Over Fields of Fire

that has influenced me regarding this issue. In one of the most recent sorties I had quite a close shave with Messers. We’d been flying to Temryuk back then — we had to destroy a bridge over the Kuban river. It seems like it wasn’t long ago when Karev with his group had smashed it to pieces. But the damned Fritzes have repaired it yet again! Damn it, how long should we be bothered with it?

Temryuk was situated almost on the coast of the Azov Sea, and the Kuban river flows west of it. At this particular place, a major highway leads from the berth on the Choushka Spit up to the Blue Line. The bridge was surrounded by countless ack-ack batteries, and along the Blue Line there were plenty of anti-aircraft installations. We had already lost three crews over Temryuk: those of Podynenogin, Mkrtumov and Tasets. Our group was led towards the bridge by Captain Yakimov. A tall, sporty guy, with somewhat lordly manners, Yakimov was always keeping himself a bit aside: as if he was looking down on us a bit — although in terms of age he was not much older than us. Having gone over the mission plan with us, he has established an order of the flight and for some reason placed me (flying a single-seater!) to bring up the rear of our formation of six. But orders are not for discussion, and we took off. A quartet of LaGG-3 fighters provided a cover but I have to admit: I didn’t feel comfortable bringing up the rear without an air gunner…

After we dropped the bombs on the bridge and leaped out over the Azov Sea our group was intercepted by Messerschmitts. The LaGGs were already tied up in a dogfight with German fighters somewhere aside, so it was up to our air gunners to get busy. They did it with quite some skill, repelling the pressing Messers. Several times they tried to split the Sturmoviks’ formation, but in vain. We flew tightly, wingtip to wingtip. And it was just me, my plane, that was not protected by a gunner to its rear. No wonder then they had chosen me as a target. I saw a tracer pass on my right, and broke left but too late: a second burst hit my Ilyusha. Following that, the ‘Messers’ had broke, turned and hurled themselves into a second attack from both sides at once, aiming at my plane. Being aware of the power of Sturmovik’s forward-firing weapons, the Germans were avoiding my forward-facing zone. Instead, they were hitting my plane (unprotected from the rear) coming at its tail. Once again I saw a stream of fire coming from short range… At this moment I hit the engine boost and simultaneously pushed the control column away. Speeding up I overtook my group and tucked my plane between the leader and his wingman on the right — Volodya Sokolov. And it saved me.

But during debriefing I had to withstand quite a set of reproofs.

“You breached battle formation”, Captain Yekimov rapped his words out, enunciating each word and each letter. “Pilot Sokolov might have taken you for the enemy and struck you with his cannons and machine-guns!”

But I had an impudent question to ask a captain: “When seeing the Fascist planes raking me with fire, why didn’t you re-form the group into a defensive circle, then drawing a fight to our side of the front?”

Silence fell. Yekimov blushed. And then, breaching the deathly hush, Volodya Sokolov stood up for me. “Comrade Captain! You said I could have taken Egorov’s Sturmovik for an enemy plane. But could I really? Isn’t it seen how the edges of her blue kerchief are sticking out of the earphone helmet? She wears it instead of the liner!”

The pilots burst into laughter, and the heavy atmosphere was dispelled. Battle-hardened airmen, as a rule, recall moments of mortal danger happily. The chill of it felt in their hearts is replaced by the joy of being able to see, to breathe, to live! Maybe that’s why they talk jokingly about a mortal danger they’ve experienced and left behind.

After this incident I was issued with an Il-2 with a cockpit that would fit an aerial gunner. Incidentally, even prior to leaving for the training course I had flown this plane with various aerial gunners available. And not just with the gunners! Once I stealthily took the plane mechanic Tytyunnik for a combat sortie. In fact, air gunners were trained at short-time classes. Anyone who had the will to fly and knew how to shoot could apply. Among those, I have seen engine technicians, mechanics, flight observers from obsolete types of planes, even machine-gunners from ground forces. The future gunners had no flying practice and they knew nothing about the complicated rules of shooting at aerial targets, but all of them had a huge desire to hit back at the Fascists till the victory. In those days, all the regiments of our divisions began to sing an unpretentious song about the Sturmovik gunners:

‘Il’ is turning, ‘Il’ is flying above a mountain,
A heroic pilot is in control.
There’s a young chap on the rear seat
He is an aerial gunner…

There were girls among the ‘young guys’ as well — Sasha Chouprina, Lena Lenskaya. And some ‘young guys’ were old enough to be our fathers! In our regiment, for example, there was an aerial gunner — a former flight observer Serguey Michailovich Zavernin from the village of Korpogory in the Archangelsk Region. To cut a long story short, when I had returned from the navigation course and the squadron adjutant invited me to choose a gunner I was surprised. “What do you mean ‘choose’? If there’s one available, send him to me. But to get one from a crew that has already fallen into step — that is no good!”

“Well, we have one not attached to any crew. But he is… he is a bit of a queer chap. We want to transfer him out of the regiment to the ground forces. But since you are Deputy Comesk now, you have a right to pick a better gunner.”

“What’s the name of the gunner you want to get rid of?”

“Makosov.”

“Give him to me.”

“I strongly advise against it, Comrade Lieutenant”, the adjutant remarked.

“Send him to my plane anyway, please”, I requested.

Soon enough, I was talking at the parking lot with Squadron Engineer Shourkhin and Technician-Lieutenant132 Stepanov, when a chuckle sounded behind me: “Here I come!”

I glanced back and there stood a boy about eighteen years old at the most, with a round face split by a smile, which dimpled his tight pinkish cheeks. His field cap was pushed onto the back of his head, and the forelock of his fair hair was accurately combed to one side.

“Who are you?” I asked him.

“Sergeant Makasov. Adjutant Boiko had, you know… Had sent me to you…”

“So what? Report your arrival, Sergeant Makosov!”

“It’s kinda odd. It’s the first time I’ve seen a female pilot!” And he began to giggle again, shifting from foot to foot, obviously a stranger to standing at attention.

“What for did they send you to our regiment?”

“I am an air gunner”

“Have you ever flown before?”

“I completed a gunnery course and that was it…”

“Do you want to fight as a gunner?”

“I want it very much but they’re not assigning me a pilot.”

“Do you know well the hardware of the cockpit? Gunnery techniques? Silhouettes of the hostile planes?”

“I do!”

“Alright then. I’ll test you tomorrow.”

The next day in the morning I saw Makosov in the Sturmovik cockpit. During questioning he answered fluently and never stopped smiling. And so it came to pass that we started going on combat missions together.

Personally, I myself would never ever have agreed to be an Il-2 aerial gunner. It was scary! The gunner sat with his back to the pilot in an open cockpit. In front of him there was a half-ring mount with a heavy machine gun. When a Fascist fighter got on your tail and started shooting at you — how could someone withstand it?! After all, an aerial gunner had neither a trench nor a hump of earth behind which he might hide from enemy bullets. Of course he’s got his machine-gun but it is the pilot who controls the plane throwing it from one side to another and it doesn’t make the gunner’s life easy. It may also happen that the machine-gun jams due to malfunction or because