Over Fields of Fire: Flying the Sturmovik in Action on the Eastern Front 1942-45

25. The Blue Line

At the end of May 1943 the Regimental Commander Kozin lined up all the flying personnel at the aerodrome and said with emotion: “Comrade Pilots! Whoever is ready to carry out a special mission from the North-Caucasus Front Command — I ask you to step out forward.”

All the pilots stepped forward as one.

“No, that won’t work!” Kozin smiled. “I’ll have to pick. Major Kerov — three steps forward.” Pavel Kerov, the 1st Squadron commander, veteran of the regiment, master of ground attack, stepped forward…

We youngsters had always marvelled at the major’s enviable calmness and kindness. He was more like a schoolteacher than a fearless ground attack expert. He had never raised his voice at anyone, and if anyone was at fault Kerov would look at him with sad grey glazed eyes, shake his head and walk away, rolling like a sailor, leaving his subordinate to think over his behaviour.

I’d been told that once when only 6 operable machines were left in the regiment, an order had arrived to destroy a river crossing near the stanitsa Nikolayevskaya on the Don. They had to send all machines into the air and Major Kerov led them on the combat mission. The crossing was protected so well that there was hardly any chance of the group returning successfully. However, Kerov managed to cheat the enemy: he came at the target from the rear, smashed it and made it home with his whole group. His plane was towed from the airstrip by a tractor. They told me that Kerov walked alongside the Sturmovik riddled with shell splinters and supported it by a wing console as if it were a wounded friend.

“Soukhoroukov, Pashkov, Frolov…” The regiment commander called the pilots’ surnames looking along the line. “Egorova”, I heard my surname. “Strakhov, Tishchenko, Groudnyak, Sokolov, Zinoviev, Podynenogin…” And each of us took three steps forward from the line.

The regimental commander Kozin included just 19 pilots in the group — three squadron commanders, all the flight commanders and the senior pilots with combat experience. Soon after that we were met by the Front Commander I. E. Petrov and the commander of the 4th Aerial Army General K.A. Vershinin.

“You, comrades, have a task simple in terms of planning but very hard in terms of implementation”, the Front Commander addressed us, adjusting his pince-nez and stuttering slightly. “Our troops are to break through the Fascist defence’s Blue Line. But first of all we have to camouflage the advancing troops — to set up a smoke screen. You will do that.” General Petrov looked at me carefully and I actually clenched my shoulders — I thought he was going to ask: “What’s a woman doing here?” But the commander’s gaze slipped onto other pilots standing by the scale model of the Blue Line — and my spirits lifted.

The General went on to say the smoke screen would have to be set up on time and accurately so as to blind the enemy, to close his eyes for the time our infantry needed in order to capture the main defensive line’s trenches. The General clearly defined the direction and time for converging on the target, and then General Vershinin told us how to carry out the mission. We were to fly without aerial gunners, just above the ground and besides that without bombs, rockets or machine-guns in the rear cockpit, and the cannons and machine-guns were not to be loaded at all! Instead of bombs we would have cylinders of ‘smoke gas’ on the bomb racks. This gas, reacting with air, would form the smoke screen.

“The most complicated thing is that you are not allowed to manoeuvre”, General Vershinin leaned over the map. “Look here, 7 kilometres in a straight line with no manoeuvring, and at an extremely low altitude. Do you understand why you’re not allowed to manoeuvre?”

“We’ll get a discontinuous screen instead of a solid one”, one of the flyers said.

“A discontinuous one will mean the attack will break down somewhere”, Petrov commented, stroking his rust-coloured moustache. “That’s why the screen must be such that no searchlight beam breaks through it — solid, straight as a ruler!”

“This is what you’ll do”, Vershinin went on. “Once you see that the one flying ahead of you has put smoke out, count three seconds and press the triggers. Manoeuvring will mean wrecking the mission. But you’ll be flying over fire, under fire, amidst fire… It remains only to wish you good luck and a happy return…”

Bidding farewell General Vershinin invited: “If any of you has changed his mind — feel free to refuse. It’s your right. We want those to make this flight, who firmly believe that they will complete the mission and definitely make it home.”

None of us responded to the General’s invitation…

On 26 May, when the Eastern sky had just begun to grow pink, we headed to the aerodrome in a ton-and-a-half truck. Michael Nikolaevich Kozin, always joyful and affable, was very gloomy. He was either angry that they hadn’t allowed him to fly, or was worried about us. And the pilots? What kind of mood were we in before such an important take-off? I looked at them and saw Grisha Rzhevskiy romping with a kitten — his new mascot-playmate who didn’t want to sit in his bosom under the leather fur-lined jacket. My brother Egor was fond of animals too. Mum used to find, hidden under the kitchen table or barricaded under beds, kittens and puppies with saucers of milk. Having eaten they would begin to mew or bark desperately, and mum would become angry and threaten to belt Egor, but could never bring herself to. The lad had grown up, joined the armed forces and war had broken out. My brother Egor didn’t come back home. He was killed in action…

Kolya Pakhomov was singing his favourite song:

Tolya Yugrov excitedly said something to Valentin Vakhramov, and both laughed like children, holding on each other: as if nobody would have to throw himself into a firestorm in just a minute or two… Misha Berdashkevich’s blue eyes smiled at something. There were so many scorch scars on his naturally handsome face! Maybe he was recalling his escape from a hospital to his regiment in a hospital gown? Tasets, an ethnic Greek, stood pensively. Most likely he was thinking over again how to approach a target, is it efficient to do a circle and shift towards your own territory if Fascist fighters attack? Tasets is our ‘great theorist’ but also a good practical man as well.

Our 3rd Squadron commander Semyon Andrianov was hugging a colleague — a squadron commander — with one arm, and Boris Strakhov with the other one. All three were silently staring at the expanse of the Kuban Steppe, revived after the long winter. The twenty-year-old comesks always tried to seem respectable, putting on strict airs. Adrianov even procured a pipe and walked without taking it out of his mouth. He would move it a little to the corner of his mouth during a conversation, but in his eyes there was so much youthful fervour in his eyes, so many sparks ready to spray those around him! We knew that Semyon Andrianov was born in a steel worker’s family in Nizhniy Tagil. There he graduated from school and the aeroclub and from there he joined the Perm pilot school. An ordinary biography for a pilot… We knew that Semyon had wife and a daughter. He’d been in our regiment since April 1941 and now he was a squadron commander. His deputy was Philipp Pashkov. He was a gentleman, and at the moment he was carefully protecting me from the jolts of the bumps in the road while the truck carried us to our fighting machines. He would often tell me about his native town of Penza, his mother, sisters and father — a disabled war veteran who died when Philipp was only three years old.

“When the war is over, let’s go to Penza, stanishnitsa119. I’ll show you the museum estates of Radishev and Belinskiy120, Lermontov’s famous Tarkhany estate. You know, Alexander Ivanovich Kouprin121 is one of us Penza people too, from Narovchatov. And what forests we have! So many mushrooms and berries!” Filipp drawled rocking from side to side. Like any dedicated mushroom-picker he exaggerated: “You can come across glades in our forest where you can mow the saffron milk caps with a scythe. My mum cooks them so well! You’ll come, won’t you?”

For some reason Pashkov never called by my first name or surname, nor by my rank or position. He called me simply stanishnitsa. “Well, stanishnitsa, how are things?”

“Not bad, thanks.”

Once (how many of those ‘onces’ there were!) Pashkov flew into the enemy’s rear to undertake reconnaissance and aerodrome photography. He was escorted by fighters, but on the way back, when the mission had already been carried out, they were attacked by Messerschmitts. Six of them were up against our two LaGG-3 fighters and one Sturmovik. The leader of the pair of fighters told Pashkov to “tramp it” home and that they would engage the skinnies. Our pilots had nicknamed the Me-109s so for their narrow fuselage… But shortly after that the first LaGG caught fire and began to fall…

“You bastards!” Filipp cursed and flew his Sturmovik towards the dogfight. Well, naturally he shouldn’t have done that, for he had to deliver the reconnaissance data and the film to the aerodrome. However, Pashkov managed to shoot down one Hitlerite, and another, shot up by him, retired from the fight, while the third one was cut down by our fighter. Upon returning to the aerodrome Filipp was strongly reprimanded, but when the film was developed the regiment commander hugged the pilot and congratulated him with an award — the Order of the Red Star. A week later Pashkov didn’t come back from a sortie, and we counted him as dead. The war… How much grief, unforeseeable surprises, and sometimes just miracles it brought each day… Five days later Filipp came back to the regiment with his aerial gunner — unshaven, ragged and dirty but cheerful.

Upon his return Filipp addressed me by my first name for the first time, saying: “They say you cried bitterly for me? Thank you. But you’d have done better to believe in my life, to believe I would definitely come back…”

And Pashkov perished anyway. It happened north of Novorossiysk, near Verkhnekabanskiy. That time I waited a long time for him, trying not to believe in his death, but never saw him again. I wrote about his death to his mum and sister in Penza, to the city where Filipp had invited me after the war.

…But for now we were all still alive and riding to the aerodrome. My thoughts were suddenly interrupted by some loud banging — it was pilots drumming on the truck cab, several yelling to the driver: “Stop, stop, what’s the rush?” The driver slowed down and they ordered him: “Backwards fast!” It turned out a cat had crossed the road in front of us. That was trouble… A second time the guys stopped the vehicle and made the driver reverse when they came across a woman with empty buckets on her yoke. It can’t be denied that airmen are a superstitious mob.

…Our regiment surgeon Kozlovskiy was talking someone into having this blood pressure measured before a sortie. “Doc, you’d be better doing my kitten — he’s acting nervous today for some reason”, Rzhevskiy stopped him to the common laughter of all.

“It looks like you’ve forgotten, Grisha, how you fed him five rissoles at dinnertime?”

“Is your chest dry?”

The jokes were starting. We couldn’t get by without them. From outside it might seem these happy guys were riding tipsy… But here we were at the aerodrome. Technicians, mechanics, motorists, instrument specialists, armourers — all of them were by the planes. It was always like that: in frost, in heat, in the open air our workmen, descendants of wonderful Russian craftsmen, prepared the planes for combat. There had been no case in the regiment of anything that failed or broke down being the fault of these tireless workers of the aerodrome.

Tyutyunnik — the mechanic of my Il-2 — wiping his hardened, work-weary hands as he walked, reported the plane ready. Then he helped me put on the parachute, adjusted something in the cockpit, and when the engine had started he shoved a pickled apple he had procured somewhere into my hand and yelled in my ear:

“If you get a dry mouth, bite the apple!” and he rolled off the plane’s wing like a ball, blown away by the spurt from the spinning prop.

I turned on the two-way and heard the voice of the group leader Major Kerov giving permission to taxi out. Pavel Usov’s Sturmovik was ahead of me, the pilot Ivan Stepochkin taxiing right next to him. Stepochkin and Usov were two inseparable friends although very different in character and looks. Usov was a short stocky rousak122 with chubby cheeks as if puffed up from laughing — an ever-smiling joker. Even Pavel’s gait seems merry, hopping as if constantly looking for someone for another joke. Stepochkin was tall, with dark eyes and curly hair — a handsome guy with Gypsy looks. He was usually silent and pensive. Once, when walking about Timashevskaya, the friends went into a church where a service was on. The priest was preaching the benefits of fasting. Usov lingered there and doubting the usefulness of such a thing, began to ask questions, and then started an argument with the priest. When Stepochkin tried to drag his friend away from the church, Usov resisted. It is interesting that the priest finally managed to prove his case to Pavel, and leaving the church the latter firmly declared to Ivan: “I’m going to fast!”

“And I will raise the issue of expelling the Communist Usov from the ranks of the VKP(b)123 for his religious connections”, — Stepochkin cut him off and walked away from his friend to the opposite side of the street. In the evening Pavel told all of us about the benefits of fasting with his characteristic humor and fervor. “Only”, he said, “don’t eat too much afterwards like we used do during Easter, that’s no good. But to fast, eating Lenten foods, to give your stomach a rest, is quite good for you.”

“So why have you just ordered another steak, Pasha?” Someone asked him. And a fighter pilot, Volodya Istrashkin, came up to Usov’s table and put on it in front of him a half-litre jar of the sour local grape-wine.

“This is for you, matey, to help your digestion. It seems to me, the priest said today: “Permission is given for wine and oil”…

The pilot Vanya Soukhoroukov — a guy from Ivanovo — flew in my pair. Vanya was a quiet man on the ground — like a fair maiden — but you wouldn’t recognise him in the air! It was him who in November of 1942 led a group of Sturmoviks to the Gizel area near Ordzhonikidze where in one of the hollows surrounding the Voenno-Gruzinskaya Road124 he destroyed the enemy’s tanks and vehicles. Later Vanya Soukhoroukov would win the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.

Major Kerov was the first to take off. We quickly joined the leader and took up combat formation. Glancing back I saw the huge sun rising in the east and the sky illuminated by its bright beams. But in the west, ahead of us, the sky was dark and smoke and fog floated over the ground…

The Blue Line met us with multi-layered flak fire. Shell bursts stood like a wall, blocking our way. Our group broke through this screen at minimum speed and emerged over the stanitsa Kievskaya. Again the ominous tracers crossed the sky. Oerlikon shells were painting the sky with red balls, the splinters of burst shells were banging on the plane’s armour. Now enemy mortars and heavy machine guns had opened on us too. We were flying through pandemonium but we could change neither course nor altitude — we had to go only straight forward. A sea of fire raged around us and I involuntarily pressed myself against the armoured seat back. The seconds seemed an eternity and I wanted so much to shut my eyes so as not to see all this hell!

Suddenly smoke burst from under the fuselage of the plane flying ahead of me. “Twenty one, twenty two, twenty three”… I count off three seconds. Oh, God how long they are! At last I press the trigger. Now come what may, I and the pilot ahead of me have done our job precisely. We haven’t turned off course and haven’t changed altitude. I want so much to see what’s happening down there on the ground, how the smoke screen is spread and if it has a gap anywhere but I can’t divert my attention. At last Kerov has turned right, to the east, and all the Sturmoviks are following him, and begin to climb up. Mission accomplished…

We were flying over the escort fighter’s aerodrome. In the headphones I heard Kerov’s voice — deep, smooth as his temper: “Thanks, little ones! You’ve done a excellent job!” he thanked the fighter pilots for escorting us.

My heart is rejoicing: we’re all coming back — all nineteen. Again there is a voice in the headphones: “Attention Hunchbacks!”

‘Hunchbacks’ meant us — it was a frontline nickname for the Sturmoviks, given for their cockpits standing out from the fuselage. I pricked up my ears.

“For successful completion of the mission”, we hear on the air, “and the fortitude shown, all the airmen who took part in setting the smoke-screen are awarded the Order of the Red Banner…”

Now it was quiet on the air. The Il’s engine was running smoothly. Here was our aerodrome. The one whose machine was most damaged was the first to close in for landing — this was our rule. Then all the others, including me, landed. Having taxied to the parking bay I turned the engine off and only then felt the deadly fatigue. The technician, the mechanic, the engine specialist, the armoury girl, the flyers who didn’t take part in the sortie, swarmed all over the cockpit like bees.

“Are you wounded, Comrade Lieutenant?” The armourer Dousya Nazarkina shouted.

“You’ve got blood on your face!”

“No”, I said, “My lips are cracked and bleeding.”

The mechanic shows me a huge hole in the left wing: “Lucky that the shell didn’t burst — otherwise you would have been blown to pieces. Look, the elevator trimmer is broken as well.”

And during the flight I hadn’t noticed my Il was damaged!

The regiment is lined up. The battle flag is brought out. We, who carried out the Front Command’s special mission, stand separately as though it were our name day. The 4th Aerial Army Commander General Vershinin expresses his gratitude to us for our excellent work and pins the Orders of the Red Banner on our chests. And in the evening there is another reward: the accursed Blue Line has been broken through by our troops! We are told that several minutes after we released the ‘smoke gas’ a white wall of smoke grew up in front of the enemy lines. It fully served its purpose. Moving towards the enemy the smoke screen covered the knots of resistance and made their infantry blind. Not knowing what was happening in front, the Hitlerites abandoned the frontline in a panic. Our troops broke through the lines and advanced a kilometer and a half to two kilometres straight away.