Department staff. director, artistic director of the Arkhangelsk Youth Theatre, Honored Art Worker of the Russian Federation, Commander of the Order of Honor and the Order of Friendship

In 1939 - 1940 he participated in battles with the Japanese invaders in China, as part of the squadron of S.P. Suprun.

From June 1941 to May 1945 - on the fronts of the Great Patriotic War.

Until November 1942 he was the military commissar of the 3rd squadron of the 43rd Fighter Aviation Regiment.

Since November 1942 - as part of the 2nd Fighter Aviation Regiment (85th Guards Fighter Aviation Regiment).

The war ended in the Guards as a lieutenant colonel, in the position of deputy regiment commander for political affairs. Personally and in a group with comrades, he shot down 13 enemy aircraft.

Awarded with the Orders of the Red Banner (three times), the Patriotic War of the 1st and 2nd degree, the Red Star; medals.

The last years he lived in Kyiv. Died in 1994.

Air battles in the sky of China.

We were sent to China by 4 squadrons of fighter pilots, ours was from near Kyiv, the other, under the command of Ossetian Daibtsiev. from Voronezh, and 2 I don’t remember where. There were 2 reinforced bomber squadrons, each with 25 aircraft: a squadron of SB high-speed bombers from Belaya Tserkov, under the command of Izotov, and the second DB-ZF, in my opinion from Monino, near Moscow, with the addition of Voronezh crews, under the command of Captain Kulishenko. The bombers of Kulishenko's squadron were quite powerful and could cover up to 5,000 kilometers without landing. The bombers, unlike the dismantled fighters, flew to China under their own power. That is, according to my calculations, only 150 pilots arrived in China. We went on a government business trip, to which each of us, formally, of course, agreed, but everyone knew in advance that if he refused, he would put an end to his further military career . He will be recognized as a coward and will stain himself for life. Such was the general situation.

Now a little about our "Ukrainian" squadron of the Kyiv Special Military District from Vasilkov: the 1st squadron of the 43rd Fighter Aviation Regiment, consisting of 12 pilots under the command of Captain Grigory Semyonovich Vorobyov, and, as indicated in all documents, the author of these lines, then a military commissar - pilot Dmitry Panteleevich Panov. I want to list the pilots: Grigory Semyonovich Vorobyov, Dmitry Panov Panov, Yakov Lavrentievich Moroz, Alexander Mikhailov, Vasily Nikitich Remnev, Ivan Zubarev, Ivan Alekseevich Kornienko, Petr Vasilyevich Galkin, Mikhail Stepanovich Bubnov, Ivan Karpovich Rozinka, Nikolay Nikolaevich Kuzmin, Alexander Kondratyuk. In addition, 2 test pilots were included in our squadron: Stepan Pavlovich Suprun and Konstantin Konstantinovich Kokkinaki, who already had big names in aviation and in the country. Their task was to test new cannons and machine guns mounted on I-16 aircraft in a combat situation. They fought alongside us, although, of course, they had some advantages: unlike us sinners, their names were known in the Kremlin even to Stalin himself.

In addition, Stepan Pavlovich Suprun, who now has a monument in the Ukrainian city of Sumy, was a deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, and later a Hero of the Soviet Union - for our work in China. The people are funny and interesting.

The Annecy airfield was surrounded by an expanse of clay steppe. When I hear today that China not only feeds a billion of its population, but also sells part of its food abroad, including to us, the owners of the world's main tracts of black soil, I always remember those clay steppes that the Chinese peasant knows how to turn into abundant granaries. When landing in Annecy, our regular eagle and Stalin's falcon Stepan Pavlovich Suprun failed: during the landing run, one of the wheels of his plane fell into a pit, the I-16 stood on its nose, bending the propeller into a ram's horn. However, Suprun did not lose heart: the plane was pulled to the parking lot, the propeller was removed from it, and in the forge, which was found nearby with the help of Chinese blacksmiths, they began to level it. The joint Soviet-Chinese cooperation that manifested itself during this operation turned out to be successful, once again shaming the cunning ideas of Western sages.

First, one plane of the screw was unbent on a metal plate, achieving its ideal adhesion to the surface of the plate, and then the second. Suprun ran around and measured the work of the blacksmiths by eye. The Chinese pushed him away with their hands, but Stepan, who was at the zenith of his glory, was eager to command, like many, many of our compatriots at that time. Then the screw was installed on the plane, Suprun started the engine, carefully listening for beats and shaking that could destroy the plane in the air. Taking off and making a circle over the airfield, he said that everything was fine - you can fly. Stepan was blessed on the way by a Chinese blacksmith, who came to see the results of his work and approved: "Ho", which in Chinese means "good".

Styopa's brother Fedya and I studied at the Kachin school and slept on bunks next to each other. We often talked heart to heart for a long time after lights out, on the sly - "played whisperer", participated in sports competitions in running, crossed the harbors of the Sevastopol Bay together, and I knew well where Styopa Suprun knew English very well, where in the manners and actions of the four Suprunov brothers , two pilots, two technicians and their sister, who became a famous paratrooper, so much grip and courage, excessive even for the most energetic detachment of the Slavic tribe - the Ukrainians.

The fact is that at the end of the 19th century, Father Suprunov decided to move from the wooded and swampy Sumy region to work in North America. At first the family lived in Canada, and then in the United States, where my peer Fedya was born in 1910, and Stepan was 4 years older. Fedya said that after moving to America, his father worked for a capitalist on the night shift for 18 years and almost completely lost his sight. After October revolution and the Civil War, it seemed to many that before Russia, over which some kind of rock was hanging, brilliant prospects were finally opening up. The spouses returned to their homeland. The father remained the director of the school in Sumy, and the children moved to Moscow, where they really needed an ideal knowledge of English - their second native language, and most importantly, the Supruns saw a different life, which gave them energy and looseness.

Stepan did not start his flying career very well. After graduating from the flight school in Smolensk, already in the combat unit, his then top-secret I-5 aircraft, rubbish, worse than which it is hard to imagine, was treacherously hijacked to Poland by a technician who turned out to be an agent of the defensive. Or maybe he was just tired of living in the Soviet Union. Based on the principle: "Not a single incident without a guilty person," as well as the suspicious origin of Stepan, who was called an "American" until his death, the Chekists took the eldest of the brothers.

S. P. Suprun.

Styopa spent about 11 months in a Moscow prison, where commanders from different branches of the Red Army were gathered, but stubbornly refused to admit to collusion with his technician. Apparently, the Chekists did not have a production plan for the confessed commanders, and Stepan safely waited for Voroshilov, who paid a visit to the prison, worried that the Chekist apparatus too often began to grab military personnel because of all sorts of nonsense - chatter that can be interpreted in different ways, or even booze. After questioning the officers, Klimka began to drive them out of the inhospitable walls in whole batches. Well, this story of Suprun only confirms once again that the machine for grinding people has always stood in our siding and always rushed into battle, and the will of individual people, put in the place of the law, turned them into despots and criminals. Wanted - planted, without any evidence. Voroshilov wanted to release and did it without unnecessary "formalities" or a deep study of the guilt of each.

However, for Stepan, a short conversation with Voroshilov turned out to be not just a step that helped to get out of the quagmire, but also a ladder up. As you know, the powerful of this world love those whom they greatly benefited. Stepan was assigned to test fighters that were serially leaving the factory. And here he had a chance to talk with Voroshilov again and even attend a dinner given by the Red Marshal regarding the reception of a large number of new aircraft by military aviation. Further in the life of Styopa Suprun, everything went by itself - just don't be a fool. Styopa got into the stream and the nomenclature of "Stalin's falcons".

Let's get back to the events in China. 7 I-15bis aircraft and 2 I-16 cannon fighters were ready for takeoffs (there were only 2 such aircraft in China), which were flown by Yakov Lavrentievich Moroz, my friend and adjutant of our squadron, and Stepan Suprun.

Human nature clearly blew up Soviet morality in the conditions of the damned capitalist environment. Yes, and in our country a terrible mess was going on, though not recognized and varnished. That was the moral. And if the "advanced issue" (communication with women) was somehow solved, then the situation with booze in our country was much worse.

The trouble was that a deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR and a famous ace, tester Styopka Suprun, who was declared commander-in-chief of all Chongqing air defense fighters, often carried a bottle of cognac in his pocket. Thus, we both became voluntary - he was the commander, and I was the commissar. And somehow it was out of my hands to chase such a high-ranking person, who turned out to be a very sociable drunkard and, having driven by car to the squadron location, constantly lured pilots towards the Chinese cemetery, where they organized drinking parties on the roof of crypts overgrown with roses, plus everything else and offending the religious feelings of the Chinese. Moreover, our slackers did not remove empty bottles and leftovers from millennial tombstones. Several times I tried to talk to Styopa. He looked at me with his blue eyes and breathing cognac fumes in my face, swore that he hadn’t taken it in his mouth since morning, otherwise he muttered something to himself in English, I think he honored me to the fullest, laughed and clapped on the shoulder, assuring that everything in this life passes.

What did the persuasion of some commissar mean to him not to abuse friendship with Bacchus, or at least not to draw ordinary pilots into the arms of this hospitable god, in whose presence Styopa scolded political workers and found particular pleasure in teasing them with his drunkenness. Somehow, unable to stand it, I asked Ambassador Panyushkin to reason with Styopa. Panyushkin smiled in his usual manner, promised in his soft but impressive voice that he would talk to him, but nothing changed: either Panyushkin did not talk, or Styopa did not care about these conversations.

Everything would be nothing, but either the booze interfered with the banter, or the high duties of the state husband, or the natural analytical tendency, but he did not really like to fly into battle, especially in adverse weather or night - it was work for "blacks". Styopa preferred to hang around at the command post of the airfield or the main command post of the city of Chongqing, located on a mountainside under a huge rock, where, with the help of beams of powerful searchlights, he tried to conduct a "chase" for Japanese bombers from the ground or gave, using knowledge of English, valuable instructions and advice Chinese commanders and called our airfield, asking in a solid voice how things were going.

In a word, Styopa had every opportunity to violate the holy principle of the air defense system, embodied in the words beginning with the name of the first letters of these glorious troops: DRINK VODKA ONE. And the same letters, in reverse order, warn: ORGANIZE A DRINK - YOU WILL BURN...

Styopa Suprun managed to get acquainted with the Minister of Aviation of China, Madame Chiang Kai-Shek, who came to the airfield and, of course, did not pass Styopa - the only one of all of us who spoke English, and they exchanged glances suspiciously often and in concert. Stepan was a handsome man, and most importantly - who had been abroad, who had seen the world, uninhibited and assertive, without any provincial complexes. These views will have an impressive continuation. Around September 1939, Styopa Suprun began to "twist" an affair with Madame Chiang Kai-Shek. The minister lived on an island, in the middle of a lake surrounded by dense forest, on the road from Chongqing to the Guanba airfield, in a beautiful fanza with a gilded roof at the bottom, which in itself was a work of art. Twisted horned supports held the roof like the horns of Bogdykhan's hat. Access to the gates of this very beautiful two-story fanza was only through a pontoon bridge, which was set aside at night or attached to the opposite bank. Here, nearby, on the mountainside, there was a fanza and the headquarters of Chiang Kai-Shek himself. A huge and comfortable bomb shelter was arranged in the mountain.

We, passing from time to time to the Guanba airfield, looked with interest at these beautiful structures located in picturesque corners. Soon they waited for the visit of the minister himself. We were told the time of Madame Chiang Kai-shek's arrival at the airfield in Guanba, where good sheds were built to cover materiel and personnel, which suited us very well.

The telephones in the command post chirped endlessly, warning that China's aviation minister was on his way. A black lacquered limousine rustled across the airfield, and we stretched out at the command "Attention". From the back door of the car, leaning on the hands of the soldiers accompanying her, an elegant woman in a dark brown hat from Paris came out - her face was covered black veil. Our worker-peasant aviation system cheerfully puffed out its chest. The senior fighter group Styopa Suprun, dressed in a short leather jacket with a zipper - they were then called "Spaniards" and khaki trousers, marched towards the minister. Before reaching 2 steps, he stretched out at attention and raised his palm to his temple in a military salute. The face of the Minister of Aviation took on a clearly interested expression when Stepan began to report on the state of affairs with the Soviet volunteers, in English.

Madame threw back her veil and began to talk with Stepan. Then she slowly went around the line of pilots, carefully examining each one, probably with the same facial expression as the notorious Russian Empress did. Through an interpreter, the minister asked what we need and what are the conditions for our provision. One of the guys expressed a desire to buy short leather jackets with a zipper, "Spanish coats", in which it was very convenient to fly. Raglan was confused in the legs and it was very hot in it. Madame Minister promised jackets in a month: they had to be carried by rickshaws on carts from Hong Kong through half of China, crossing the front line.

Madame Chiang Kai-Shek was still flirting, spoke to Suprun in English, and drove away from our airfield. Of course, we animatedly discussed the merits of Madame - a woman and a minister.

After 2-3 days, a familiar limousine and Madame Chiang Kai-Shek's secretary, a young man in a black sweatshirt - tunic and khaki trousers, appeared at the airfield, began to look for Mr. Suprun, distorting his last name in such a way that it really looked like English word"plum" - this is how our ace explained the origin of his surname to foreigners, hiding its roots coming from horse harness. Ace was spotted at the start and he ran in: he washed, shaved and preened. The limousine took Stepan into the unknown, and we remained at a loss. Styopa appeared only the next day for dinner, being clearly relaxed and inhibited.

I gave myself over to painful thoughts. Indeed, in Moscow I was directly instructed that I should monitor the "moral decay" of the entire group, and therefore of Suprun. But on the other hand, this is Suprun and Madame Chiang Kai-Shek. Should I poke my nose into this? Prudence won over the commissar's adherence to principles, and I decided to confine myself to a conversation with the brave Stepan. But my question is, "Where have you been?" - he answered in the sense that he was where it should be, which I could have guessed. "Look, Stepan Pavlovich, the Chinese will hit you like Grishka Rasputin," I thought it necessary to warn the brave pilot. "They won't hit you," Suprun muttered.

As it became known to us, while Suprun and Madame Chiang Kai-shek were solving the "advanced" issue, the commander-in-chief of the Chinese army went to the front line for a whole week. So everyone had their own front for everyone to enjoy. From now on, it became customary: as soon as Chiang Kai-Shek came to grips with military affairs, a black limousine came to our airfield. The familiar secretary of Madame Chiang Kai-shek picked up Stepan and took him away in the direction of the fanza. And therefore, when we received the "Spaniards" as a gift from the Minister of Aviation of China, we believed, not without reason, that our "senior" honestly worked out this gift.

On the other hand, my commissar's adherence to principles, and being drawn into the gears of the system, I became a rather principled commissar, was consoled by the realization that with Soviet side this whole novel seems to be not entirely "immoral": 34-year-old Suprun was not married. In principle, one could also assume this: what if Styopa fell in love with Madame Chiang Kai-Shek and was going to marry her?

But the more time passed, the more Styopa was heading towards the black limousine: either Madame was tired of him, or he was oppressed by the idea that a leading comrade with a mustache, who could very easily tear off his head, sent Styopa to China not to check his own " guns", and for testing the I-16 cannon fighter in a combat situation. And Styopa was drawn to military exploits. Apparently, assuming that if someone "knocks" in Moscow where it is necessary about what kind of tests he conducted in China, then he will not do well, Styopa was eager to fight with Japanese fighters. The bombers, whom he did not really bother, he no longer had enough. And the fighters were only in the south of China, in the Canton area. And Styopa began to introduce into the minds of the leadership the idea of ​​our raid to the south.

At first, Chiang Kai-Shek categorically rejected this idea. He, and all the inhabitants of Chongqing, already liked that, at the command of "Timbo", up to 80 fighters rise into the air and, at the very least, drive away the Japanese. Of course, so many vehicles could be kept at the extreme strain of forces of all Soviet and Chinese squadrons, but it also happened that, together with foreign mercenaries who were based at an airfield unknown to us, it became literally crowded in the sky of Chongqing from loitering fighters. But Styopa stubbornly bent his line, and many began to agree with him, and here, by the way, the Japanese landed a large landing force from the sea in the Canton area, captured the city and began to move inland to the city of Luzhou. The 300,000-strong Chinese army first tried to push this, in general, relatively small landing force into the sea, and then began to retreat. One of the reasons for the defeat, the Chinese Generals called weak air support, where Japanese fighters raged.

Styopa Suprun has already worked out in detail our movement to the south. The decisive argument was the need to bring down the noisy tone of the enemy press, which assured that Soviet volunteers did not bring much benefit in the sky of China - except that they destroyed Chinese long-range aviation. And the capture of the city of Canton, along with the most important bay "Pak-Khoi", greatly saddened Chiang Kai-Shek. By the beginning of December 1939, the decision was made - stop the Japs shitting in our borscht, and it became clear that we could not avoid meeting with Japanese fighters. One week was allotted for the entire preparation. We began to study the area of ​​​​future hostilities using Chinese crappy maps. I must say that we flew south willingly. Still, without meeting with enemy fighters, based on the results of some bomber chases, it was possible to call us combat pilots with some stretch. A fighter is not a real fighter until he destroys his own kind. We haven't even seen them yet...

The mood was cheerful because in the summer of 1939, our fighters defeated the Japanese in the Khalkhin-Gol region. True, we did not yet know that the Japanese economy and military industry, like the German one, reacted very sensitively to the requirements of combat units, took into account and corrected the shortcomings of their equipment in time, and we had to deal with a new generation of fighters. And getting to the South of China was not so easy. Our "whatnots" had to overcome 5 powerful mountain ranges, from 1500 to 6000 meters above sea level. And the Chinese flight cards issued to us by the command were no good, especially for flights in the mountains. It was more useful for us to have conversations with Chinese pilots who had already flown this route, who were guided in the mountains by their peaks. These stories were very useful to us during the flights. At the beginning of December our flight was delayed twice due to bad meteorological conditions: low cloud cover and rain. All mountain ranges along our route were covered by dense, stormy clouds.

Only on December 14 the weather "shone" for us. Styopa Suprun boarded the leading C-47 passenger plane piloted by a Chinese crew. Apparently, our valiant ace was so tired of holding his own device in a fanza with a gilded roof in his hands that he no longer felt confident in holding the control knob of the I-16P (“cannon”) combat fighter, on which a pilot from another squadron had to fly. "Sikorsky" took off and we lined up after him. We did not have time to fly even 100 kilometers, as a dense wall of black clouds appeared directly on the course. "Sikorsky" pecked up and down, which meant we were breaking through the clouds. It turned out that we had to go further along the route above the clouds. Our leader famously dived into the clouds and disappeared from sight, carrying away the brave ace. And we remained, like a flock of sparrows abandoned by a crane. By the way, birds do not fly in the clouds. They are frightened by the loss of a sense of space, and if they accidentally fly in, they immediately fall down like a stone.

The pilots honestly work out their flight nutritional norm, the flight is not an easy thing. After all, no matter how much you fly, the thought is constantly present in the subconscious: if something happens, there is no one to rely on, nothing to rely on. The pilot's soul is constantly under the hammer of heavy thoughts, and from this it becomes clearer and crystallized. Almost all the "Stalinist Falcons" that I knew were ordinary pilots, better than many, but also worse than some. The immoderate praise made them very stupefied and stupid. What can you do, the heroes were riveted like tractors on conveyors - it turns out that the country needed them and they were organized by dozens and dozens were removed when they were no longer needed.

So, Styopa, who disappeared among the thunderclouds under our very noses, was the same "organized hero." And of course, it was not for nothing that he ended up not at the control stick of a fighter, but in the passenger cabin of our leader, which had an autopilot and other excellent American devices for blind flight, and we had to fly like birds, mainly relying on intuition. The nerves of the pilots could not stand it, and our flight formation finally crumbled in the pitch darkness of the clouds. A nasty thing began: a whore in the clouds. I gratefully remembered the assault brigade, in which so much time and attention was devoted to night flights. However, fear crumpled my soul, and after all, there were young pilots in our ranks, who, perhaps, did not even have time to fly properly at night.

Listening to the work of my motor, I suddenly heard the roar of the engine of another aircraft. What was especially annoying was that I didn't see him. I guessed well to throw my head back - just a meter above my head the propeller of another fighter was spinning, which literally landed on me in the air, which, of course, would have ended in a search for our two lifeless bodies and aircraft wreckage in the Chinese mountains. I gradually began to press the control stick down and left my colleague pressing on top. As soon as I left the top plane, a link of our fighters appeared directly below me, crossing my course only 2 - 3 meters below. As soon as I got scared and sharply pressed the aircraft control stick, we would have collided...

Things turned out badly, and it seemed to me that some of the guys obviously could not cope with such a long flight blindly, in thunderclouds that seemed impossible to break through. However, fortunately, it turned out differently. The pilots of our squadron, having finally lost their leader, began to turn back and lay down on a course of 0 degrees - in the opposite direction to their airfield - Guanba, from where we took off.

Having oriented myself in the situation, I saw in pitch darkness that other planes were heading back. I decided not to break away from the team, which, as you know, is one of the main principles of socialist community life. The team is always right, even when they are wrong. When I safely emerged from the clouds at an altitude of about 200 meters above the ground, I saw an impressive picture: one of our I-15bis aircraft, finishing a spin, crashed into a mountain covered with forest and immediately turned into a huge ball of fire, rising high above the ground - that's all the tanks were filled to the very top of the cork. Which of the guys "coffin"?

When our entire squadron, one by one and in pairs, returned to its airfield after about 1 hour and 20 minutes, we received an answer to this question, fortunately not a final one. Misha Bubnov was missing, a 24-year-old young pilot, a Lieutenant from the South Ural city of Kusa, a very good and warm-hearted guy. Misha was loved in the squadron and we walked around the airfield, as if lowered into the water. Fortunately, he survived and soon returned to us.

Soon our leader also returned. Styopa Suprun said: "Well, you falconers didn't cope? It was possible to break through the clouds. We had to work." It should be said that no one prevented Styopa from not only inspiring us to break through 6-km thunderstorm clouds on a lousy weak "whatnot", the instruments of which, in the pitch swirling black haze, pierced by lightning, became completely useless - the arrows danced like crazy and it was completely impossible to understand , where is the top, where is the bottom and where is the horizon. I wouldn't be surprised if half of our squadron died in a flight like this, when the pilot loses his bearings and the plane goes into a tailspin. Here, the famous ace himself would sit at the control stick of a combat fighter and show us an example. But Styopa's "falcon" boarded an American plane, which was a machine of a completely different generation and technical level, equipped with powerful devices for blind flight and adapted for them.

Grini Vorobyov's nerves could not stand it, and he attacked Suprun with a cry, accusing him of leading the squadron to certain death, while he himself was spinning around breaking through the clouds at an altitude of 6500 meters on a passenger plane, waiting for how this whole story would end. I must say that after this incident, our pilots often added a small, but by no means harmless addition "bad" to the name Suprun. Indeed, Styopa could have killed all of us in this career flight. When parsing it, Styopa still tried to cock it, but after experienced pilots, among them your humble servant, and, using facts, explained to the "Stalin's falcon" that the flight was impossible on this technique in such weather conditions, Styopa "tucked his tail." It should be said that thorough flight training in difficult meteorological conditions our illustrious ace did not have, flying to test aircraft only in good weather. In terms of performing blind flights, I, for example, who had 200 hours of flight at night and blind flights, could well teach him something. But where was the famous Styopa to study! Spinning on the leader above the clouds, he returned to his Guanba airfield, like us sinners.

3 days after our failure, we made a second, this time successful, attempt. December 18, 1939 was a nice, sunny, cool day for China, the temperature dropped almost to zero, the weather was good along the entire route and we flew in two fighter squadrons: ours and Ershov's squadron, armed with both I-16 and I- 15bis We quite successfully overcame the first 250 kilometers of the flight and ended up at the Ji-Ching airfield, which had a runway 1.5 by 1.5 kilometers, similar to a cinder track with its coating and good approaches to it from all sides.

The next day, December 19, 1939, following the leader, the same "Sikorsky", still weighed down by the handsome Styopa, we took to the air. The main and external tanks were full of gasoline, which was enough for 4.5 hours. Course - Guilin airfield in southern China ...

We rested at the Guilin airfield for all 3 days and, having safely spent the night, on December 22, 1939, the shortest day of the year, flew closer to the front line to the Liuzhou airfield. This is a large stationary airfield with an unpaved runway, 1.5 by 1.5 kilometers, planted along the edges with mighty palm trees. From the southern tip, a mountain range 600 meters high is piled up.

The front line was only fifty kilometers from our airfield. There was nowhere to travel further, and it became clear that here we were to meet with Japanese fighters. nervous tension increased. But the guys were cheerful, laughing at both life and death, which of course is easier until he met her. We were informed that the Japanese were quite successfully advancing on the city of Kunming, the loss of which would have deprived China of the most important supply route, through which, through Burma, it received a lot of military equipment and gasoline from the USA and other capitalist countries. The Chinese did their best to push the Japanese into the sea, but with a ratio of 1:10 in their favor, the Japanese army pushed the Chinese: 30,000 Japanese drove 300,000 Chinese and successfully moved forward towards Liuzhou, which they subsequently occupied. Approximately 2 hours after our arrival at the airfield of this city, we received "guests".

We just had time to refuel the planes when the command "Timbo!" sounded, accompanied by verbal explanations: "Japan, japan guitsula" - the Japanese are coming to us. At the airfield at that time there were 4 squadrons of fighters, 2 of ours and 2 of China. All of them took to the air in just 5 minutes. A curtain of dust rose over the airfield, and only by a miracle there were no collisions, the planes took off in a hurry on what sometimes seemed to be intersecting courses. Taking off was very risky. There was an unimaginable roar of almost 100 fighters. They took off in all directions. One of the five fighters of our squadron was led by Vorobyov, and the other by me. The Chinese squadron on duty, armed with I-15bis, took off first. And with the second Chinese squadron at an altitude of about 30 meters, my five almost collided. There was an impression that 4 Chinese planes were controlled by pilots who did not pay attention to strangers and took off as they wanted, not in a straight line, but somehow crookedly, on intersecting courses. I had to give afterburner and literally jump over the Chinese plane. It was already easier for the guys following me, the Chinese managed to slip through.

We took off, and the Japanese were already in the air: about 25 fighters. Looking around, I saw that long shiny objects were falling on our airfield, and I expected explosions, but it turned out that these were tanks worked out by Japanese fighters, which they dropped on our airfield, freeing themselves from all that was superfluous for air combat. So a bully takes off his jacket before a fight. The fate of life and death was decided by moments. While we were gaining altitude with all our might, away from the airfield, in order to get into a fight, a dozen Japanese fighters descended 600 meters and, diving, began firing machine guns at the planes starting after us. However, they failed to shoot down anyone - raising tails of dust, the last of our fighters left the runway, and tracer jets of anti-aircraft machine guns were already stretching from the ground towards the Japanese, which, however, had rather a symbolic meaning.

The attacking Japanese fighter group was covered by a group of the second tier, operating at an altitude of up to 5000 meters, whose planes, like kites from heaven, looked out for a target and rushed at it in a vertical dive flight, then sharply left the attack and became a "candle" climbing to the previous height. For the first time I observed the battle tactics of Japanese fighters, but immediately appreciated the power of the I-98 engines - machines of a new modification. There were no such cars on Khalkhin Gol. The Japanese aviation industry responded instantly to the needs of the army. I-98 was a magnificent modern machine, covered with a thin duralumin sheet, equipped with 4 machine guns: three medium and one heavy type"Colt", with a powerful 14-cylinder "two-row star" engine in a scrupulous Japanese performance. [Perhaps under the I-98 brand, D.P. Panov means the Japanese Ki-27 fighter, but he did not have such strong weapons. ] Our "Chizhiks" in pursuit of the Japanese monoplane on the "candle", could pursue it only the first 250 meters up, and then the engine lost power and choked. I had to roll over the wing and get into horizontal flight on turns, and hang out like shit in an ice hole, waiting for the Japanese, who had come out with his "candle" to a height of more than 1100 meters, to look around and outline a new victim for his swift peck from a great height.

After takeoff, gaining about 4000 meters of altitude, we turned around to attack the enemy from the upper echelon, with the sun behind our backs and rushed to the place of the air battle, which was already beginning: a huge carousel of fighters chasing each other was spinning over the airfield. The Japanese followed their previous tactics: the lower group conducted air combat on turns and combat turns, and the upper one spun, looking for a victim for a dive attack. Our squadron, divided into 2 groups of 5 aircraft, attacked the lower group of the enemy from 2 sides: Grisha Vorobyov started the top five on the left, and I on the right. The Japanese carousel crumbled and the battle became chaotic. We led it according to the principle of "pair" - one attacks, and the other covers it, while the Japanese acted on the principle of collective responsibility - the upper ones covered the lower ones. The Japanese way of fighting was noticeably more effective.

So, perhaps it has come main point in the life of a fighter pilot - an air battle with the enemy. It is always a matter of life - win or be defeated, live or die, which must be answered without delay. The handle of the gas sector of the motor is given forward to the stop and the engine trembles, giving everything it can. Pilot's hands on the trigger for machine guns. The heart beats in a frantic rhythm, and the eyes are looking for a goal. It is during exercises that they look into the "tube" of the sight, and in battle the machine gun is fired "like a hunter": you point the nose of the aircraft at the enemy and open fire, making adjustments in the course of the flight of tracer bullets. Yes, do not forget to turn your head more often, looking under the tail of your plane, has the enemy appeared there?

Sometimes people ask me: "How did you get out of a perennial air meat grinder alive?" The answer is simple: "I was not too lazy to turn my head, since my neck is short and my head turns easily, like a tank turret." I always saw the enemy in the air and could at least approximately predict his maneuver. Yes, and apparently the parents gave brains that can constantly keep the whole picture of air combat in themselves.

At first, complete chaos reigned and it was necessary to shoot at random. Then my attention focused on the secretary of our squadron party bureau, Lieutenant Ivan Karpovich Rozinka, who, having chosen a target for himself, bravely attacked it in a dive and, having caught up with the enemy aircraft, opened fire from his 4 machine guns. The Japanese plane was engulfed in flames, it crashed to the ground, turning into a fireball. But the upper echelon of the Japanese did not spin in vain. When Rozinka took his plane out of a dive, it was immediately attacked by 2 Japanese upper echelon fighters, and the Chizhik was set on fire in the first bursts. The hit was so accurate, and the petrol tanks so full, that the "Chizhik" did not even reach the ground. The fiery torch that he turned into cut off his path at about 500 meters. I don’t know if Ivan Karpovich was wounded, or simply didn’t have time to jump out of the flaming car, but at that moment he found his fiery death in the sky of China. Rozinka was loved in the squadron. It was a calm, reasonable, intelligent pilot. He left a family. Before leaving, a son was born. As in life: Styopa Suprun was eager to become famous, and Ivan Rozinka died.

I shuddered with burning resentment, seeing the death of a comrade, and rushed towards one of the Japanese who shot him down. In the usual manner of the Japanese, placing the plane with a candle, he came out of the attack, gaining altitude, just past the pair where I was leading. The follower was Sasha Kondratyuk. I approached the Japanese, coming out of the attack, and attacked him from a very convenient position - from the side, when he was flying vertically, facing me with the top of his head, under the plexiglass cap that the Japanese I-98s were equipped with. I saw the pilot well and opened fire a little earlier. The Japanese flew into the fiery stream and flared up like a torch. First, gasoline splashed on the left wing, apparently the bullets hit the gas tank and the plane was immediately engulfed in flames, ending in a plume of smoke. The Japanese, in a fever, performed a “candle” for another 200 meters, but then rolled over over the wing and, becoming in horizontal flight, pulled his plane engulfed in flames to the east, towards his airfield. In battle, there is no time for curiosity, however, natural, what happened to my opponent ...

My attention turned to other Japanese, and Chinese observers from the ground later reported that the Japanese plane did not reach the front line - its plane broke off and the pilot left the plane, descending by parachute. The Chinese captured the Japanese and brought him to the airfield.

Having learned about this, in the evening after the battle, we began to ask the Commander-in-Chief of the Chinese Air Force, General Zhao-Zhou, who flew after us to the airfield to show us the captured pilot. Zhao - Zhou at first got out, explaining that he was sitting in some shed, and then he began to explain to us that the pilot, in general, was no longer there, and they would show us his uniform. They brought some poor clothes and slippers on thick felt with laces. As we learned later, the Chinese airfield servant, according to the Chinese custom, took the Japanese by the arms and legs and, on command: "Ai-tsoli!", "One or two took", tore him to pieces ...

War is a terrible thing. Judging by his aerial maneuvers, the Japanese was a good pilot and a brave guy who had bad luck, which could happen to any of us. But the Chinese peasants, dressed in soldier's uniform, whom the Japanese pilots killed by the tens of thousands, could be understood. In war, there is no absolutely right and absolutely wrong. In any case, this story left a heavy aftertaste in my soul. Yes, and I myself could have been set on fire immediately after the attack on the Japanese. Well, Sasha Kondratyuk drove off the fighter, which was attached to my tail.

Kolya Kuzmin shot down another enemy, attacking him from the lower hemisphere, under the stomach, just as the Japanese was trying to attack our aircraft in the most vulnerable position. No wonder they say: "do not dig another hole." The air battle over the Liuzhou airfield flared up. The Chinese pilots, having lost one aircraft, descended to a height of up to 100 meters and circled around the airfield there, watching how we were fighting. The first group of Japanese from the lower tier, having apparently shot their cartridges and used up fuel, gathered away from the airfield and went east. They acted clearly and disciplined following the commands transmitted by radio. They were replaced by a new dozen fighters, which took on us with fresh forces, after dropping outboard gas tanks on the airfield field. The Japanese fought competently, not by numbers, but by skill. There were about 3 times fewer of them, but thanks to the correct tactical pattern of the battle and the actual non-participation of the Chinese in it, we had a pretty hard time.

However, our guys were inflamed. A double attack by Kostya Kokkinaki and Sasha Mikhailov set fire to another Japanese fighter, and so far we managed without new losses. The battle lasted for about 40 minutes, enough for the pilot to sweat and dry 40 times when it became clear that the enemy, who had lost 4 aircraft, was starting to leave him. We did not pursue the Japanese and there was not enough fuel left, and there was no particular desire, to be honest.

And where was our glorious ace Styopa Suprun, who was sitting at the control stick of a rather powerful I-16 cannon fighter, the last word in Soviet aircraft construction? None of the pilots who participated in it somehow noticed him in battle. But he could have asked, sweeping like a formidable meteor to the Japanese such pepper with his 2 guns, caliber 23 mm, as he had threatened more than once on the ground. It turned out that Styopa's Moscow apartment, honorary titles and titles, free bachelor life, caviar sandwiches were somehow more expensive than military glory. And so it happened that by the time we took off on the Timbo command, Stepan and his wingman, Yasha Moroz, a wonderful person and my friend, were late and took off only when the air battle was already in full swing and the Japanese had no time for a couple of starting fighters . While the "Ishachki" were gaining altitude at a distance from the airfield, and turning around, looking out for the enemy, about half an hour passed. Obviously, seeing that the Japanese were slowly folding, Styopa decided to show his great prowess, but not knowing the tactics of the Japanese, he began to approach the scene at high altitude, where he ran into Japanese cover fighters.

A pair of Japanese fighters, without any respect for a member of the Soviet government, chased Styopa for a long time, and Yasha, as he himself claimed, tried to protect him. In any case, the facts were as follows: the "ace" aircraft received 31 bullet holes in the fuselage and planes, and 8 bullets hit the armored back covering the pilot from behind, which meant that the Japanese fighter freely went into Stepan's tail and hit him as he wanted. This, of course, was surprising for such a thunderstorm of gardens and orchards as Styopa Suprun ...

After landing, the shocked Yasha Moroz talked about all the ups and downs of saving the famous ace. But Styopa was deathly pale and remarkably silent. A few days later, Kachanov-Volgin, the chief military adviser in China, flew to our airfield, already in Guilin, where we retreated from Liuzhou, and after a short conversation with Styopa, without explaining anything to anyone, put him on a plane and took him to Chongqing. Together with the famous ace, who was saving his precious life, the commander of our squadron, Grinya Vorobyov, flew away, in whose eyes, after meeting with the Japanese, the expression of mortal fright did not pass. Grisha immediately fell ill, coughing terribly and, as he himself assured, spitting up blood. So we were left without outstanding air fighters. Instead of the commander, Sasha Mikhailov remained. I must say that this only had a positive effect on the further course of our military operations.

A couple of hours after landing, upon leaving the battlefield, we began to calm down a bit. The results of the collision with Japanese fighters were favorable for us: according to the Chinese, 2 more Japanese fighters fell short of reaching the front line, and thus we lost only the bright memory of Ivan Karpovich Rozinka and one Chinese pilot, while shooting down 6 enemy aircraft. We suffered the loss of Ivan Karpovich painfully.

In addition, many of our planes were hit by bullets. In the evening we were evacuated from the airfield to a rest home, which was located about 15 kilometers from the airfield. And they did exactly the right thing: with the onset of darkness, the Japanese bombers again took up our airfield and bombed it until the morning: every 40 minutes a "nine" flew in and dropped bombs on the Liuzhou airfield. The roar of bombs and flashes of explosions haunted us all night. When dawn came and the bombardment of the airfield stopped, we decided that all our aircraft had been destroyed. But when we left for the airfield at dawn, we made sure that most of our planes were not there at all. The Chinese drove them away and hid them in the mountains. The airfield was severely disabled by deep craters, but we found a narrow takeoff strip.

The Chinese General Zhao Zhou ordered all fighters: both ours and the Chinese, to fly away from the front line, to the Guilin airfield, because if the Japanese kill our fighters, then there will simply be no one to defend Chongqing. And that would be a very possible outcome. After all, the Chinese Air Force had only up to 100 fighters, and the enemy had about 1000 and could freely maneuver, creating an advantage in the air. And the quality of Japanese aircraft was higher. Our success in the first battle was due to the fact that the Japanese did not yet know our tactics, there were much more of us and we fought over our own airfield.

All serviceable aircraft soon took off and left for the Guilin airfield, which was about 300 kilometers away. I couldn't follow their example as my plane was in need of minor repairs. During a night bombardment, a clod of earth fell on my I-15bis, which remained in the parking lot, and pierced the plane. They had to be repaired. Styopa Suprun's plane was also repaired.

By noon on December 23, I, accompanied by a group of Chinese, buried the remains of our pilot Ivan Karpovich Rozinka at the local cemetery. Remains is too strong a word. Only one left left hand and everything else burned down. After this sad funeral, which marked the beginning of what seems to be an endless line of funerals for pilots from the units where I was a commissar and fought, I took my repaired aircraft and left for Guilin. Mountains and valleys flashed under the wing, I went to the settlement area, but did not find the airfield. The city of Guilin itself was in place, but the airfield disappeared somewhere. I circled over Guilin for a long time at an altitude of 1500 meters and, not finding an airfield, decided to return to Liuzhou, where I showed up 2.5 hours after my departure, before which I managed to say goodbye to everyone. Stepan Suprun met me at the airport and we, together wondering at such a strange opportunity that happened to me, set off on our way back after I had rested for an hour and my plane was refueled with gasoline.

This time the airfield was found. As it turned out, for the first time I was mistaken for a Japanese. The planes were hidden in a cave, there were no signs of life at the airfield, and he himself merged perfectly with the surrounding plain. When we arrived for the second time, a "T" sign was posted on the runway, which helped us orient ourselves.

As you know, you cannot run away from your weakness. We left the front-line airfield, and the Japanese followed us. Japanese bombers, all night, from December 23 to 24, 1939, bombed the Liuzhou airfield, and Guilin also got it, though to a lesser extent. We must pay tribute to the Chinese command, which skillfully maneuvered its aviation forces, transferring them from airfield to airfield and thus getting out of the attack of the Japanese Air Force. Very often, Japanese bombers dropped their cargo on empty Chinese airfields or aircraft mock-ups.

On December 25, the Japanese, having received a "tattoo" from their intelligence, seriously took up us at the Guilin airfield. The pilots were finishing their breakfast when the command "Timbo" was given. Japanese bombers and fighters were heading towards our airfield. As soon as ours managed to take off, like Japanese fighters, there were about 30 of them, they imposed a battle at an altitude of 1000 meters. The fighters pinned us down, and at that time the bombers from a height of 3000 meters dropped 1000-kg bombs on the airfield of the airfield. After that, the Japanese fighters began to withdraw from the battle, and our "Chizhiks" could not keep up with them.

I must say that when I write "we" in relation to the pilots who participated in this battle, then, obviously, the habit of associating myself with the pilots of our squadron affects here. At that time, I was on the ground and lying in a fanza, seized by the first attack of tropical malaria, which then pursued me for many years. The Japanese fighters were assisted by a "fifth column" consisting of Chinese malarial mosquitoes. They disabled more of our pilots than the enemy. I was lying under a warm blanket, I was pounding, the temperature was up to 40 degrees, and my lips were covered with ulcers. Nevertheless, having heard the thunder of battle, I went out to the threshold of the fanza. I must say that when you look from below, the advantage of the Japanese fighters is especially noticeable. They flew to us at the Guilin airfield, covering a distance of several hundred kilometers and fought, dropping outboard gas tanks made of cardboard, which clung to for long-range flight. Their I-98 fighter with retracted landing gear sometimes reached a speed of 500 kilometers, and our morally and physically outdated whatnot I-15bis with a non-retractable landing gear in the most favorable conditions and without additional external tanks developed speeds of only up to 300 kilometers. [The Japanese Ki-43 fighter, if that was it, did indeed have a retractable landing gear. However, these machines were put into mass production only in January 1941 and, therefore, could not fight in the skies of China in December 1940. ]

Perhaps, when some ace tested an ideally made model in ideal meteorological conditions at the factory airfield, it gave even more. But we then flew in real combat conditions. As I already wrote, the difference was also striking in the vertical: for a combat turn, the I-15bis could gain a maximum of 500 meters in height, and the I-98 more than 700 meters, and this element, the unfinished Nesterov loop, from which you go into horizontal flight by flipping over the wing , which is similar to the famous Immelmann, only with a slope, is often decisive in a duel of fighters. I'm not talking about the pursuit of the Japanese, making a "candle", which we had to soon stop. To "play" with an airplane, as the "leader of the peoples" called on us, heroism alone is not enough, you also need good reliable equipment. And our I-15bis alone "bast shoes" took almost a quarter of the speed. This aircraft by that time had long deserved an honorable retirement.

By the way, one of the Japanese bombs during the raid on the Guilin airfield, with a direct hit, landed on the I-15bis aircraft of our commander Grini Vorobyov, who, due to a strong cough, was hiding in a shelter. The plane was blown into small pieces, which made Grinya very happy, who now had every reason for an early departure to his homeland. As I already mentioned, Suprun and Grinya were taken away by the chief military adviser Kachanov, who gave us the order to fly back to Chongqing. Chiang Kai-Shek was afraid that the Japanese would crush his already few aircraft, and the capital would be left without cover. We had to fly through the mountains. After a short preparation, on December 27, 1939, having completed our raid to the south, in which we lost a comrade, we set off on the return journey. Following the Sikorsky, we flew over the first mountain range and landed safely at the Ji-Dzyan intermediate airfield.

On the morning of December 28, the weather deteriorated sharply, looming clouds brought uninterrupted two-week rains. And as always, under the veil of rain, it was possible to look around a bit and get acquainted with the life of China. The way to Chongqing was ordered to us - not to fly through the mountain ranges I have already mentioned in bad weather, to certain death. True, Styopa Suprun and Grinya Vorobyov, together with the chief military adviser Kachanov, still managed to slip to Chongqing, under the very nose of the impending bad weather on the day of our arrival in Jijiang. We did not see more of these brave heroes, who apparently decided to leave us a piece of military glory, in China. The calculation was simple: you need to return as the first hero to collect foam, because when there are a lot of heroes returning, there are not enough gingerbread for everyone. However, without them, the air became clearly cleaner ...

On January 22, 1940, our planes jumped over the surface of the Guanba airfield, from which we seemed to have been flying all our lives. Thus ended our rush to the South, which nearly cost the lives of the pilots of the entire squadron, absolutely meaningless from a military point of view, but very interesting from a cognitive and tourist point of view, which allowed Styopa Suprun, who arrived in Moscow before us, to add the title of conqueror to his title of king of test pilots Japanese fighter aircraft. Our greyhound newspapermen immediately "rolled out" the episodes of his next epic exploits in the sky of the South of China. And Ivan Rozinka died, about whom no one even mentioned a word. However, we were no strangers to this - in Russia, the planned heroes almost always gained fame on the bones of silent soldiers, who, indeed, were, according to Napoleon, the manure of history. These fine people were not manure, but they were treated that way.

Styopa Suprun, who always felt the situation subtly and appeared in Moscow before anyone else, according to his story, even visited Stalin's dacha, in the Perkhushkovo region near Moscow, and, together with the leader himself and other members of the Politburo, sipped tea with jam, painting the meteorite tracks of his cannon fighter, without analysis of the smashing Japanese in the Chinese sky. Styopa was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union, and his friend and adjutant, as well as his faithful drinking buddy Kostya Kokkinaki, were given the Order of the Red Star. Marshal Timoshenko did not transfer our award lists to the award department of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, saying that the junk that we brought was enough. This was apparently the information of one of our illustrious aces. Of course, if these papers could be attached to "legs" and proper information was received at Stalin's dacha, guarded by "blue-headed ones", then things could turn out differently.

God bless him, with awards for himself personally, but it was a shame for the guys, and after returning home, I decided to visit Suprun and Kokkinaki, to remind about people whom I don’t know if they considered comrades. But after all, Styopa was a member of the government. And I went to him at the address indicated to me, in a gray house on the left side of Gorky Street, if you go down to Manezhnaya Square. In a 3-room apartment, very poorly furnished, I found his mother and sister. My mother, who spoke Ukrainian, in an aggressive rural style familiar to me from the Kuban, began to be surprised that I did not know about Stepan's stay at the airfield in Shchelkovo, where he lives permanently and almost never visits Moscow. I took the train and went to Shchelkovo.

Arrived in the evening. Stepan was not at home, but he did not have to wait long. An "emka" rolled up, at the wheel, which our valiant "ace" was sitting on. We greeted warmly and went up to Stepan's 3-room apartment, furnished with a whole battery of empty bottles, mostly from wine and cognac. Unaccustomed from childhood to the national tradition, Stepan did not recognize vodka. I knew this feature of his from China. On a bare table covered with newspapers, we drank a bottle of sour wine, which had nothing to eat. Of the furniture, one could also note a double metal bed and a leatherette sofa. I told Styopa that the guys were offended: several months had passed since our return from China, and there was no word or spirit about the awards. Even though he got a Hero himself.

Styopa thoughtfully replied that yes, he received the Hero, but he was at the reception of Stalin himself. Styopa liked to emphasize that he was a bird of a different flight, not like us. He is an eagle and we are chickens. True, in air battles it was the other way around, but in battle there are their own orders, and in Moscow's higher spheres - their own. Styopa, not without pride, also showed the highest Chinese order, which Madame Minister of Aviation of China secretly obtained for him and his faithful envoy Kostya. This order, placed in a neat box, was about 100 grams of gold in the shape of a cross, in the center of it there is a blue enamel multi-horned star with a reverse swastika on it, which, according to Chinese concepts, was supposed to bring happiness.

Styopa solemnly showed me the order and, by God, was sincerely proud of him, not even allowing the thought that with this award he had offended the pilots of our squadron. Does the feeling of camaraderie live in an army built on servile and servile principles? In fact, at that time there was a procedure according to which all foreign awards brought to the Union were supposed to be donated to our state, receiving domestic ones in return, but Styopa, and Kostya, were in no hurry. Our brave aces - testers have not yet left for China, and they have already been programmed to become heroes. And we, fools, tried. It was not for nothing that Vasya Remnev used to say: "Panteleevich, to hell with these Chinese. Rozinka died and others can be killed. Let's fight slowly so as not to suffer losses. Let the Chinese fight themselves." Sadly, Vasya, who well understood our system and the principles of its work on the distribution of heroes and fools, was largely right. But we still tried and fought honestly.

When we went to bed in Stepan's Shchelkovo apartment - I was on a dermantin sofa, the telephone chime began. Women called who, like the Chinese projectors who lost sight of the Japanese bomber, also lost sight of our valiant sexual ace. Stepan thoughtfully explained: “Today I can’t, well, I just can’t - a friend has arrived. Honestly, I’m not lying,” and then he shouted: “Panteleevich, go to the phone!” An assertive female voice, sounding in a black tube, did not want to hear any of my confirmations and insisted that I must be lying. For some reason, this woman seemed to me with small, very sharp teeth and a long tongue. Half an hour later another called...

In the morning, Styopka assured me that the guys in the squadron could be calm, they had awards in their pockets. He Stepan Suprun will take all measures to push our award lists where it should be. In approximately the same thoughtful tone, Stepan talked to the women who called him, reassuring them and promising something. He took his "emka" from the parking lot, drove me to the ramp where the Moscow train stopped, and saw me off on an empty stomach. When we said goodbye, I noticed an expression of sincere relief on Styopa's face. The scene: "seeing off a comrade", who is by no means one of the "necessary people", he honestly brought to the end, retaining his reputation as a combat pilot. Stepin's "emka" rolled towards the flight canteen, and the train took me away towards Moscow. Of course, we did not see any awards, and Styopa himself soon crashed into the Smolensk swamps on a MiG-3 fighter, which he gave a start in life.

Air battles in the Patriotic War.

On May 12, 1942, before dawn, 7 Su-2 bombers from the 135th LBAP, covered by 8 I-16 aircraft of our 2nd squadron of the 43rd IAP, took to the air and at dawn flew to perform a combat mission that can be compare it to attempting rape with unsuitable means, or the decision of a rabbit to attack a lion. I will remember this day for the rest of my life. Perhaps, there was no more difficult battle in which I had the opportunity to die at least 20 times in my life. The fact that this did not happen, I explain only by what was otherwise written in the book of my fate.

We flew illuminated sunbeams, but the night haze still hung over the earth. It was nothing to fly: 20 kilometers or 3 - 4 minutes. Unfortunately, the contours of the forest in the area of ​​the airfield in two places were very similar to each other and it was easy to confuse them. As if not far from the bank of the Seversky Donets, someone bent an intricate Tatar bow, with a concave middle and two almost identical semicircles along the edges. The airfield was on the left, I knew this well because I took off from it and landed on it even before our retreat. But the navigator - the navigator of the bomber group, flying on the lead aircraft, apparently knew the terrain worse and it became quite obvious that he mixed up the semi-circles very similar to each other and we were flying past the German airfield, turning sideways to it. The target was on our left. Of course, there was no radio on our planes, and in a matter of seconds there was practically no way to point out to the navigator his gross mistake, which was obvious to all the pilots of our squadron, who began to excitedly roll our Ishachki from wing to wing, trying to signal the bombers on the wrong course.

"Airfield on the left!" - terribly swearing, our guys in the cockpits shouted and spat to the side, but the navigator of the bombers stubbornly bent to the right. I made an attempt to enter the formation of the bombers and turn it to the left. But they didn’t understand me, and the bomber pilots showed their fists, gesturing to join their squadron. Finally, the bomber navigator slapped his forehead, and we realized that he was convinced of the mistake. At that moment, the target was 3 to 5 kilometers away. The senior bomber group again made an idiotic decision: to try to make a second circle over the target and still bomb.

I looked to the left: the haze had dissipated and from 2000 meters long trails of dust were perfectly visible, which trailed behind the German fighters rising from the airfield. The day promised to be hot. We were no longer up to fat, but to be alive, but the bombers stubbornly pulled on the target, where there was nothing but an empty field airfield. While we were describing the circle, the German fighters had just gained an altitude of 2000 meters and were right there.

Our "Donkeys" were divided into 2 groups. The first was led by Vasya Shishkin. It included Romanov, Borisov and Kiktenko. This group, marching in the same formation, was responsible for the direct cover of the bombers. I led the second "fettering" group, which included Bubnov, Polyanskikh, Fadeev and Shvets. Enemy fighters, in the event of their attack, were our concern. The piece is not sweet. It was my group that met 10 brand new Me-109Fs, which attacked either us or the bombers. We attacked the Germans, knocking them out of sight and direction of attack, preventing them from setting fire to the bombers. Although, of course, it was hard for our old "Ishachki" armed with 4 machine guns to compete with the forced "Messers" equipped with Swiss automatic guns. Gradually, all this roaring swarm of aircraft, spitting fire at each other and howling engines on bends, went east, crossing the front line. After one of the attacks, I looked down for a fraction of a second and was relieved that we were already over our territory.

And the position of my restraining group was rapidly deteriorating. The fact is that the leader of the bomber group, who had led us into this air trap, now made the simplest decision: throwing bombs anywhere, the bombers gave full throttle and began to leave with a decrease, which immediately made their speed much higher than ours. Soon, the Su-2s stretched out in a swiftly fleeing gut for several kilometers, flying with a huge gap from each other. We were practically losing our last chance to survive, which consisted in the fact that the bombers would become a tight formation and create a dense screen of fire from their turret machine guns, and we would attack the fighters that would try to break through to them. This was our only opportunity to fire our German "colleagues" machine guns, whose machine speed was 1.5 times higher than ours, not to mention the lethal power of their guns. Our unfortunate four "Ishachkov" was spinning in a wild round dance. The only good thing was that most of the German fighters did not waste time on our "snub-nosed", but swiftly rushed past - in pursuit of the bombers.

I realized that things were getting really bad when another dozen German fighters, the formidable multi-role Me-110s, arrived at the scene of the air fight. This powerful, twin-engine, fighter, armed with 2 cannons and 4 machine guns, was then the most powerful fighter of German aviation in terms of firepower, the main enemy of the Allied heavy strategic bombers - the American and British "Flying Fortresses", many of which knocked over burning on German soil not far from the bombed German cities. Our "Ishachek" next to him looked like a coma. However, we also had hope for success, because nearby was the valiant Hero of the Soviet Union Vasya Shishkin, who, judging by the lively description of his drinking buddy Misha Rosenfeld, had already killed such an airy crocodile on his "Seagull" over a settlement unknown to us, which means he had experience in dealing with this machine and knew its weaknesses. But out of the corner of my eye, I noticed that our brave Cavalier of the "Golden Star" joined the wise leader of the bomber group and, also picking up speed, on afterburner with a decrease, quickly leaves the battlefield, apparently not considering it worthy to get involved in such a well-deserved air ace.

The only thing that gave us a chance to survive was the good maneuverability of the Ishachkov. Like sparrows among crows, we fluttered between the Messers' cannon tracks, at the same time, like moths - pushers, we also managed to spin around our rear bombers, trying to cover them. The air battle moved south of the district village of Korocha, where the headquarters of our regiment was located and the 1st squadron under the command of Captain Zhenya Melnikov was sitting. It would be natural to raise this squadron to help us, but Timokhey Syusyukalov, standing at the command post, together with the deputy commander for flight Sorokin and the battalion commissar Shcherbakov, watched the air battle, which they had no desire to get involved in with their mouths open. I don’t know whether Syusyukalov was mortally frightened, or was afraid that our entire regiment would be crushed in the air and he would simply have no one to command, but our “valiant” commander simply threw the 2nd squadron to be devoured by the Germans, who threw up more and more new reinforcements. Probably, from the ground, all this was very reminiscent of the Horts hunting for hares. And our regimental bullies, who forgot where the cockpit was located on the plane, enjoyed the spectacle.

By this time, another eight Messerschmitts appeared on the battlefield, and it turned out that there were 4 Germans for each aircraft of our squadron. And if we take into account that half of our "Ishachkov", led by the hero Vasya Shishkin, broke away from pursuit and, together with 5 bombers, went to the Velikaya Mikhailovka airfield, then for each of our 4 aircraft, covering the remaining 2 bombers, there were 8 "Messerschmitt". Wherever you turn your head - everywhere you are taken at gunpoint or smoky cannon tracks draw your route. The situation was hopeless. I think we were not shot down immediately just because there were too many Germans and they interfered with each other, in a hurry to deal with us. Finally, seeing that it didn’t work out quickly, the Germans used the following tactics: a pair of Messers attacked our Ishachka from the left and right, taking it in pincers, and the other 2 German fighters attacked the bomber.

Our Su-2 had only one machine gun from the defensive armament and was not well covered. True, he also had a machine gun on the planes, but it’s just not clear why he needed them, because he was by no means going to dive this plane, but our wise men, the designers, put only one machine gun in the back. Perhaps this came from the theory of offensive warfare and the idea of ​​military operations as moving only forward, which brought so many troubles to our army ...

Soon I, escorting the bomber, going 100 meters to the left and 50 meters higher, was pincered by a pair of Me-109Fs. From two sides, they fired cannon fire at me, from which I escaped by throwing my "donkey" up, then to the left or right, and after a successful maneuver, he himself tried to attack German aircraft, opening fire from 4 machine guns with his old one, like most in our regiment, after a major overhaul of the machine. And as soon as he managed to fight back, he rushed to the aid of a bomber, knocking down the sight of a German fighter with his fire. This was repeated many times and it is not surprising that soon I was all wet with sweat. My heart was pounding, the engine was overheating, even though all the blinds were open and it wasn't a hot day. It was tobacco, but my heart was beating regularly, my arms and legs were working, the plane was intact, and I was ready to compete with the aces of Richthofen, whom, at a meeting, I could also tell a lot of interesting things from the experience of air battles on a fighter.

My sponsored bomber was still intact, but the one flying to my right came under fire from all the barrels of the Me-110 and, on fire, crashed to the ground near the village of Korocha. Then one of our fighters caught fire. Tolya Shvets competed with 4 Me-109F for a long time, but the forces were too unequal and in the end they set it on fire in front of the cowardly bastard, our regiment commander Timokha Syusyukalov. Tolya died a heroic death, and we buried him near the village of Velikaya Mikhailovka.

Help was nowhere to be found, and we were exhausted. The estimated flight time was coming to an end, we had been fighting the Germans for almost an hour, and the fuel remained at the bottom of the tank. Apparently, the fuel of the Me-109F, which began to leave the battle, was also coming to an end. But the most dangerous enemy - 6 Me-110 aircraft, stubbornly attacked us, apparently having fuel in their tanks and not wanting to leave the battle without prey. Fortunately, the last bomber, which I was covering, suddenly switched to a strafing flight, practically merging with the wooded area and at full throttle began to leave in the direction of its airfield, on which it soon successfully landed.

I would not mind following his example, and it was already time, judging by the remaining fuel, but as soon as I tried to head for my airfield, one of the "Hundred Tens" would definitely catch up with me and impose an air battle. There was such an impression that six of these formidable machines were playing with our two "Ishachki", mine and Lenya Polyansky, like a cat with a mouse, apparently deciding, in the end, to knock us down for a snack of a successful air battle for them. Yes, that's just what makes war so interesting, that until you lose heart, the outcome of the battle is always in the fog, often even contrary to the real balance of power. Gradually, it turned out that Lenya Polyanskikh and I were left face to face each with our opponent. Apparently, 2 German pilots decided to challenge us to the tournament, as in jousting. And so we organized 2 paired roundabouts and began to circle, feeling the enemy’s capabilities and skills in short bursts.

If you imagine my duel with a German as a battle between two systems, then what a more powerful system the German represented, whose plane confidently cut through the air. As I already mentioned, it was twin-engine, with 2 cannons and 4 machine guns. But when I looked closely, I found that there was also a gunner in the cockpit at the back, wielding a large-caliber turret machine gun. My I-16 plane had 4 ShKAS machine guns, 2 of which fired through the propeller, and 2 from the planes with 7.62 mm bullets. In addition, the enemy pilot was perfectly covered by an armored cockpit in front and behind, and my "Ishachok" was completely bulletproof - it was pasted over with plywood. It seemed my chances of success were minimal. But there was nothing to do, and, being brave by necessity, on my moth, sheathed in "monocoque", as aviation plywood was then called, I entered into battle with an armored crocodile.

If in chess it is customary to move with a pawn in front of the queen, then the first step of a flying duel always begins with an attempt to get behind the opponent. And so the German did, coming to me from below from the rear hemisphere. I became in a steep turn. The enemy repeated my maneuver, and we made 2 circles in this position, examining each other. Each of us pulled the control levers more and more strongly in order to go into the enemy's tail and be the first to open fire. This entire battle took place at an altitude of 100 to 200 meters east of the village of Korocha. The engines of our planes were running at full power: the throttle sector of my engine was given forward to the stop, and the cooling shutters were completely open.

I must say that since my plane was lighter, I gained an advantage in maneuver speed and was the first to go into the tail of the Messer, whose pilot clearly showed self-confidence, relying completely on the overwhelming technical superiority of his car and did not take into account some specific points. When I approached the rear hemisphere of the enemy aircraft and began to take it into my sight, the gunner from the cockpit opened intense fire on me. I was saved only by the fact that we were in a deep turn, and the centrifugal force pressed the gunner to the bottom of his cockpit, knocking down the aim. Large-caliber bullets fanned out around my "Donkey", but I remained unharmed due to the fact that both the target and the shooter were in constant motion. Basically, it was a huge success. Finally, I caught sight of the hood of the enemy aircraft and hit it with all my 4 machine guns.

The tracer bullets embedded in the tape helped me determine that I had successfully covered the target. The first visible result of the firing was the gunner's machine gun barrel from the rear cockpit bulging upwards, which usually happens when he is killed. The German pilot apparently realized that everything would not be so simple and abruptly, like a candle, soared up. To be honest, I hoped that his fighting fuse was exhausted, and he would leave me alone, allowing me to safely reach his airfield on the remnants of fuel. But it was clearly a day of unfulfilled hopes. The German again came to my tail, imposing a fight, and we again converged in deep turns. The pilot of the "Hundred and Tenth" began to maneuver, changing the power of his engines, entering the left deep turn, sharply reduced the speed of the left engine, acting accordingly with the right one, when he went into the right turn, simultaneously increasing the power of the other, opposite engine. As a result of these maneuvers, the enemy plane significantly reduced the turn circle and it became more and more difficult for me to escape from his sight, even despite the lower weight and better maneuverability of my machine.

The German seemed to be tightening an air loop around my neck, and, apparently realizing that my song had been sung, relaxed somewhat. As a result, no longer fearing my fire, he freely and relaxedly began to move from the left turn to the right for a moment, identifying his aircraft in the sight of my machine guns. I didn't have time to think that this was my last chance. I simply, with the speed of an electric spark, pressed the trigger, and all my 4 machine guns spat fire, hitting the German on the left engine and gas tanks. "Messer" instantly caught fire and, making a left turn, began to leave to the west in the direction of his airfield near Belgorod.

Struck by such a fantastic success and literally intoxicated by the feeling of luck, I almost rushed to pursue him, but, looking at the arrow of the fuel indicator, I immediately gave up the matter. And, nevertheless, I still managed to see how, having flown 10 kilometers from the place of our fight, the Messer began to fall apart: from the intense heat, its left wing fell off and the plane, from a height of about 100 meters, crashed to the ground . Another burning engine rolled out of the fireball. This victory was the pinnacle of my flying triumph, a hundredfold enhanced by the fact that when I looked at the ground, I saw that our rifle unit was gathering dust along the road, the soldiers of which greeted me passionately, throwing caps into the air. For several seconds I was beside myself with happiness, also because I slightly supported the prestige of aviation, which, through no fault of ours, was very low among the infantrymen, artillerymen and tankers. They even said that before the war, pilots were heroes, and in the war - tankers ...

But the reader will be mistaken if he thinks that my adventures of that hardest day have come to an end. No wonder they say: "Help a person out, and he will find how to harm you." Before I had time to catch my breath, Lenya Polyanskikh appeared in my field of vision, who was already clearly exhausted in an air duel with his Messer. "Well, things will be easier here - there are two of us," I thought, and rushed to his rescue. But as soon as I intercepted the enemy on myself, it seemed, giving him the opportunity to go into the tail of the German, as Lenya left the air battle and went to our airfield, and I was left alone with the new enemy, for whom I had almost no ammunition, fuel, and, frankly, strength. I even took my breath away from resentment towards Lyonya. Well, oh well, let's forgive him for this, who soon died - over one of the Don crossings near the Ilovlya station, shot down by Messers.

According to the flying handwriting, I immediately felt that my second opponent was by no means a gift. I made 2 deep turns and, realizing that the tank was almost empty, I began to leave the battle for my airfield. And here I had to make sure that someone was praying hard for me. When exiting the turn with a left turn to the east, I fell under the cannon jet of the Messerschmitt pilot, who, with great skill, managed, almost in one place, to turn around and from a distance of 700 meters, hit my Ishachka. I did not expect this, having decided that the German would not shoot from such a hopeless distance, but he turned out to be a master of maneuver and aerial shooting. I survived by a miracle. A cannon-machine gun jet knocked one of my upper machine guns out of the mount, which flew off somewhere, damaged the engine, cut the fairing of my aircraft into tatters - from the rear armored back to the tail, miraculously not breaking the plane itself. One of the bullets pierced the collar of my flying raglan, and already on the ground, a parachute laying soldier found another bullet that pierced the parachute. With a sharp drop, I began to disengage from the battle, but I think that my song would have been sung if the German had more fuel in his tanks. After chasing me a little more, he fell behind.

I think that one can imagine in what state I, 20 minutes later than the whole group, landed at the airfield near the village of Velikaya Mikhailovka. My legs gave way when I got out of the cab, and when I sat down on a stump under a tree already covered with spring greenery, my knees shook for a long time and I could not do anything with them. My plane's engine was so overheated that it continued to run like it was crazy for another 10 minutes, even when the technician turned off the gas valve. I walked away from the parking lot, lay down on the airplane cover and instantly fell asleep - as if I had fallen into a deep well. To understand how a combat pilot sleeps, having just left 20 deaths, you need, God forbid anyone, to try. I just can't find the right words...

And from this deep well, reviving my sleep organism, they suddenly began to pull me out: they tirelessly pulled, pushed aside and tried to put me on my feet. In the end, I still got up, staggering, hardly forcing my eyes to open. What extraordinary circumstances prompted me to raise? It turns out that another spectator of the air battle came to our airfield: the head of the political department of our Air Army, Colonel Nikolai Mikhailovich Shcherbina - medium height, smart, with a mustache under his nose under Charlie Chaplin, whom he slightly looked like. What did this political film actor, whom I mention while working on this book, want, half a kilometer from 54 Engels Street in the city of Lvov, where Shcherbina lived after the war? But what could the head of the political department of the army want from me, who never boarded a plane and was appointed to his position after working as a propagandist for the Kyiv Special Military District - our troops lost battle after battle, and political workers rose in positions like crows jumping on branches. During the Kyiv cauldron, Shcherbina, who had a lot of time to calculate options for saving life, was the first to end up in Kharkov. Now he demanded from me a political report and a story about an air battle - he could not bear a few hours to satisfy his curiosity. In a slurred tongue, I briefly told him about the last battle. Shcherbina gasped, clicked his tongue and felt sorry for the 3 communists who died in this battle. Yes, what else could he say, completely unaware of what we do in the air.

By the evening of the same day, when I had a little sleep, the bodies of those dead communists, our comrades - pilots: Anatoly Shvets and the navigator of one of the light bombers, were brought to our airfield - the body of the pilot burned to the ground. He was a tall handsome man with blue eyes, similar to Tukhachevsky, very calm in character, a good comrade and a brave pilot. Unfortunately, I don't remember his last name. And we fought with Tolya Shvets from the very beginning. He was stocky, of a bearish build, with a thick neck, slightly clumsy, with a kindly gentle character, silent, very reliable and steadfast in battle, but, unfortunately, slightly phlegmatic, rarely turning his head in different directions, and most importantly, not wanting to understand this major mistake despite all my remarks, boy...

If we understand the cause-and-effect relationships, then the death of Tolya, of course, is on the conscience of Timokha Syusyukalov, who watched from the ground as we were beaten in the air, but did not raise the 1st squadron into battle. The commander of this squadron, Zhenya Melnikov, even wanted to take off to help us, but Timokha did not allow him. When I asked Timokha head-on about the reason for his behavior, he escaped with chuckles and grimaces and his favorite saying about a war without losses that does not happen, sticking out his heroic chest with a wheel, decorated with the Orders of Lenin and the Red Banner received for Spain, which turned out to be sheer jokes compared to the porridge brewed in our own land. We buried our friends according to all the rules of a military ritual, under a salute. After the funeral, a piece did not go down anyone's throat, and everyone sat as if petrified.

But this battle became an important milestone in my biography of the pilot: it showed what loads I still have to endure during this war and where the limit of my capabilities is. After all, the pilot must know his body, like the engine of the aircraft. This battle became a kind of starting point for me - if it is easier for a person to endure difficulties, knowing that it was worse, then it is easier for a pilot to defeat the enemy, knowing that there were tests and more serious ones.

By May 1945, the war was almost over, but on May 2-4 we were still flying to cover our advancing troops northwest of Brno, where the Germans were attached to bomb them, inflicting considerable losses. In general, the Germans took root in Czechoslovakia, which they had ruled since 1939, so much that it seemed that they were not even going to leave here: they fought at full strength. I flew out as part of a group of eight under the command of the deputy commander of the regiment for flight training, Misha Semyonov. Not far from Brno, we met with 12 Messers, which, covering their bombers, were moving in two groups of 6 aircraft each. Misha Semyonov ordered on the radio 4 of our aircraft of the Lobka flight to climb to 3000 meters and, once above the enemy, attack the Messers from a dive. So we did - I flew as part of this link.

With a left combat turn, we sharply gained altitude of about 1000 meters above the enemy aircraft and transferred the Yaks into a dive. The attack turned out to be unusually successful: Lieutenants Kovalev and Urazaliev immediately set fire to 2 Me-109s. After a successful attack from the upper hemisphere, our link made a combat turn and again went to climb, again being 3000 meters above the ground. The Germans clearly did not assess the dangers of our maneuver, apparently calculating the combat capabilities of our aircraft based on the characteristics of the Yak-1.

But the Yak-3 was a qualitatively different aircraft and had much better flight and tactical qualities. We have already beaten "Messers" at all seams. While we were gaining altitude, the second link, led by Semyonov, started an air battle on the verticals with the second six. Soon another "Messer", leaving a smoky trail, pulled to the ground. The Germans realized that something was wrong, and each of them began to leave the battlefield on their own. We hung on their tails and easily caught up in level flight, which was the first such surprise for the German pilots in the entire war.

I caught up with the "Messer" - the powerful engine of my "Yak" shook at full throttle, reduced the distance in about a minute and took the enemy plane into sight. From a distance of about 80 meters, he pressed the cannon button. "Shvak" did not fail and worked flawlessly, evenly releasing shells at the target. The enemy plane caught fire and began to turn sharply to the left, but then, when the fire on board intensified, the pilot immediately ejected and safely descended on a yellow parachute, and the plane crashed into the ground from a dive and burned out.

It was my last air battle, the last Messerschmitt, the 13th in a row, among those enemy aircraft, which, in all honesty, I can say that I personally shot down. I know that our reader is spoiled by ringing numbers, exceeding a hundred enemy aircraft shot down by Kozhedub and Pokryshkin. Well, smiling skeptically when describing some of the exploits of our aces, I will not once again question the military deeds of these guys. I will modestly report only my real result, which is quite good, in my opinion. And to anyone who considers him too modest, I advise, although God forbid he does this, and it is impossible in reality, to shoot down at least one modern metal aircraft, piloting a wooden moth like I-16. And I succeeded. And I'm proud of it. And I think it's legal.

P anov Pyotr Yakovlevich - gun commander of the 3rd battery of the 729th separate anti-tank artillery battalion (16th tank corps, 2nd tank army, Central Front), sergeant.

Born on September 6, 1912 in the village of Pelym, now the Garinsky district of the Sverdlovsk region, in a peasant family. Russian. Graduated from 3 classes. He worked in a communications office in the village of Kondinskoye, Tyumen Region.

In the Red Army since May 1942. He graduated from the courses of junior commanders. In the army since 1943. He was enlisted in the 726th anti-tank fighter division, just on the eve of heavy fighting on the Oryol-Kursk Bulge.

That memorable battle for Panov began on the morning of July 7, 1943. Almost 100 German tanks moved to the location of the division, they were supported by aircraft. The division began to retreat to another position, and Panov's gun crew was ordered to cover this redeployment. It seemed as if heaven and earth were on fire from explosions. Tanks, planes, artillery were all thrown by the enemy at a handful of fighters. But the nerves of the Siberians did not give up. The gun crew of Pyotr Panov destroyed 11 tanks, including 5 "tigers". At the same time, the commander retained all personnel and weapons.

At order of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of August 7, 1943 for the exemplary performance of combat missions of the command on the front of the fight against the Nazi invaders and the courage and heroism shown in this, to sergeant Panov Petr Yakovlevich was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union with the Order of Lenin and the Gold Star medal (No. 1089).

"In such a fiery hell,- says in the award sheet, - ... Panov's crew knocked out 11 enemy tanks, including 5 "tigers", destroyed more than two battalions of soldiers and officers. The personnel and the cannon remained unscathed in this battle.

Soon Pyotr Panov was sent to the artillery school. But when he learned about the death of his brother Procopius at the front, he decided to take his fighting place at the helm of the aircraft. To do this, he had to go to aviation school. But the pilot Panov did not have to beat the enemy in the air, the war ended, and the profession he received was useful in peaceful days.

After the war, in 1947-1959, he worked as an aviation commander in Salekhard. For more than a decade and a half, he mastered the Tyumen North. For conscientious and trouble-free work, he was awarded the Aeroflot Excellence badge.

Awarded the Order of Lenin (08/07/1943), Patriotic War 1st degree (6.04.1985), medals.

A bust of the Hero is installed in the park of the city of Khanty-Mansiysk. In Tyumen, on the facade of the house where he lived - a memorial plaque.

From the memoirs of Panov P.Ya.

It all started at dawn on July 7th. At the position of our artillery battalion, which opened fire on German tanks, retaliatory strikes from the air and advancing armored vehicles of the enemy hit. The division withdrew after heavy losses, and I remained with my crew for cover. Hitler's tanks went on the offensive: I counted 23 vehicles, and we have one gun.

The duel began. I set fire to the first three tanks. And I did not immediately notice how nine cars went around to the left, and the rest - to the right along the front. I thought at first that it was me, as promised, that help was coming. But I saw crosses on the sides. The calculation changed its position, and we opened fire on this nine. 8 vehicles were hit with armor-piercing shells.