I began to talk Nazarkina out of it, told her how scary it was to fly in a Sturmovik as a gunner, how many of them get killed138.
“We pilots are protected by armour”, I tried to convince her, “but the gunner sits in front of a Fascist fighter-plane in an open cockpit. And your Serezha may still be alive. After all, you know many cases of our pilots and gunners “coming back from the dead.”
But Dosya seemed not to want to hear me: “Take me on! Support my application before the regiment command, I’ll write the application now.”
I failed to dissuade Nazarkina. And in about two weeks the head of the Corps Political Department Colonel Toupanov arrived, and the issue was decided: Dousya Nazarkina was appointed as aerial gunner in my crew. Thus the only all-female crew in ground-attack aviation was formed. Later I was to find out about another female crew for the Sturmoviks that had been formed in August 1944: it was made up by my abovementioned aeroclub friend Tamara Fedorovna Konstantinova (later Hero of the Soviet Union) and the aerial gunner Shoura Moukoseeva.
Back then I was sorry to part with my seasoned gunner, and he didn’t want to go to another pilot. But an order is an order, and I obeyed it. I was to discover Makosov’s fate only after the war. During the reunion of the veterans of the 230th Kuban Ground-Attack Aviation Division, Twice Hero of the Soviet Union Air Force Major-General G. F. Sivkov, who had fought in the 210th Aviation Regiment of our division approached me and said: “You had a great gunner in Kuban. He was assigned to our regiment after Nazarkina was appointed to join you.”
“Makosov?” — I exclaimed gladly.
“Yes, Makosov. After the war your former aerial gunner quit the forces, got married and raised five sons with his spouse. But then what misfortune befell their grey heads. One of their boys was killed in action during the frontier conflict at the Ussury river in 1969139…”
And back then, in 1943, I began to fly with Dousya Nazarkina and was greatly surprised — from the very first combat sortie she handled her gunner’s duties not the least bit worse than Makosov. I heard her voice in the intercom time and again. Dousya became my second pair of eyes. Occasionally through the reinforced glass separating our cockpits in which we sat back to back, I saw her operating her machine-gun. Its barrel would now lift up, now dip at an angle, spitting fire. I was lucky with gunners!
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.
138
Editor’s note — this is indeed true: the ratio of losses in
139
Editor’s note — a frontier conflict between Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China.
140
Editor’s note — in this area the historic battle of Poltava, between Peter the Great’s army and the Swedish army of Charles XII, took place in 1709.