Alexander Orlov
Doctor of History, for RIA Novosti

We know a lot about the cooperation between the Soviet Union and the United States during the Second World War, when both countries fought on the same side against Hitler. We know about the summit meetings, the work of diplomats, the lend-lease deliveries, and the fraternization of the soldiers and officers of the two armies on the Elbe.

But we know almost nothing about the 1944 "shuttle operations" of the U.S. Strategic Air Forces, which used three Soviet airfields - Poltava, Mirgorod and Piryatin - as bases for bombing German military facilities.

In summer 1944, when I was a junior lieutenant, I commanded a platoon in the 9th Tank Brigade, which was waiting in the recently liberated Ukrainian town of Poltava for reinforcements. Seven kilometers from where we were stationed there was an American air base, which was used by aircraft that had completed "shuttle" flights from Britain and Italy. What actually happened was that U.S. B-17 bombers and escort fighters would take off from British and Italian airfields, bomb targets in Germany, the occupied countries and Axis states, and then land in Soviet territory so the crews could rest and the aircraft could be repaired and refueled. Then they would take off and conduct further air raids against German targets, this time landing in airfields in Britain and Italy. And then they would fly back to Poltava again.

The Poltava air force junction (consisting of the above three airfields) hosted the Eastern Command of the U.S. Strategic Air Forces, which together with the Soviet Air Force Command, controlled the operations of the American bombers. The Americans bombed Nazi air bases and factories, and joint Russian and American teams serviced the planes and the airfields and defended the airfields and Allied ground facilities from enemy air strikes.

It was only much later that I learnt that the idea of building American airfields on Soviet territory had been President Roosevelt's. Back in 1942 he had asked Stalin to set aside several airfields in Siberia for 100 heavy bombers, which would carry out air strikes against Japan should it attack the Soviet Union. Stalin had rejected the proposal because he could not risk ending Soviet neutrality with Japan and becoming involved in fighting on two fronts.

But when the tide of war turned in 1943, Moscow showed interest in a new American proposal, put forward by Major General John R. Deane, U.S. Army Commanding General of the U.S. Military Mission in Moscow. Stalin did not however give his allies the go-ahead at this point and talks on the creation of an American air base in Soviet territory were not resumed until the Tehran Conference. The U.S. badly needed such a base: due to a lack of spare airfields in Europe, its relatively short-range planes were forced to save on fuel. They did not want to engage in serious air battles without reliable backup from fighter planes and were sustaining heavy losses.

This time Stalin agreed to the proposal in principle, but said he would not make a final decision until all the relevant documents had been studied. This took several months and so it was only in February 1944 that the equipment for the combat operations of the U.S. Strategic Air Forces began to arrive at the Poltava airfields.

There was a great deal of work to do. Up to 120 Boeing B-17 four-engine bombers (Flying Fortresses) were to take part in the shuttle operations. So that they could land and take-off, metal strips had to be laid on the runways of the Piryatin airfield and the cement airstrip at Mirgorod had to be extended. There was not nearly enough accommodation in the war-ravaged region to house the 1,000 or so foreign maintenance personnel and signalers. In the end it was decided to use two Soviet sleeper trains, which were stationed at the approaches to Poltava, as living quarters.

It was also necessary to set up communication centers that would connect Poltava with both Moscow and Britain. General Deane's mission was headquartered in the Soviet capital, and the U.S. Strategic Air Forces were headquartered in the UK. There also had to be a communication link with Italy, as heavy bombers would be taking off from there, and with Tehran, where there were American logistic bases.

One more task was to coordinate the overflight of B-17s and the escort fighters over the front line and provide ground support in the event of emergency landings. But the main task was to identify and agree the enemy targets.

The Americans wanted to bomb the Heinkel plants outside Riga so as to draw part of the German Air Force away from the Western to the Eastern front before Operation Overlord. However, Moscow was insisting that the Americans bomb facilities in Romania and Hungary that were supplying fuel to Germany. Under the Soviet-American agreement, Soviet requests were to have priority and so the Americans did what was asked of them.

As we needed air defense systems to protect the airfields, the Soviet Command dispatched a fighter division from the Air Defense Force and an air defense artillery regiment from the 6th Air Defense Corps to Poltava. The Americans could not see the point of this: on the Western Front the Germans had never tried to launch strikes against American airfields that were less than 150-300km from the front line, and Poltava was a good 500km away from the front. They were mistaken, but more about that later.

On June 2, 1944, 750 aircraft of the 15th Air Force took off from a base in Italy and carried out the first air strikes, bombing railroad junctions outside the cities of Debrecen, Dej and Cluj. This mission and all subsequent missions became known as "Operation Frantic." Some of the aircraft involved in this first mission returned to Italy, but 128 B-17 Flying Fortress bombers and 64 P-51 Mustang escort fighters flew back to Poltava, having lost only one B-17, which had exploded in the air in the target zone. Another B-17 lost its undercarriage when landing because it had been hit by the enemy's air defense. And one fighter was not accounted for. It was a fantastic result for the time.

I clearly remember how we, Soviet officers, reacted to the appearance of the Americans. Of course, our commanders did not approve of fraternizing, but we could hardly hide from the Americans. After all, we walked the same streets, saw the same films, and drank in the same cafes and restaurants. We "spoke" with each other mostly in the language of gestures, pats on the shoulder and smiles. We swapped stars from our shoulder epaulets and caps, medal ribbons, trophy German helmets, chocolate, cigarettes, and chewing gum, which was a novelty to us then. We even traded homebrewed vodka for gin and whisky, which were also something we had not tried before. And the Americans were amazed by our "Three Beetroots," a strong spirit, light blue in color, which was made locally out of the said vegetable.

The Americans were very friendly to us, and we were kind to them. I made friends with several of their officers, as I could speak a little English and translated during officer get-togethers. Senior Lieutenant Rally Sun, B-17 commander, used to tell me, "I was pleasantly surprised by the welcome. Some of our "gentlemen" back home in America and Britain told us that Russians were ill-natured and rude, lacking in culture and generally backward."

Likewise, we found out lots about the Americans. For example, the straightforward and democratic relations between the American airmen and their officers surprised us. If an officer, or even a colonel or a general, entered a tent where maintenance technicians were playing cards, then no one would jump to attention; they'd just carry on smoking, talking and joking. Even when a senior officer addressed a private, the latter would reply without putting out his cigarette, as if he were talking to a pal. Such behavior was unacceptable in the Red Army.

One event cast a shadow over our relations though. On July 11, General Eaker's group took off from Poltava for Italy, and the group's photographer, Lieutenant McCoy, took along aerial photographs of the Poltava airfield, which showed B-17s in their stands and on the takeoff strips. This was absolutely against regulations. The American base at the Poltava airfield was meant to be top secret. And as bad luck would have it, the Germans shot down Lt. McCoy's plane and got hold of the photographs. Ten days later, a He-111 Heinkel reconnaissance plane zoomed over the airfield, and we were unable to bring it down. That night, German bombers dropped photoflash bombs followed by fragmentation, incendiary and high-explosive bombs first on Mirgorod and then on Poltava. The air defense guns and the fighter planes from the 802nd Air Defense Regiment had little success in repelling the attack. Several bombs even fell on our tank brigade.

The German raid hit us very hard. The Nazi bombs destroyed three fighter planes from the 310th Air Defense Division and 404 tons of fuel and they damaged 12 Aerocobra planes and the metal takeoff strips. Two men were killed and 14 wounded. The Americans did not lose any aircraft or men because they had dispersed their bombers immediately after the incursion of the He-111 reconnaissance plane. But they still had serious issues with the airfield's anti-aircraft defense system, and largely with good reason. The system had shown itself to be weak and inadequate. We went on to make a lot of improvements to the defense system, and the subsequent German raids were not as successful as the first one had been. But relations were soured.

The Americans were insisting that they be allowed to install U.S. radar stations at the Poltava base. These radars would detect German planes long before they approached the airfields, and the Red Army did not have any such equipment. They also wanted to transfer large-caliber air defense artillery, night fighters (which were in short supply in the Soviet Union), and other defense systems from Britain. But the only person who could authorize this was the Supreme Commander (Stalin), and he was in no hurry to do so. He did not like that this would entail an increase in the number of foreign specialists at our bases. There could end up being as many as 9,000 of them, and this in turn would require an increase in the number of Soviet specialists.

Meanwhile, the Americans resumed their shuttle missions. From July 22 to 29, they carried out four air strikes against military airfields in Romania and Hungary, destroying 159 planes (67 on the ground and 64 in air combat) and damaging 28. They also destroyed 4 locomotives, 14 loaded trucks, and 2 personnel buses. The Americans lost 8 Lighting planes during these missions.

In August 1944, the U.S. Air Force carried out five missions from bases in Italy, Britain and the Soviet Union. In that one month, they made 499 flights and dropped 467 tons of bombs on the enemy, destroying oil refineries and 22 enemy planes. This cost the Americans four aircraft.

The shuttle operations conducted under the Stars and Stripes were put on hold during the Warsaw uprising, which was started by Polish patriots on the behalf of the London-based government in exile. Stalin was furious. He realized that the pro-Western Polish leadership wanted to liberate the capital without the help of the Red Army, so that they could later restore "the pre-war anti-Soviet cordon sanitaire." When British planes flew over Poland instead of American ones and, on Churchill's instructions, airdropped supplies for the insurgents, Stalin forbid the Allies from flying over the Soviet-German front and the Red Army.

The last four "Operation Frantic" missions took place in September. The first one entailed air strikes against a military factory in Brucks (south of Berlin). The second and the fourth missions consisted of strikes against Hungarian facilities in Miskolc and Szolnok, and the third mission aimed to help the Polish insurgents. Stalin allowed this last mission because by then it was too late to save the Poles. The uprising was doomed and was suppressed on October 1. Most of the American supplies airdropped from an altitude of 4,000m landed in German territory. The Americans lost two bombers and two fighter planes.

In winter 1944-1945, the Americans left Poltava. The U.S. Air Forces Command awarded ten Red Army servicemen (mostly junior officers, NCOs and privates) the Valor medal for courage and persistence in the joint efforts to defeat the common enemy. The Soviet Command awarded state medals to 17 American generals and officers.

I remember how easily the ordinary people of Russia and America interacted, despite differences in mentality, religion, traditions, customs and languages. We had no need for intermediaries, diplomats, ideologists or politicians. And our friendship and partnership, born all those years ago, has not been forgotten and will stand the test of time.