Rolling to the right, he dropped his starboard wing and did a roll around, coming back upright in a left-handed dive.
A fluffy cloud proved a momentary haven, and Olegrevin pulled up as hard as he dared, with right stick and pedal, intent on turning the tables on his enemy.
…Which enemy was still on his tail.
‘Mudaks! Job tvoju mat!’
Tracers flashed past his cockpit, close enough that he felt he could lean out and catch the deadly cannon shells in his hat.
He spun away, using his right hand turn to advantage, feeling the forces push him hard back into his seat.
Johannes Steinhoff, commander of JG200, had one hundred and eighty-eight victories to his name, and was perturbed that number one-eight-nine was proving so difficult.
From the kill markings on the enemy jet, the man was clearly an experienced pilot, but such was Steinhoff’s confidence and self-belief that he had expected to down the Soviet airman with much less of a fight.
His last burst had missed, although it must have shaved the Schwalbe’s cockpit.
The red and white tailed jet threw itself into a breakneck right diving spin.
Fate took a hand, and Steinhoff had to shift his stick to the left rapidly, as two enemy aircraft closed in on a collision course.
“Scheisse!”
Narrowly missing the leading enemy, he swung around in a long port turn His eyes sought out his worthy opponent, but failed to find him.
Another target suggested itself, and Steinhoff flicked back into the vertical and pulled on the stick, walking his shells from tail to nose.
The enemy 262 simply fell apart as its integrity was compromised and forward air speed did the rest, ripping open the fuselage.
Steinhoff ignored the pilot as best he could, as the man, clearly missing a leg, fell out of his disintegrating aircraft and disappeared out of sight.
‘189.’
He heard the thuds.
He knew he was in trouble.
A piece of debris from the Soviet aircraft had entered his starboard intake, and the JUMO turbojet began the brief and spectacular process of tearing itself apart.
Steinhoff was floating free of the dying Schwalbe before he knew it, his razor sharp instincts again preserving him.
Before his chute had properly deployed, the JUMO disintegrated and his aircraft fireballed and plunged to the ground.
This was the thirteenth time he had been ‘shot down’, but only the second time he had taken to a parachute.
He had little trust in them, and watched his canopy suspiciously as he floated gently to the ground.
Djorov sent another DRL Halifax out of formation, its port wing awash with fire, pieces falling off, further reducing the crippled heavy bomber’s ability to stay airborne.
He and his MiGs had downed seven of the bombers, but he had lost three of his own pilots in the process…
… and worse was to come.
With his MiGs low on fuel, he called his regiment off, but disengaging was not possible with the enemy 262s intent on revenge.
“Yaguar-krasny, Yaguar-krasny, disengage, Odin, out.”
“Yaguar-Odin, Yaguar-dva, over.”
As Djorov moved away from the remaining heavy bombers, he listened to Olegrevin’s brief status report.
“Belyy-Dva, you must disengage now! Disengage now!”
“Odin, we’re trying to but…”
Above Djorov’s head, something turned orange and exploded.
“Dva… Dva… Belyy-dva, come in…”
The radio died.
Olegrevin felt the thuds as something chewed away at his aircraft. Whilst the response was slightly less than normal, he evaded with a tight port turn.
In front of him, an enemy 262 was in trouble. Instinctively, he sent a burst into the damaged jet and was rewarded with an instant fireball.
Just in case, he yelled his orders into the radio, but he expected no reply, and there was none, as he was sure that the radio was the original of the burnt electrical smell that assailed him.
The enemy fighter ace was nowhere to be seen, and he realized that suddenly the sky had become less busy.
Olegrevin’s eyes flitted from aircraft to aircraft, but all he saw were the red and white tails of his regiment.
Below and heading north-east were the MiGs of Djorov’s group.
In the distance, he could just about make out the remnants of the 109s that had escorted the first group of enemy bombers.
As he double-checked that no hostile aircraft were still in the vicinity, he made a loose count of his aircraft, and came up short by seven.
‘Nearly a third… fucking bastards… the fucki…’
His eyes saw and sent the images to his brain, which took a little longer to understand.
He thumbed his useless mike, despite himself.
“Yaguar-belyy, Yaguar-belyy, enemy aircraft diving… break left… break left!”
Even as he shouted uselessly, Olegrevin worked both pedal and joystick, breaking away from the rallying aircraft of his regiment, reasoning that if his men couldn’t hear him, they would at least follow his movements and realise that the enemy was upon them.
Below him, Djorov had been momentarily distracted counting his own aircraft, finding five missing, before his eyes strayed back to the 262 group… and what was diving on them.
“Yaguar-belyy! Yaguar-belyy! Enemy aircraft diving… break left… break left!”
‘More jets… Blyad!’
Steinhoff, nursing a sprained ankle, found a position from where he could observe what was happening above.
His Walther was kept close to hand, just in case some nosey Soviet soldier came on the scene.
He didn’t know who the new arrivals were, but he had no doubt that it was the head of the DRL’s fighter units himself, flying with the newly established ‘Squadron of Aces’, a unit constructed around experienced men that nearly rivalled his own for total kills and missions flown.
Steinhoff’s professional eye took in the small details that escaped most other watchers, instinctively understanding which of the black blobs was flown by an expert, and which was likely to fall in the vicious dogfight that was developing.
The ‘Geschwader von Asse’, as the new unit was officially named, or ‘Asse Geschwader’ as it was more simply known by its pilots and ground crew, was easily gaining the upper hand, the Soviet fighters already low on fuel and ammunition, and the pilots tired by the intense combat they had already experienced.
Steinhoff sniggered to himself, remembering the AG on the side of the General de Jagdflieger’s Me262, standing not for ‘Asse Geschwader’, but just for the legend’s name.
Adolf Galland.
He shaded his eyes, seeking some sign of the great man in the skies above but the aircraft, all of the same type, were indistinguishable from each other, so he could not even celebrate when an aircraft here and there staggered and fell from the sky.
Steinhoff grasped his pistol tighter in sympathetic alarm for his comrades, as he watched some of the strange new Russian jets rising up into the fray, but relaxed quickly as he examined their movements and swiftly concluded that they were undoubtedly second best in aerial combat with the superior 262s.
He shouted at the blue and white battleground above.
“Come on, leutchen. Knock the communist bastards out of the sky.”
None the less, the arrival of the Sukhois gave the enemy some breathing space, and two distinct groups formed, that comprising the enemy making off and diving as quickly as they could, the other group, quickly reformed, headed off to the southwest.
Steinhoff frowned, wondering why the DRL aircraft had yielded such a strong position, not knowing that the ‘Asse Geschwader’ had been recalled to respond to a heavy Soviet ground attack mission on German frontline units near Göttingen.