has not been getting enough sleep himself all this time, but thinks about his flyers first. The flyer will fly and fight.

  Morning on the command post. The squadron commanders receive preliminary orders for the day. It will be broken during the first hours of the day, as sorties will break the whole schedule. The flyers crowd around. Everyone is interested to know if the strain has slackened. Karmin, Bekashonok’s deputy, has set a place for himself in front of a mirror fragment, and is shaving. “What are you doing?” I wanted to stop him, but it would be rude to remind the ageing experienced pilot about a foolish omen, as I understood perfectly.

  Actually Karmin was shot down that day and bailed out. He had shot down a Messerschmitt before that, and rammed the second with his burning plane, and all that with legs shot through by the German bullets. Those were his sixteenth and seventeenth. He couldn’t fight anymore. He returned to Kazan and became the director of an aviation club. He worked there till the end of the war. He never became a Hero of the Soviet Union, although he had all the merits for it…

  Evening. The Communists of the Regiment sit on the grass near the Command Post. Only flyers and staff officers are here. The technicians and mechanics are busy with the preparation of materiel. All the planes need to be fixed up and ready to fly before dawn. The Corps Commander Utin, and Division Commander Goreglyad, came to discuss the results of the first three days of the operation. Combat officers, they never missed a chance to talk to the pilots, to find out news from them. Both Utin and Goreglyad could see a lot from the ground, when commanding the fighters from the guiding posts. And Goreglyad often flew himself and fought. They listened to the opinions of ordinary pilots, trying to pick up elements of new tactical tricks. Those were only being worked out during our flyers’ dogfights against the Fascists’ bomber and fighter planes.

  At that moment, everybody was talking about heavy fighting with large groups of enemy planes. “If we had groups of twenty to twenty-four planes”, the flyers were referring to the sortie when Goreglyad had led a ‘bookshelf’ of twenty-four fighters, “then we would dissuade the Germans from flying! Don’t get too enthusiastic about it.” General Utin stood up. “We can send off such groups only occasionally. Otherwise we won’t be able to carry out our main task. Our task is, from dawn to dusk, to give cover to the front line ground troops, and to stop the Germans from bombing directly on target. We can’t afford to have large groups over the frontline all the time. There won’t be enough pilots and planes.”

  He continued, “Yesterday I ordered Bekashonok to descend as Junkers had come up. He dived with the whole group, but one of them broke away. Evsyukov, a young fellow, I hadn’t known him before. You say he had just arrived? So, he broke away and kept flying at a height. A ‘skinnie’ came over and shot out a burst at him. He began to turn around smoothly. The Messerschmitt made an overturn and off he raced. Evsyukov kept flying high above, now southwards, climbing, now, after a turnaround, northwards, descending. Then he turned around again. Twelve Messerschmitts have come over. Once a Messerschmitt gets on his tail, Evsyukov begins to turn around and the Messerschmitt does a flip and retreats. They were racing around him afraid of getting closer. They thought he was some sort of ace. It lasted this way for about fifteen minutes and nobody else shot at him. He gradual
ly descended and landed about two hundred metres from me. They ran up to him, but he was dead. Seven bullets had gone right through his heart! Obviously, he had balanced his plane pretty well with the trimmers when flying. And they say flying’s hard!”

  Utin sometimes used to curse at us on the two-way, in anger, but understood that we could not be everywhere at the same time. But at the front line, when shells and bombs burst around, there’s no time to select better words. And down here, he knew that it was necessary to encourage his flyers, to show them that they take the upper hand over the Fascists with a smaller force. That’s why he told the true story about Evsyukov that had happened the other day. The main thing was to boost morale.

  “And then”, Utin continued, “your flight groups are not that small in numbers. Figichev has found the right way. One squadron flies in the crack group, another one covers it at full strength. It may seem not to be a well co-ordinated group, but it works well. One group strikes at bombers, another one draws off the fighters. Has it really ever happened that you were in a hot dogfight and Goreglyad wouldn’t reinforce you by sending ‘sixers’ on watch in the air? No! The sorties are organised pretty well now. It was we who made the Germans change their tactics. In the beginning, they used to send over many individual groups, with nine bombers in each, and under cover of four to six fighters for every group. They were beaten. And beaten well, although it was hard to chase all these groups. Now they are afraid of operating with small groups. Armadas come over, of sixty to eighty bombers, under strong fighter cover of up to thirty planes. For us, it’s easier to conduct concerted strikes on one major group, than on several smaller ones.”

  In the morning, after arriving at the airstrip, I lay down to have some more sleep.

  “Wait a minute, Comrade Commander!” Volkov stopped me. “While it’s still cool, have some eggs since you eat nothing during the day.”

  I took an egg, broke it and drank. “Have one yourself.”

  “No, I’ve had enough! I did a deal with a Romanian and he will buy us ten eggs a day.”

  After a fight, the group flew back on the last drops of fuel. The engine of Boris Golovanov’s plane had stopped, as he’d run out of fuel. He landed a kilometre and a half before the airstrip, beyond the river. He smacked his head on the gun-sight and got scalped. They led him to the Command Post, where he sat down with a map pressed to the wound. He was sent to a hospital.

  The squadron shot down eleven German planes during the spring battles, and the Regiment shot down thirty-five. We had had no fighting as fierce over the time I could remember, but the losses were much lower than the losses over the Dniepr River. Back then, we lost sixteen planes in eight days and shot down eighteen. Now we lost ten, but shot down thirty-five! I boosted my personal account to fifteen.

  20

  To a new frontier

  In just a few days a lull came to the front. The fighters would fly off on patrol, group after group, and return, not having seen the enemy. There wasn’t the solid curtain of smoke and dust that had been over the frontline for over a week. Only a general bluish haze spread over the ground. The flyers would stay in their cockpits on full alert, then get out, not having had the flare signalling a take off. The Germans were not coming over, and there was no need to send the fighters on watch into the air. Soon an order came to stop any cover flights. The German attempt to advance had failed and fighting had come to a full stop. The only thing to do was to be on watch at full alert. Tired flyers, mechanics, technicians were having a rest. They were lying under plane wings and throwing glances towards the Command Post. What if a flare soars again? What if such fighting occurs again? There was no flare.

  Arkhipenko returned from the Command Post instead, and brought with him a young Sub-Lieutenant. He was a short chap, not even as tall as Misha Lusto, with a round boyish face, with big slightly puffy black eyes, and a girlish blush on his cheeks which had never known a razor. He stopped, in confusion, next to the Squadron Commander, glancing out from under his long eyelashes, at the flyers who had raised their heads. He differed in his whole appearance from all those present, who were also young, but already battle-seasoned guys.

  “What’s new, Fedor Fedorovich?” Ippolitov asked, raising himself a bit on one shoulder.

  “A truckload and a small trailer of news. Here we go, please get acquainted. A new flyer has arrived. Stepanov.”

  And Archipenko began to introduce Stepanov to the flyers.

  “Lusto, my combat deputy.”

  Misha stretched out his hand.

  “Mikhail Vasilievich.”

  “Sergey.”

  Is Pupok the deputy commander? What about Victor? So it’s all over… Victor has not been heard of for over a month. Most likely, they issued an order that he is missing in action. After a month they would issue an order, “Count as missing in action,” about flyers who had not returned from sorties, if there was no exact information about their death, or word of being in a hospital.

  Arkhipenko went on, “First Lieutenant Mariinskiy, group leader.”

  I heard my surname and reached my hand out.

  “Eugeniy, but not a group leader, simply a flyer, a Lieutenant.”

  “There’s an order here for you and Lusto. Well, you are awarded the rank, and got the ‘Red Banner,’ Goreglyadov rang.”

  “I’ve never been even a senior flyer!”

  “You’ve been nominated as a group leader.”

  “Alright, you’ve convinced me. The squadron leader and I are inviting everybody for tonight.” With a barely concealed smile, I glanced at Arkhipenko who had opened his mouth with surprise. “Is it true, Fedor Fedorovich?”

  “Nothing common with me?” He shrugged. “I’ve run out of stock.”

  “Don’t be like that! What about the canister behind your bedside table?” Something’s still splashing in it.”

  “Hmmm!” Arkhipenko grunted discontentedly. “You sniffed it out, you bastard! Well, for this occasion I will sacrifice the last bit.”

  “Only a priest’s wife may be the last one!” I snapped out, and all burst out laughing. It was a Russian proverb, originating from the Russian Orthodox Church regulations, that stipulated a priest can be married only once in his life!

  “Well, Stepanov, you’ll get acquainted with the rest yourself later on.” Arkhipenko got back to the topic. “Listen up, my eaglets. The Americans and the British began their landing in France yesterday.”

  “Is it in the papers?” Lebedev asked.

  “How could it be in the papers? They landed only yesterday! It was on the broadcast.”

  “And how did it go?”

  “They captured bridgeheads. There is a lot of aviation! More than ten thousand planes!”

  “Well,” suddenly he remembered, “you Lebedev are leaving us.”

  “Where to?”

  “To a neighbouring Division.”

  “Why?”

  “Exchange. They are transferring a pilot from there to us.”

  “Why me? Let them send somebody from reinforcements. They have just arrived and it doesn’t matter to them where they serve.”

  Stepanov huddled up. Although Lebedev didn’t mean him, he took it all personally. To take so much trouble to join a battle regiment and then be sent somewhere else.

  “They need a battle seasoned flyer. Such a one as they are sending us.”

  “What about the third or second squadrons?”

  “Ours has lost less than the rest. Figichev decided to take one from us. Who else but you?”

  Lebedev looked at the lying Ippolitov.

  “What about Ivan?”

  Arkhipenko didn’t consider it necessary to answer and Ippolitov snorted resentfully, “Why me?”

  Lebedev sighed and looked at the Commander, then at Lusto. Maybe they were joking.

  He asked, “When do I leave?”

  “Don’t know. You’ll be told.”

  “What about flying? Lusto displayed interest.”

  “No f
lying. We’ve done our war here.”

  Arkhipenko couldn’t calm down after the short talk with Lebedev. He imagined himself in Sergey’s place. Who would like to leave his Home Regiment in which he began his frontline life? He also felt sorry to lose a good pilot. Sergey had knocked down three enemy planes during these fights alone. And there were two others before that. “The Germans are played out.” He answered Lusto at last.

  A peaceful life began. As before, we kept coming to the aerodrome by dawn, but most of the time we stayed under the wings of our planes and chatted. We shot from machine-guns in the shooting gallery, trained on plane silhouettes. We put young reinforcements into service, but still on the ground. We told stories about fighting. Or rather we didn’t tell stories, but just talked among ourselves, remembering different episodes, and analysed the actions possible under such circumstances. Neither Arkhipenko, nor Lusto, nor other flyers invented anything new. They had been analysing fights and sorties this way for a long time.

  Stepanov, who had been assigned to my group, instead of our drop-out Golovanov, listened to these talks with an intense interest. He looked with burning eyes at other flyers who he thought had been through everything and feared nothing. They didn’t even ask to fly! “If I only had come a few days earlier. And I would have been in those dogfights!” he thought. It was possible he thought there had been nothing frightening back then, from some of his remarks and energetic gestures. One turned around, trained on something, pressed the trigger, shot one down!

  “It’s good, Sergey, that you came late”, Arkhipenko noticed his mood. “Four guys had come just before this fighting. Probably, they had hoped to be just shooting down, but they got shot down themselves. Two of them died, one is in hospital. Golovanov, the fourth guy, landed with no fuel after a fight, and is now in hospital.”

  “What’s the difference, Comrade Commander? One way or another I have to start. Will there be more fighting?” he asked somewhat hesitantly.