They Said This Rookie Was Cannon Fodder — Until He Became the Deadliest Man in the Sky скачать в хорошем качестве

They Said This Rookie Was Cannon Fodder — Until He Became the Deadliest Man in the Sky

The winter wind howled across the frozen airfield at Leningrad on January 12th, 1943, cutting through flight suits and chilling men to the bone despite layers of wool and leather. Junior Lieutenant Nikolai Dmitrievich Gulyaev stood beside his LaGG-3 fighter, watching the mechanics work on the engine while trying to control the shaking in his hands. The trembling wasn’t from the cold, though the temperature was twenty degrees below zero. It was from fear, pure and simple, the kind of fear that every new pilot felt before their first combat mission but that most were too proud to admit. Gulyaev was twenty years old, fresh from flight school, with exactly forty-seven hours of flight time in fighters and zero hours of combat experience. He had arrived at the 27th Fighter Regiment three days earlier, one of six replacement pilots sent to fill gaps left by casualties. The regiment had lost nine pilots in the previous month, shot down by experienced German aces flying superior aircraft, and the veterans who remained looked at the new arrivals with the cold assessment of men who knew that most of these rookies would be dead within a week. Squadron Commander Major Viktor Ivanovich Popkov had been blunt during Gulyaev’s initial briefing. “Comrade Junior Lieutenant, I’m going to tell you something that your instructors at flight school probably didn’t mention. The average life expectancy of a replacement pilot at this front is four missions. Four. Some last longer, some die on their first sortie, but the average is four. Do you know why?” Gulyaev had stood at attention, his voice steady despite the fear coiling in his stomach. “No, Comrade Major.” “Because replacement pilots arrive here with minimal training, no combat experience, and no understanding of how to survive against German pilots who have been fighting for two, three, sometimes four years. You have forty-seven hours in fighters. The German pilots you’ll face have thousands of hours, hundreds of combat missions, and aircraft that are superior to ours in almost every measurable way. You are, to be blunt, cannon fodder. Your job is to follow orders, stay out of the way of the experienced pilots, and try not to die too quickly. If you survive your first five missions, your chances improve significantly. But most don’t survive five missions. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”