Excerpt (3) from Black Cross/Red Star Vol 3

Excerpt (3) from Volume 3 of Black Cross Red Star: Air War Over the Eastern Front:

"Red" Spanish Fighter Pilots Over Stalingrad

Volume 3 of Black Cross/Red Star has the subtitle Everything for Stalingrad. It presents the result of a painstaking research into the air war during the German summer offensive on the Eastern Front from 28 June 1942; the subsequent fierce air battles over Voronezh, Rostov, and the Caucasus; the Luftwaffe's onslaught on Convoy PQ-17; the hard air war over the Central and Northern combat zones, when the Soviets launched their relief offensives in the summer and fall of 1942; and, mainly, the huge Air Battle over Stalingrad.

As an example of Volume 3, we publish a few short excerpts from the manuscript below. Please notice that the photographs are not from the book. All photographs in the book--many of which are in color--will beprinted in very high quality.

This is the second excerpt.

Excerpt (3)

. . .Among the VVS pilots participating in the air battle over Stalingrad by this time also were at least three Spaniards. Leytenants José Pascual Santamaria and Domingo Bonilla, both veterans from the Spanish Civil War, had been posted to Yak-1-equipped 788 IAP/102 IAD-PVO in August 1942. Kapitan Anselmo Sepulveda served as a Pe-2-pilot with 208 ShAP. Sepulveda was an experienced pilot who had flown SBs in action in the Spanish Civil War for three years. Twenty-three-year old Pascual Santamaria had achieved a total of nine victories by early September 1942. (. . .)

On September 8, five 788 IAP pilots took off in the regiment's last remaining Yak-1s to provide a badly mauled front sector with air cover. They were led by Kapitan Nikolay "José" Kozlov--a veteran credited with twelve individual (two of them tarans) and five shared victories on 495 combat sorties. Participating on this mission were the Spanish pilots Leytenants Pascual Santamaria and Domingo Bonilla.

Kozlov and his pilots were circling above their assigned area at six thousand feet flight altitude as the air surveillance radio station reported:

"Enemy aircraft approaching your sector from the west, on the same flight altitude: Three squadrons of Ju 87s, and above them, a formation of 'Messers'."

The regimental commissar, Starshiy Politruk Vyacheslav Bashkirov, led the Yak formation to attack the first Stuka formation. Although Bashkirov had graduated from the flight training school only a few months previously, he had already been credited with six victories. According to the Soviet report, two Ju 87s were shot down in the initial attack (a report that can not be confirmed by Luftwaffe loss reports), whereafter the remainder jettisoned the bombs and dispersed their formation. Next the Bf 109 top cover fell upon the Soviet fighters. Leytenant Bonilla and a Soviet Yak pilot turned against the German fighters while the remaining three 788 IAP pilots continued to attack the Ju 87s. But the combat was too uneven.

A Bf 109 Rotte singled out Bashkirov's Yak-1 and set it burning. The pilot bailed out, and Santamaria saw how German fighters closed in on the commissar and opened fire against him as he hung in his straps. Santamaria could not control himself. His agitated voice was heard yelling in Spanish over the R/T:

"Salvajes! Canallas!" ("You scum! You bandits!")

Fortunately for the Soviet airman, the German bullets missed their target. But Santamaria was raging with fury, and charged a group of five Bf 109s alone. The Germans, apparently stunned by the lone Yak-1 who attacked them so boldly, were slow to react against this attack, and within short Pascual Santamaria had shot down two Bf 109s. Then followed a whirling dogfight, during which Pascual Santamaria managed to shoot down a third Bf 109, his 14th victory. Just as his last victim went down in flames, a hail of bullets struck Pascual Santamaria's own fighter. Francisco Meroño, another Spanish pilot who served with the VVS, wrote:

"José's Yak immediately caught fire, and the flames enveloped the entire fuselage of the aircraft. Pascual bailed out and had to jump through the fire. He fell like a stone. His parachute failed to open."

Leytenant José Pascual Santamaria posthumously was awarded with the Order of Lenin.

José María Bravo, another "Red" Spanish fighter pilot who served with the Soviet Air Force in WW II.

From CABALLEROS DEL AIRE de la Guerra Civil Española (1936-1939)

(Photo copyright CABALLEROS DEL AIRE de la Guerra Civil Española (1936-1939) )

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