My plane shuddered, jarring me in my seat. I punched the right rudder, realizing I’d drifted off the runway. The correction was too much, however. My plane tipped left as it slid. With a death grip on the stick and working the pedals with my feet as furiously as I could, I somehow kept the plane from flipping over.
I bit down on my lip hard enough to draw blood. When I guessed I was around a hundred and seventy kilometers per hour, I pulled hard on the stick, knowing I was about to run out of runway. The plane launched into the air. It wobbled and started to roll on its side. Immediately, I dropped the nose and used a side lever to extend the flaps. Once I had the plane stabilized and was no longer convinced I was about to die, I raised the landing gear and offered a silent prayer of thanks.
“Wow, that was close,” I said over the radio, leaning back in my seat with a heavy sigh. “I think I almost carved a path through the maintenance shed.”
Zhenia responded first. “Cut the chatter. Stagger altitudes and head to Saratov. Alexandra, fifteen hundred meters. Nadya, two thousand. Valeriia, you’ve got twenty-five. I’ll be at three.”
I leveled off at the prescribed height. Despite the five hundred meters of separation, I was still nervous about a collision. One plane colliding with another never ended well.
“We’re looking for Ju-88s, ladies,” Zhenia said. “ETA is under two minutes, and we’ll probably only get one shot at them. Call your targets before you engage.”
My eyes strained trying to pierce the night sky in search of the bombers. Unless the search lights below found them, we didn’t have a prayer to make the intercept. Also, unlike the He-111s we’d caught before, the Junkers Ju-88s were built for speed. They could drop thousands of kilos’ worth of explosives and be gone before anyone made the spot. If that happened, dawn would usher in slews of new orphans and widows.
I clenched a fist and hit the side of my canopy. I hated the pressure I faced. Though it was never said, everyone on the ground expected us to stop a raid in the dead of night. Correction, they demanded we girls fly blind and save countless lives. The truth was we had no control of what was about to happen, and this night would shape who I was and what I was worth. The whole thing made me want to vomit.
I rolled my shoulders a few times to try and loosen up and relax, but my body didn’t cooperate. My tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth, and my breath hung in the air, reminding me the ache in my arms would soon become throbbing. Nothing about this flight was good.
My stomach knotted as the Volga River passed below us and we flew over the city of Saratov. Klara’s words about finding the beauty in a moment came to me, and I looked for something to latch on. Inside the cockpit everything looked worn and shrouded in shadow. Outside wasn’t any better. The night hid our enemy, and the cold air wracked my body. The moon illuminated my olive wings in a soft glow I found pleasing, but I couldn’t stay focused on it as the fascists were closing in.
Then I found it. My brain tied combat with my paint job, and I thought about how Klara had taken it upon herself to give my plane custom nose art. Yes, she’d made my skin crawl with what she encircled it with, but now, slicing through the night air at nearly half the speed of sound, about to engage in mortal combat, my objections seemed so trivial. Moreover, her actions seemed so beautiful, made her so beautiful. I swore I’d mend the damage I’d caused between us the instant I could.
“Spotlights are up! Look for targets!”
Zhenia’s voice ripped me out of the moment. Beams of light coming from the ground crews cut through the darkness. For a half-minute we circled, waiting for one of the enemy planes to be caught in the lights. All I could do was gnaw on the bottom of my lip and pray for His guidance.
One of the lights jumped and caught a Ju-88 dead in its beam. Zhenia was the first to call it. “On him,” she said. “Mind your distance. Find his friends.”
A couple seconds later, two more enemy bombers were hit with the lights. They were farther west than the first and moving fast, but well within range to intercept.
“Alexandra, take the bomber on the left,” Valeriia said. “Nadya, shadow the right and engage after I’ve made a run.”
“Copy, lining up now,” I said, setting myself up for an attack on the bomber’s rear. It flew a little lower than I did, so once I made my final turn, I also ended up in a shallow dive. Rademacher might have been willing to let his enemies go from time to time, but I wasn’t.
Using small corrections with aileron and rudder, I kept the plane dead in my sights. At three hundred meters from the target, I cut my speed to keep from closing any farther as I didn’t want Valeriia to accidentally shoot or ram me. She knew I was trailing the bomber, but at the speeds we flew, half blind in the dark, there wasn’t a lot of room for error.
Valeriia made her attack from above. Her tracers danced through the sky. Some found their mark, but most flew wide. “Damn it, I overshot,” she said over the radio. “Nadya, don’t let him get away.”
I pushed my throttle forward, eager for the kill. “Engaging. Five o’clock high.”
My hands tightened around the controls. I forced myself to be patient as I closed the distance. I didn’t want to shoot early like I had with the 109, only to miss and have the plane take evasive maneuvers. When it looked massive in my gun sight, I closed one eye to preserve my night vision in it and pushed both triggers.
The muzzle flash lit up my cockpit, blinding me to all that was happening. I had to trust my aim was true, and I kept firing. The enemy tail gunner returned fire with his twin, rear-facing machineguns in the back of its cockpit. The flames from his barrel filled my view, and only then did I realize I was about to plow through the bomber.
I yanked the stick for all I was worth to avoid the collision.
“Fantastic!” Valeriia called out.
I twisted, pressed back in my seat from the steep climb, and looked over my shoulder. Even with one eye ruined for flying at night, the small fire erupting from the bomber’s starboard engine was easy to spot. It turned the plane into a comet. No, an easy kill.
“Coming around now from his eleven,” Valeriia said. “Get clear.”
“Already done,” I said, positioning myself high for a follow up to Valeriia’s second attack, but it wasn’t needed. She raked the poor bomber from nose to tip. It turned on its side and fell from the sky like a falling star. When it hit the ground, the explosion lit up the sky.
“One down,” Valeriia said with pride.
“Stay focused. It’s not over,” Zhenia said. “Find the others and call your targets.”
I scanned the area. The darkness was disorienting. Even with the searchlights shining, at times it was hard to tell where my plane was going since I was half blind, and I worried I might fly straight into the ground. Sadly, the night vision in my right eye wouldn’t return for another twenty or thirty minutes.
I’d like to say we downed more, but our luck ran out. Each of us tried to make attacks on other bombers caught in the lights, but they would drop their bombs and peel off into the darkness before any of us caught up to them. I could only hope they were jettisoning their ordnance to get away and weren’t hitting their targets.
A few minutes came and went in silence, other than the occasional request by Zhenia to report our location to avoid collision. My hands ached, and the cold made it worse, despite the fleece-lined coat, wool sweater, and leather gloves I wore.