ONE FINE DAY

The German high command did not seem too determined to free the troops starving and freezing to death in the Kessel

They made a brave attempt to hold out, but there was no one trying to reach them from German lines.



The only supplies reaching them were those brought in by air, and our fighters were having a field day. Every day they brought down dozens of German Ju52s and He111s. The German airfields at Pitomnik and Gumrak looked more like junk yards than military airfields.



For us, those days were a blur of anti tank, anti troop, anti artillery missions.

One mission stands out, from start to finish.

A ground attack mission, inside the Kessel, where our troops and artillery were trying to root out entrenched German positions.



Petrovna arrived with a bruise on her cheek and I noticed she winced as she climbed into her gunner's position. Last I had seen her she was drinking a quiet beer with some of the other women.

I plugged in my radio cable and asked her over my shoulder..."So, romance or politics?"



She didn't reply. "Not romance then," I guessed. "So don't tell me, you insulted some general, or commissar, or someone's uncle who serves on the high command..."

"That damn Krymov," she finally said as we lifted off the icy runway, "She's a dubious character, I remember her when she arrived from Kiev, all full of herself and her time with the Trotskyists and Bukharinites..."



"There is not enough war for you down there...you have to also make war in your own barracks?"



"The new Russia," she grunted, "Has enemies everywhere. Now shut up and drive will you, it is too cold back here for chit chat."



But that is not why I remember the mission. We flew 40 minutes under a low grey sky toward the attack point, but when we arrived over where the front lines should be, I could see nothing.



No trenches, no dug in troops, no smoke or wrecked vehicles, the whole landscape below was snowy, white and undisturbed.

I ordered the flight to follow me in a racetrack course over the target area.

"Lost again," Petrovna muttered.

"Well, use your own eyes," I told her as we made another circuit, "Instead of just complaining."



"We're sitting ducks up here," she pointed out. "Why don't you just land and ask the Germans for directions?"

Then there was a mighty CRACK and a black cloud erupted behind us.



"Flak!" Petrovna yelled.

Continued here:

http://simhq.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/4043486/Re:_Mostovskoy_goes_to_war:_a_#Post4043486

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and "Spit Girl" flies again... only this time, with an attempted story line

I believe there was an attempted story line for Spit Girl...badly attempted.



The Jedi Master

You supposed to fly and fight comrade, not smotching around the opposite sex, no wonder the germans made it this far!

Cheers
Walt

Nice ....

Chief

Barsagino

"Seriously," Agrippina Petrovna complained, "Just look at it."

It was a fair comment. I tried to imagine seeing it again for the first time.

It was larger. About a metre longer and three metres wider than our IL2. It had a nose made largely of glass, where the engine on our IL2 was. Instead of one AM38 engine, it had two M105Ks cranking 1200 horsepower each. There was a 7.62 mm ShKAS machine gun in the nose, together with a 12.7 mm Berezin UB, the equivalent of the powerful .50 calibre gun on the American lend-lease P39s. Two rearward firing 7.62 mm ShKAS in the dorsal, one Berezin UB in the gunner's ventral hatch and 1 ShKAS you could stick out the side ports, both mostly for strafing.

"It's a Peshka," I told her. "Frontovoe Trebovanie - Request from the Front."

"I request," she said, "To be transferred back to our old unit."



"And I know it's a Peshka," she added. "I've been redoing my bombadier training all week. What I want to know, is...is it a bomber, or a dive bomber, or a heavy fighter or...just an uglier way to die. It looks like half of everything and none of anything."

"Two engines," I pointed out, "Twice the chance of getting home."

"Twice the noise," she replied.

"1600kg of bombs - twice what we could carry in the IL2."

"No rockets."

"Get in."

CONTINUED HERE: http://simhq.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/4047178/Re:_Mostovskoy_goes_to_war:_Bo#Post4047178

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FINALE
Agrippina Petrovna

Dedushka, why have we never met this Agrippina Petrovna? Whenever you have too much to drink, you talk about her. Every Christmas, you talk about her. You see a young woman, you say, 'She looks like that witch Petrovna'. But where is she now?

My grandchildren ask me this.

Natalya, my beautiful daughter, even suggested when my dear Lyudmila passed away, Papka, you are so lonely...why don't you go and find that woman you always talk about from the war. Agrippina Petrovna? Go look her up. She'd be happy to see you!

She would be 92 by now, I told them. No one lives that long, except me.

No one lives that long.

Which brings us to December 16 1942.

It was another mission to attack a German airfield behind their northern front lines. We were slowly pushing them further and further away from Stalingrad, leaving their troops there at the mercy of our artillery and rockets.



I was in the mood to celebrate. It was only three weeks until Christmas. My mother had made me some small Matryoshka dolls from cloth, as ornaments, to hang in the window of my barracks. I was too embarrassed to do this, but as we walked out to our newly repainted Peshka, I fished them out of the pocket of my coat and handed them to Petrovna.

She looked at them suspiciously, "What are these?"

"Matryoshka ornaments," I told her. "My mother made them for me, but I thought of you."

"Why?"

"Well, I am sure that if someone could peel away all that dirt on your face, and your filthy overalls, and comb your hair, there would actually be a fine Russian woman in there somewhere."

She grunted, "You'll never know, that's for sure." She held them out to me.

"No, they're for you," I said.

She looked at me again, then shrugged and put them in the pocket of her jacket, and climbed into the aircraft. I took the shrug for a thankyou.

Seratov was standing there too. "What do I get?"

I patted him on the shoulder, "You get a free ride in this nice aeroplane son, now get in."




CONTINUED HERE: http://SimHQ.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/4051736/Re:_Mostovskoy_goes_to_war:_Bo#Post4051736

Fantastic story, very entertaining