586 Fighter Regiment was the first to leave Engels, on April 9, 1942. On the way to Moscow they needed a “change of footwear,” from skis to wheels at the transit airfield of Razboyshchina. Alas, there were no wheels, and they found themselves stuck for ages at this godforsaken airport, which fully lived up to its baleful name.1 “It was a ghastly little garrison,” Nina Ivakina observed. In the middle of the airfield she noticed “a lake of oil and petrol, on the banks of which defunct vehicles were rusting. Piles of shit everywhere. All sorts of unspeakable stuff dripping from the canteen ceiling straight onto the plates.”140
There was no radio, and no water or electricity either. After the passable amenities in Engels, the conditions in Razboyshchina struck many of them as totally intolerable. The huts in which they were all accommodated were very small and the food was terrible. Nina Ivakina once again found herself under fire from the mechanics. They were outraged both by the bad food and now also, more than ever, by the glaringly obvious difference in rations between commanders and other ranks. “The top dogs are sitting pretty while we are on starvation rations!” Sonya Tishurova complained indignantly, urging her friends to boycott the canteen.141 It seemed to Administrator Ivakina that soup and porridge and two-thirds of a kilo of bread a day were what Red Army soldiers should expect, and not at all bad considering there was a war on. She, of course, was on commander’s rations, which included sausage, cheese and butter.
Weeks passed with no sign of the wheels. Ivakina recorded that the girls “sang and played” to pass the time. They had no real work and Katya Budanova, with nothing better to do, decided to improve her regiment’s amenities by building a toilet. Nina Ivakina documented the date the project was completed, noting, “The pilots have constructed a delightful little wooden convenience with a waiting room, etc., etc.” It “is only faith that stops it from falling down,” but it was entwined with twigs like a romantic bower, and it had been cleverly designed. A notice proclaimed: “April 12, 1942. Chief Engineer: Budanova. Chief Designer: Khomyakova. Planks pilfered by: Everyone.”142
While airwomen who had regularly flown in the Tushino air shows were constructing a wooden toilet in Razboyshchina, the contribution Soviet aviators, including those in the fighter regiments, were making to the war effort was far from satisfactory. The newspapers of the time, and indeed the histories written in the U.S.S.R. after the war, praised the selfless courage of Soviet pilots, their immense skill, and determination to vanquish the enemy at all times and in all circumstances. But the reality is that, in 1941 and the first half of 1942, Soviet fighters by and large shied away from combat. In his memoirs, Air Marshal Alexander Novikov, the former commander of the Soviet Air Force, celebrated the “fantastic fortitude of Soviet pilots.”143 Accounts by German front-line pilots suggest, however, that: “At the beginning of the war, Soviet fighters posed no threat to German bomber formations, and often avoided combat with them.”144 German planes were so much more technically advanced and German pilots so much better trained, that Soviet pilots believed it was impossible to beat them. Moreover, the Soviets, at least at the beginning of the war, were also heavily outnumbered. Although there was never a word about it in the newspapers, when Soviet fighter forces did engage the Luftwaffe they invariably suffered catastrophic defeats. Pilots were often shot down on their very first sortie, and the losses meant heavy bombers and ground-attack aircraft often had to fly without fighter escort.
This was known only to those at or close to the front. In summer 1941 Konstantin Simonov returned to Moscow from Byelorussia, where he had watched the Luftwaffe shoot down in flames six huge unescorted TB-3 bombers in ten minutes. He could not talk about this even to those closest to him. They had no idea what was going on, but Simonov could compare the real situation at the front with its coverage in the newspapers. He comments that, “Anyone reading what the newspapers were printing about the war in the air would have come to highly unrealistic conclusions.”145 Simonov could not tell even his mother what he had seen in the skies above the Bobruisk Highway. “She was still living with a pre-war faith” in the unprecedented might of the Soviet Army. His opinion was that, at the beginning of the war, the Soviet Air Force was in the worst situation of any branch of the armed services.
In 1941, the ramming of enemy aircraft featured extensively in Soviet propaganda. If pilots were unable to outfight the enemy, they could at least use a Soviet plane to destroy a superior German one, usually at the cost of their own lives. Human life was cheap. Those who rammed Luftwaffe aircraft, of whom Victor Talalikhin was one of the first, became heroes, usually posthumously. The propaganda machine made heroes even of those who accidentally flew into German aircraft after losing control of their own.
Soviet aerial combat tactics only began to change in 1942, and the momentum came not from the Air Force command and theorists, but from the pilots themselves, who learned from their own experience and also, to a large extent, from observing the Germans.
Aware of how obsolete the Soviet aircraft were, Air Force commanders pinned their hopes on the new Yaks, but these had teething problems. In late February or early March 1942, their designer, Alexander Yakovlev, was summoned to explain himself to Stalin. He had always enjoyed the Leader’s favor, but now was a frightened man. Stalin asked menacingly, “I have received information that the Yaks readily burn in aerial combat with the Hitlerites. Would it not be an error to embark on extensive mass production of these fighters?”146
Soviet newspapers clutched at every successful mission of “Stalin’s Falcons,” a favorite cliché of the time that was even adopted as the title of the Air Force newspaper. In early March 1942, seven pilots from 296 Fighter Regiment, led by Squadron Leader Boris Yeremin, really did win a dazzling victory over a numerically superior group of German planes. It was in all the newspapers, with the entire front page of Pravda devoted to the battle and those who had taken part in it. Although she had come to love her Pe-2 and Marina Raskova’s regiment, Masha Dolina nevertheless felt a pang of regret that Nikolai Baranov had not been able to keep her on. Here is an excerpt from Pravda:
Our valiant heroes, turning in combat formation, flew at the Messerschmitts. In the skies engines scream, machine guns rattle, cannons roar. One sweep follows another. This is war! The combat becomes increasingly ferocious. Our skillful pilots strike with precision again and again. The enemy is annihilated, and one after another four enemy aircraft crash to the ground.147
And so on. There is no skimping on banal bombast, but the battle was a real enough victory. Boris Yeremin, almost the only one of its participants to survive the war, remembered it vividly, despite subsequently fighting in dozens of others.148 He recalled that this was one of the first missions his regiment had flown in the new Yak-1 fighters after being retrained from the earlier I-16. He was a 29-year-old captain and set out with burly, blond Alexey Salomatin, a talented and courageous pilot, as his wingman or “slave.” There were two other pairs and the regimental navigator, Ivan Zapryagaev: a total of seven aircraft. Near the front line they spotted a large formation of German bombers with a Messerschmitt escort.
Yeremin was already an experienced fighter pilot, having fought in air battles over Lake Khasan during the border conflict with Japan in 1938. He had been at the front since the beginning of the war. Taking them to higher altitude, he lined his fighters up. The attack started well and they split into the pairs, immediately shooting down four aircraft. In the close-quarter aerial combat aircraft and fiery tracer bullets flashed past, and they could not be certain they were not shooting at their own people. The Germans, however, decided to retreat, one group heading north and the other west. Yeremin’s pilots pursued them and shot down three more aircraft. Having used up all their ammunition, it was time to return to base. Yeremin had to call the group together by dipping his wings: it was another year before they got radios.
Salomatin’s fighter had “a decidedly strange look to it.” On closer inspection, Yeremin noticed that the cockpit canopy, which shelters the pilot from the airstream, had been shot off. Salomatin was crouching forward in order not to be blown out of the plane and “was not looking happy.” Ivan Skotnoy’s plane was trailing a plume of white steam because his radiator had been punctured. Incredibly, however, the full complement of six pilots in Yeremin’s group formed up behind him. They were all alive, and what emotion they were feeling at having scored the first victory in this war! They flew back to the airfield and gave a victory salute. They landed and people ran to congratulate them, shouting and yelling, “Victory! Victory!” The chief of staff and Regimental Commander Baranov came running out. What happened? How? How many planes had they shot down?
Their report delighted the high command and made its way right to the top. Stalin telephoned Yakovlev and said, “See that? Your planes have proved themselves.”149 The Air Force commander of the Southwestern Front was ordered to meet the pilots, establish all the circumstances, and reward them accordingly. There were phone calls, endless questions, journalists arrived, medals were awarded. More important than all that, however, was that everybody now knew that the Germans could be beaten. For Yeremin and his men, March 9, 1942, was the turning point of the war.
Vasiliy Grossman spent two days with the pilots and recorded in detail everything they told him about themselves and the battle. He noted who had shot down what, recorded what Yeremin had to say about such tactics as making sure they kept in pairs, and wrote down their disparaging remarks about German aircraft. “The Messer looks like a pike,” “I saw right away it was a Junkers Ju 87: its legs stuck out and it had a yellow nose.” He asked the pilots what they thought about ramming enemy aircraft. Alexey Salomatin considered it heroism, but the others disagreed. Crashing your own plane in order to destroy a German one was the easiest thing in the world, with nothing heroic about it. Heroism was shooting down more than one enemy plane and living to fight another day. These pilots knew how to fight, and there was no need to sacrifice themselves and their planes by ramming a German.150
Each spoke briefly about themselves, but were keener to talk about their friend Demidov, who had just been killed and whom they had all liked. “Wetting” their medals, they first drank a toast to Stalin, and then to Demidov, who “lived in Sushchevsky Val in Moscow and was studying to become an actor.” Demidov “loved singing and flying.” He was a couple of years older than Salomatin and the others and had been like an elder brother to them. When they were flying he was constantly checking they were all right and making sure no one got left behind. Commander Nikolai Baranov was crying as he pinned on their medals, remembering Demidov.
Those young fighter pilots, with whom Grossman spent only a short time, made such an impression that when, a few years later, he was working on his novel Life and Fate, he used their names and personalities for the characters in his novel: a place in it was even found for Demidov. But by this time, of the seven young fighter pilots, only their leader, Boris Yeremin, and Alexander Martynov were still alive.
1 The name of the settlement, Razboyshchina, is derived from the Russian words razboynik (robber, bandit, highwayman), or razboy (robbery, plunder).