Not soon enough, as the nose came apart, and the engine parted company with the fuselage before coming back into contact with it, the propeller chopping into the right wing and causing it to fail.
The Dornier, now as aerodynamic as a cardboard box , started to freefall in a gentle spin.
The pilot could do nothing but sit in his doomed aircraft, and ride it into the Baltic, as the centrifugal forces kept him pressed into his seat and unable to bail out.
Istomin did not see the Arrow’s end, his own concerns more pressing, as his control column started to shake uncontrollably and the Tupolev inexplicably lost height.
He checked his instruments.
‘Running hot?’
A quick look confirmed damage on the starboard engine cowling. Closer examination revealed a leak of something vital, possibly coolant, plus extensive damage to the right aileron hinges.
“Just you and me now, Comrade Mayor. They’re both dead.”
The Ta-152 version of the Focke-Wulf was designed for high-altitude interception; sleek, deadly, and the ultimate killer in the Focke-Wulf series. Its performance at lower altitude was not so good, but it was more than adequate for the task of chopping down an injured Tupolev.
Unterfeldwebel Feinsterman drifted in behind the wounded Soviet bomber and lined up the shot.
A stream of tracer from the upper machine gun position angered him, and he shifted his aim, destroying the area with his cannons.
It was not until he tried to press his pedals that he realised that his right thigh had taken a bullet, and that not all was well with the Focke-Wulf.
The smell of burning reached his nostrils at the same time as the iron smell of his own blood.
The smoke came next, and he overshot his target as he struggled to establish what was happening to his aircraft.
Istomin, following the path of the 152 carefully, decided to manoeuvre upwards in a rapid rise, not realising that the enemy pilot had his mind on other things.
The tip of his port propeller clipped the rear of the German aircraft, adding to Feinsterman’s misery.
As he wrestled with the virtually unresponsive aircraft, Istomin also had his own problems, as the rise had unseated part of the starboard aileron. The port propeller also remonstrated against its rough treatment, and started to spin off centre, providing an equally interesting and terrifying problem for a pilot already struggling to keep his aeroplane in the sky.
A second 152 made an attack, producing many hits and making Istomin’s decision easy.
He reached for his parachute, but the aircraft bucked without his hands on the controls. He grabbed them again, and slipped into the harness as best he could one handed. Changing hands, he reached around and noticed the third 152 making a beam attack.
The stream of cannon shells virtually tore the canopy from the Soviet aircraft and Istomin found himself in an icy stream of air, as the front of the aircraft started to disintegrate.
Snapping the harness lock, he took the opportunity provided, launched himself towards the growing hole, but found the air pressure defeated his attempt.
Bizarrely, the Tupolev flew more steadily since the major damage, although the loss in height was faster now.
Istomin felt the jerk as the aircraft pulled up, rising sharply as one part or another of the control surfaces was destroyed by the next attack.
The Tupolev stalled and provided a moment of suspension; no forward momentum, nothing except a second of calm. That enabled the Soviet pilot to propel himself through the gaping hole, and into free air.
Once his canopy had opened, he watched in fascination as the bomber slowly fell away into the sea.
Looking around, he saw the remains of his regiment attempting to flee. The German fighters took them down one by one.
The last surviving Tupolev simply fire-balled and described an incredibly bright orange arc across the sky, before extinguishing itself in the cold Baltic below.
The air battle moved away, leaving Istomin to ponder his swimming abilities, and wonder about the enemy pilot dangling from the parachute three hundred metres below him.
Spectrum Red was more successful than the planners could have hoped.
The massed Allied fighters, over five hundred in total, consisting of training squadrons, reforming squadrons and just hastily thrown together air units, ripped through the Naval and Air force regiments, greatly assisted by the Soviet orders to press home the attack on a non-existent surface fleet.
Torpedo boats and submarines enjoyed great success against the little ships of the Baltic fleet, although not without sustaining losses of their own.
The MTBs, secreted in small bays and coves, dashed out to plant their torpedoes in the innards of passing destroyers and minesweepers, sending eight to the bottom in as many hours, as Spectrum Red continued. There seemed no end to thet supply of fresh fodder thrown at them by desperate men in the higher echelons of the Baltic Naval command.
USAAF bombers carried out an unhindered attack on the Polish defenders of the First Army, hammering part of their northern shoreline.
Amazingly, they pulverized a position that General Berling had ordered evacuated only an hour beforehand, and few Polish casualties were sustained. The Polish AA gunners put up a spirited defence, but failed to hit any of the American aircraft.
A second US group destroyed an NKVD divisional camp just outside of Kolobrzeg, where the reverse was true. The bodies were too numerous to count and, in any case, those who would have counted them lay amongst the dead.
Yet more USAAF squadrons struck targets across the Northern European coastline, hammering Soviet defensive positions that could oppose a forced landing.
German infantry of the 264th Division launched an attack on Møn and Falster Islands, linking up with small groups of the SAS and SBS, who had been landed by submarines, tasked to wreak havoc on the Soviet air and AA defences.
The advance was halted on both islands, short of Allied expectations, mainly because of fanatical resistance by the 40th Guards Rifle Corps.
The five hundred plus Allied aircraft lost thirty-nine of their number, mainly to other aircraft. They inflicted at least three hundred casualties on the Soviet air forces, as well as sinking numerous vessels of the Baltic Fleet.
The Naval contingent inflicted its own significant losses on the Soviets, claiming another eight enemy aircraft destroyed, along with fourteen destroyers, eleven minesweepers, and numerous smaller craft.
One old MTB had been sacrificed to subterfuge, carefully beached and wrecked by a small crew, who ‘fell’ into the hands of Swedish Military Intelligence officers, and were subsequently paraded as aggressors by a Sweden anxious to portray a rigorously enforced neutrality.
Two smaller Soviet vessels had actually been destroyed by the Swedish defences, so the destroyed MTB was seen as support for the notion that the Swedes did not take sides.
HMS Rye, one of the minesweepers that had accompanied Force V, was caught by three Ilyushin-4 torpedo bombers and sunk, two torpedoes cutting the old ship in half
HMS Sabre, an S Class submarine, failed to return home, and it was subsequently discovered that Soviet bombers had sunk her off the Island of Fehmarn.
As the day turned its back on the sun, the last acts of the tragedy were played out.
Istomin had tied his life raft to that of the German pilot, producing something that supported both their legs, or at least his, and what was left of his enemy’s.
Feinsterman’s right thigh was a mess. Five bullets had struck home, mangling the flesh, but missing artery and bone by some lucky chance.
Another bullet had shattered his ankle and destroyed the nerve endings, which was why Feinsterman had not felt the fire start to consume his toes.