Diary of a Soviet Airwoman at War: Narrow Escape

Diary of Anna Yegorova, a young pilot in the Soviet Air Force during WWII. In this entry, the young lieutenant convinces a terrified soldier to help her save her Po-2 (aka U-2) biplane from being destroyed by enemy fire.

He seized my hand and pulled me, sometimes crawling, sometimes running, up the hill. The shells had already made a ruin of the windmill, its broken wings hanging down listlessly. The airplane, too, was riddled with bullet holes. 

As I climbed onto the wing, my terror finally caught up with me. Shock waves from the explosions had torn out the front seat and flung it into the instrument panel in the rear cabin. A thought flashed  through my mind: what if the plane was too damaged to fly? I jumped into the cockpit and made a cursory inspection. The damage didn’t seem too serious.

“Take hold of the prop!” I cried, but the driver had already done it without my invitation. “Pull it through a few rotations. Then pull down on the blade as hard as you can and jump out of the way.” 

“And-a-one!” he cried, yanking hard, and the propeller roared to life. The young driver vanished, as if whisked away on the propeller slipstream…

The Germans peppered the U-2 even more feverishly with bullets. I climbed out of the cabin to turn the aircraft so it pointed in the right direction. I don’t know where I found the strength to muscle the tail around. Fear probably played a large role…

I took off right under the Fascists’ noses and headed eastward. The sun had set, and twilight enveloped the land. I had no working instruments, but the engine was purring contentedly, and I was alive. But how would I land in the dark?

This is part 6 in a series of excerpts from Red Sky, Black Death, A Soviet Woman Pilot’s Memoir of the Eastern Front, by Anna Timofeyeva-Yegorova

The Battle Draws Near

This is part 4 of a series of excerpts from Yegorova’s memoir, posted 70 years after the events in question. In this entry (from late summer of 1941), Anna flies her U2 biplane to a small village, only to find that the battle has already arrived.

“Along the road out of Kalarovka, a frantic mass streamed from the village. A roiling chaos of people and soldiers mingled with cattle, carts laden with household items, and military vehicles. Half-ton trucks sped along the side, and infantry men hurried along in small clusters instead of the usual orderly marching columns.

I landed the airplane on a hill near a windmill…and shut the engine down…The crackle of gunfire rose form the valley, along with the terrified lowing of cattle and the roar of vehicles and fleeing people. Panic seized me. There could be no doubt now. The battle was coming our way…I could see the front line a half-kilometer away, a thunder of war advancing from the west.

In minutes, the fighting would tear into the silence of those pensive little houses perched along the valley’s edge. And so it did. The first explosion smashed into the quiet streets; then a second rang out…one of the hut roofs caught fire…frightened birds swirled up into the sky. The blunt snouts of tanks scrolled across the landscape as if across a movie screen. They ground along on their caterpillar tracks, spitting flames. Their gun barrels seemed to point right toward my little hill, where the U-2 presented an excellent target.

Indeed, a shell burst right next to the windmill, sending me running toward the airplane…”

-Anna Timofeyeva-Yegrova,  Red Sky, Black Death, A Soviet Woman Pilot’s Memoir of the Eastern Front

First Mission: Late Summer 1941

This is Part 3 of an occasional series of recollections, excerpted from Yegorova’s memoir, posted 70 years after the events in question. In this excerpt, the young pilot flies her first liaison mission at the front in a U2 biplane:

It was a gorgeous late summer day…I was less than pleased. In a crisp, clear sky, the “kukuruznik” would be defenseless against the Fascist hawks…plywood “armor” doesn’t stop bullets. Our only defense was to dive down toward the ground and spread our wings low over the withered fields, flying so close to the earth you could hear the landing gear cutting the feather grass on the steppe.

At “tree-shaving” altitude…the earth scrolled by, dangerously close, mere feet beneath my wings…Just then, I saw two distant points in the sky, rapidly approaching. Messerschmitts, I guessed. Suddenly, they were upon me, roaring over my head, brazenly flaunting their spidery swastikas. Machine-gun fire spat at me from above…they covered me with their black shadows, but with all their speed, they couldn’t manage to shoot down the docile little U-2. They flew off, and I released my breath with relief…

- Anna Timofeyeva-Yegorova, Red Sky, Black Death, A Soviet Woman Pilot’s Memoir of the Eastern Front