Аннотация: Английский вариант "Воспоминаний Мёртвого Пилота"
"The Hero of Our Time, kind sirs, is indeed a portrait, but not of just one man: it is a portrait composed of the vices of our entire generation, at the height of their development."
"The Hero of Our Time" Mikhail Lermontov 1841
"There have been worse times, but there was none more deceitful."
Prince Hamlet
The key characters, along with all those Admirals, officers, their wives and mistresses, colleagues, and drinking buddies-they're not based on any real folks, mind you. I conjured them up with one purpose: to tarnish our once-glorious past-a time when family values, religious beliefs, and recognizable morals gave way to the clutches of Communist ideology. And if, by any chance, you find yourself thinking that such things might have actually happened, think again.
Nope, it wasn't like that.
Prologue
Every part of my body is in agony. Darkness envelops me, and I struggle to see anything. Slowly, I force my eyes open and start to make out the objects around me. The source of my excruciating pain becomes evident - the plane's control column jammed into my chest, pushing me back into my bulletproof seat. A searing sensation in my belly indicates broken ribs and internal bleeding.
I turn my head to the right, searching for my crew. The navigator's cabin at the front of the plane is obliterated. Captain Vasiliev's workspace is now a chaotic mess of aluminum, glass, crushed navigation equipment, and bloody body parts. Flight engineer Gennadiy Rybnikov, who was seated between me and the co-pilot during the landing, is doubled over. The seatbelt prevented him from being thrown out through the windshield but has left him with his forehead melded into the instrument panel. His lifeless hands hang motionless, and blood drips from his head onto the radio operator, who is now dead.
Just before we crashed into the collector column of the storm drain at the Cam Ranh air base, once American but now Russian, the radio operator, Nikolai Onoprienko, was sitting behind my co-pilot. He was sending out the Morse code report of our landing to the fifteenth flotilla of the Pacific fleet headquarters. He had attempted to crawl under the flight engineer's seat to reach the navigator at the nose of the aircraft, desperate to see how I was going to manage landing with only half of the main landing gear. For him, it was better to face the danger than remain ignorant of our situation. He almost reached the cabin when the impact threw him against the navigation equipment.
...My co-pilot is sitting without his head, severed along with the headrest of his seat by the jagged lining of the fuselage. His lifeless head, held in place by the headset, leans towards me, and his blank eyes seem to gaze at me with a mix of contempt and shock. He didn't have the opportunity to tell me the price the Vietnamese paid for transport on our plane from Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh.
Before takeoff, the flight engineer managed to sneak thirty locals into the pressurized cabin designed for only ten, without proper authorization. Our initial destination was the former capital of South Vietnam, but we were rerouted to Haiphong, a port city, to pick up cargo shipped from the Soviet Union. Knowing that landing at this intermediate stop would land us in serious trouble, possibly a long prison term for transporting illegal passengers using Ministry of Defense property, I quickly devised a Plan C since there was no Plan B. I sent my co-pilot, Sergey Kovalenko, to compile a list of passengers and get the signature of the aviation supervisor at Hanoi International Airport's military sector. It was a challenging task that would require a significant bribe. Sergey returned fifteen minutes later, looking troubled.
"What happened?" I asked.
Gasping for breath, he replied, "For his signature, Smirnov wants twenty-five percent of the money collected from the Vietnamese."
"And how much is that?" I received a wad of banknotes without time to count.
"Let's just say you don't want to know. "I would say our venture definitely is not going to be profitable." He groaned.
Takeoff was imminent, and I decided to deal with the financial matters after returning from the mission.
...But now Kovalenko wouldn't utter a word, not to me or any military investigator.
The first responders team members rushed towards the plane from all directions. Oh, they would be in for a shock when they discovered my precious human cargo. However, I couldn't help but wonder why they all remained so quiet back there. During the landing approach, I had depleted the fuel from the wing and fuselage tanks almost entirely, which is exactly why we didn't explode on impact. So, while the command cabin was now a twisted mess, the passenger cabin should be intact, right? Yet, they weren't making a peep. Strange. Well, I couldn't be bothered with them at that moment.
Rescuers surrounded me, attempting to direct my broken body out through the twisted metal. My vision was blurred, but one thing was clear - I needed to recollect how I ended up in this wretched predicament, both literally and figuratively. Memories flooded in, a grim sign that my brain had accepted the inevitable and was now reflecting on the most significant episodes of my wasted life.
Chapter 1
After graduating from the Higher Military School for Pilots, I was assigned to serve in the military garrison of Yelizovo. The airfield there also served as the airport of the regional capital of the Kamchatka Peninsula, Petropavlovsk-on-Kamchatka. The place welcomed me with a warm wind and a light drizzle. Even though October was coming to a close, frosts had already been reported in other parts of Russia, but here on the peninsula, yellow and red leaves still clung to the trees.
I could the birds that hadn't yet left for the south formed a low flock in the sky, honing their formation flight skills. High above them, four white, thin contrails trailed behind an IL-62 commercial airliner as it headed towards North America. It felt like a fitting introduction to my first posting after graduating from the Navy's Aviation College.
As I walked along the road from the airport building to the headquarters of my new squadron, my mind was preoccupied with thoughts of those birds. I hoped that soon, like them, I would be up in the sky, doing what I was destined to do: fly. As I looked at the birds perfecting their formation flight skills, I thought, "They, like me, were preparing for a long journey ahead."
The officer on duty, a sullen and imposing Captain, greeted me frostily in the hall of the one-story fifties-era building and led me to the reception room of the commander of the rocket carrier squadron.
Behind a worn but sturdy oak desk sat a young and remarkably attractive lady with the rank of Sergeant. She was dressed in a cream blouse, a black necktie, and a black skirt, which seemed somewhat out of place in this remote military station.
However, as I caught a glimpse of her slender legs provocatively crossed between the columns of the desk, I was taken aback by the unexpected welcome. The officer with me exchanged a few words with her, but my mind was fixated on the hemline of her skirt, paying little attention to their conversation. Succumbing to my hungry gaze, she picked up the telephone receiver and reported my arrival to the commander with an unenthusiastic expression.
The Captain nudged me with his elbow and whispered, "Don't get your hopes too high. A much bigger fish is regularly in the picture with her, if you catch my drift..."
The girl hung up the phone, silently gestured towards the commander's door, and kept drumming her slender fingers on the typewriter keys.
From the commander's office, I emerged as the co-pilot of Commander Major Gribov's crew. I found myself as the rookie of an old rocket carrier, an outdated TU-16, with an uncertain future. Unfortunately, nothing else was offered to me.
For four long years, I flew in this position, spending my bachelor existence in wild drinking bouts with my colleagues and indulging in love affairs with the local beauties. To my regret, but who knows, perhaps to my fortunate, there were no commander's secretaries among them. Rumors circulated that the girl I had met earlier was not just an excellent typist but had many other talents as well.
I could have flown as a co-pilot for another three or four years, but my commander had been stationed in this garrison for too long, and he no longer felt the need to keep his thoughts and feelings to himself. Assuming he had the right to say whatever he pleased, he provoked a scandal with his boldness. However, this turned out to be my opportunity to break away from the destructive cycle of card tables, strangers' beds, and bar counters.
During one of our typical drinking bouts, Major Gribov shared a harmless anecdote with his friends. It was essentially an account of a conversation between the Secretary of the Communist party organization and the priest of a nearby church.
"Father," said the party branch leader, "let me borrow some chairs from your church for the communists. Tomorrow I have a conference."
"I won't give you any," replied the priest. "The last time you borrowed them, your party members carved indecent expressions on them with their pocket knives."
"Well, then, I won't be sending you any more boy-scouts to sing in the church choir," retorted the party organizer.
"Then I won't send you any monks for Saturday 'volunteer' territory cleaning," the priest parried.
"Then I won't give you any members of the Young Communist League for the procession of the cross." The party organizer, being a true communist, refused to give in.
But the priest had an ace up his sleeve.
"Then there won't be any more nuns for your sauna."
The local branch party leader fell silent for a moment, and then he barked into the telephone:
"For such words, Father, you are going to have to surrender your communist party membership card."
I was well aware that our Orthodox Church was far from being independent. It had deep ties with the state, collaborating with the KGB, police, and the Communist Party of the USSR. Yet, this cooperation remained hidden from the public eye. Making jokes or speaking critically about such connections, especially during Stalin's era, could result in dire consequences, like being sent to the GULAG or the Main Directorate of Northern Camps for prisoners. Even in the early 1980s, it could lead to expulsion from the party and the loss of one's job, putting individuals like me in a perilous position.
Despite the fact that everyone present was aware of the potential disastrous consequences this funny story could bring upon the narrator, we still laughed together at the joke. However, in a few days, the good Major became the subject of a serious investigation by our Party Committee. Who wrote the denunciation, I could not ascertain. Not being a party member, I was spared from the suspicions that circulated among my coworkers. The unfortunate joker faced exclusion from the party by a Majority vote, and as expected, he was later dismissed from his position.
The next day, I was summoned for an interview with the squadron commander. The sight of the entire staff of our squadron gathered in his office surprised me. I stood before the commander's desk, on a heavily-worn rug, and wondered why such a grand meeting was being held in my honor.
The chief of staff questioned me about my background, meticulously comparing my answers with the data in my personnel file. It seemed like he wanted to ensure that I wasn't a CIA agent, but rather the person I claimed to be. Fortunately, my answers matched what was written in the red file folder, and he closed it with a smirk before placing the secret document in front of the commander.
The squadron commander covered the coat of arms of the Soviet Union, embossed on top of the file, with both hands. He glanced at his assistants and deputies, who were standing against the walls, took a deep breath, and spoke, "Well, then, Grigoriev, your time has come. The Motherland, represented by me, and the Communist Party, represented by the deputy commander of political affairs, have decided to entrust you with the position of rocket carrier pilot-in-command."
Despite the highbrow words, I couldn't help but feel a surge of pride in my chest. My shoulders straightened involuntarily. However, my elation was short-lived as he continued, "However, we do have a few unresolved issues with you."
The sense of pride was replaced by apprehension as I waited for the hammer to fall.
"You must promise us that you will fulfill the following conditions: first, you must enroll in the Communist Party; second, you must get married; and third, but not of least importance, you must cut back on your drinking."
The hammer seemed to hang in the air, and in that moment, I processed the demands. Enrolling in the Party might not be a Major challenge, marriage could be managed somehow, but curbing my drinking was a real problem. Vodka had always been a loyal companion to military members who served far from the comforts of real civilization. Nevertheless, I signed the papers placed in front of me, promising to fulfill all three conditions within the next six months.
Chapter 2
The promotion came with elevated respect from those around me and a small pay raise, but it also brought a load of new responsibilities. Gone were the days when I could disappear for my two days off, spending them carelessly in Lyudmila Salnikova's bed or showing up for a pre-flight exam with a face puffy from vodka. The doctor would occasionally remark, while taking my blood pressure,
"Grigoriev, at least breathe to the side. Your vodka fumes make my eyes water."
Everything shifted suddenly. My reckless youthful days were now behind me, and I had to be more disciplined
Two days later, I sat with all the other aircraft commanders, listening to the flight assignments for the following day. The reports on weather, potential enemies, supply, maintenance, and communications barely registered in my mind. What mattered to me was that I would take off first at 0800 hours, and four hours later, I would return to base. After another four hours, I'd be celebrating in the officers' mess with my friends, marking the successful completion of my first battle mission.
As I glanced at the placards depicting various TU-16 rocket carrier catastrophes over the past decade, I felt a sense of confidence. The crashes were mostly due to pilot error or poor decision-making, which they called "the human factor." I was determined not to end up like those unfortunate pilots. The flight mission for the combat watch to the American Aleutian Islands assigned to me was evidence of the confidence placed in me, and this thought made me smirk with self-satisfaction.
As a copilot, I had flown there many times, but my primary role was to serve as the aircraft commander's backup and avoid interfering with his control over the aircraft and crew. However, in the event of his unexpected death, loss of consciousness, or illness like diarrhea or vomiting, it became my responsibility to take over his duties and ensure the safe operation of the flight.
Now, the situation had changed, but I couldn't change my carefree attitude. My crew and I devoted only an hour to preparing for the flight along the American border, and then more experienced pilots from other crews approached us, and we headed to the garrison's sports arena to play volleyball. The last two hours of preparation for the next day's flight were spent playing cards in the doctor's office. Our excited and sometimes disappointed shouts were well-hidden behind the sign "Do Not Enter: Patient Exam in Progress" on the door, padded with cotton and covered with black leatherette.
On the morning of the next day, I sat in the pilots' mess waiting for the waitress, Lyudmila, to bring me breakfast. My previous dalliance with her had ended six months earlier, but we had remained friends until the rumor circulated that I had gotten married. Her attitude toward me changed drastically.
Nobody knew who my wife was and why a confirmed bachelor like me had taken such a big step. When I informed the commander about fulfilling one of his three conditions, he made no secret of it, which resulted in worsened service for my crew in the pilots' mess. The squadron humorists wasted no time in making jokes.
On that particular day, I had no time to deal with Lyudmila's emotions. Being scheduled to take off first on the Air Regiment's fly day, I needed to get to the pre-flight briefing as soon as possible.
Trying to get her attention, I raised my hand like a diligent student who knows the answer to the teacher's question. When I saw no reaction from the waiter, I raised the other hand as well. The pilots turned to look at me, and some put down their forks to see what would happen. But Lyudmila passed my table without acknowledging me, and with contempt, she said, "Grigoriev, you could raise your leg as well, but you're going to be the last to eat anyway."
I responded loudly, injecting every ounce of sarcasm I could muster into my words, "Lyudmila, raising legs, especially parted, is more your style, I'd think."
The pilots squad burst into laughter, and the girl, caught off guard by my biting remark, dropped the tray of dishes on the floor and ran off in tears. Shortly after, a new waitress, Veronica, took over, and as she served my crew's table, she wasted no time in expressing her thoughts on the matter: "I always told her that she could expect nothing but filth from you."
Chapter 3
We were the first to take off, soaring to our flying altitude before turning towards the Commander Islands. Leaving the last bit of Soviet land far behind, we aimed for the American border.
"My mission was to verify the anti-aircraft defenses of the potential enemy."
At a distance of roughly two hundred miles from the Attu Island, we initiated our descent. Gliding downward, we slipped beneath the radar beam stationed atop a rugged peak that extended from the mountains at the westernmost point of the United States. With the intention of delaying detection for as long as possible, I guided the aircraft towards our objective: Adak Airfield. Our altitude was a mere two hundred feet, and we were hurtling through the air at an astonishing speed of six hundred knots. As we closed in to a hundred miles from the Rat Islands, a pair of patrolling fighters caught my eye.
Our little war game had come to an end; we were detected and theoretically shot down. But we didn't see ourselves as losers. Just six minutes before, my navigators had successfully simulated a training missile launch against the American air force forward base.
In an actual battle scenario, upon exiting the bomb compartment, the three-ton cruise missile would ascend to a staggering altitude of sixty-thousand feet and then descend nearly vertically onto the American targets. The impact would shatter the concrete slabs of their runway, sending debris scattering hundreds of feet in all directions.
The McDonnell Douglas F-18 Hornet fighter jets rushed past us, skillfully maneuvering to flank my aircraft.
The pilot of the leading fighter saluted me and gestured for me to open the bomb compartment. He showed me two palms horizontally pressed against each other and then turned them vertically, indicating that he wanted to see if we had any weapons on board. As I nodded in agreement to his request, my navigator pressed the necessary button, and an indicator on my instrument panel lit up with the "bomb compartment is open" sign. The American pilot dived under the rocket carrier's belly and confirmed that our bomb compartment was indeed empty. He took his position above the left wing, gave me a thumbs-up, and we flew together for about twenty minutes under their escort.
During our joint flight, the pilot of the second fighter jet positioned his aircraft above our right wing, and the pilot entertained my co-pilot. While flying the aircraft on autopilot, the American flipped through the glossy pages of the Playboy erotic magazine, showing the showing the young Lieutenant the allure of nude female bodies through the plexiglass canopy of the cockpit.
Eventually, I signaled farewell to the fighter pilots, and they accelerated to put some distance between us before making a couple of aileron rolls and banking away toward their base.
A sigh of relief escaped me. My first battle assignment had been successfully completed.
I called out to anyone who cared to listen, "Let's get the hell out of here!"
The nervous tension subsided, and I allowed myself to relax, daydreaming about the leave I had just completed.
Two months ago, after receiving our leave documents from the chief of staff, the entire crew and I headed for Vladivostok. From there, our paths diverged. My subordinates scattered across the country to visit their relatives, while I settled into a hotel with the somewhat romantic name "Dawn of the East." My attention was caught by the discotheque of the medical school. I spent two weeks partying with the students and indulging in a few romantic liaisons, until I unexpectedly faced rejection from a future physician. Her 'No' left me dumbfounded and preoccupied with thoughts of her.
"How could that be?" I pondered. "A naval battle pilot like me getting turned down? I've never heard that word from a woman before, and I don't want to hear it now." But this woman proved to be more stubborn and smarter than I anticipated. As a result, by the middle of my leave, we were married. There was another factor that played a role in my hasty decision-her father held the esteemed title of Rear-Admiral. Despite having no connection to naval aviation, he held the esteemed position of being the Commander of the Soviet Union Pacific Coast Defense.
Suddenly, I heard the navigator report, 'Commander, we've reached the descent point,' I said, snapping back to reality.
"Roger that." I pushed the control column forward, lowering the nose of the aircraft while idling the engines, and the cabin immediately grew quieter. Glancing at the copilot, I noticed his bored stare, his mind seemingly elsewhere. After all, rare ice floes on the surface of the Pacific Ocean could only hold the young pilot's attention for so long. It was evident that the mission didn't require a substantial amount of his involvement, heightening the likelihood that he was reflecting on the images from a globally renowned magazine - quite possibly the alluring depictions of beautiful naked models that had captured his attention.
Giving him a look, I returned to the life of a crew commander, I mean myself.
My thoughts drifted back to Vladivostok and my new wife.
The latter part of my leave turned into a honeymoon. Our wedding was so rushed that we had no time for vacation planning, and my wife's impending winter term left her with barely any free time.
Thankfully, my parents-in-law had a solution. They stayed in a posh hotel downtown, giving us full use of their home. We spent most of our time in bed, mixing Olga's lectures with more hands-on and comprehensive studies of human anatomy. We particularly focused on the differences in structure between male and female bodies. While no groundbreaking discoveries were made, the process brought pleasure to both of us. The fond memories brought a smile to my face...
"Commander, my on-board radar screen just went blank!" The navigator's voice snapped me back to harsh reality. It's strange that I'm hearing it directly instead of through the aircraft communication system headset. I glanced at the instrument panel. There were over thirty gauges and indicators there, but my attention was drawn to just two - the ones displaying the revolutions per minute of the left and right engines. Both pointers were trembling, indicating an autorotation - a telltale sign that both engines had stalled. My gaze shifted to the fuel flow indicators. A stark revelation awaited: nothing! The tiny arrows were squarely fixed at 'zero'.
"Cut off all electrical devices!" I hollered to both navigators, the copilot, the gunner, and the radio operator. Then, I focused on the engine control levers, and suddenly, the situation became crystal clear.
About eight minutes back, during the descent from thirty thousand feet, when I moved the engines from cruise to idle, I must've accidentally pulled them a bit too far, into the cutoff position. Without cross-checking the instrument readings, the plane had descended smoothly to ten thousand feet. During that time, the operational aviation equipment and, most critically, the powerful on-board radar had completely drained the batteries.
I mashed the "air start" button for the third time, but it yielded no results. The older model of the TU-16 lacked a "lock flight idle" feature to prevent the control levers from shifting freely across their full range. And lost in my pleasant memories, I had inadvertently shut down both engines.
Back in the early fifties, when Stalin's aircraft designers were sketching out this aircraft type, they couldn't have foreseen that these planes would still be operational forty years later, or that the pilots at the helm would be more engrossed in a woman than in the engine humming beneath them. The degree of "idiot-resistance" they incorporated failed to anticipate such enduring service, nor did it consider the scenario of pilots consumed by desire, their focus diverted as they guided these aircraft.
It wasn't enough to just kill me. I should have been killed, buried, exhumed, and killed again. The water was getting closer and closer, and I couldn't even send a distress "Mayday" call. The radio wasn't working. Parachuting out of the plane was already out of the question-it wouldn't have made a difference anyway. Because, climbing out of the icy water into an individual rubber boat with the air temperature at twenty degrees Fahrenheit, we could survive for no more than two hours.
A shiver coursed through me as I contemplated,
"Damn, this is the end. I've never landed on water before. What will happen if I misjudge the distance from the plane to the sea surface before landing? A foolish question. What will happen? What will happen? Any pilot will tell you what will happen. We'll skim without engine power eight to ten meters above the water, and then, losing speed, we'll crash onto the water. Despite its apparent softness and fluidity, it'll be harder than concrete for us. The fuselage will crack along riveted seams, the wings and tail surfaces will break off immediately, the crew's spines will crunch nauseatingly from the vertical overload, snapping the spinal cord in several places. And we'll swiftly sink, conscious and with paralyzed limbs."
The picture that emerged wasn't enviable. Fear gripped my heart. My shoulders twitched involuntarily, and nausea rose in my throat. I looked at the co-pilot on the right. The Lieutenant gripped the control yoke so tightly that his fingernails turned as white as chalk. His pale face was covered in large drops of sweat.
"Look at that, a paradox. Not a drop of blood on his face, yet he's as wet as if he just stepped out of a steam bath. I wonder, do I look the same or even worse?"
This thought pushed my own concerns out of my head.
I grabbed the control yoke, gently swayed it left and right, and in complete silence, with a calm voice, I said to my assistant,
"Release it."
He placed his hands on his knees and closed his eyes.
"Bidding farewell to life," I managed to think, trying to find a landing spot relatively free of ice.
Just before the water's surface, I pulled the control yoke towards myself. The plane slowed its descent, the fuselage kissed the water, and, clearing separate floating pieces of ice with the glass nose of the navigator's cabin, it glided on the surface of the Pacific Ocean.
The water landing was successful. Miraculously, my rocket carrier remained intact, and at least two navigators, the co-pilot, and I were alive. The fate of the gunner and radioman was unknown to me. Now, the most important thing was to leave the plane as quickly as possible.
As I focused on the landing, the navigator, bombardier, and co-pilot left their stations, gathering beside my seat, poised to operate the emergency hatch above us. With a brief struggle, they managed to release it, allowing me to crawl out first. I sprinted back along the top of the fuselage toward the mid-station hatch, which had automatically blown open upon impact with the water. Reaching for the silk lanyard, buoyed by a compressed air balloon and connected to the orange-shrouded inflatable emergency raft floating near the open hatch, I retrieved my knife from my flight jacket. I severed the balloon, securing the remaining lanyard around my hand. Stumbling and slipping, I dragged the raft behind me to the aircraft's nose.
At this point, the three crew members were standing on the fuselage, ready to descend onto the port wing, now partially submerged with small ripples and a veneer of ice coating the super-cooled metal.
Just as my mind registered the hazard posed by the icy aluminum, and a split second before my voice caught up, my co-pilot leaped onto the wing. His legs lost traction, throwing him off balance. He tumbled onto his back, skidding down the wing. His arms flailed wildly, attempting to grasp onto anything, everything. In a despairing cry, choked and cut off, he vanished beneath the water's surface.
His fur parka, insulated coveralls, and high leather boots lined with dog fur turned into an enormous sponge, absorbing water and leaving him no chance to stay afloat, not even for a moment.
Horrified by the scene before us, we stood frozen beside the open upper hatch of the cockpit-until the metallic thuds against glass jolted us back to reality.
The gunner and the radio operator, situated at the tail of the pressurized hull, were pounding their pistol handles against the plexiglass of the rear hatch.
The muffled echoes of their desperate attempts reverberated eerily along the entire length of the fuselage. The tail section hatch, designed to open downward under normal circumstances, was now submerged under at least three feet of icy water, and the opposing pressure rendered any attempt to open it futile. This left the two NCOs trapped in the sealed compartment. With inadequate advance notice of an imminent emergency water landing, they had remained within the compartment-now, completely unable to be reached from the outside or to escape from within.
In an emergency situation, they were supposed to parachute out, but they couldn't do it without my command, and after the internal radio communication failed, I couldn't issue such an order anymore.
Haunted by the gruesome fate of the copilot and now confronted with the dire cold reality of the two in the aft, the navigator, the bombardier, and I aided each other in a cautious descent onto the wing.
Then, we carefully maneuvered the raft closer to the aircraft, and I instructed the bombardier to take the leap first. The Lieutenant, new to the service for only a month, shot me a resigned glance, yet trusting my expertise, he leaped. The slippery wing didn't provide much traction for a running start, causing him to narrowly miss his landing. His right leg smacked against the resilient rubber wall of the raft, propelling him over the water's surface. He plunged in, submerged by a wave-but against all odds, he managed to clutch the thin safety line encircling the raft. Within seconds, he resurfaced, and as he emerged, the navigator dropped to his knees and gripped his young colleague's flight jacket collar, preventing him from going under again. I tugged the raft's cord taut to the wing's trailing edge, and together we aided the Lieutenant in scrambling onto the flap and then tumbling into the raft.
While we grappled to rescue the bombardier, the aircraft was gradually sinking into the ocean. The wavelets over the wing evolved into full waves. Icy water licked at the tops of our boots. As the navigator and I clambered into the inflatable shelter after the drenched bombardier, we began to row with ferocity, striving to put as much distance as possible between us and the plane.
The raft floated past the tail compartment, and to my dismay, I witnessed the gunner and the radio operator-bearing an uncanny resemblance to wild animals-firing their .35 caliber pistols at the glass.
Amidst the deafening noise and panic, it momentarily felt as though they were aiming at us. Aghast, I shifted my gaze away, intensifying my rowing effort.
Not yet distanced significantly from the scene, I turned to the navigator and said, I turned to the navigator and said, "They must understand that the glass of their compartment is impervious even to the impact of the six-barrel Gatling-style rotary cannon Vulcan. They'd do better to save a bullet or two to end their own suffering; otherwise, they'll meet a dreadful death from suffocation."
"Very true, Commander, but I'm afraid their fate, much like the copilot's, will weigh on your conscience," he responded, his eyes glistening with tears.
"Row harder, damn it. The plane could descend beneath the waves any moment now. Our raft could easily be caught in the whirlpool. Let's put as much distance between us and this spot as possible. We can discuss my conscience later," I replied, and after a brief pause, I added, "If we manage to survive."
The bombardier remained silent, curled in a fetal position and trembling. About a hundred feet away, the aircraft began to tilt its nose higher and higher until it reached almost a vertical position, then abruptly plunged beneath the water. Enormous air bubbles surged from the forward hatch, creating a powerful geyser-a final tribute to a once-proud plane. I managed to seal the rubber door of the raft just in time. We were lifted upward and then tossed downward. The sea, having claimed three victims out of our six-person crew, settled back into its calm state.
Now, we had to conserve our strength and wait.
Our destiny rested in the hands of the long-range radar operator. I was confident that he was monitoring our movements and would swiftly report the disappearance of our aircraft from the radar screen. I envisioned that, following his report, the entire fleet's resources would be deployed to search for us, and they would unquestionably locate us. As I shared this belief with the navigators, the bombardier muttered with a desperate edge, "The hell they'll find us."