Over Fields of Fire

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!

24. Tit, Petr and the rest

Sorties, sorties… We were all were by now exhausted but there was no let-up. The losses were mounting. The weather was frequently bad, clouds pressed down to the ground, the planes came back after sorties literally riddled with bullets and the technicians barely had time to patch them up. We kept flying to the Choushka Spit and the Blue Line: we raided aerodromes, railway junctions, trains of enemy troops and materiel, attacked and bombed enemy ships on the Black Sea. This kind of work required meticulous preparation and we painstakingly prepared ourselves for each mission.