Just over to the right, a column of black smoke interlaced with red flame shot into the sky. A ground attack bird, probably an Su-7 had gone in. The Germans didn't have an air force to speak of anymore but they'd never been short of flak. Further to his right he could see the road approaching, the swing in was working perfectly. Glory be he had been right, there were a mass of soft-skins stationary in front of him. He could see the figures running backwards and forwards as they saw the ground attack aircraft boring in. drivers were diving out of the cabs of the trucks.
Another thing from the past, Evans wasn't aware he'd pressed the firing button but his cannon were thumping, sending tracers arcing down to the traffic jam beneath. More chaos underneath now, trucks backing, trying to get away. Wouldn't do them any good. Evans lined his sight up with the rearmost trucks and squeezed the firing button. The packs were set to ripple off the rockets so salvos of four would land at closely-spaced intervals along the flight path. Air-to-ground rockets had come a long way since the old days,
Evans' particular favorite was the huge 450 millimeter S-20s, lie could only carry six of them but each had the hitting power of a thousand pound bomb. But the little S-8s he was carrying today were doing their job. They were a mix of explosive, fragmentation and incendiaries, turning the target into a sea of flames and explosions. For Ivan Fedeev was adding the fury of its rockets to the hell developing underneath the racing jets. Evans punched the centerline racks release, dropping his two napalm tanks to bounce across the stalled trucks in front of him, then curved away. That was it, back home.
Only it wasn't it. As his Su-7 arced away from the inferno, Evans felt a heavy thump in the belly of For Maria Chermatova and the instrument panel erupted into a kaleidoscope of warning lights. The controls, always heavy on the Sukhoi, felt like they'd been set in concrete and a thick trail of black smoke erupted behind his aircraft. He'd been hit by something heavy, perhaps even an 88. “Comrade, you have a flame” It was Boroda, radioing over the bad news. There was a time when being called “Comrade” by a Russian would have set Evans teeth on edge but not now. Now, Russians had reverted to the traditional Grazhdanin as a form of address and Comrade meant again what it should.
Boroda hadn't mentioned bailing out when they had been swapping lessons. Both Russians and Americans had agreed on one thing at least, you don't bail out near troops you've just bombed and strafed. They tend to be resentful. Anyway For Maria Chermatova was still flying even if she was one very sick aircraft. Evans had some limited control and he knew where he was. It was about 70 kilometers to the Volga and safety. He just had to keep flying east, towards the sun. Those were the good things, the bad news was he was running out of speed, running out of altitude, running out of energy , running out of fuel and running out of ideas.
The Lyulka turbojet was banging and thumping, grumbling, spitting and coughing but it wouldn't quit. The vibration was getting worse as well, whatever was wrong under there was getting worse. The fuel gauge was slumping down much too quickly, his fuel tanks had been punctured. Just another addition, in fact losing his fuel may even work for him. He was only five minutes out from the Volga, if the aircraft would just hold together long enough. It was crabbing, trying to turn into its wounds, if he let it continue spanwise drift would spin her in. He fought the controls, sweat trickling into his eyes so at first he didn't see the streak of blue in front of him.
There were two bridges, one of the original assault bridges and a new heavy capacity pontoon. Tanks were using the latter one now, the lighter assault bridge had been devoted to trucks and their cargoes. For Maria Chermatova skimmed over the left bank of the Volga and kissed the water between the two bridges. Evans slammed into his harness, banging his forehead on the sharp screws that held the Perspex of the cockpit to the metal frame. They were supposed to be covered by rubber washers but the Russian rubber hardened and fell off.
The Su-7 was skimming across the river towards the right bank, huge arcs of water spraying into the air,. Across the river, he could see men were running towards the anticipated crash site. Evans braced himself and there was a sickening crash as his aircraft hit the right bank of the river, caught one wing on a tree spun and smashed through a stone wall. A group of pioneers were running up to the aircraft and started hacking the cockpit open with their pick-axes. Evans felt himself being grabbed and hauled through the shattered Perspex and metal to the grass outside. For Maria Chermatova was already starting to bum and there was enough explosives still on board to create a small scale disaster. Everybody was getting clear now, the aircraft was gone and everybody knew it, there was going to be nothing left to save.
“Hey American!” The sergeant in charge of the pioneers who'd pulled him out of the wreckage was calling him. An old, grizzled Sergeant with a brand-new Hero of the Russian People medal pinned to his uniform. In his hand he held a bottle of expensive Vodka with one good gulp left in it. Better yet, he was offering it to Evans. There were, Evans reflected, times when some gifts were beyond any achievable measure of gratitude.
German Forward Headquarters, Obil 'noye, Kalmykia, Russia
The Russian advance was swinging further south than he'd expected, they were using the marshes of the Caspian Depression to guard their left flank. It appeared the largely infantry groups of the First Khazak Front were working their way through the marshes towards Astrakhan. The Don and Volga-Don Canal lines were still holding, in truth they weren't under that much pressure. The Russians had cleared the areas north of the defense lines, advanced to the bank of the river and then stopped. They were pounding the right bank defenses with artillery but that was it. Obviously, it was the heavy armor of the First Byelorussians that was the primary thrust.
It all came down to those bridges. He'd been trying to take those damned bridges out. He'd tried air strikes and lost his last aircraft in an attempted raid that had been a disastrous failure. They'd been shot down before even getting close. Long-range artillery had failed as well. The guns were tiring a few shots then moving. So far they'd dodged the Russian fighter-bombers that were swarming over the battlefield but their luck wouldn't hold forever. And their chances of hitting the bridges were negligible.
Model shook his head, the southern swing of the Russian armor was disrupting his plans. Not disastrously but enough to make a difficult situation critical. He'd hoped the Russian advance would bring their northern flank onto LII Panzer Corps allowing them to fight as a cohesive whole. Instead LII had to move south and had been hammered by air attack all the way. The Russian aircraft had been all over them. They hadn't lost much armor but the Sturmoviks had crucified their supply vehicles and softskins. The open-topped half-tracks had suffered as well, hurt badly from the jellygas. LII Panzer wasn't out of the fight but it was hurt.
Without its supply vehicles it was going to have its work cut out staying in battle. That was another thing that British moron Fuller had forgotten about. Very fond of talking about penetrating long distances and getting into enemy rear areas and chewing up whatever they found there, but tanks burn fuel and they can only go as far as their fuel lasts. Without trucks to bring more fuel, the tanks stopped.