The Wing Commander rings up. “It is sinking day for the 3rd. You are to take oft immediately for another attack on the Kirov berthed behind the Marat. Good hunting!” The photographs taken by our latest aircraft show that the Marat has split in two. This can be seen on the picture taken after the tremendous cloud of smoke from the explosion had begun to dissipate.
The telephone rings again: “I say, Steen, did you see my bomb? I didn’t and neither did Pekrun.”
“It fell into the sea, sir, a few minutes before the attack.”
We youngsters in the tent are hard put to it to keep a straight face. A short crackling on the receiver and that is all. We are not the ones to blame our Wing Commander, who is old enough to be our father, if presumably out of nervousness he pressed the bomb release switch prematurely. He deserves all praise for flying with us himself on such a difficult mission. There is a big difference between the ages of fifty and twenty five. In dive bomber flying this is particularly true.
Out we go again on a further sortie to attack the Kirov. Steen had a slight accident taxiing back after landing from the first sortie: one wheel ran into a large crater, his aircraft pancaked and damaged the propeller. The 7th flight provides us with a substitute aircraft, the flights are already on dispersal and we taxi off from our squadron base airfield. Ft./Lt. Steen again hits an obstacle and this aircraft is also unserviceable. There is no replacement available from the flights; they are of course already on dispersal. No one else on the staff is flying except myself. He therefore gets out of his aircraft and climbs onto my wingplane.
“I know you are going to be mad at me for taking your aircraft, but as I am in command I must fly with the squadron. I will take Scharnovski with me for this one sortie.”
Vexed and disgruntled I walk over to where our aircraft are overhauled and devote myself for a time to my job as engineer officer. The squadron returns at the end of an hour and a half. No. 1, the green-nosed staff aircraft—mine—is missing. I assume the skipper has made a forced landing somewhere within our lines.
As soon as my colleagues have all come in I ask what has happened to the skipper. No one will give me a straight answer until one of them says: “Steen dived onto the Kirov. He was caught by a direct hit at 5000 or 6000 feet. The flak smashed his rudder and his aircraft was out of control. I saw him try to steer straight at the cruiser by using the ailerons, but he missed her and nose-dived into the sea. The explosion of his two thousand pounder seriously damaged the Kirov.”
The loss of our skipper and my faithful Cpl. Scharnovski is a heavy blow to the whole squadron and makes a tragic climax to our otherwise successful day. That fine lad Scharnovski gone! Steen gone! Both in their way were paragons and they can never be fully replaced. They are lucky to have died at a time when they could still hold the conviction that the end of all this misery would bring freedom to Germany and to Europe.
The senior staff captain temporarily takes over command of the squadron. I chose A.C. 1st class Henschel to be my reargunner. He has been sent to us by the reserve flight at Graz where he flew with me on several operational exercises. Occasionally I take some one else up with me, first the paymaster, then the intelligence officer and finally the M.O. None of them would care to insure my life. Then after I have taken on Henschel permanently and he has been transferred to the staff he is always furious if I leave him behind and some one else flies with me in his stead. He is as jealous as a little girl.
We are out again a number of times over the Gulf of Finland before the end of September, and we succeed in sending another cruiser to the bottom. We are not so lucky with the second battleship Oktobreskaja Revolutia. She is damaged by bombs of smaller calibre but not very seriously. When we manage on one sortie to score a hit with a two thousand pounder, on that particular day not one of these heavy bombs explodes.
Despite the most searching investigation it is not possible to determine where the sabotage was done. So the Soviets keep one of their battleships.
There is a lull in the Leningrad sector and we are needed at a new key point. The relief of the infantry has been successfully accomplished, the Russian salient along the coastal strip has been pushed back with the result that Leningrad has now been narrowly invested. But Leningrad does not fall, for the defenders hold Lake Ladoga and thereby secure the supply line for the fortress.
5. BEFORE MOSCOW
We carry out a few more missions on the Wolchow and Leningrad front. During the last of these sorties it is so much quieter everywhere here in the air that we conclude the balloon must be about to go up in some other part of the line. We are sent back to the central sector of the Eastern front, and as soon as we get there we begin to notice that the infantry is spoiling for action. There are rumors here of an offensive in the direction of Kalinin—Jaroslavl. Over the air bases Moschna—Kuleschewka we bypass Rshew and land at Staritza. Flight Lieutenant Pressler has replaced our late skipper as squadron commander. He comes from a neighboring wing.
Gradually the cold weather sets in and we get a foretaste of approaching winter. The fall in the temperature gives me, as engineer officer of the squadron, all kinds of technical problems, for suddenly we begin to have trouble with our aircraft which is only caused by the cold. It takes a long time before experience teaches me the answer to the problems. The senior fitters, especially, now have their worries when every one is doing his utmost to have the maximum possible number of aircraft serviceable. Mine has an accident as well. He is unloading bombs from a lorry when one of them tips over and smashes his big toe with its fins. I am standing close by when it happens. For a long time he is speechless; then he comments, gazing ruefully at his toe: “My long-jumping days are over!”
The weather has not yet become really cold.
The sky is overcast, but there are warmer currents again with low clouds. They are of no help to us in our operations. Kalinin has been occupied by our troops, but the Soviets are fighting back very bitterly and still holding their positions nearer the town. It will be difficult for our divisions to develop their advance, especially as the weather is of great assistance to the Russians. Besides, the incessant fighting has seriously reduced the strength of our units. Also our supply lines are not functioning any too smoothly, because the main communications road from Staritza to Kalinin runs right in front of the town in the hands of the enemy who exerts a continuous pressure from the East on our front line. I can soon see for myself how difficult and confused the situation is. Our effective strength in aircraft is at the moment small. The reasons are casualties, the effects of the weather, etc. I fly as No. 1—in the absence of the C.O.—in a sortie to Torshok, a railway junction N.W of Kalinin. Our objectives are the railway station and the lines of communication with the rear.
The weather is bad, cloud level only about 1800 feet. This is very low for a target with extremely strong defense. Should the weather deteriorate sufficiently to endanger our return flight we have been ordered to make a landing on the airfield near the town of Kalinin. We have a long wait for our fighter escort at our rendezvous. They fail to show up; presumably the weather is too bad for them. By waiting about in the air we have wasted a lot of petrol. We circuit round Torshok at a moderate altitude trying to discover the most weakly defended spot. At first it seems that the defense is pretty uniformly heavy, and then having found a more favorable spot we attack the railway station. I am glad when all our aircraft are in formation again behind me. The weather goes from bad to worse, plus a heavy fall of snow. Perhaps we have just enough petrol left to reach Staritza provided we are not forced to make too wide a detour because of the weather. I quickly decide and set course for the nearer Kalinin; besides, the sky looks brighter in the East. We land at Kalinin. Everybody is running round in circles in steel helmets. Aircraft from another fighter-bomber wing are here already. Just as I am switching on my ignition I hear and see tank shells fall on the airfield. Some of the aircraft are already riddled with holes. I hurry away in search of the operations room of the formation which has moved in here to obtain a more accurate picture of the situation. From what I learn we shall have no time to waste in overhauling our aircraft. The Soviets are attacking the airfield with tanks and infantry, and are less than a mile away. A thin screen of our own infantry protects our perimeter; the steel monsters may be upon us at any moment. We Stukas are a godsend to the ground troops defending the position. Together with the Henschel 123s of the fighter-bomber wing we keep up a steady attack on the tanks until late in the evening. We land again a few minutes after taking off. The ground personnel are able to follow every phase of the battle. We are well on the mark, for everybody realizes that unless the tanks are put out of action we have had it. We spend the night in a barracks on the Southern outskirts of the town.