Over Fields of Fire

flak and attacks by enemy fighter planes. During debriefing the regimental navigator set various tactical tasks before the pilots. All together we analysed how to attack a train or a tank column most successfully, or to bomb a bridge or river crossing, and why it would be better to approach such narrow elongated targets not perfectly parallel to the course but at a narrow angle. We talked about speed, wind direction near the ground and at intermediate altitudes, taking into account how in that case the dissipation ellipse would look when bombing or shooting. Karev’s idea to manoeuvre inside a group of Sturmoviks became a common practice in the regiment. Initially, the pilots had been required to stick strictly to their positions in a formation. But Karev had got the tactics changed and required pilots to manoeuvre within certain limits: to fly above or below the leader, to change the distance between planes… All this improved alertness, impeded attacks by Fascist fighters and hindered their ack-ack from directing accurate fire at the Sturmoviks.

At Taman Karev was the idol of the young pilots. We all remembered Petr Timofeevich when he was Acting Regimental Commander, finding at a very difficult moment a courageous, clever and expert solution to a problem. During one sortie a bomb tore away from its clamps and exploded during a plane’s take-off run. The surviving pilot and gunner managed to run aside and lie down but there still were five 100-kilogram bombs on the plane. The group’s take-off was stopped then, but the combat mission couldn’t be cut off! Karev ordered the start realigned by about thirty degrees. The planes began to take off again. Despite the realignment of the start the departing planes were passing close the burning machine on which there were still bombs, ammunition and rockets. Everyone could probably expect an explosion, but the plane blew up when the last Il-2, flown by Karev, was already in the air.

But from that sortie made by a sixer, when a bomb exploded on one of the Ils during the take-off, only two crews returned — Karev’s and mine — his wingman’s. We had found the target and dropped our bombs, then strafed everything in three or four passes, and retired with not a single loss. Although battered we got away. But we shot over a German aerodrome, and it was full of German planes — they were landing and taking off. Flak guns held us as if in a ring! We were over the Kerch Straits when somehow we broke out of that ring, but only Karev and I: all the other crews perished over the German aerodrome. I didn’t even see who smashed them — either the planes taking off, or the flak. Now we had broken out into the Kerch Straits, and we had to go to the other side. Down below us white domes, the parachutes of our comrades, shot-down airmen, hung in the air like giant mushrooms… I still had two bombs unreleased, but behind us there were Messsers ready to make short work of our pair. Suddenly I noticed a loaded barge right underneath me, moving from Kerch — the temptation was great. I wasn’t supposed to land with bombs, but I would have been told off had I dropped them just anywhere. So I fell behind Karev a little, turned the Sturmovik towards the target and jerked the lever of the emergency bombload release. I wobbled in the air a bit, the plane shook, wavered and became uncontrollable for a while — yet I kept watching the barge: how was it feeling down there? I hadn’t missed: the barge listed and went down. But suddenly doubts pricked me like a pin: whose barge had it been — ours or the Germans’?.. I’d seen no markings on it. I had been moving away from Kerch busy with the enemy and besides, our men would have spread out canvas as a distinguishing mark, but this time I’d seen nothing. But you never can tell! That was why I decided to say nothing about it, and when reporting to the regiment commander on the sortie said not a word about the sunken barge…

The secret, however, had already been disclosed: prior to the landing my leader and our fighters had reported by radio the destruction of a vessel recognised by them as German, and Karev added “Egorova sank a barge full of materiel, there were tanks on it”. And soon the Division Commander General Get’man pinned to my blouse a large silver medal ‘For Valour’.

25. The Blue Line

At the end of May 1943 the Regimental Commander Kozin lined up all the flying personnel at the aerodrome and said with emotion: “Comrade Pilots! Whoever is ready to carry out a special mission from the North-Caucasus Front Command — I ask you to step out forward.”

All the pilots stepped forward as one.

“No, that won’t work!” Kozin smiled. “I’ll have to pick. Major Kerov — three steps forward.” Pavel Kerov, the 1st Squadron commander, veteran of the regiment, master of ground attack, stepped forward…

We youngsters had always marvelled at the major’s enviable calmness and kindness. He was more like a schoolteacher than a fearless ground attack expert. He had never raised his voice at anyone, and if anyone was at fault Kerov would look at him with sad grey glazed eyes, shake his head and walk away, rolling like a sailor, leaving his subordinate to think over his behaviour.

I’d been told that once when only 6 operable machines were left in the regiment, an order had arrived to destroy a river crossing near the stanitsa Nikolayevskaya on the Don. They had to send all machines into the air and Major Kerov led them on the combat mission. The crossing was protected so well that there was hardly any chance of the group returning successfully. However, Kerov managed to cheat the enemy: he came at the target from the rear, smashed it and made it home with his whole group. His plane was towed from the airstrip by a tractor. They told me that Kerov walked alongside the Sturmovik riddled with shell splinters and supported it by a wing console as if it were a wounded friend.

“Soukhoroukov, Pashkov, Frolov…” The regiment commander called the pilots’ surnames looking along the line. “Egorova”, I heard my surname. “Strakhov, Tishchenko, Groudnyak, Sokolov, Zinoviev, Podynenogin…” And each of us took three steps forward from the line.

The regimental commander Kozin included just 19 pilots in the group — three squadron commanders, all the flight commanders and the senior pilots with combat experience. Soon after that we were met by the Front Commander I. E. Petrov and the commander of the 4th Aerial Army General K.A. Vershinin.

“You, comrades, have a task simple in terms of planning but very hard in terms of implementation”, the Front Commander addressed us, adjusting his pince-nez and stuttering slightly. “Our troops are to break through the Fascist defence’s Blue Line. But first of all we have to camouflage the advancing troops — to set up a smoke screen. You will do that.” General Petrov looked at me carefully and I actually clenched my shoulders — I thought he was going to ask: “What’s a woman doing here?” But the commander’s gaze slipped onto other pilots standing by the scale model of the Blue Line — and my spirits lifted.

The General went on to say the smoke screen would have to be set up on time and accurately so as to blind the enemy, to close his eyes for the time our infantry needed in order to capture the main defensive line’s trenches. The General clearly defined the direction and time for converging on the target, and then General Vershinin told us how to carry out the mission. We were to fly without aerial gunners, just above the ground and besides that without bombs, rockets or machine-guns in the rear cockpit, and the cannons and machine-guns were not to be loaded at all! Instead of bombs we would have cylinders of ‘smoke gas’ on the bomb racks. This gas, reacting with air, would form the smoke screen.

“The most complicated thing is that you are not allowed to manoeuvre”, General Vershinin leaned over the map. “Look here, 7 kilometres in a straight line with no manoeuvring, and at an extremely low altitude. Do you understand why you’re not allowed to manoeuvre?”

“We’ll get a discontinuous screen instead of a solid one”, one of the flyers said.

“A discontinuous one will mean the attack will break down somewhere”, Petrov commented, stroking his rust-coloured moustache. “That’s why the screen must be such that no searchlight beam breaks through it — solid, straight as a ruler!”

“This is what you’ll do”, Vershinin went on. “Once you see that the one flying ahead of you has put smoke out, count three seconds and press the triggers. Manoeuvring will mean wrecking the mission. But you’ll be flying over fire, under fire, amidst fire… It remains only to wish you good luck and a happy return…”

Bidding farewell General Vershinin invited: “If any of you has changed his mind — feel free to refuse. It’s your right. We want those to make this flight, who firmly believe that they will complete the mission and definitely make it home.”

None of us responded to the General’s invitation…

On 26 May, when the Eastern sky had just begun to grow pink, we headed to the aerodrome in a ton-and-a- half truck. Michael Nikolaevich Kozin, always joyful and affable, was very gloomy. He was either angry that they hadn’t allowed him to fly, or was worried about us. And the pilots? What kind of mood were we in before such an