January 19, 1940 outside of Helsinki
Arne Elo cursed at the cold inside the dispersal airfield’s ready room. It was really just a lean-to of fresh cut pine logs with an iron stove in the corner burning greenwood in a failing attempt to warm the room to a level that could be described as comfortable. Two layers of long johns, a wool sweater and pants, mutluks, a hat and gloves with hinged fingers allowed him to work. Six Brewsters were at this temporary airstrip twenty five miles from the squadron’s main base. They had dispersed three weeks ago when three days of steady raids and strafing runs had destroyed seven fighters on the ground and killed thirty critical ground crew and two irreplaceable pilots. A blizzard stopped the attacks and allowed an evacuation. Four to six planes were at each of the expedient landing strips carved out of the woods west of the capital. Another dozen airfields had mock fighters hidden, some skillfully and others with a deliberate bit of laziness to attract attacks. One dummy base was plastered yesterday, but the early warning system allowed all of the ready stubby American fighters to get altitude and dive on the SB-2 bombers, scoring seven kills without loss before fleeing from the increasingly disciplined escorting fighters.
“Sir, #5 is ready, fueled and good to go” The crew chief jostled his elbow. #5 had missed the fight yesterday as her oil pump had failed during warm-ups. A replacement was found from one of the destroyed fighters. She needed a quick hop to confirm the fix, twenty or thirty minutes max. The Finnish pilots were exhausted. Arne had volunteered to fly the check hop to allow the combat crews to sleep.
Half an hour later, he was eight thousand feet above the snow covered forests, alone, and enjoying the steady hum of the engine stolen from a transport. The sun was shining bright and the cloud cover was intermittent. As he was ready to report that #5 was as good as she would ever be, he spotted three biplanes at his 1 o’clock a mile below him. They were coming in from over the sea. The pre-flight check had confirmed there would be no friendlies within forty miles of the airfield, so these were probably Red intruders.
He officially was not in Finland, he officially was not flying a fighter. He officially was not pointing his nose over to dive to a point where his three heavy machine guns (as the Finns discovered four made the plane handle like a drunk pig) would be able to send a steady stream of rounds into the lead intruder. He was a ghost, a predator that no one could know about. The radio stayed silent as he screamed in against the biplanes.
In under a minute, the first intruder had crashed, a two second burst slammed into the pilot and his slumping body pushed the plane’s nose down. The other two biplanes broke formation. They jinked and they dodged. One attempted to turn inside of him, but he ignored an invitation for a turning fight, instead zooming back to six thousand feet before pitching his nose back over, gaining the speed he lost and loosing three bursts of a second apiece into the less aggressively flown plane.
Climbing again for altitude, his eyes scanning over his shoulder as he flipped the fighter so its belly face the sky, he corkscrewed down. The last remaining bi-plane was two hundred feet above the pine forest, jinking and juking. Two bursts from the 7 o’clock position missed but the Soviet pilot was aware of them as the stream of tracers screeched by. Another burst missed by mere feet over the pilot’s left shoulder. He flinched, and brought the stick down and jammed his rudder pedals for a tenth of a second. It was a mistake that he did not have the altitude to recover from. The biplane clipped a tall pine tree and the sudden imbalance flipped him over three times before the plane began burn in a small clearing. The pilot escaped but the bitter cold would kill him from exposure before a militia patrol could pick him up.
Arne breathed out, his heart rate almost returning to normal. He was an ace now.
Ten minutes later, he landed at the temporary airfield and the ground crews hitched the horse teams to bring the fighter back under cover.
That evening, Arne, the unofficial ace, enjoyed the three celebratory shots of vodka, one for each kill.