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

23. The skies over Taman

It didn’t take long to get us into operation. We studied the operations area, familiarised ourselves with the intelligence data and, as the deputy comesk of the 2nd Squadron Pasha Usov liked to say, “we were off”. The newly-appointed Chief-of-Staff of the regiment Captain Leonid Yashkin, appointed to our unit in place of the departed Captain Belov, summoned all the flying personnel to the headquarters dugout for a briefing on the operational situation in our sector of the front.

To start with he advised that he had arrived from the Academy without graduating from it, and before that he had been Deputy Chief-of-Staff of the 366th High-speed Bomber Regiment. Before the war Yashkin had served as a junior commander, and had a Leningrad working-class background. His father used to work at the ‘Red Nailmaker’ plant and perished during the Blockade of Leningrad. Telling us about it Yashkin began to run the fingers of one hand through his unruly fair hair and wiped a tear off his cheek with the other… Leonid himself had been a worker at the ‘Red Nailmaker’ in the past, and his sister Anastasia was a medic at the front.

Getting up from the table Captain Yashkin pulled down his blouse as if shaking off the hard memories, straightened his belt and the loaded holster on it, put on a businesslike look and began his report: “Developing the advance in the South our troops have cleared the Soviet land of Fascist vermin. They have advanced hundreds of kilometres and liberated many areas of the North Caucasus, the Rostov District, part of the Ukraine and reached the Azov Sea… Their plans to capture the Caucasus oil and conquer the Black Sea coast and its ports have led the Hitlerites to complete destruction and a retreat from the North Caucasus in the direction of Rostov and the Taman Peninsula. Now, fearing a breakthrough of Soviet troops, the enemy has built a heavy defence line from Novorossisk to Temryuk. There are concrete pillboxes, dug-out weapon emplacements, anti-tank and anti-personnel fortifications, trenches with communication lines, dense landmine fields, a large amount of field and flak artillery. Because of the numerous water obstacles the Germans have called this strongly fortified position ‘The Blue Line’. According to their plan, it is supposed to cover their retreat to the Crimea.”

The Captain went on with his report but I became pensive… Suddenly I recalled Lermontov’s story Taman. I was fond of Lermontov107. Before the war Victor Koutov had presented me with a book of his verses, and currently it was striding with me down the roads of war…

“…In order to create a threat against their flanks”, the voice of the Chief-of-Staff was coming from somewhere distant, returning me to reality, “and to prevent the German Fleet using Tsemesskaya Bay, on the night of 4 February troops sent from Gelendzhik landed there. They captured a bridgehead called ‘Lesser Land’. The Germans have been trying all possible ways to annihilate the bridgehead. So, fighting doesn’t die down there day or night. Thus, we will be helping our landing party to wipe out the Fascist scum on the Taman Peninsula…”

Straining my memory I recalled our history teacher telling us that Taman was colonised by the Greeks a thousand and a half years ago, then settled by the Khazars, Mongols, Genoese, Turks… Suvorov had built a fort there.108

“We have a mission. The squadron commanders are to stay for the briefing”, Regiment Commander Kozin entered the room with these words and unfolded a map on the desk.

We left the cramped quarters but stayed together, waiting for the decision: what if any of us went on a combat mission? “Maybe I will be included in the fighting group?”, I thought shyly. Everyone was excited — both novices and ‘oldies’, but tried to conceal it. Pilot Rzhevskiy told us a joke about a daughter who asked her father to tell her all he knew about steam engines, which had just come to existence. Her father talked a long time, showed her a picture, and then asked his daughter: “Well, do you understand everything?”

“Everything, Daddy! Just show me please, where they harness the horses…” The airmen laughed. A short brawny fellow from Rybinsk, Volodya Sokolov ran up to me and, putting on a serious face with difficulty, said:

“Anyuta, let’s swap heights!”

“Let’s do it, Volodya. I love high-heeled shoes so much but feel shy of wearing them because of being tall. But how shall we do it? And what will I get for the difference — after all I am 170 centimetres tall and you’re only 160?”

“Sokolov, Egorova, Vakhramov, Tasets, Rzevskiy, up to the commanders!” This was an order from the Chief-of-Staff. Everyone forgot all about jokes and ran into the dugout.

We were proffered not a straight flight route but a kind of zigzag one. “We’ll avoid the enemy’s flak guns. It’ll be better that way. Stay in the formation, do what I do”, the navigator Karev, our leader, said and showed us on the map who was to fly where. My position was wingman to the right of Petr Karev.

What I was thinking about before my first combat sortie in a Sturmovik, it’s hard to say. There was no fear. There was a kind of satisfaction: look, they’ve included me in the first flight group, now I must not disgrace myself — after all, I am the only woman amongst so many men, and what men — Sturmovik pilots!

A quartet of LaGG-3s from a fraternal fighter regiment based on the same aerodrome as we were, was to escort us. There were five regiments in our 230th Ground Attack Aviation Division: four ground-attack and one of fighters. The Division was under the command of a Hero of the Soviet Union Colonel Semyon Grigorievich Getman.

Here we were sitting in the cockpits of our combat planes and waiting for the signal — a green flare. My eyes slid over the instruments, my fingers ran over (as if to get the feel of them) the numerous switches and handles — I was checking the correct setting of their positions. My mechanic Rumskiy was here, next to the plane. He had made the plane ready for a combat sortie long before but now he wipes clean the long ago cleansed and shiny reinforced glass of the cockpit, then sets straight a parachute strap on my shoulder and looks at me as if to ask: “What else can I do for you?..”

“Thanks, friend. I need to be alone for a little while and concentrate, to collect my thoughts”, I thanked my mechanic, and looked at Karev’s Sturmovik standing ahead of me to the left. The group leader was quiet. He put his hand on the cockpit sides and seemed to be singing. “Doesn’t the coming mission really worry him in the least?” I thought with astonishment. But my thoughts were interrupted by a green flare soaring above the Command Post. Hissing nastily it rose above the field and began to fall very slowly and burn out. Time we take off! Our course — to ‘Lesser Land’.

During the flight I did my best to stick close to Karev: I was afraid of falling behind. Here was our target. The leader swung his plane in a manoeuvre — I did the same, he dived almost to the very ground — so did I, he shot — I shot too. I dropped my bombs after him as well. But after the fourth pass on the target I fell behind nevertheless. And I didn’t just fall behind but lost the whole group. What should I do now? Now I was flying on my own among dense shell bursts. I manoeuvred desperately, looked for the group but didn’t see it… Near Myskhako I turned onto our territory and became a witness to dozens of our planes and the enemy’s fighting an aerial battle over Tsemesskaya Bay. Fighter planes were falling into the sea, pilots were descending on parachutes, motorboats were rushing towards them from both sides. I was observing such a battle for the first time in my life…

It was not easy for a novice to make sense of the melee taking place over the Taman Peninsula. Two fighters dashed towards me like black vultures. For some reason I took them for our ‘Yaks’ but when a machine-gun tracer passed ahead of me to the right and they began to turn for a second pass I clearly saw white crosses on their fuselages. The Germans behaved extremely insolently, taking no care for their own defence, and attacked from different directions but without result. The Sturmovik’s speed was lower than the Messerschmitt’s, and during one of their attacks they skipped forward and appeared in my gun-sight. I pressed all the triggers simultaneously but, alas, no discharge followed: all my ammunition had been spent over the target. That time I was saved by our fighters. They drove the Fascist vultures away from my plane and even shot one down — and so I made it home safely.

During debriefing Captain Karev harshly reprimanded me for falling behind the group. I couldn’t disagree with him and I humbly admitted my negligence. During this flight the pilots Sokolov and Vakhramov were shot down by flak but several days later they returned to the regiment. Vakhramov and his aerial gunner were picked up in the sea by our motorboat, whilst Sokolov, having made it to our territory on his shot-up Sturmovik, landed on the Kuban river floodplain.

Fighter planes gave us Sturmoviks a reliable cover from the air. I still remember the names of many fighter pilots who became famous over Kuban: G. A. Rechkalov109, V. I. Fadeev, N. F. Smirnov, G. G. Goloubev, V. G. Semenishin, V. I. Istrashkin. The callsigns of the Glinka brothers — Boris Borisovich and Dmitriy Borisovich — were ‘BB’ and ‘DB’110… But it seems to me that the dashing fighter pilots didn’t much like flying escort to us Sturmovik pilots, being our ‘nannies’. It was another thing to get a combat mission to go ‘free hunting’! You found a target, engaged the enemy without looking back at the Sturmoviks, shot a Fascist down and came back to your aerodrome victorious. But flying escort, your chance of shooting down an enemy plane was quite low…

We had our dogfights against the Hitlerite planes too. I remember our battle in which the pilot Rykhlin distinguished himself, his glory roaring all over Kuban. Rykhlin had joined the regiment with no military rank — in his OSOAVIAKhIM blouse with ‘birds’ on the collar patches and a magnificent sleeve insignia — the Air Force emblem. Rykhlin had used to work as a pilot-instructor in an aeroclub, had accumulated a lot of flying hours, and was put into operations quickly. By his second combat sortie yesterday’s instructor was flying in the group of Sturmoviks led by the Hero of the Soviet Union Captain Mkrtumov. I was in the same sixer too…

…The greyish strip of the Kuban river flashed past. Mountains were sometimes seen through the shroud of low clouds. We were supposed to approach the target unseen, coming from the seaside, and the leader began to descend steadily carrying us behind him towards the ground. I saw Mkrtumov’s intent profile through the open pane of my cockpit. The helmet tightly covered his handsome head with its Oriental profile, the throat-mikes fastened to the last button were visible on his neck, and from under his helmet a white strip of lining was visible — that was why his face seemed even darker and more sun-tanned.

Now the stanitsa Krymskaya was gone under my wing on the right, and that was when our leader again changed course, at the same time gaining altitude. So as not to fall behind I energetically revved up and gained speed. We crossed the frontline and the blue of the sea appeared through the risen mist. Far below gun flashes began to sparkle — we were under flak fire. Small grey puffs of shell bursts began to leap about the plane. I saw a large splinter hit the right wing of Mkrtumov’s Sturmovik but his machine kept flying obediently.

The last seconds before an attack place an especially strong strain on one. It seems nothing else exists in the world for you — all your attention is concentrated on the leader and the target. In that flight, tanks with white crosses on the armour were our target. Our tankers and artillerymen were holding off pressure from the enemy with their last strength, and assistance from the air arrived in the nick of time. The bombs covered the target accurately, the ground attack followed. Attacking tanks is a complicated business involving a lot of risk. Tank cannon had enviable precision and more than once hasty pilots had paid for their errors with their lives. You had to watch your altitude really carefully. Our Goldy (that was what we called Rykhlin among ourselves, after his fiery-red hair) got a little carried away, forgot about his altitude in the heat of battle, and one of the Hitlerite tanks instantly pulled up the barrel of his cannon and opened fire at the plane! Rykhlin’s damaged machine, barely pulling out of the attack, turned away towards Gelendzhik. But four Messerschmitts pounced upon it like a bolt from the blue. The pilot had no choice but to accept the fight with them.

Knowing the power of the forward fire of our Sturmoviks, the German fighters feared to attack from the front. In the current situation the high speed of the Messerschmitt was a nuisance for them and Rykhlin decided to capitalise on it. When two vultures, having put down their undercarriages to reduce their speed, sneaked up to the Sturmovik and began to shoot at it point-blank, Rykhlin abruptly turned his plane around towards the enemy and went on the attack himself. One of the Messerschmitts found itself in the Il’s gun-sight with its yellow belly exposed. The pilot pressed all the triggers and the yellow-belly began to smoke, tilted on one wing and fell into the sea. The second Hitlerite met the same end. The aerial gunner Vanya Efremenko, already wounded in the arm, shot up a third one; a fourth Messer exhaled smoke as well. Quitting the dogfight it turned towards his aerodrome.

On his own, badly damaged, our Sturmovik had faced four Fascist fighters and got the upper hand! And this miraculous victory was made by a pilot flying only his second combat sortie. Rykhlin managed to make it to a narrow strip of land by the Black Sea in his bullet-riddled plane. Many of our troops saw the scene of the aerial battle from the ground, and when the pilot had landed his machine, sailors who happened to be nearby were ready to carry the fearless hero in their arms.

The Military Council of the 4th Aerial Army highly appreciated the feat of the gallant warriors. N.V. Rykhlin was appointed a flight commander and promoted to the rank of Senior Lieutenant, and Sergeant I.S. Efremenko became a Junior Lieutenant. By Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Council of the Soviet Union on the 24th of May 1943 N.V. Rykhlin and I.S. Efremenko were awarded the ranks of Heroes of the Soviet Union.

Then Rykhlin went on a course to improve his qualifications. Running a bit ahead I will say that many years after the war I suddenly received a letter from Rykhlin in which he advised that he was in hospital and asked to see me. By that time I was the only living person from of all our regiment, and I went. He was so happy to see me when I came to the hospital! It turned out that after the war he had married a woman with a son. The latter took a great dislike to him, wrote some kind of complaints against him, some kind of cock-and-bull stories — and they believed him: Rykhlin was arrested and stripped of his rank of Hero… And his wife didn’t stand up for him. It was a somewhat strange story… After all, he was a kind and good man!