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

12. “Is it natural flair or is it all God-given?”

Frontline veterans remember this simple biplane getting the most unexpected, sometimes overblown, sometimes ironic but always favourable nicknames. For the infantry it was ‘frontline starshina’, the partisans nicknamed the U-2 ‘kitchen gardener’ or ‘cropduster’ for its incredible ability to land on tiny patches of ground, and seasoned pilots respectfully called the nimble plane ‘the duck’. But the nickname was not the point. The U-2 had won its glory by honest soldierly work: it transported wounded men, dispatched mail, flew reconnaissance flights, bombed the Hitlerites by night. Generals and Marshals, war correspondents and doctors considered it the best form of frontline transport. Its unusual maneuverability, simplicity of maintenance and ease of handling allowed it to conduct such operations as were for fast and heavy aircraft simply impossible.

It didn’t seem a big deal to fly the U-2 carrying orders, searching for military units, reconnoitring roads, carrying couriers and signal officers. But this seemingly routine work was fraught with such the surprises and dangers! What kind of routine was it if all flights towards the frontline for fast communications with secret mail, and flights beyond the enemy lines were by rights considered combat sorties? It was not for nothing our squadron was recommended for Guards rank, but the unit was too small for that. Only in 1944 was the 130th Squadron given the honorific name ‘Sevastopol’…

But 1941 wasn’t over and the front was moving east… While putting up increasing resistance to the enemy, our troops were nevertheless giving up their positions. During the retreat communications between units were sometimes lost and there is nothing worse than loss of control when you’re at war! The squadron’s flyers were sent into the air to restore it or to despatch necessary information or a required order. They would take off in rain, in fog, in any weather.

…On 21 August I received orders to fly to the 18th Army Headquarters. I was advised of the approximate locality where this headquarters ought to be, but once there I would have to clarify its position. The squadron commander warned me that there would be many Hitlerite fighter planes en route. Blink and they will knock you off straight away. I remember the weather was superb, typical August, and at another time I would have been glad of that, but now… In a clear sky a ‘cropduster’ was defenceless against Fascist fighters. You couldn’t get away from them — you had no speed. And plywood is not armour, it doesn’t stop bullets. And your only weapon was the revolver on your belt. The only escape was to dive towards the ground, spread your wings just above the grass and fly so low that you could hear your undercarriage mow the feather-like grass of the steppe.

And here I am hugging the ground. I have no navigator and I often look at the compass, the watch, the map, keep an eye on the ground: it’s quite close, under my wings. I am happy that I can recognise the farmsteads flashing by under me — the time I pass over them coincides exactly with the calculations. Of course, the compass is a good thing but I’m not much good with it. I prefer to compare the terrain I pass over with the map, and, to be honest, when working as a pilot instructor I rarely had to stick to a flight path, there were few ‘blind’ flights in the clouds or at night when you wholly rely on instruments. When farmsteads and gullies had stopped flashing under my wings and the barren steppe spread underneath, anxious thoughts crawled into my mind: what if this compass is off? Maybe they failed to get rid of the deviation? Now it seems to me that I shift course to the right… No, maybe, to the left! “Trust the compass, trust it… It’ll lead you where you need to go…” I assure myself, “it won’t let you down”.

Suddenly I see two approaching dots. “Messerschmitts,” I guess in a flash. Yes, that’s them! And now they’ve swooped over my head, insolently showing off the spiders of their swastikas. They let off a burst, swept past somewhere but came back straightway. I remember them covering my U-2 with their shadows but they couldn’t do anything else. So they left…

I sighed with relief: now I could concentrate on the ground rapidly flashing under my machine so as to get back my bearings. Here was the village where the headquarters of the 18th Army was. Noticing a small patch of ground with three U-2 planes — the Army Headquarters’ Signals Flight — I landed. My passenger, a naval captain of the Dnieper Flotilla — went to Headquarters and I had to wait for him. In the meantime the pilots from the Army Signals Flight refuelled my plane, treated me to watermelon and told me about the situation on this sector of the front.

On my way back I lost concentration and was immediately punished for it: everything got mixed up and confused in my head. I began to swing wildly from one side to another looking for any noticeable landmark but only the deserted steppe lay silently beneath… Calming down a bit I headed eastward and flew by compass. I saw a railway station. I tried to read its name but couldn’t. Then I decided to land and find out. There was a method of orientation called “questioning the local population”. It turned out to be the village of Porovka. The Tikhiy farmstead was nearby and I returned to the aerodrome safely. There Squadron Commander Boulkin asked me, knitting his brows, “Why have you been in the air so long?”

“There was a delay with my departure from the Army headquarters”, I weaseled.

It was the communications officer who told the major about our encounter with the Messerschmitts and about my desperate manoeuvres. I disliked Boulkin and I wasn’t the only one.

“Get some rest!” Boulkin said. “You’ll fly there again tomorrow.”

But on the next day I had to fly to Kalarovka near Melitopol. There was the headquarters of the 9th Army and I’d been ordered to deliver a communications officer there with urgent orders. The weather that day was excellent, visibility limitless. So as not to come across the Fascist hawks, I flew hugging the ground. Here a village appeared, buried in verdure, and I lifted the plane a little: with this altitude I could have easily snagged a tree, a post or some chimney. As soon as I climbed up my field of view improved and I immediately noticed, not far away, white huts clustered around a wide gully. Turning back to the lieutenant-colonel I waved my hand down: to say ‘that’s it, we’ve arrived’. But while I was closing in for landing I noticed unusual, somehow convulsive movement, on the roads leaving Kalarovka. The troops were moving mixed up with cattle, carts loaded with goods and chattels milled around under the wheels of military trucks. Empty tonne-and-a-half72 trucks were sweeping past on the sides of the roads, the infantry was marching not in columns but in small groups few in number. An uneasy disorder was everywhere apparent…

I landed the plane near a windmill on a hillock, taxied right up against the mill and turned off the engine. “Something’s wrong”, the communications officer who had flown in with me muttered. “You stay here and wait for me to come.” And he ran down a footpath towards the village.

I began to look for something to camouflage the plane with and, finding nothing, sat under a wing and began to wait. I waited an hour, twenty minutes more, thirty… But the lieutenant-colonel still didn’t come back. I began to feel somewhat alarmed. The crackle of gunfire was heard from the gully: there could be no doubt a battle was breaking out down there…

I crawled out from under the wing and moved a bit forward to position myself better. There was hustle and bustle in the village: the cattle were bellowing, machines roaring, people running… I had a full view of the village from the hillock: the gully divided it into two. And while the streets of the eastern side were crammed with troops its right half was empty. But right behind that emptiness lay the frontline. The sounds of fighting were coming from there — from the west. I understood: the Germans were just about to break through to the buildings about half a kilometre beyond the gully… And that’s what happened. Suddenly an explosion boomed in a deserted street, then another, then a third. The roof of one of the huts caught fire, a slender Lombardy poplar bent down in the middle, and frightened birds shot up into the sky. And suddenly in front of me, like on the movie screen, very close, the blunt snouts of German tanks came into sight. Their cannon muzzles were seemingly targeted directly at the hillock upon which the plane stood unmoving, an excellent target. Unfortunately it didn’t just seem that way: a shell exploding by the mill made me run to the plane.

A good two hours had already gone by but the communications officer hadn’t come back yet. Obviously, he’d forgotten about me. “What should I do? The Hitlerites will be here very shortly. I have to save the plane…” — These thoughts got mixed up in my head. A second shell exploded next to my plane and tore the cladding of the fuselage and the wings with its fragments. I quickly jumped into the cockpit, tried to start the engine but failed, for I needed someone to turn the propeller. Then I saw a tonne-and-a-half truck rushing down the road. It was fishtailing for there was no tyre on one of the wheels. Running down to the road I tried to stop it but the driver (he looked like a boy to me) decided to drive around me. Without stopping to think I pulled my revolver from its holster and began shooting furiously at the intact tyres. He stopped and cursing began to pull out his rifle…

“Drop that thing”, I pointed at his weapon. “Help me start my engine instead.”

The driver was taken, hearing a female voice. “Stop, I tell!” I said and put the revolver away.

“What are you up to? Don’t you see: the Fascists are on us, the front’s been broken through. I have to catch up with my unit.”

“You’ll still have time! My plane’ll be lost here.”

“The hell with it, jump in here while it’s not too late.”

A new explosion made me turn my head towards the U-2. I saw shell fragments tearing apart the fuselage of my shuddering plane. “It’ll be done for…” I jerked the door of the truck, “Come on out! Just for a minute.”

“It’s plain you’re crazy!” the chap obeyed. “Where is the plane?”

I pointed up towards the mill. “You’ve gone mad! Don’t you see them shooting? Your bird is about to catch fire! Jump in the cabin!”

I wouldn’t, and so he gathered his nerve. With a quick look around the chap grabbed me by the arm and dragged me up the hillock. Now crawling, now dashing we reached the mill. It was already half-smashed by shells and its broken blades were hanging down. The wings of my plane had been holed too, and climbing up on one of them I got a real scare: an air-blast had torn away the seat of the rear cockpit and thrown it up on the dash-board of the front one. What if everything was destroyed? I got into the cockpit and was happy to see that there was apparently no serious damage.

“Take the propeller.” But the chap had already grabbed it without an invitation.

“Turn the propeller a few times and jerk the blade, then jump away so it doesn’t hit you!”

“Heave ho!” and the propeller began to spin. The driver was blown away as if by the blast — he disappeared straight away. I noticed only when the tonne-and-a-half truck scampered away behind the hillock. The Germans intensified their firing at my plane. I had to get out of the cockpit and turn the machine towards the take-off direction myself. And just where did I get the strength from? Most likely from fear — and the determination to escape the enemy at all costs and save the machine played its role too. Basically, I took off under the Fascists’ very noses… There were no instruments, the dashboard was smashed, but the engine caught and I am alive…

I was flying east. The sun had already gone down and twilight had swallowed the ground. How would I land in the dark? I was circling, looking for my aerodrome, but below were only slag heaps73, cables, the railways that led to each shaft. At last I saw a small light far away. Surely they hadn’t set a fire for me? Fortunately they had!

It turned out that when all the deadlines for my return had passed they had decided in the squadron that I wasn’t coming back. On top of that the pilots from the 6th Army Signals Flight had landed on our airstrip during their retreat and reported to Major Boulkin that my plane had supposedly been seen flying towards a village occupied by the enemy. In short they had they had given up on me in the squadron. Only my plane mechanic was stubbornly waiting and believing I would return. It was him who had set up the small fire on the airstrip.

After landing I didn’t leave the cockpit for quite a while: I still couldn’t believe I had broken free of the enemy’s clutches. I took off the helmet, wiped my sweaty face with a sleeve of my overall, and stayed sitting in a kind of stupor. A routine day at the front had ended…

Dronov the mechanic, having looked over the planed noted, “You flew here on ambition, Comrade Commander. But no drama, we’ll fix it up…”

In the morning the mechanic reported the machine ready to fly. My ‘cropduster’ looked brand-new. “Thank you, Kostya!” For the first time I called Dronov by his first name. He blushed, muttered something and for some reason began shifting the plane covers from place to place…

“There’s something God-given in you”, the pilots were joking when I turned up to report to Boulkin the squadron commander, “Some natural flair! We had already said a few words for you at dinner… You’d be sure to find your way even if all instruments were turned off and the maps were taken away from you.”

“I would, I would for sure, especially if possessed by anger.”

“Why would you be angry?”

“How could I not be! The communications officer ordered me to wait for him and didn’t come back…”

“Egorova!” the squadron commander called. “The Head of Frontline Communications General Korolev asked if you came back from the mission. The communications officer who flew with you sends his apologies for not warning you.”

“Why did he desert me in Kalarovka?” I asked Boulkin angrily.

“He didn’t desert you, he was trying to catch up with the Army Headquarters in a passing vehicle to give the Commander the Frontline HQ’s order to retreat.”

“What was the point over handing over the order to retreat if the Army had retreated long ago?..”

“He was doing his best to carry out his mission and was late… But he returned to the Frontline headquarters. After all he sends you his apologies”, the squadron commander repeated.

“Apologies to whom, if he doesn’t even know if I’m alive or dead?”

I felt pain and anger. And my senior officer too! I was sure that abandoning me, a woman, to death, he had behaved in an unmanly manner.