A Dance with Death: Soviet Airwomen in World War II by Anne Noggle Page A

necessity was to get out of the fire
zone. But I couldn't maneuver because of the aileron damage; the
only possible escape was to dive. My altitude dropped from 60o to
200 meters. That made it especially risky, because at that altitude we
could be hit by submachine gun fire, or even by a gun! My navigator
was wounded in the forehead and was blinded by blood. Without her
to guide me, I headed back to our airdrome. I didn't know to what
extent our aircraft was damaged. We were lucky to have no wind that
night; if the wind had banked our plane, I would have never been able
to level it. The bombs still attached to the left wing were pulling the
aircraft to the left. I held the plane with my right rudder. But how to
land the plane? The landing strip was ninety degrees from my heading, and somehow I had to turn. Using the rudder, I kept applying
pressure to the right. Soon I saw the airdrome, and I shot three red
rockets to indicate an emergency landing. Since we were landing with
the bombs still under the left wing, I made a decision to land a
distance from the other planes so as not to blow them up if we
exploded. When the altitude dropped to six or eight meters, I completely lost control and stalled. The fact that we didn't fall flat saved
us from exploding. The aircraft went to pieces: the fuel tank fell on
my right foot and squeezed it; I hit my head against the control panel
and lost consciousness. Our ground personnel ran to our plane and
extracted the navigator from her cockpit, but they couldn't pull me
out because I was trapped by the fuel tank, which was too heavy to
lift. So they had to axe the fuselage to break into the cockpit. I was
happy to remain alive.

    I can't help trembling when I recall an accident that happened in
my squadron, for in recalling, it again comes alive. It took place on a
mission over the Taman Peninsula. A very young crew of pilot and
navigator came into my squadron as reinforcements. I always escorted new, unskilled crews to the target on their first flight, so after
takeoff, I joined up with them. Our target was Mitridat in the Crimean.
We dropped our bombs and made a turn to fly back when I saw a very
low overcast rapidly advancing from the Black Sea. I idled the engine
and dove to escape the overcast, but the clouds were growing incredibly fast, like a snowball, in front of our eyes. For awhile we could dive
into the holes between heavy clouds, but they soon disappeared in
that gray, scary mass. The wind increased, and I could see we were
drifting. I made a sixty-degree drift correction, for the wind was
strengthening, and there was extreme turbulence. I came out of the
overcast at 300 meters. Below me was the sea-no shore in sight. The Taman Peninsula separates the Black Sea from the Sea of Azov. I
understood that I had not corrected my heading enough, and I had
been blown to the Sea of Azov! The overcast pressed me lower to the
water, and the aircraft was shaking heavily from the extreme turbulence. I corrected my course to fly back; I was thrown back and forth,
up and down. I could hear the sounds of the water splashing below
me, the sea spray streamed off the waves-my insides were throbbing
and jumping. Around me was nothing but pitch-black emptiness, and
the head wind was almost equal to the speed of my aircraft. For three
hours I was suspended in the air and seemed not to move. Then, in
the distance, I saw land; I prayed to the skies to help me to the land.
Finally, I was able to land on the Taman Peninsula. I feared for the
young crew, for there was no news of them-I knew they had crashed.
A month later their bodies were found on the shore of the Sea of Azov.
They ran out of fuel and fell into the sea.

    On another mission over the Kerch Strait the engine quit. I couldn't
even think of making a forced landing on the waters of the strait
because it was winter, and our heavy fur overalls made it impossible
to float to the surface. I