Achfung Pokryshkin

Moscow's hero worshipers fast week heard the latest: Major Alexander Pokryshkin had shot down his 59th enemy plane, was still beyond challenge, the ace of all Allied aces.

Muscovites guessed the tight-knit, blond, blue-eyed ex-mechanic scored his latest triumph over Rumania, where in 1941 he began his fighting career. He was then 28 and middle-aged by U.S. or British fighter-pilot standards. Since then he has fought more than 500 air battles, has been shot down thrice.

Today Pokryshkin commands a regiment--rough equivalent of a U.S. group--in Russia's most famous fighter unit (its other aces: Richkalov, 46; Glinka, 38; Lugansky, 32; Alelyukhin, 29).

Pokryshkin, eloquent only when he talks flying, drinks little, eats and sleeps much. Superstitious, he will not be photographed before a flight. Six months ago he married a Red WAC at the front. On furloughs Pokryshkin goes to Moscow for a round of theaters and tourist sights (he has been seen gawking at the Moscow subway's new, resplendent stations). After the war he wants to be a plane designer.

Brother's Advice. Pokryshkin's mother still lives in Novosibirsk, with the youngest of her four sons. She is a plain old peasant woman, proud of her sons. Recently she wrote to Alexander: "Your brother [also an airman] wants to shift to your unit." Replied Alexander: "Let him prove his mettle. ..."

Steady-nerved and self-confident, Pokryshkin is as fatalistic as most combat pilots. In combat he is cautious and calculating, likes to feel out his enemy be fore the kill. In the Army's Red Star recently he analyzed some airmen's failures : "They have not absorbed . . . the feel of a fighter. . . . They are not sly or calculating enough, and they act in a stereotyped manner. ... It is clear that such airmen cannot fight successfully."

Pokryshkin has earned a chestful of medals (including the U.S. Distinguished Service Cross), a bust in his native Novosibirsk. But the highest prize comes through his earphones when he slashes into enemy formations. Then the German flight leaders identify his plane with its cluster of red stars--one for each aircraft downed --and shout "Achtung, Achtung--Pokryshkin."

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