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

26. My comrades-in-arms

The life of the regiment went on its normal course. Fierce fighting on the Taman Peninsula continued. We had to fly combat missions several times a day, and most of the time we flew towards targets over the waters of the Black and Azov Seas.

I’d feared water since childhood and had always been a bad swimmer. And it seemed to me sometimes when flying over the sea that the engine was playing up. In case of emergency we had been issued with lifebelts but the airmen didn’t believe they would save us if we ditched on water. But I, like a drowning man clutching at a straw, would put the belt on without fail, to the jokes and laughter of my comrades, meticulously adjusting it to my figure. Of course by modern standards our lifebelts were far from perfect. Judge for yourself: when a shot-down plane falls into the sea, a pilot has to manage to open the cockpit, to bail out, then open the parachute and the valve on the life belt and wait until it filled up with gas produced by the contact of some chemical substance in it with water. And if the belt didn’t fill with gas, what then? That was why the airmen didn’t believe in the lifebelts. But when put on, it had a positive psychological effect on me, and therefore I paid no attention to the guys’ good-natured joking.

The regimental favourite Borya Strakhov didn’t come back after a sortie onto the Choushka Spit. A day later some seamen brought his body to our place and said it had been washed ashore near Anapa. We buried him with a Division lined-up, with all military honours in the Stanitsa of Dzhigitskaya. Airmen were rarely buried during the war because they usually died where the action was. I stood next to the coffin of Boris, wept bitterly and could not believe he was dead. It seemed he would get up any minute, look around with his grey-green eyes, twist his non-existent moustache and ask: “What are they taking girls to war for?” and would hand me a field flower. He used to do that often.

During his last combat sortie Boris led a sixer of Il-2s on a ground attack and bombing mission against a ferry carrying a troop train near the Choushka Spit. The Sturmoviks flew below the lower edge of clouds at a height of 700 metres. On approach to the target the pilots were surprised: the enemy didn’t open fire on the planes for some reason. Strakhov and his wingmen were aware that the enemy flak was zeroed in on the clouds’ lower edge beforehand and began to conduct wide anti-flak manoeuvres in course and altitude plane. The flak guns remained silent. The pilots wanted to see them sooner than later, to see the first shell bursts so as to know where to turn the planes but the sky was still clear right up to the clouds. But then Boris Strakhov noticed the ferry near the Choushka Spit — a steam-engine dragging the carriages was creeping off it. Judging by their silhouettes on the open trucks, there were tanks, artillery and vehicles under the tarpaulins, and probably ammunition in the covered carriages. As soon as the leader switched his plane to diving several flak batteries tore the skies with a powerful salvo. The pilots didn’t falter and maintained their rapid approach to the target, firing their cannons and machine-guns and launching rockets. The pilots dropped 100-kilogram bombs with delayed fuses from low altitude. In 22 seconds the fuses did their work and a dazzling blaze covered the whole Choushka Spit.

But when the group was on its way home and already flying over the Black Sea the pilots saw that the leader’s plane was badly damaged and losing height. Apparently Strakhov was wounded, for his radio was silent. And suddenly four Fokkers125 leaped out of the clouds. They pounced upon the leader’s plane like jackals. Strakhov sharply threw his plane up — possibly he wanted to let the Hitlerites pass forward and attack them himself but his plane was no longer controllable. Hitting the waves with a list, he went to the bottom…

So Boris Strakhov was no more — a fair-haired bloke from Gorky — the 1st Squadron Commander. Everyone in our regiment took his death hard but his friend Vanya Soukhoroukov suffered harder than anyone. Ivan lost weight, looked drawn and spent all his spare time at his friend’s grave. Just recently as an incentive Ivan had got permission to have a vacation at home. Before leaving he told me confidentially that he was leaving to marry his childhood girlfriend and asked me to ‘lend’ him my trench-coat, for his own was very old, soldier-issue. My trench-coat had been made up from English cloth in a Voentorg126 workshop. “Since you’re going to get married…” I agreed, “take it!”

Ivan had been absent from the regiment for ten days and when he came back for some reason he did his best to stay out of my sight. “What’s the matter?” I wondered and decided to ‘interrogate’ Boris Strakhov. Borya was somewhat hesitant and then said:

“You know, it’s a very delicate matter. Please don’t tell anyone…”

It appeared Ivan had made it home but his girlfriend had just left for the front. Their wedding didn’t happen. When his vacation was over his town-folk presented him with a three-litre bottle of samogon127, a gift for his comrades, the frontline airmen: “Don’t be precious, everything we own is yours…” Ivan saved the huge bottle all the way back, having wrapped it in my ‘special’ trench-coat. He had to hitch-hike from Krasnodar to the aerodrome, and when he was doing the last leg of his trip the driver shook his passengers so much that all of them flew out of the back of the truck and hit the ground hard. Everyone was alright, and only Ivan suffered: his cherished three-litre bottle was smashed. Of course, the strong home-made drink soaked the trench-coat. Ivan washed it after he came back to get rid of the smell of spirits and hung it out to dry somewhere outside the stanitsa, among the vegetable gardens. “As soon as it gets dry, he’ll iron it and bring it back to you”, Boris finished earnestly, and it suddenly made me laugh: I had imagined Ivan flying out of the back of the truck with arms around the bottle wrapped in my trench-coat. When I finished laughing I suggested: “Not a drama. I’ll have to ask for a new trench-coat from the battalion commander, and I’ll present Ivan with that one — let it remind him of his town-folk’s gift.”

That’s how it went back and forth in our life on the front: rare minutes of youthful joy and relaxation, and combat sorties, attacks, the grief of losses…

During one sortie Kouz’ma Groudnyak’s shot-up Sturmovik landed, barely dragging itself across the frontline. The Il-2 with its damaged engine stood on its undercarriage in a hollow not far away from a ravine, beyond which the enemy’s defensive line was situated. The pilot climbed out of the cockpit under a hail of bullets and mortar shell splinters and lay down. Then he crawled to our lines and reported what had happened, and soon technicians headed towards his plane. But they had to get to the plane on foot. The whole terrain was dug up with trenches and land-mined, and so it was impossible to tow the plane away from the frontline. Only one thing could be done to save the Il: fly it away from the spot after replacing the engine. But how could that be done? You need a run-up and there were endless trenches and minefields all over the place. And it was a dangerous business to replace an engine in sight of the enemy. Finally they decided to work at night, and to disguise the plane with tree branches in the daytime.

So the technicians covered themselves with tarpaulins and began to remove the engine under torchlight. During the next night they installed an operational engine. The pilot had crawled up to the disguised plane too. Kouz’ma Dmitrievich spread out his raglan that had seen better days, lay on it, lit a cigarette and began to think how to take off. Glancing at his cigarette smoke he grasped that the wind was blowing from the enemy side. That was good for the run-up is shorter when taking off against the wind. “Well, is everything ready?” he asked the technicians.

They looked at the pilot narrowly and the Senior Technician Petr Panarin replied: “All nuts on the underframe have been splinted, hoses and pipes connected — I’ve checked it myself. Water and oil have been topped up, fuel as well…”

“Keep it short, Petr”, the surprised pilot cut him short. “You tell me: will it fly?”

“At the aerodrome I wouldn’t let it go.”

“And why’s that?”

“We haven’t tested the engine properly, and everything’s been done by eye… What if the prop slips? Or something else?

“You check the governor cable thoroughly one more time and just imagine you’ll be taking off yourself.”

“Aye, Comrade Commander. But how shall we warm up the engine before the start? It’s as quiet now before the dawn as at home near Omsk128.”

“We’ll ask the gunners. We’ll warm it up under cover of the noise!”

That was how they did it. An artillery battery commander agreed: “Alright, we’ll ‘rumble’ a bit from the reserve positions as if we are zeroing in.

Early in the morning our artillery began its work. Groudnyak turned the engine on and began to warm it up, then revved up — there was no slip. And then he released the brake and rolled! His plane was rolling directly towards the Fascists’ dugouts and trenches. At one moment the pilot engaged the booster and just before a German dugout he jerked the control lever. Shortly after the salvaged Sturmovik dashed low over our lines and waved its wings in thanks for the hospitability.

One day I was summoned to the regiment CP and ordered to lead a quartet of Sturmoviks to that same accursed Choushka Spit — to attack the enemy infantry and materiel reserves that had just crossed the Kerch Straits. I tried to refuse to be the leader and timidly asked the regiment commander to allow me to fly as a wingman.

“And who do you reckon should lead the group?” asked Michael Nikolaevich staring at me point-blank. “There are only inexperienced youngsters left! Usov, Stepochkin, Zinoviev, Tasets, Pashkov, Balyabin, Mketumov are all killed… Bougrov has got burns. Trekin is badly wounded. Who do you think is going to lead the pilots on the mission?”

The regiment commander turned his face away, wiping his eyes with a glove, and then, quickly repeating the mission aloud, I dashed out of the dugout.

“It’ll be nothing but a suicide mission in this weather and on such a target…” the pilot Zoubov muttered when he found out about the sortie.

And instead of explaining the mission or calming the pilot somehow I suddenly ordered brusquely: “Everyone to your planes! Run!” I had flown off the handle…

After the take-off all my wingmen joined me, taking up their positions in the formation. The group and I ‘called in’ to pick up the escort fighters: they were always based closer to the frontline while we, the Sturmoviks, were further away. Soon a quartet of LaGG-3 fighters got airborne and joined us.

I knew it would be impossible to reach the Choushka Spit following a direct course through the flak screen. That was why I decided to do it in a broad curve from the direction of the Azov Sea. The low clouds worked for us, but whilst we flew above the marshes and the sea the minutes seemed like an eternity to me: any engine malfunction or damage to a plane meant inevitable death in the water! At last the sandy shallows of Choushka came into view. Death was lurking around here. It might leap out of the clouds as a diving Fokker or come from the ground as a flak shell or a stray bullet…

Already en route to the target we came under the heaviest flak fire. I glanced back — my wingmen were still in formation. “You need to be sneaky with ack-ack”, I recalled the words of my squadron commander Andrianov. “Otherwise you’ll get shot up or shot down. It’s best not to engage them at all but if you’re gonna pounce on them attack the one in your way, one protecting the target…” I got ready to attack: I rocked the plane, changed altitude and speed. The wingmen did the same. We leaped over the first belt of anti-aircraft defence, then over the second… Here was the target! The Choushka Spit stretches for 18 kilometres and is similar to the embankment of an unfinished bridge crossing the Kerch Straits. And there was so much Fascist scum down on this narrow flat strip washed by two seas, that the spit itself was not invisible — there was only materiel, guns, tanks, men…

We dived, dropped bombs, fired our cannons and machine-guns. We pulled the Sturmoviks out of the attack when we were just above the heads of the Hitlerites, then gained altitude and swiftly dashed into another pass. I saw vehicles burning, something exploding. The infantrymen were on the run, the tanks crawling in all directions, crushing their own soldiers. Take that, you bastards! For everything we’ve suffered!

The ammo was running low and I turned my plane towards home. I glanced back to check if everyone was still with me — and a nasty chill ran down my back, then I felt hot and my mouth got dry: Zoubov’s plane wasn’t there… Where was he? How could that be? A pilot was shot down and I didn’t notice? It meant now there were only three of us left. The quartet of our escort fighters was in a dogfight a bit to the side of us.

So, I was flying back and kept watching the ground: maybe, I would see Misha Zoubov’s plane? How could it be? And I had shouted at him before the battle… But as soon as we’d crossed the frontline I saw a Sturmovik lying on a hillock not far away from the marshes. The number on its tail was ‘23’ — it was Zoubov’s! He and his aerial gunner got out of the cockpit onto the wings and waved to us, then fired a shot from a flare gun. I made a steep turn, banked my wings (“Look, I can see you — wait for help!”) and flew away.

We landed safely and, having reported completion of the mission to the commander, I headed to the marshes in a Po-2 to pick up Zoubov and his gunner. Zoubov told us his Sturmovik had been damaged by ack-ack guns and when he was retiring, shot up, he was finished off by a fighter. Later, when Misha and I had done quite a few combat sorties, he admitted to me once: “You know, Anna Alexandrovna, back then I was afraid not of the Choushka Spit or the bad weather but of your presence. I thought: “Well, Michael, no good will come of a ‘woman on board’. But when you made the turn above us and then came back to pick us up in a Po-2 all my doubts disappeared. I beg your pardon…”

After that a crew of technicians and engine specialists flew over to the forced landing spot from our regiment and PARM129. They were to assess the damage and decide the fate of the Sturmovik. Would it be feasible to repair it on the spot or it would be better to disassemble it, load onto trucks and send to workshops in separate units? Such decisions were always taken by the captain of technical services Petr Vasilievich Komkov — formerly engine specialist to V. P. Chkalov130 himself. He was a jack-of-all-trades but best of all he knew the AM-38 engine. Like a good doctor of diagnostics he would listen to it: tap it all over, then sit in the cockpit, turn on the engine and continue listening to it first at low, then at medium revs, and sometimes on booster. At last Komkov would turn the ignition off, look into all sections of the engine and only then would he was make a conclusion. We were all confident that our frontline ‘academic’ would always make the right diagnosis — with him mistakes didn’t happen.

It’s true Komkov from Gorky had one weakness. He was so very jealous of his wife that more than once she ran to the head of the Division’s Political Section with complaints against her husband. Praskovya Semyonovna (just Panya to everyone) from Moscow, very young and pretty, appeared in the PARM unexpectedly but stayed. She went to work in her husband’s workshops sewing percale on a machine. And thus Panya sewed up until the end of the war — that was her contribution to the Victory.