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

28. The aerial gunner and the technicians

In our regiment I flew an old single-seater Sturmovik the longest. It seemed to me much lighter and more agile than the two-seater. But really you just needed to get used to it! And now, when I had returned from the navigation course, I was going to fly a two-seater and Boiko the Adjutant of our 3rd Squadron has suggested I choose an aerial gunner. There also was another important factor that has influenced me regarding this issue. In one of the most recent sorties I had quite a close shave with Messers. We’d been flying to Temryuk back then — we had to destroy a bridge over the Kuban river. It seems like it wasn’t long ago when Karev with his group had smashed it to pieces. But the damned Fritzes have repaired it yet again! Damn it, how long should we be bothered with it?

Temryuk was situated almost on the coast of the Azov Sea, and the Kuban river flows west of it. At this particular place, a major highway leads from the berth on the Choushka Spit up to the Blue Line. The bridge was surrounded by countless ack-ack batteries, and along the Blue Line there were plenty of anti-aircraft installations. We had already lost three crews over Temryuk: those of Podynenogin, Mkrtumov and Tasets. Our group was led towards the bridge by Captain Yakimov. A tall, sporty guy, with somewhat lordly manners, Yakimov was always keeping himself a bit aside: as if he was looking down on us a bit — although in terms of age he was not much older than us. Having gone over the mission plan with us, he has established an order of the flight and for some reason placed me (flying a single-seater!) to bring up the rear of our formation of six. But orders are not for discussion, and we took off. A quartet of LaGG-3 fighters provided a cover but I have to admit: I didn’t feel comfortable bringing up the rear without an air gunner…

After we dropped the bombs on the bridge and leaped out over the Azov Sea our group was intercepted by Messerschmitts. The LaGGs were already tied up in a dogfight with German fighters somewhere aside, so it was up to our air gunners to get busy. They did it with quite some skill, repelling the pressing Messers. Several times they tried to split the Sturmoviks’ formation, but in vain. We flew tightly, wingtip to wingtip. And it was just me, my plane, that was not protected by a gunner to its rear. No wonder then they had chosen me as a target. I saw a tracer pass on my right, and broke left but too late: a second burst hit my Ilyusha. Following that, the ‘Messers’ had broke, turned and hurled themselves into a second attack from both sides at once, aiming at my plane. Being aware of the power of Sturmovik’s forward-firing weapons, the Germans were avoiding my forward-facing zone. Instead, they were hitting my plane (unprotected from the rear) coming at its tail. Once again I saw a stream of fire coming from short range… At this moment I hit the engine boost and simultaneously pushed the control column away. Speeding up I overtook my group and tucked my plane between the leader and his wingman on the right — Volodya Sokolov. And it saved me.

But during debriefing I had to withstand quite a set of reproofs.

“You breached battle formation”, Captain Yekimov rapped his words out, enunciating each word and each letter. “Pilot Sokolov might have taken you for the enemy and struck you with his cannons and machine-guns!”

But I had an impudent question to ask a captain: “When seeing the Fascist planes raking me with fire, why didn’t you re-form the group into a defensive circle, then drawing a fight to our side of the front?”

Silence fell. Yekimov blushed. And then, breaching the deathly hush, Volodya Sokolov stood up for me. “Comrade Captain! You said I could have taken Egorov’s Sturmovik for an enemy plane. But could I really? Isn’t it seen how the edges of her blue kerchief are sticking out of the earphone helmet? She wears it instead of the liner!”

The pilots burst into laughter, and the heavy atmosphere was dispelled. Battle-hardened airmen, as a rule, recall moments of mortal danger happily. The chill of it felt in their hearts is replaced by the joy of being able to see, to breathe, to live! Maybe that’s why they talk jokingly about a mortal danger they’ve experienced and left behind.

After this incident I was issued with an Il-2 with a cockpit that would fit an aerial gunner. Incidentally, even prior to leaving for the training course I had flown this plane with various aerial gunners available. And not just with the gunners! Once I stealthily took the plane mechanic Tytyunnik for a combat sortie. In fact, air gunners were trained at short-time classes. Anyone who had the will to fly and knew how to shoot could apply. Among those, I have seen engine technicians, mechanics, flight observers from obsolete types of planes, even machine-gunners from ground forces. The future gunners had no flying practice and they knew nothing about the complicated rules of shooting at aerial targets, but all of them had a huge desire to hit back at the Fascists till the victory. In those days, all the regiments of our divisions began to sing an unpretentious song about the Sturmovik gunners:

There were girls among the ‘young guys’ as well — Sasha Chouprina, Lena Lenskaya. And some ‘young guys’ were old enough to be our fathers! In our regiment, for example, there was an aerial gunner — a former flight observer Serguey Michailovich Zavernin from the village of Korpogory in the Archangelsk Region. To cut a long story short, when I had returned from the navigation course and the squadron adjutant invited me to choose a gunner I was surprised. “What do you mean ‘choose’? If there’s one available, send him to me. But to get one from a crew that has already fallen into step — that is no good!”

“Well, we have one not attached to any crew. But he is… he is a bit of a queer chap. We want to transfer him out of the regiment to the ground forces. But since you are Deputy Comesk now, you have a right to pick a better gunner.”

“What’s the name of the gunner you want to get rid of?”

“Makosov.”

“Give him to me.”

“I strongly advise against it, Comrade Lieutenant”, the adjutant remarked.

“Send him to my plane anyway, please”, I requested.

Soon enough, I was talking at the parking lot with Squadron Engineer Shourkhin and Technician-Lieutenant132 Stepanov, when a chuckle sounded behind me: “Here I come!”

I glanced back and there stood a boy about eighteen years old at the most, with a round face split by a smile, which dimpled his tight pinkish cheeks. His field cap was pushed onto the back of his head, and the forelock of his fair hair was accurately combed to one side.

“Who are you?” I asked him.

“Sergeant Makasov. Adjutant Boiko had, you know… Had sent me to you…”

“So what? Report your arrival, Sergeant Makosov!”

“It’s kinda odd. It’s the first time I’ve seen a female pilot!” And he began to giggle again, shifting from foot to foot, obviously a stranger to standing at attention.

“What for did they send you to our regiment?”

“I am an air gunner”

“Have you ever flown before?”

“I completed a gunnery course and that was it…”

“Do you want to fight as a gunner?”

“I want it very much but they’re not assigning me a pilot.”

“Do you know well the hardware of the cockpit? Gunnery techniques? Silhouettes of the hostile planes?”

“I do!”

“Alright then. I’ll test you tomorrow.”

The next day in the morning I saw Makosov in the Sturmovik cockpit. During questioning he answered fluently and never stopped smiling. And so it came to pass that we started going on combat missions together.

Personally, I myself would never ever have agreed to be an Il-2 aerial gunner. It was scary! The gunner sat with his back to the pilot in an open cockpit. In front of him there was a half-ring mount with a heavy machine gun. When a Fascist fighter got on your tail and started shooting at you — how could someone withstand it?! After all, an aerial gunner had neither a trench nor a hump of earth behind which he might hide from enemy bullets. Of course he’s got his machine-gun but it is the pilot who controls the plane throwing it from one side to another and it doesn’t make the gunner’s life easy. It may also happen that the machine-gun jams due to malfunction or because it has run out of ammunition133… No, no way would I want to be aerial gunner in a Sturmovik.

However, Makosov started behaving quite actively right from his very first sorties. Spotting an enemy plane he would immediately shoot a flare at it, warning everyone of danger. When I was gaining in altitude after completing my pass over the target, Makosov would fire his gun to hit a target of opportunity on the ground. I knew that the tail of my plane was covered in a reliable way. Moreover, using an intercom set my air gunner was always reporting whatsoever he saw in the air or over the ground.

“Comrade Lieutenant”, I heard time and again now. “A flak gun’s firing from the woods on the right!” or “Comrade Lieutenant, six tanks are moving towards ‘Lesser Land’ from Novorossiysk. They’re shooting on the move!” And yet again: “Comrade Lieutenant, Sturmovik tail number ‘6’ is hit. It is loosing altitude, going down to the sea…”

It seemed nothing could escape the attention of my gunner. I was happy for his successes and used every opportunity to support or praise him. For completing 10 combat missions successfully and for damaging a Messer, the regimental HQ awarded Makosov the medal ‘For Meritorious Service in Combat’.

My air gunner always kept his heavy machinegun in combat-ready order. He always cleaned and lubricated it in time, performed maintenance check-ups and prevented any jams. Makosov would sit in the Sturmovik cockpit for hours and practise by targeting planes flying over the aerodrome. By that time, I had full confidence in him. I was fairly sure: in a difficult situation he will not get lost, will not let me down. Makosov never panicked, never got overexcited. He shot in a calm, business-like manner — and did hit his target. Over the Stanitsa Moldavankaya he managed to shoot down a Me-109, jointly with few other gunners. Soon, Makosov was awarded with another medal ‘For Valour’. During debriefings he was now being held up as an example for other gunners, but he invariably kept smiling the same way, showing the dimples on his cheeks and blushing. I noticed that our gunsmith and weapon/ammunition specialist girls started looking towards our Sturmovik with quite an interest — it was Makosov sitting in its cockpit…

I have to mention that all the girls serving in our regiment were the pick of the bunch — very pretty. Masha Zhitnyak, Yulia Panina, Masha Dragova, Varya Matveeva, Nina Gneusheva, Dousya Nazarkina, Lida Fedorova, Lyuba Kasapenko. Nina Piyuk, Katya Kozhevnikova, Nina Shcwetz, Katya Zelinskaya — they all had come from ShMAS134. All of them were locals, from the Kuban area, — it turned out that when we were based in the area the local Military Commissariat had sent them all to us as a bunch. The girls were supervised by armament technicians P. I. Panarin and N. A. Kalmykov, and also by our armament engineer B. D. Sheiko. The days when we were conducting missions in a rapid sequence were incredibly difficult for the girls. How many bombs and rockets they had to lug to a plane! And not just lug but lift and suspend them — and do so without any appliances. It was also their responsibility to load hundreds of cannon and machinegun belts between the sorties, and to fuel every plane scheduled for a combat mission. All that was so impossibly hard that for many years after the war they could not carry a child… Many male technicians would help the girls voluntarily: after completing their own duties.

At the same time, the arrival of the ‘best half of the people’ in the regiment had surely influenced our male contingent. Prior to the appearance of the girls many pilots of our regiment considered it fashionable to wear a beard. Although it might not have been a fashion but rather a superstition: a bullet will not find you once you have a beard! But once our pretty gunsmiths and weapon/ammunition specialists had arrived — all those beards disappeared overnight, as if they were gone with the wind. The pilots started shaving and changing their clothesmore often, and the technicians followed their example. Their usually oily and dirty overalls became almost snow-white due to washing in buckets of petrol. Some appeared ironed — these were placed under a mattress for a night.

The fact that Technician-Lieutenant Petr Panarin wasn’t indifferent to the armament specialist Masha Zhitnyak was noticed in the regiment straightaway. What could you do about it? — he had fallen in love with her at first sight. Petr was attracted to this quiet unhurried Ukrainian girl by her modesty, kindness, diligence, and without procrastination (lest the dashing pilots beat him to it!) he proposed. But… he was rejected. And after a repeated proposal Maria said as if cutting him off: “You, Comrade Technician-Lieutenant, think I came to the regiment to get married? I won’t hide that I like you, but there’ll be no wedding until the day of our Victory!”

Many years later, after the war, our former armament specialist Maria Timofeevna Zhitnyak (now her last name was Panarina) came to visit me in Moscow. She was living in the city of Chervonograd, close to Lvov. She was as always smiling and cordial as before, although the war and age had certainly left their mark on her. We were able to recall a lot during that encounter: how mistrustfully our regimental comrades treated the girls, how hard their life was at the beginning. Indeed, not everything went smoothly for the female armament specialists at first. And how hard it was for them… It is true that not everything went right in the beginning: many girls just did not know to use the tools, and their hands were covered with bruises. But nobody heard any complaints from them! Knowing it was not easy for many, the girls reconciled themselves to all the hard sides of frontline life.

Masha remembered how on the first bath day all the girls, like all the other soldiers, were issued with high-collared tunics and trousers. They had to make them over and adjust themselves individually. Nina Gneusheva — a modest, very pretty and proud girl born in Kuban — became our seamstress. On finding out about Nina’s talent, the male pilots, blushing and hesitant, began to ask her for makeovers, sometimes of their blouses, sometimes of trousers or something else. The Kuban Cossack girl managed to do everything, to hang bombs and rockets, to load cannons, and to carry out all tailoring orders.

The female gunsmith/armament specialists were issued English-made boots, which were nicknamed ‘Churchills’ — for their thick soles. They were issued together with puttees out of which the girls learned to make stockings. The latter had their ‘brand-name’ — zebras. The homemade stockings were so called for their low-quality dyeing — in stripes. Some would manage to procure acrichine from the regimental surgeon or ink from Ivanovskiy’s HQ administration department, dilute it with water and dip the puttees in it — and rush to wring them out, because the others wanted to dye their own ones. In the summertime the armament specialists did not wear cumbersome ‘Churchills’. Instead, they were making a splash wearing slippers self-made from plane covers. Guard duty was the only duty they served fully uniformed…

Guard duty deserves special mention. Standing guard was what frightened the girls most. It was especially hard in the territory of Poland and Germany: there, you had to watch out, to twirl your neck all the time! And as ill luck would have it, the Starshina Shkitin would place girls as sentries at the most remote guard-posts. He reckoned they would be the most vigilant sentinels guarding the aerodrome. Indeed, our beautiful armourers knew well how to handle submachine-guns and the strict Starshina trusted them with good reason.

Once Yulia Panina came to a meeting of the regiment Comsomol bureau, of which she was a member, with a bandaged neck. “What’s wrong with you, Yulia? Are you sick?” The bureau secretary Vasya Rimskiy asked.

“No”, Yulia replied, “I’m not sick. But I was on a guard duty last night. With fear, I turned my neck so much that I have hurt it…”

“Are you joking, Panina?”

“Not at all. It seemed to me all night that someone was crawling towards the planes and I was straining my ears and eyes so much that… now it hurts.” Everyone laughed.

“Everything will close up on the wedding day!” Zhenya Berdnikov concluded joyfully.

“You may well laugh. You’re the sterner sex but I often see you standing guard by the headquarters dugout. But we — the fair sex — stand with our machine-guns by night at the outermost plane parks…”

Generally speaking, the regimental and squadron Comsomol meetings usually occurred between combat sorties or in non-flying weather, late in the night. The agendas were such as: “All our strength for the destruction of the Fascist beast!”, “Strike at the enemy like the Comsomol crews of the Heroes of the Soviet Union Rykhlin and Efremenko!”, “Mutual help in combat is the Comsomol member’s law!”

Once, the pilot Bougrov came back from a sortie in plane so damaged, that it would have been better to tow it to a scrap-heap: such holes yawned on its wings and fuselage that a man might have easily fallen through many of them, while the rudders and elevators were barely holding on. After having a look at the machine, the regimental Chief Engineer Koudelin addressed Bougrov: “Tolya, my boy! I am an old aviation engineer. I’ve seen a lot in my life but I’ve never seen anything like that. Not only were you flying a wreck not a plane, but what’s more you’ve landed it brilliantly! Honour and praises to you!” And straightaway Koudelin addressed this subordinates. “Shall we try it, guys? Shall we fix it up?”

This appeal by the Chief Engineer played a positive role. The impossible was done — in a week the pilot Bougrov took off in that plane to strike at the enemy. Everyone knew that every repaired plane, its every sortie, meant death for dozens of Fascists!

But in the tension of combat work my regimental comrades nevertheless knew how to find time for relaxation and rest. The aerial gunner Zhenya Berdnikov was an indefatigable and constant organizer of regimental amateur performances. A merry fellow and a live wire, he could tell all sort of cock-and-bull stories and jokes for hours. And when, goggling his eyes and turning his toes out sideways, Zhenya began to dance imitating Chaplin and singing songs from his movies, it was simply impossible to keep from laughing!

Once, Berdnikov suggested putting on stage in the Stanitsa Timashevskaya’s club a sketch of Leonid Lench’s135 called ‘The Dream Comes True’. Most of the roles were taken willingly by the amateur performers, but no one wanted to act as the demoniacal Führer. Finally the Comsomol organizer Rimskiy had to accept it. The staging went off successfully, and then it was decided to show it to the locals. The concert in the club went well. The mechanic Vanya Koulikov danced the ‘Yablochko’136, then, together with the female armourers Nina Piyuk and Dousya Nazarkina, ‘The Russian Folkdance’. Masha Zhitnyak and Vasya Nazarov read aloud humorous stories, and Berdnikov and Panina sang the ‘Ogonyok’ song to the accompaniment of the flyer Pavel Evteev. Everybody liked how Vadim Morozov recited the poem ‘Wait for Me’137. Then the sketch ‘The Dream Comes True’ began, but at the moment of conversation between Napoleon and Hitler loud cursing resounded through the complete silence, and some object flew across onto the stage and accurately hit ‘Hitler’. The club audience burst out laughing but the actor didn’t feel like laughing: he’d got a good smack from a gumboot. Apart from that, his wig with its renowned forelock on his narrow forehead flew off his head.

After that incident the sketch was not performed anymore: no one wanted to play the despicable person! And when after the concert a very old man came up to Rimskiy and began to apologize: “My boy! Forgive me, I didn’t mean to hurt you. I’d strangle Hitler with my own hands! The Fascists shot my two brothers, burned my house down…” How could we not sympathize with this human grief…