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

30. Off the front

The fighting near Taman had ceased: now we were attached to the 1st Byelorussian Front. The relocation of the regiment to Karlovka near Poltava went without incident. As usual, the HQ and the technical personnel met us with a prepared airfield, parking lots, and billets for the airmen.

Somewhere in those parts Peter the Great defeated the Swedes.140 And just recently our troops had smashed a large Hitlerite force here. For our training, the HQ found us a natural bombing range near the ancient Russian redoubts, where the rubble of abandoned enemy materiel remained. They built an observation tower there, marked the trenches with wooden dummy ‘soldiers’, installed wooden ‘cannons’. On this dummy enemy defence line there were also tanks marked with crosses, and vehicles.

Over the period of our action over Taman, our regiment had been reinforced by planes and flying personnel three times. And now a new reinforcement arrived — many new pilots, whom we would have to get into shape: to teach them how to bomb, to shoot, to seek out targets — in other words, all we’d been taught once upon a time by the veterans of the ground-attack regiment at the Ogni aerodrome. Experienced, though not battle-hardened pilots had arrived in our 3rd Squadron. All of them had come from the Far East: Stepanov, Sherstobitov, Khomyakov, Ladygin, Ivnitskiy, Khoukhlin, Moustafaev, Kirillov, Evteev, Ivanov, Tsvetkov, Konyakhin… We — the ‘oldies’ — did not enjoy working with the youngsters. Leaving the frontline we had hoped to have a short rest in the rear. Attacks on the bombing range dummies with cement bombs did not make the seasoned front-liners enthusiastic, and for the younger guys these exercises were only a continuation of their boring school lessons. They were striving to go to the front too. Only once did I come across a pilot who didn’t want to fly. I asked him: “Tell me honestly, what’s your problem?” And he said: “I’m afraid”. That pilot was released from the regiment… But in general the mood was: “Let’s go to the front!” We would fly with the young pilots in two-seaters two or three times — they were mostly well-trained, but it was required that they study the plane in detail! Moreover, many of them were used to open cockpits, but the Il’s cockpit was closed, and at first one felt sort of boxed in. We also got clumsy ones and we had to ‘polish’ them up. You would fly with them time and again, they would do their best but there would still be big problems…

There were changes in the regiment: an order was issued for the appointment of “the Regimental Navigator Major Karev Petr Timofeevich as Deputy Commander of the 805th Ground-Attack Aviation Regiment, Lieutenant Egorova Anna Alexandrovna as Navigator of the same regiment”. I was still a Lieutenant but this was a lieutenant-colonel’s position! This promotion horrified me and I rushed to the commander “to sort it out”. Not long before, Kozin had visited his family somewhere in the deep rear. Upon his return he showed me a photo of his daughter. Wide-open trusting childish eyes, very similar to her father’s, two plaits, a kerchief tied under her chin, looked at me from the picture. “The heiress!” Mikhail Nikolaevich said laughing.

We loved our commander very much. A gallant pilot, fair to his subordinates and strict in moderation, he carried in him so much vivacity, joy, sincere gaiety! ‘Batya’ (Daddy) was what we called him between ourselves in our friendly collective. He sang with us, danced, shared griefs… Showing me the photo of his daughter Mikhail Nikoilaevich confided: “You know, Lieutenant, when my wife found out that there was a female airman in the regiment, she became jealous.”

“Let her be like that. It’s good sometimes”, the regiment zampolit141 Dmitriy Polikarpovich Svydkiy, appointed to replace the fallen Ignashov, laughed then.

It seemed, after Ignashov, who had won great respect in the regiment for his tactfulness, after his kind treatment of people and his fidelity to principle, that the new zampolit would find it hard to gain people’s confidence and win the same level of fondness and respect from the personnel. But time went by and Dmitriy Polikarpovich, while still a combat flyer, won many people over. He had a marvellous feature — he knew whom to say an encouraging word to, whom to rebuke, whom to praise. And he would do all that at the proper time without delaying till tomorrow, and somehow inconspicuously and tactfully. And flying combat sorties with one or another group and frequently finding himself in difficult situations, Shvidkiy certainly knew the aspirations and the mood of the airmen.

Debriefing of combat sorties had changed its character after Shvidkiy’s arrival in our unit. Whereas before we had spoken mostly about the accuracy of our strikes now we began to talk more about the pilots’ actions, their fortitude, initiative, battle tactics. Dmitriy Polikarpovich paid a lot of attention to combat camaraderie and cohesion. Our new zampolit liked to repeat Suvorov’s words “Perish yourself but rescue your comrade!” — how that was to reverberate around in the regiment I will tell of later…

But in the meantime I had to talk to the Regiment’s Commander about my new appointment and I walked down into the headquarters dugout. “Comrade Commander, may I address you?” I pronounced, saluting according to the regulations.

“You may”, Kozin nodded in agreement and glanced at me somewhat reproachfully.

“What have you appointed me Regimental Navigator for? I won’t handle it. I’ll be a laughing stock! There’s Berdashkevich, the 2nd Squadron Commander, there’s Soukhoroukov, Vakhramov. It’ll be handier for them to be Navigator of a male regiment!”

“Have you said your piece?” The lieutenant-colonel asked brusquely. “Then about turn and march! Double-quick to carry out your Regiment Navigator duties. And don’t bring this matter up to me again.”

Now in my new capacity I ran training with the flying personnel: sometimes I would direct an ‘attack’ by radio from the bombing range observation tower. My duty was to make sure everyone had their maps in order. During preparation for a mission I had to make a meticulous study, tell the airmen how we’d be flying, where the targets would be, what we were going to bomb. That’s preparation for a sortie too. I began to like the navigator’s duties a bit too, they grew on me. After all, I had graduated from the Kherson Aviation School as a navigator, when working in the Kalinin aeroclub I used to teach aerial navigation for several hours a week, I had done a navigator’s course in Stavropol. In a word, knowing about my navigator’s ‘classes’ and taking into account my combat experience the regimental commanders had not appointed me for the position by an accident. Apart from that I was promoted to the rank of Senior Lieutenant.

So, here I was standing on the tower, and there was such a wonderful panorama around me! The planes were taxiing over the green carpet of the airfield, from the Poltava side the American ‘Fortresses’142 were taking off to bomb the common foe. A small river was visible not far off, one of Peter the Great’s redoubts towered just nearby, and skylarks completely filled the sky…

The telephone rang. I took the receiver and heard the voice of the flight controller:

“Get ready, taking off shortly!”

The radio-station’s engine under the tower began to work. I took the microphone, blew into it for convention’s sake and spoke: “Hallo! Hallo! Hallo! ‘Birch’ here! Do you hear there?”

“‘Mignonette-2’ here”! ‘Mignonette-2’ here”! I hear you loud and clear. Request two hundred…”

‘Mignonette-2’ was Major Karev’s callsign, and two hundred was permission to carry out bombing and ground attack. I’d always wondered why Regimental Signals Commander Matyshenko gave the men call signs like ‘Mignonette’, ‘Violet’, ‘Lilac’, ‘Volga’143. And once he gave me the call-sign ‘Hawk’ — enough to make a cat laugh!

A group of Sturmoviks was already over the training ground — it made a circuit and steeply dived on a target. The pilots carefully caught the targets in their gun-sights and shot short bursts at the scattered dummies, then dropped bombs and circled to gain altitude. Karev, Mignonette-2, calmly gave orders and carefully watched every pilot’s work.

“Khoikhlin! Reduce your diving angle…”

“Ageev! Don’t fall behind…”

“Tsvetkov! Slow your plane down or you’ll shoot ahead of the group.”

“Well-done, Kirillov!”

The voice of Mignonette-2 flew over the training ground and, seeing Karev’s painstaking work with the young pilots, I involuntarily thought of that steadfast man with deep respect, remembering my flights with him over Taman. I have never seen a bolder and more gallant flyer over the battlefield than Karev.

After repeating the pass, Karev’s group retired towards the aerodrome.

“Birch, Mignonette-17 here, Mignonette-17 here…” A different voice was heard now from the microphone. “Permission for two hundred?”

“Granted!”

And suddenly I heard: “Birchie, are your teeth bothering you?” I did indeed have a toothache. I was standing on the tower with a bandaged cheek, but I furiously cut off the insolent son of the airwaves: “Mignonette-17, mind your own business! Reduce your angle!”

But the pilot didn’t obey and dropped his bombs diving at a steep angle.

“Mignonette-17! Stop acting willfully! Otherwise I’ll shut the down the range!”

“Roger”, the pilot replied gaily and closed in for another attack. You had to admit, he attacked the target deftly, but then he left the range descending, hedge-hopping, leaving a Ukrainian song behind him:

By now I knew the pilot was Lieutenant Ivan Pokashevskiy. That fellow with the broad face and mop of dark hair and mischievous grey eyes had stood out among the newcomers. He was out of uniform: on top of an old-fashioned blouse and civilian trousers he had a wool-lined jacket, worn, seasoned jackboots, an ear-flapped cap set on the back of his head — just about to fall off… Ivan told us he had been shot down in combat and taken prisoner. When the Fritzes were taking the POW airmen to Germany he and two of his comrades broke a hole in the wagon floor and at night time leaped out of the moving train. They then ran into the woods where they managed to find the partisans. Pokashevskiy fought alongside the partisans for seven months and was even awarded the Order of the Red Star. Then the airmen were transferred to Moscow and assigned to aviation units, and thus Ivan found himself in our regiment. When his father learned his son was alive (he and his mother had received the death notice a year before) he sold his bee-hives and bought an aircraft with the proceeds. Ivan’s father very much wanted his son to fly that plane: he reckoned it would be safer that way.

Pokashevskiy was fitted out in our regiment and appointed as a pilot to the 2nd Squadron. And then his father — Ivan Potapovich Pokashevskiy — arrived in Karlovka and brought with him his eldest son Vladimir — a sovkhoz144 director.

“Let my laddies serve in your unit”, he said to the regimental commander trustingly, in Ukrainian. “Volod’ka145 has been in ‘armour’146 as irreplaceable — enough is enough! It’s time he does his duty! But only on one condition — don’t make it cushy for my sons, put the heat on them like it says to in the Army Regulations…”

The weather was wonderful that day. There was not a single cloud in the blue sky, the sun was as warming as in summer. A lot of people were gathered at the aerodrome — locals from Karlovka and the neighbouring villages with banners and portraits of Party and State leaders, and the heroes of the occasion themselves. And there, aside from the other planes, stood a brand-new Sturmovik with an inscription on the fuselage ‘To the Pokashevkiy sons — from their Father’.

The head of the Division’s Political Department Lieutenant-Colonel I. M. Dyachenko and the Pokashevskiy family climbed up on the plane’s wing. The sons helped their father to get up on it and stood next to him: Ivan to the right, Vladimir to the left. The meeting was opened by Dyachenko who had two Orders of the Red Banner on his chest. Ivan Mironovich had been badly wounded defending Moscow, and after that the doctors ruled him out of flying operations.

Dyachenko spoke passionately and excitedly about the kolkhoznik147 Pokashevskiy’s patriotic deed, about the coming battles and our future Victory. Then he let Ivan Potapovich have the floor. The old man gave a start and was just about to step forward, but his sons held him back so to stop him tumbling from the wing. And he said only two words: “Brothers and sisters!” and there he fell silent. His sons leant towards him and said something, apparently encouraging him… I would long remember that simple peasant’s short speech in Ukrainian: “I’ve got two sons. I’m giving them away to my dear Fatherland148. I’d like to join you beating the invaders but I’m a bit past it…”

The old fellow wanted to say something else but, unable to cope with the emotions that had engulfed him, waved his hand, bowed from the waist in all four directions and kissed his sons three times. Uproar and applause from the whole crowd, — and the orchestra took up a flourish. “Chair him, chair him!” a cry came from the crowd and they picked the old man up in their arms.

From that day on Ivan and Vladimir Pokashevskiy were assigned as the crew of their dad’s plane: Ivan as pilot and Vladimir as aerial gunner. And now I was watching through my binoculars: the bombing range team was checking the results of the Pokashevskiys’ work — excellent! All the hits were on target! Suddenly a Sturmovik flew up and approached the range without my permission. “Birch’s here! Birch’s here!” I said rapidly. “Advise who’s flying over the range?”

There was no reply, and by now the plane was already making a turn and diving at our tower. Had he gone mad? He seemed to have confused the ‘T’ sign on the tower with a cross on the range. “Everyone to the trenches!” I ordered and saw the two-way-station driver, a technician and someone else throw themselves into the trench.

A bomb exploded: the blast wave swept away a tent standing nearby and rocked the tower — bomb splinters also hit it full on. For some reason I grabbed not the rails but the microphone and the telephone, and rushed here and there with them, shouting:

“Signaller! Send a red flare, a flare! Send him away from the range!”

The flares soared. The pilot understood his error and retired. Well, he hadn’t done a bad job at all — it was just a pity that it had not been on the right target. But… training is training!

The next group was led to the range by the comesk Captain Berdashkevich — a kindhearted Byelorussian from Polotzk. Misha was heartbroken: his father, a partisan, had been killed in action, and his mother had been shot for her partisan connections.

“Flak from the right!” setting the scenario for his group, and the novices conducted an anti-flak manoeuvre, changing both their altitude and course. “Out of the sun, right — four Fokkers!” The leader’s voice was heard again, and the whole group rearranged itself into a defensive circle.

A ‘life-buoy’, as we called such a circle, is a variety of battle order worked out for defending against Messers. Let’s assume that an enemy fighter tries to attack our Sturmovik — then a plane following him along the circle is in a position to cut the attacker off with his frontal fire. We may pounce on targets from this circle too — I saw twelve Sturmoviks already diving, their rockets darting at the ground, and a ripple explosion resounded mightily over the area. Then cannon and machine-gun fire destroyed the targets and, at the moment of pulling out of the dive, bombs separated from all the aircraft at once. When the dust settled I saw no targets through the binoculars…

May flew by imperceptibly. The young pilots had learned to shoot and bomb accurately, and begun to keep formation not only when flying straight but also when manoeuvring. They’d learned to attack targets in groups up to a squadron in size. Now the regiment was ready to take off to the front and at last we received approval. The 197th Ground Attack Division, which now included our 805th Ground Attack Aviation Regiment, had just been formed. It was destined to join the 6th Aerial Army commanded by General F.P.Polynin: we knew that we would fight as part of the 1st Byelorussian Front.

The 197th Ground Attack Aviation Division was commanded by Colonel V. A. Timofeev. Many pilots remembered him from aviation schools such as Postavskoye and, during the war, Orenburgskoye, which he had been in charge of. When Timofeev was introducing himself to the flying personnel he seemed to me to bear some resemblance to a Tsarist officer as they had been shown in the movies. His tunic and breeches were strictly fitted to his figure, the box-calf jackboots with high heels and knee caps shone as if lacquered, there were leather gloves on his hands.

“You can tell straightaway: he’s from the rear”, said my plane’s mechanic Gorobets, standing next to me.

“No! Don’t you see, the Colonel’s got the Order of Lenin and a ‘XX years of the RKKA’149 medal on his chest?” Pilot Zoubov objected. “He fought on the Kursk Salient, was a Deputy Division Commander there. And he received his Order of Lenin back in pre-war times in Transbaikalia. He was in charge of an aviation brigade after graduating from the Air Force Academy and made it the best in drill preparation in Blucher’s150 Far East Army.

“Why are you mentioning Blucher? He was an enemy of the people, after all!”

“He was no enemy of the people at all”, “Misha declared stubbornly. “He was a real people’s hero: my own uncle — my mum’s brother — a kombrig151 used to tell me about him when I was a kid — and I believed him and still do. And Timofeev, by the way, was arrested in 1938 too and spent two years in Chita prison before he was released as a baselessly victimized man, restored in his rights and appointed head of an aviation school. Shvernik152 himself — a teacher of Vyacheslav Arsenievich — backed him! But apparently there was no one to stand up for Blucher…”

“They say Timofeev fought during the Civil War?” someone asked Zoubov.

“He did. He was a scout on the Eastern Front, then a Deputy Commissar in the 15th Inzenskiy Regiment.”

“How do you know all that?”

“How could I not know? I was a flying cadet at the Orenburg School. Vyacheslav Arsenievich used to tell us about the Civil War, gave very interesting lectures.”

“What about?”

“Various things — I’d never heard anything of the kind before. And how to hold your knife and fork properly, how to smoke elegantly without leaving marks on your fingers. We were taught how to dance and how to invite a partner to a dance.”

“What’s this, the war had been on for two years and you were learning to dance?” Tolya Bougrov, a pilot with extensive burn scars on his face, asked angrily.

“Maybe, he also taught you how to choose a good wife?” Zhenya Berdnikov grinned.

“Sto-o-op the chatter!” The regimental Chief-of-Staff Major Kouznetsov loudly cut off our sotto-voce conversation, and everyone fell silent. Such was our introduction to Vyacheslav Arsenievich Timofeev…

The 197th Ground Attack Aviation Division successfully relocated to the Byelorussian aerodromes. The weather wasn’t spoiling us those days. A layer of thick fog lay dolefully over the airfield, and the Sturmoviks, having taxied out to the start point, had to turn their engines off. But then the wind blew and dispersed all the misty haze. The airmen of our division took off on combat missions one group after another. The Sturmoviks were bombing the vanguard of the enemy’s defences, neutralising the enemy’s artillery fire, blocking them on the roads, burning vehicles and tanks, wiping out infantry… Our routine work had started.

We co-operated with the famed General Chuikov’s Army (the 8th Guards)153 — from the Czartorysk field aerodrome. It seemed to us, the airmen, to be a bit quieter over here after the fighting over Taman and the Kerch Peninsula, but it was far away from being so. On one sortie Captain Berdashkevich was leading a group of nine Sturmoviks to the target. They’d been given a complicated mission — to destroy a ford on the Bug river, and thus to impede the retreat of the enemy troops. Misha had meticulously ‘played out’ the whole route with the pilots: he had shown it them on the map, scribbled on the ground with a twig the distinctive landmarks, the flak guns’ estimated positions. Then each of the wingmen repeated the ‘flight’, and only when Berdashkevich had made sure that everyone had understood everything, did he order: “Off to your planes!”

On approach to the target the pilots heard his calm and gentle voice again: “Safety locks off. Spread out, keep freer…”

“Manoeuvring, guys! Manoeuvring!” Berdashkevich ordered and in a dive threw his machine at the ford.

The others followed him and the target was carpeted by bombs. But fiery tracer from the ground criss-crossed over the Sturmoviks. The pilot Khoukhlin’s plane somewhat clumsily, as if unwillingly, aimlessly, with a smashed wing and a destroyed stabilizer climbed up, and then abruptly lowered its nose and went towards the ground with a dead engine. Nevertheless, Khoukhlin managed to straighten out and then land the badly damaged Il-2 on a small, crater-pitted field beyond the ford on the enemy side — and the Hitlerites rushed towards the Sturmovik from all sides like carrion crows. The group leader Berdashkevich saw all this, and sent the remaining eight Ils to help his wingmen. The Sturmoviks diving one after another were beating off the Hitlerites surrounding our plane, and Andrey Konyakhin — a faithful and inseparable friend of Victor Khoukhlin — closed in for landing where the shot up Sturmovik stood.

Konyakhin’s plane touched down very close to the Khoukhlin’s Il, jolted over humps and bumps and stopped. The Fascists, scenting a double prize, rushed into another attack, but Berdashkevich and his group drove them off again. In the meantime Andrey, defending himself from the closely pressing submachine-gunners, was firing his plane’s cannons and machine-guns at them, but his trails of fire were going too high, missing the enemy. Then Konyakhin’s aerial gunner leaped out and… lifted the Sturmovik’s tail with a superhuman effort! The pilot now began shooting at the Hitlerites on target. In the meantime Khoukhlin set fire to his badly damaged Il, ran to his friend’s plane and climbed into the rear cockpit with his gunner. Konyakhin turned his machine around, gave it full gas and a boost, and the Sturmovik rushed at the panicked Hitlerite sub-machine-gunners and then climbed into the sky.

Later Andrey told how after the take-off he began to doubt whether he had enough fuel to make it home. He glanced back at the gunner’s cockpit and went numb — two legs were sticking out of it next to the machine-gun! Dumbfounded, he didn’t understand at first that it was his own gunner, who had jumped into the already occupied cockpit on the run and had not managed to turn around in the tight space — he’d got stuck upside-down.

After the landing the engine stalled. Everyone who was at the aerodrome rushed to the motionless Sturmovik. They pulled one aerial gunner from the rear cockpit, then the other, then the pilot. Konyakhin was sitting in his cockpit, pale, his head thrown back on the protective screen, his eyes closed, his wet curly hair stuck to his temples. Major Karev was the first to rush to him and began to kiss him. Then, straight from the plane wing, he addressed his regiment comrades excitedly: “Comrades! The pilot Konyakhin has adhered to the great commander Suvorov’s precept: “Perish yourself but rescue your comrade!” He’s observed this commandment three times — he’s brought his Sturmovik back to the aerodrome, saved his friend and stayed alive himself! Let’s chair the hero!”

The pilots and gunners pulled Konyakhin out of the cockpit and carried him over to the headquarters dugout on their hands. The next day photojournalists from the Army and Front-level newspapers arrived unexpectedly. They wanted to photograph Andrey, but he hid from them and sent his total refusal via a friend: “They won’t get me! This is a combat airfield, not a photo studio and I’m not gonna pose.”

So, a piece in the paper was published without Konyakhin’s portrait. Later I became a witness of this dialogue between the friends: “You’re still alive?” Konyakhin asked Khoukhlin.

“I am, but how come they haven’t shot you down yet? They should have smacked you with shrapnel you-know-where to make you go to bed on time and not sit up late with Katyusha from the field ambulance.”

The city of Kovel was liberated from the Germans by July 7. Following that, we relocated to one of its aerodromes situated in the area. Once on a new field, I was immediately ordered to make a reconnaissance mission over the enemy’s communications, to detect his troop concentrations and to record that on a photo film accordingly. After taking off, I passed over the next airfield to join the fighters about to cover me. A couple were already waiting for me with their engines running. While I was circling the field, they took off and started climbing up. I quickly established a radio link with a flight leader of the fighters and without catching my breath ordered:

“I will run both a visual recon and make some photos. Please do not move far away from me — keep me covered. Is that clear? Receiving!”

Usually on such occasions the leader would of the fighters reply: “Understood!” and either repeat the task or specify if something was unclear. But this time after a short pause, there was a hoarse young tenor, full of sarcasm: “Hey, you, a ‘hunchback’! Why are you screeching like a milksop?” And after some silence he added with annoyance: “And you pretend to be a Sturmovik pilot? It is disgusting to hear you!”

In the end, the fighter pilot attached a salty word.

The offensive ‘milksop’ outraged me! In a fit of temper I wanted to respond in a similar manner, but managed to hold myself in check. After all, they didn’t even suspect that they were subordinate to a ‘milksop’. So after a minute I resumed my high spirits.

I had carried out the task successfully and on my way home contacted the guidance station, reporting the situation in the reconnoitred area. A familiar officer from the guidance station thanked me for the intelligence data with the words: “Thank you, Annoushka!” And it was then, when the fighters went mad. They started an amazing performance around my plane! One would make a ‘barrel’ turn; another would roll over his wing! After calming down a bit, they rejoined my Ilyushin closely and, vying with each other, began to cheer me from their cockpits waving their arms. Flying past their aerodrome I thanked the fighter pilots in farewell: “Thank you, brothers! Go and land! I’ll make it home on my own now…”

But my ‘bodyguards’ accompanied me to our very aerodrome. Only after seeing me land did they circle our field, waggle the wings of their planes and vanish over the horizon. I was reporting ‘mission accomplished’ to the commander at the CP when I noticed something. Yes, everybody was listening to my report, but first smiling — and then suddenly bursting into a laugh. “Lieutenant Egorova has started bringing her admirers straight to her base!” Karev genially commented on the event. The pilots laughed, and I laughed too, pleased with the successful reconnaissance. I had come back without a scratch.