Zhukov was woken from his slumber at 0600.
Anna Komarov had been a widow for just over an hour.
The flight back from ‘stonking’ Leipzig was quiet, far quieter than normal. Another kill occurred briefly but spectacularly close by, the ever-present NF30 Mosquitoes of 141 Squadron pouncing on an enemy, aircraft type unknown, which was a threat and then it was dead.
Approaching their temporary airfield, designated B51, at Vendeville near Lille, the banter was absent and as they touched down the standard derisory comments about a bumpy landing were not forthcoming; nothing.
S for Sugar came to a halt near a newly erected blast screen, bulldozed into place so recently that the shrubs which had been removed in its favour still stuck haphazardly skywards, some roots first, others branches uppermost.
Engines off and shut down complete, the crew made their way out of the aircraft.
The six men looked at each other. Wally moved to the fuselage door and called down towards the tail-gunners position.
“Den? Come on mate. Den?”
As he did so, Saul walked slowly around the tail-plane and came to an abrupt stop, knowing what he might see and shocked to confirm his suspicions.
The rear turret was fully turned to port and the break out hatch in its rear was gone, exposing the workings of the guns to the elements.
It was empty.
As Saul looked on in disbelief, Wally’s ashen face appeared.
“He jumped Wally. The poor bastard bloody jumped.”
Wally said nothing, holding Dennis Riley’s parachute up for Saul to see.
“The poor bastard.”
12th US Armored Division, the Hellcats, was itching to go. Having force marched over two nights and hidden during the day, they had displaced from Heidenheim and Augsburg northwards nearly eighty miles to their staging area around Bad Windsheim.
Both the 152nd Signals Btn and 56th Armored Infantry sustained some casualties due to Soviet air attacks but, in the main, the move had gone off without a hitch for them.
The unit commander, Brig. Gen. Willard A. Holbrook Jr as was on the 7th August but who was now a temporary Major General, went over the plans for the relieving attack with his Combat Command leaders and Regimental CO’s.
The part to be played by his three field artillery commanders in tandem with Lieutenant Colonel J.M.Welch of the 573rd AAA Btn was relatively unique and would hopefully pay dividends in the battles ahead.
To their east side, elements of the 9th US Armored recovered from the Bayreuth Pocket and reinforced by the 16th RCT of the Big Red One were preparing to relive the pressure on the northern side of Nurnberg, aiming a thrust from Neustadt-an-der-Aisch north-east towards Bamberg.
The 12th’s job was to buy time for the 42nd and 63rd Infantry on the Tauber River and possibly drive back up towards Würzburg.
For both the 10th and the 12th, the job was also to minimise casualties in both men and equipment.
The P61 Black Widow was her name and she was designed for a number of tasks from bombing to reconnaissance. Tonight three P61-C’s of 416th Night-Fighter Squadron USAAF were roaming the skies at night, locating prey with their radar and using deadly Hispano cannon to end resistance. Until very recently the 416th had been stationed at Schweinfurt but having been singled out for Soviet attention they had withdrawn to a new home near Günzburg. The rest of the squadron, eleven in all, were off accompanying bombers on offensive operations but these three survivors of the twenty-two on the squadron strength on 6th August were special. Recent arrivals from Northrop, they possessed higher performance. In case the Soviet air force got lucky and shot one down, examined it and gleaned the secrets, they were forbidden from flying over enemy territory in case their modifications were copied.
As München had been receiving a number of night bomber attacks they were tasked with its defence that night.
And what a night it would be, for the Black Widow’s were not the only lethal ladies aloft and heading to München.
A casual observer at their airfield might have wondered if he was looking at a serious military unit. Starting with the planes, even a rudimentary knowledge of aircraft would make someone think he was back in the First World War. The Polikarpov PO-2 was a wood and canvass biplane designed in 1928, for purposes like training and crop-dusting. With a maximum speed below the stalling speed of its German adversaries, the aircrews who used the PO-2 found that lack of speed was their saviour in the Patriotic War.
The aircrew had consistently distinguished themselves from 1942 and Taman, through to the end in May 1945. Taman particularly, as the unit had been honoured and renamed as the 46th “Taman” Guards Night Bomber Aviation Regiment, respectfully known by friend and foe alike as the Night Witches, for all the air crew were female.
The full Regiment normally consisted of twenty aircraft but on the third mission of the night only thirteen were aloft, returning to bomb the army holding camp steadily growing outside of München. Two of their number remained within the perimeter of that camp, knocked down by anti-aircraft fire on the first mission. The second mission had been a success until the return when one of the PO-2’s flipped on landing, killing both crewmembers. Two others were being repaired, having taken damage during the week’s fighting. Thus far, 25% of the Witches had been killed in less than a week but during the Patriotic War there had been no shortage of replacements waiting and the 46th was rarely below strength for long.
On this mission they were accompanied by three Yak-9M PVO’s, adapted for night fighting from the basic Yak-9.
None of the three pilots had fired a shot that night and neither did they expect to, as the Soviets ruled the air.
There it was, a smudge on the screen, not very distinct but certainly something worth chasing and killing, for nothing in the air over Munich that night was friendly, except the two aircraft operating five thousand and ten thousand feet above “Night Reaper”, the Northrop Black Widow of Captain Lassiter and his crew.
He had bottom station at ten thousand feet and according to the radar operator, there were a number of slow moving aircraft at about nine thousand five hundred feet altitude, some eight miles ahead.
A matter-of-fact statement in his ear told him that one of his group, Radowski, had three contacts in the air space above, joined by an eager French-Louisianan voice confirming that the third Northrop also had acquired and was attacking.
Lassiter slowed his airplane with perforated air brakes, part of the modification they wished to keep secret, but still he found he was gaining on what was in front of him.
Making the decision to keep back, he manoeuvered ‘Reaper’ in a lazy circle as he let his comrades do their work.
He was facing directly away from the group he had discovered when his gunner informed him of a kill.
Completing his turn, he was able to watch the night sky dissected by an orange line, marking the death plunge of an aircraft.
Within a second, another similar line started, almost prescribing a fiery cross in the sky, but terminated early as the aircraft exploded before reaching the ground. The first aircraft had buried itself into the hallowed soil of the Friedhof Perlach, killing the gravedigger preparing for the following days business.
“Antoinette has a confirmed kill”, Lebel transmitted, his Cajun voice betraying his excitement at a first ever shoot down.