Red Star Airacobra
Page 26
The Fockers decided to get away from Golovanov’s pair with a steep curve in which they were not skilful at all, and Boris easily hung on a wingman’s tail and shot him down with two bursts. I caught up with a Focker in a dive. He climbed up steeply. I managed to aim at him and shot a burst only when he was somewhat hanging over me while the nose of my plane was directed vertically upwards. The Focker was hanging straight in front of me. Off the target. And my cannon fell silent for some reason. Another loop. And again I could shoot only in a vertical position and again there was no shot out of my gun.
During the third loop I darted out above him and even overtook him slightly. “Ah, hell! Just like that Messerschmitt near Jassy that rushed ahead of me. He’s going to strike me now.” The Focker’s muzzle was next to me, about twenty metres behind, and a bit lower. And nothing could be done. Both planes were lying on their backs at no speed. I should have dropped the plane’s nose down long ago otherwise it was easy to break off into spiral but this way I would have brought my fighter under the Fascist’s fire.
“Zhen’ka! A ‘skinnie’ is attacking!” Ippolitov yelled. Ivan didn’t follow me in a vertical carousel with a Focker and found himself above watching the leader from aside…
“That’s a bit too much!”
“Beat him off!”
I was already going to throw my plane down and break away from the pursuer when I suddenly noticed that the Focker that was hanging at no speed too. He had failed finally to keep up and went into a dive. I followed him, glancing back. Where is that ‘skinnie’? My plane had already gained speed and I could have manoeuvred if needed. “Eh, there they are!” A pair of Messerschmitts was closing in from the right. Ippolitov was left of them. He turned and opened fire. One could see by the smoke racing away from his plane’s nose and by the lesser fires of the trace heading towards the leading Messerschmitt. One burst, another one, then another! The Messerschmitt was wreathed in smoke, slid aside and turned over. The second Messerschmitt quit the fight with a left turn.
“Where’s the Focker? Eh, you scumbag, you’re running away!” The Fw-190 was diving over the Spree a bit north of Spremberg. “I’ll soon bring you down.” But I didn’t have to do it myself. Glotov having settled scores with his Fockers closed in and shot down this one as well, with a long burst. In ten minutes our group of eight planes made a contour flight over our aerodrome, with six enemy planes on our account, shot down in this battle.
Next day I noticed a German airman in officer’s uniform, with several medals and other battle insignia on it, in a column of POWs walking past the aerodrome. I came up to the column. One of the escort guards spoke reasonable German and I requested him to ask the officer how he had managed to be captured. The German waved the guard aside and said with pathos in broken Russian, “I know Russian well enough not to resort to an interpreter’s services. Yesterday my Fokke-Wulf was damaged over Spremberg.”
I found out from our talk that the German was the flyer I was fighting against and who had been finally shot down by Glotov. In the meantime, he kept talking the Fascist rubbish about the Greater Germany and the German master race which would rule the world one day. I gave him a blow on the face, with great pleasure, and added, “It’s a pity, you vermin, I won’t come across you again in the skies.” Then I turned away and went to my plane.
The fighting was ongoing in surrounded Berlin, and the Soviet troops met the Americans on the Elbe. Germany became divided into several zones. But the Germans didn’t want to give up. The ground troops kept fighting ferociously, people kept dying. Only in the air had it become quiet. There was no point counting as a fight one incident that happened during our return from a sortie. We had been covering the Potsdam district. On the way back, an enemy fighter had gone through below our ‘sixer’. I couldn’t have attacked him as I was in too inconvenient a position.
“Lusto! A Focker right and below!”
Misha turned around somewhat unwillingly and idly, at least that’s how it seemed from the side. He shot out a burst, and the Fw-190 rolled across the vegetable gardens of a small village, in a fireball.
Later, I led ‘sixers’ myself, and came across Me-262 jet fighters twice, but failed to catch up with them. And then there was the last dogfight.
Our patrol was proceeding quietly. The huge city with its millions of people spread out down below. Actually, we saw only its suburbs which had been taken by our troops straight away. The whole central part was covered by a huge pillar of dense smoke, with fires flashing through it. The fight was on down there.
We had not seen large groups of German planes for a long time, except for that ‘sixer’ of jets. But it gave no reason to be too relaxed. We had to be on maximum alert. It was easy to spot a large group from afar but what about a pair of ‘hunters’? As if in confirmation of this, an Me-109 burst out of the smoke over the centre of Berlin and began to pull away westwards. “Turn right by one-eighty!” While transmitting this order on two-way, I steeply turned my fighter right.
Surely it wasn’t a ‘hunter’. But, maybe, it was something worse than that. We knew that sometimes light enemy planes and fighters were taking off from the squares and streets of cities yet unoccupied by our troops, and flying away westwards. What did they have on board? Secret documents? Leaders of the Third Reich? Maybe this one was carrying Hitler himself on board?
The Messerschmitt was not even trying to engage us in a fight. He was merely fleeing like another Messerschmitt once upon a time. But then it was completely different. Then I was Victor Korolev’s wingman in one of my first dogfights. That was near Kirovograd.
The distance to it was shorter and shorter.
“Zhenya, hit him!” Boris Golovanov couldn’t hold on and yelled.
“In a second! Watch out, maybe there’s another one fleeing.”
“Will do!” Fires of the tracers stretched from my fighter’s nose to the Messerschmitt and pierced its fuselage and a wing. White smoke burst out of its engine and fire flashed.
Berlin fell! But the fighting went on. The 1st Ukrainian Front turned south to help the uprising in Prague. The fighter planes flew over there as well. Stepanov didn’t return from one of those flights.
It was the last day of the war, his last sortie… He died…
Epilogue
At the end of June 1945, in the middle of the night, Nikolay Volkov and after him, the whole lot of mechanics and engine and arms technicians burst into the room in which Michail Lusto and I were having up to either our second or third dream. Although Nikolay and I were good friends and called each other by first name, in the presence of other officers and younger servicemen, Nikolay would always switch to “Comrade Commander,” and I to “Volkov.” And this time he yelled, “Zhen’ka, you devil, wake up! You’d sleep through anything in the world!” Nikolay shook me so hard I nearly flew off the bed.
“Are you mad? Why the hell aren’t you sleeping yourself and letting others sleep? Have you had a drop too much?” I couldn’t understand what was wrong with the mechanic. Lusto woke up too.
“I’ll smack him with a jackboot and he’ll calm down straight away!”
“Getup! Reveille!” The mechanics who filled the room began to yell in unison.
“Zhen’ka, you’ve been awarded a Hero Star! And you’re sleeping like a log.” Volkov began to yell again. He was yelling as if he’d been decorated, not me.
“Rubbish…” I whispered.
Only two days before, they declared in front of the formation, a Supreme Soviet Decree about the decoration of the flyers of the 22nd Guards Division with the Hero Award. The title of Hero of the Soviet Union was given to Arkhipenko, Lusto, Glotov, Karlov, Nikifirov and Bekashonok. My surname was not in the list, although I had been nominated earlier than the rest. That was back during the fighting over the Sandomir bridgehead. It was true. Then, after the formation had been dismissed, Goreglyad and Figichev came up to me, seeing my despondency.
“Don’t be in the dumps, Mariinskiy! The order will
come!” Goreglyad reassured me.
Figichev added, “It’s not for the first time with you! Remember when we had flown to the 1st Ukrainian Front, you thought that you wouldn’t get your decorations. And then you got the Red Banner and Patriotic War First Degree orders at the same time.”
Yes, that’s the way it was. But this time… At this front I’ve already been recommended once…
“What the hell! am I talking rubbish?” Nikolay was outraged. “Look, the Decree for you was signed the same day as the rest. But this is a different one.” He turned on the bulb, and bright light filled the room and made me blink. “Here is the newspaper, read it! They brought it half an hour ago.”
I took the paper from Nikolay, and opened it at the second page. “Here it is.” Volkov pointed his finger into the middle of the Decree, which occupied more than half the page. “Where is it?” Lusto pulled the paper towards himself. “Ah, down here. Mariinskiy Evegeniy Pakhomovich,” he read distinctly. “Well, my congratulations, Zhenya,” he hugged me. “Nothing wrong with a celebration for this occasion! But what with?”
“We’ve brought some! We commandeered it from the aide-de-camp while he was sleeping!” Volkov produced two bottles of cognac handed over to him from the rear. They put some simple snacks on the table, spread on it empty tins as mugs and glasses. We still lived the frontline life-style.
“Let’s drink to your Gold Star, Zhenya!” Mikhail raised his mug. “May it never grow dull, and may you always stay as you are! Cheers!”
Photographs
Evgenii Mariinskiy, student of flying school, VVAShP February 1942
Viktor Korolev
From left to right: Semen Bukchin, Nikolai Gulaev, Leonid Zadiraka, Valentin Karlov
Nikolai Volkov June 1945
Mechanic Nikolay Volkov, engine specialist Serguey Karpushkin and gun-specialist Protsyuk are preparing Mariinskiy’s plane for a sortie, 1945
Baturin, Ivan Ippolitov, Evgenii Mariinskiy, Fedor Orlov, Fenakhin, April 1945
Michail Lusto sets his squadron a task. Sergei Stepanov (KIA 8 May 1945), Ivan Ippolitov, Evgenii Mariinskiy, Fedor Orlov, Boris Golovanov, Mikhail Lusto, Baturin, Nikolai Glotov, 5 May 1945
Airacobras are getting ready for a sortie. A mechanic helps a pilot to put his parachute on
Motor mechanic Sergei Karpushkin, aircraft mechanic Nikolai Volkov, gunsmith Procyuk and unknown near a plane
The Airacobra of Evgenii Mariinskiy
Boris Golovanov, 1945
Squadron commander Fedor Arkhipenko, 1946
Mikhail “Pupok” Lusto (left) and Evgenii Mariinskiy with his dog, Dzhulbars, 1945
Germany, August 1945: Ivan Ippolitov and Evgenii Mariinskiy
Zindorf, Austria: Boris Golovanov, Mikhail Lusto, Evgenii Mariinskiy
Valentin Karlov and Evgenii Mariinskiy (on the right), 1945
Evgenii Mariinskiy
Having a rest
Evgenii Mariinskiy, 1948
The flyers of the 129th Guards Fighter Aviation Regiment stand by the wall of the Reichstag. The inscription on the column reads “We are from Moscow. The shortest way to Moscow – via Berlin”.
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