The Memories of Dead Pilot. Yuriy Sobeshchakov
pinging of metal against glass brought us back to our senses. The gunner and the radio operator, at the tail of the pressurized hull were smacking the butts of their pistols against the plexi-glass of the rear hatch. The muted sounds of their desperate efforts transmitted eerily along the full length of the fuselage. The tail section hatch that, under normal conditions, opened downwards, was now under a minimum of three feet of frigid water and the back pressure made opening it impossible, trapping the two NCOs in the sealed compartment. Without sufficient prior warning of an impending emergency water landing, they had remained in the compartment – now, with absolutely no possibility of getting to them from outside or for them to escape from within.
Terrified by the gruesome death of the co-pilot and now besieged with the terrible frigid fate of the two in the aft, the navigator, the bombardier, and I helped one another to descend carefully onto the wing. Then we pulled the raft as close as possible to the aircraft, and I ordered the bombardier to jump in first. The lieutenant, who had only begun service a month previous, gave me a resigned look, but trusting my experience, jumped. It was impossible to get a good running start on the slippery wing, and he missed his landing by inches. His right leg, striking the resilient rubber wall of the raft, bounced him up and over the water. In he went, submerging fully in a wave – but against all odds, he managed to seize hold of the thin safety line girdling the raft. After a couple seconds, when he again appeared on the surface, the navigator fell on his knees and seized his young colleague by the collar of his flight jacket, preventing him from going under again. I pulled the cord of our raft taut to the trailing edge of the wing and we helped the lieutenant clamber first onto the flap and then tumble into the raft.
While we were struggling to save the life of the bombardier the aircraft was slowly sinking into the ocean. Wavelets over the wing became full waves. Icy water bathed the tops of our boots. Clambering into the inflatable shelter after the wet bombardier, the navigator and I began to row furiously, trying to get away as far as possible from the plane.
The raft floated past the tail compartment and to my horror, I saw that the gunner and the radio operator, like wild animals, shooting at the glass. Deafened and panicked, it seemed to me at that moment as if they were shooting at us. Horrified, I shifted my gaze away, putting more force behind my rowing. I said to the navigator:
“They know that the glass of their compartment can’t be broken even by the impact of a twenty-millimeter automatic gun. They’d do better to leave a bullet or two to shoot themselves with; otherwise they’ll die horribly from suffocation.”
“True commander, but I suspect their deaths, like the co-pilot’s, will be on your conscience.”
“Row harder, damn it. The plane will go under any minute now. Our raft could easily be caught in the whirlpool. We get as far away from this place as far as we can. We’ll talk about my conscience later,” I said, and, after a moment’s thought, added: “If we survive.”
The bombardier didn’t interrupt as he lay in fetal position and shivered. About a hundred feet away, the aircraft began to lift its nose higher and higher and, coming almost to the vertical, suddenly plunged beneath the water. Huge air bubbles escaping from the forward hatch produced a mighty geyser, the last testament of a proud aircraft. I buttoned up the rubber door of the raft in time. We were carried upwards and then thrown down. The sea, having taken three victims out of the six in the crew, grew calm once more.
Now we had to conserve our strength and wait.
Our fate was in the hands of the operator of the long-range radar. I was certain that he was tracking us and would immediately report the disappearance of our aircraft from the radar screen. I imagined that after his report all the forces of the fleet would be searching for us and would find us without fail. I told the navigators this. The bombardier answered gloomily:
“The hell they’ll find us.”
And his older colleague, with bitterness in his voice, objected to him quietly:
“They will certainly find us, but when?”
Chapter 4
We didn’t know then that the long distance radar operator, Sergeant Konstantin Yelizarov, had sent his assistant to the sailors’ mess for dinner. Remaining by himself at his battle station, he immediately called the garrison telephone office to speak to one of the operators.
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