Later today we got a call from our Wing Commander saying some troops on the Krymskaya front were getting engaged by armor moving through the flatland. He suspected the enemy would make an attempt to hit our artillery and tank positions with ground attack aircraft. 4th Staffel was called to the flight line with our aircraft fueled and ready to go. I took the lead position and quickly threw together a flight plan. The weather was perfect today with high visibility and not a could in the sky. We were to fly at 3500m and engage any targets over the front.

We hit our patrol point over the front when an artillery observer radioed contacts over their position. What we found was a group of 9 enemy fighters consisting of Spitfires and P-39s. We had the altitude advantage so I called our flight of 3 to engage. Stab 4 ended up getting too low in the initial fight and was shot down by a Spitfire. I spotted a chute over friendly lines. Meanwhile, I ended up with 6 enemy planes on me with my wingman having to deal with his own problems. I was forced to continually do head-on attacks when I saw an enemy turning into me. This fight went on for about 20 minutes constantly turning into attacks at about 100-500m. I finally had a few second opportunity to shoot a Spitfire down, thinning out the enemy aircraft.

The fight went on for another 10 minutes having to turn into oncoming attackers until they were low on fuel or ammo and had to bug out. After the fight, I ended up with 4 of the 6 aircraft destroyed.