Korean Combat (Yeoman Series) Page 6

  Yeoman felt utterly detached, as though surveying the whole scene from the outside, as an impartial observer. The aircraft around him were little more than silvery streaks, flashing across his field of vision for a brief instant. Once or twice, a string of glowing coals that were the 37-mm shells from a MiG-15’s nose cannon drifted past with astonishing slowness, to fall harmlessly to earth; an experienced pilot could even avoid the 37-mms, if he saw them coming in time and had plenty of speed in hand. The MiG’s two 23-mm cannon, which had a far higher muzzle velocity and carried more shells in their magazines, were much more dangerous.

  The MiGs, as far as their pilots found it possible to do so, were attacking from astern in pairs, forcing the Meteors to keep on turning constantly, for the British fighters had no hope of out-running their opponents. The best the Australians could do was keep on turning and try and get an occasional shot at an MiG as it went past.

  One pilot in Anzac Baker section was lucky, and saw his shells knock large chunks off a MiG, which flicked away in a series of rapid rolls. Then he himself came under attack and took hits in the rear fuselage; with his Meteor shuddering alarmingly, he broke off the action and headed for base.

  Suddenly, the MiGs ceased their savage attacks and dived away at high speed over the Yalu, pursued for a short distance — until they reached the river-by a dozen Sabres which, having dealt with their own opposition, had now come down to the assistance of the Meteors. With their fuel now running low, the British and American jets turned away from the combat area and headed back towards their respective airfields.

  The communist pilots had shown themselves to be more efficient and aggressive than ever before, and Yeoman thought it little short of a miracle that only one Meteor had been lost, although three others had been quite seriously damaged. As he flew back to Taegu at the head of a very sober group of pilots, something about the action they had just fought niggled at the back of his mind; he could not put his finger on whatever it was, so he dismissed it for the time being.

  Later that day, however, things began to fall into place when Yeoman received an urgent summons to attend the Joint Operations Centre in Pusan. He flew down in one of the Squadron’s Meteor 7 trainers, and when he arrived he discovered that a conference had been called by the general commanding the US Fifth Air Force to discuss what appeared to be a new development in the enemy’s air fighting tactics.

  The conference, with the general in the chair, had already started when Yeoman arrived. A dozen men, much be-medalled, were seated at a long table; Jim Callender was one of them. The general waved Yeoman to a vacant place and introduced him to the others, who were all Americans.

  ‘I have invited Wing Commander Yeoman to take part in this conference for two reasons,’ the general explained. ‘One: he is the Royal Air Force liaison officer who has been responsible for introducing the British Meteor jets into action, and two: he is probably the most experienced fighter leader in this room, with one possible exception.’ The general glanced briefly at Callender, who looked at Yeoman and winked.

  The general leaned forward, resting his elbows on the table. He surveyed the others for a moment, as though collecting his thoughts, and then said:

  ‘Gentlemen, we have evidence that the air war over Korea may soon begin to take a new and, for the United Nations, very unfavourable turn. I’d like you to pass this folder round and take a look at the contents. The photographs inside it, taken this very week, depict three major airfields which are now under construction inside a twenty-mile radius north of the Chongchon River, in North Korea.’

  The general tapped the table top with his index finger, as though to emphasize his point.

  ‘Our Intelligence people think that this can only mean one thing/ he continued. ‘They believe that those airfields, when they are completed, will be used as MiG bases in a bid to establish air superiority as far south as Pyongyang. I don’t have to tell you that if this is allowed to happen, our B-29 and fighter-bomber attacks on targets in the north will become prohibitively costly. We have to hit those airfields quickly and repeatedly, and so deny their use to the enemy. It will not be easy; as you will see from the reconnaissance photographs, the communists have set up a lot of flak in the vicinity.’

  The general paused, then went on:

  ‘This is by no means all. There is also evidence to show that the Reds are making increasing use of radar in carrying out interceptions at night. This is a serious development, because as you know most of our B-29 missions have been flown at night lately for reasons of safety. On several occasions during the day, our fighter-bombers have been ‘bounced’ through cloud by MiG-15s, which were clearly steered to their targets by radar controllers; returning B-29 crews, meantime, have reported encountering what appear to be radar-directed searchlights and anti-aircraft batteries. We think, too, that the Reds have at least one squadron of MiGs equipped with airborne intercept radar, and that these aircraft act as ‘master’ night fighters. Once they have located the bomber stream, they fly immediately above it and guide other fighters to the scene.’

  The general’s face had become very grim.

  ‘Three nights ago,’ he said, ‘four B-29s of the 19th Bombardment Group were suddenly lit up by searchlights after being shadowed for several minutes by an unidentified aircraft. A few moments later they were heavily attacked by MiG-15s, which shot down two and damaged a third so badly that it crashed on landing at Kimpo.’

  The general leaned back in his chair again, and folded his arms. ‘It comes down to this,’ he said. ‘All of a sudden, the Reds have reached a new level of expertise, and we think we know why. The evidence is everywhere, including in the air tactics they have begun to adopt. Now, Colonel Callender has a word or two to say on that score. Colonel?’

  Callender cleared his throat, then said quietly: ‘Thank you, sir. As you know, gentlemen, the Reds have been very quiet for the past couple of weeks. Oh, we’ve seen ’em all right, but they’ve stayed on the other side of the river all the time. It’s as though they were training a bunch of green pilots, getting them used to the sight of us from a respectful distance. Then, suddenly, wham! Seventy or eighty of them come across the river and hit us really hard, using tactics we’ve never before encountered in Korea — fast dives by two or four ships, followed by a zoom and a firing pass on the climb, then a second firing pass on the dive again.’

  Callender looked directly at Yeoman, and paused for a moment before continuing. He was a born showman, and had the complete attention of his audience.

  ‘Well,’ he told them slowly, ‘I’ve come across those tactics before, and so has my old buddy George Yeoman, here. Cast your mind back, George. It isn’t all that hard to recall where we both ran into this kind of thing a few years ago.’

  Yeoman sat bolt upright in his chair. He remembered now; the problem that had been nagging at him on the flight back from the Yalu that morning was solved. Everything was crystal clear.

  ‘The Luftwaffe,’ he said. ‘The Luftwaffe used those tactics against our Spitfires. They always tried to fight on the climb-and-dive, because they knew we could out-turn them. There were a lot of other things I noticed this morning, too; the way the MiGs organized their formations, for example. It was straight out of a Luftwaffe textbook.’

  The general nodded. ‘That’s right, Wing-Commander. We are up against fighter tactics that were developed to a fine art by the Germans during the last war. We learned a lot from them, as did the British. And so did others, too.’

  He picked up a second folder, opened it and held it up so that the others could see the photograph inside. It was a somewhat grainy blow-up of a man’s head and shoulders. The man had a square, determined face, hair that was close-cropped and appeared to be either fair or grey — it was impossible to tell from the black-and-white print-and a uniform tunic whose left breast was covered with medal ribbons.

  ‘You are looking, gentlemen, at Major-General Ivan Krylenko, third top-scoring Russian fighter pilot of the las
t war, three times winner of the Hero of the Soviet Union, Russia’s highest decoration for gallantry.’

  The general laid the folder aside before continuing.

  ‘Our Intelligence sources state that this officer left Moscow recently to take up an unspecified operational appointment in the Far East. Well, we now have good reason to believe that he is in Manchuria, and that the first Soviet Air Force MiG-15 squadrons are now operational over Korea.’

  The general looked at each of the officers in turn, and when he spoke again his voice was as grim as his features.

  ‘In short, gentlemen, we may be just that much closer to a Third World War, right here in Korea.’

  Chapter Five

  GENERAL KRYLENKO CURSED AND SLAPPED AT HIS NECK, THE target for a predatory insect. His aide, Captain Andrei Semyenov, winced inwardly at his superior’s crude peasant obscenity and pretended to be engrossed in the details of a wall map.

  Krylenko stared moodily out across Antung airfield through a glass window pane that was both cracked and dirty. A MiG-15 taxied slowly past, looking squat and ungainly on its short undercarriage. It bore the grey-brown striped camouflage and the insignia of the Chinese People’s Air Force, but the man in the cockpit was Russian and the machine belonged to a Russian unit, the 737th Fighter Air Regiment.

  Krylenko hated his new assignment. He hated the Chinese and their wretched country, and he hated jet aeroplanes, He was a piston-engined fighter man to his fingertips, and although he had amassed a lot of hours on jet types he had never got used to the absence of a propeller, or of the lack of instant manoeuvrability such as his sensitive fingers had commanded from the controls of the La-5 and La-7 fighters he had flown in the latter days of the war.

  Ah, those were days indeed! He wished that he had the power to turn back the clock. He had been a colonel when the war ended, commanding a Guards Fighter Regiment that had fought its way from Stalingrad to the gates of Berlin in three years of bloody, merciless warfare.

  He well remembered that last drive to the German capital, his fighters operating from the autobahns that ran arrow-straight through the German forests; from these improvised airstrips the Russian fighters had roved freely over Berlin, escorting the fighter-bombers that were attacking strongpoints in the shattered streets or challenging the Luftwaffe’s handful of remaining fighters to join combat.

  They had all been there for that last battle, all the aces; Ivan Kozhedub, the top-scorer with sixty-two victories, Ivan Pokryshkin with sixty, himself with fifty-eight. And the other names made famous by the war in the air: Rechkalov, Golubev, Klubov, Sukhov, Vorozheikin and little dark-haired Dmitri Glinka, all of them deadly in a fighter’s cockpit, all of them adding to their already impressive scores in the burning skies over the German capital.

  Grudgingly, Krylenko had to admit that the Luftwaffe had fought hard to the last, its pilots hurling themselves against the Russian air armadas with suicidal courage. Scraping together their last resources, they had flow an average of a thousand sorties a day during the month-long battle for Berlin. It was a mere drop in the ocean; in one day alone, during the final assault on the capital, the Soviet air armies flew nearly seventeen thousand missions.

  Krylenko had scored his final two victories during a memorable flight over Berlin in April 1945, not long after the start of the last big Russian offensive. Together with his wingman, he had taken off just before sunset and set course westwards. He could see the scene, in his mind’s eye, with absolute clarity; beneath their wings the whole earth had seemed to be on fire, the sun shining blood-red through the curtain of smoke.

  Over the city’s north-west suburbs, the two La-7s had described a lazy circle through the sky as their pilots scanned the horizon for enemy aircraft. They had not encountered any so far that day, and Krylenko was playing a hunch that the German fighter-bombers would attack just as it was getting dusk. In that way, they might stand a slim chance of avoiding the Russian day-fighters.

  The two Russian pilots had not been disappointed. A few minutes later, they had sighted a cluster of dots in the western sky, growing rapidly in size until they could be identified as a mixed formation of Focke-Wulf 190s and ‘long-nose’ FW 190D-9s, the former carrying bombs and the latter presumably acting as their escort. The D-9 was one of the last German fighters to go into production; it was very fast, as well as retaining all the excellent characteristics of the redoubtable 190.

  There were forty aircraft in the enemy formation-odds that were too long even for Krylenko. There was some scattered cloud a few thousand feet above and the two Russians had climbed towards it, shadowing the Focke-Wulfs as the latter slid past beneath. The Germans had made no move in the direction of the two La-7s, and it had taken Krylenko — banking on the possibility that the enemy had not seen the fighters that were stalking them — only seconds to make up his mind.

  Remembering, General Krylenko, now a world away from Berlin and his last battle, permitted himself the trace of a smile as he absent-mindedly lit a papirosa, a foul-smelling Russian cigarette composed of a cardboard tube with a bit of tobacco at one end, and continued to stare out over Antung airfield, seeing not the dusty earth of Manchuria but the lurid sky over what had been an enemy city.

  He had given a curt order to his wingman and the two Lays had gone down in a long, powerful dive on the upper echelon of Focke-Wulfs, which was bringing up the rear. He had fired at point-blank range at a 190, looming in his sights; the German aircraft had blown up and gone down to crash among the ruined streets below, tracing a vertical streamer of smoke down the sky.

  The remaining Focke-Wulfs had scattered in all directions as the Russian fighters dived headlong through their ranks towards the lower echelon. Krylenko had opened fire again, seeing pieces fly off a second Focke-Wulf, which flicked sharply away out of trouble.

  Suddenly, out of the corner of his eye, Krylenko had seen a 190D-9 turning steeply, level with him, and had realized in that same fleeting instant that the German intended to ram him and that there was nothing he could do to get out of the way in time. Then, unexpectedly, the D-9 had literally fallen apart and spun down in a cloud of wreckage, the victim of a well-timed burst from Krylenko’s number two.

  By this time, the enemy formation had become completely dislocated. The German pilots, no doubt believing that they were being attacked by a far superior force of Russian fighters, dropped their bombs haphazardly and sped back the way they had come.

  All except one. Of sterner stuff than the rest, he had headed towards the front line at top speed, still carrying his bomb, hotly pursued by the two Russians. Over Russian-held territory, the 190’s pilot had gone into a steep dive and let go his bomb on whatever objective he had selected, afterwards pulling up into a steep climb-straight into Krylenko’s cannon shells.

  With one wing torn off, the 190 had gone into a fast roll, still carried upward by its speed. Then, rolling all the time, it had reached the top of its crazy arc and plunged into the ground.

  A few days later, on 2 May, German resistance in Berlin had come to an end. Ironically, Krylenko had not been there to see it; just before the final surrender his regiment had been moved south to an airfield near Prague, where pockets of German resistance were still holding out. It was there that the last German aircraft to be destroyed in air combat over Europe had fallen to the guns of one of Krylenko’s pilots, on 9 May 1945-the day after hostilities officially ended. The German pilot, flying a Me 109, had shown no signs of obeying an order to land, so he had been shot down.

  Krylenko sighed, and returned to reality. Those indeed had been the days, but they were gone forever, as were many of his former comrades-thrown on the scrapheap, their services no longer required. He supposed he had been luckier than most; war service followed by a period testing captured German aircraft, and then a comfortable staff job in Moscow.

  And now this flea-infested garbage can of a country, peopled by faceless men in baggy uniforms. If this was Communism, it wasn’t his kind. But then, he�
��d only joined the Party in the first place because it was the one sure way to get promotion after the shooting stopped.

  For three years after the end of the war, Krylenko had been heavily involved in studying German fighter tactics; in fact, he had emerged as an authority on the subject, and had rewritten several sections of the IA-PVO Manual, the Soviet fighter pilots’ bible, which had first been put together in 1942 by his friend and colleague Aleksandr Pokryshkin, who had narrowly beaten him to become the pilot with the second largest number of ‘kills’ in the Soviet Union.

  There was no doubt, thought Krylenko, that Russia had lagged a long way behind the West in the development of modern combat aircraft until just a few years ago. At the end of the Great Patriotic War in 1945 the Germans, British and Americans had all been operating jet fighters, whereas the Russians had not even had such a type on the drawing board.

  Then had come the German collapse, and the seizure of vast quantities of German aircraft and aero-engine design documents, together with many key scientists. Krylenko smiled; the great Anglo-American bombing offensive had forced the Germans to move their factories to the east, right in the path of the advancing Soviet armies, with the result that the great bulk of the Germans’ technical material had fallen into the hands of the Russians, and not the Western Allies.

  Armed with this material, the Russian aircraft designers had really got into their stride. First of all, to fill the jet fighter gap, they had produced simple developments of types that had been on the German drawing boards at the end of the war and fitted them with copies of German turbojets-or, alternatively, had modified Russian piston-engined fighter designs to take jet engines.

  Sometimes, the idea had worked. Krylenko had helped to test the first jet fighter to enter service with the Soviet Air Force, the Yak-15, which was basically a combination of the highly manoeuvrable Yak-3 fighter and a Junkers Jumo turbojet, and had liked it, for the cockpit layout and the handling qualities had been scarcely any different from the fighter types he’d been used to flying.