Wings of fury

Many of you will have heard of the Hawker Sea Fury, the monoplane fighter that served in several air forces just after World War Two. However there was a biplane called the Hawker Fury that served around the world just before the war. It remained in service with some air forces even during the Second World War.

The Fury was the RAF's first fighter that could exceed 200mph.  In 1931 the Fury entered service with the RAF, and remained in service until January 1939.

One of the main selling points of the Fury was that it could be fitted with a huge variety of engines, which meant eight countries brought it, and most fitted their own preferred engines.

In 1941 Yugoslavia had two squadrons of 15 Furies, these were Grupa 35 and 36.  Grupa 36 was based at the airfield at Rezanovacka Kosa.  The Yugoslavian Air Force was formed from pilots with little experience or training. They had suffered a blow when the high ranking officer Vladimir Kren had stolen an aircraft and defected to Austria. Despite this setback the morale of the pilots was exceptionally high.

To add to their confidence the Yugoslavs had received an intelligence warning of the impending German attack, and had therefore began quietly mobilizing their forces.  This included dispersing the air force to fifty smaller airfields.  The intelligence was so good the Yugoslavs even managed to predict on which day the German attack would fall.

Grupa 36 had been warned to expect German bombers on April the 6th, 1941.  Before 0600, as the sun poked over the wooded hills on the horizon two Furies were dispatched on patrol to look out for German bombers.  The remainder of the Grupa's pilots were stood to, in position in their aircraft with the engines switched on and running at idle.

At 0611 over the voices of the ground crew and pilots, and the soft chugging of the Furies engines came the harsh roar of German engines at full power.  Around thirty ME-109's and BF-110's stormed towards the airfield.  The Yugoslavian pilots reacted immediately, ramming their throttles to full power as they bumped along the runway.  The sudden movement of their victims caused most the Luftwaffe attacks to miss and only one Fury was destroyed on the ground. Unfortunately however, three trainers and an ambulance aircraft were destroyed.

The Luftwaffe planes looped around and dived onto the gaggle of biplanes who were clawing for altitude. Despite the good (for a biplane) rate of climb the Germans in their vastly superior machines had every advantage.  Soon the Furies were crumpling under the strikes of the Germans cannon shells but the Germans didn't have it all their own way in the 19 minute dogfight that followed, as two of the BF109's were shot down by Furies.

Kapetan Konstantin A. Jermakov had been born in Russia, but had ended up in the Yugoslavian Air Force as the leader of one of the flights of Grupa 36.  In the dogfight so far he had emptied his guns into the German planes to no effect.  In a fit of rage or desperation, we shall never know which, he flew his plane at a BF110, crashing into the wing.  Both planes fell to the ground in a mangled smashed heap of wreckage killing both pilots and the crew of the BF110.

Kapetan Jermakov

This act of defiance seems to have touched off something within the Yugoslavian pilots.  The other Grupa 36 flight leader, a Bosnian, Kapetan Vojislav J. Popovic, repeated the feat, ramming and destroying another BF110 and killing himself.

Kapetan Popovic

Finally a Serbian pilot, Porucnik Milorad D. Tanasic, went after harder prey.  He managed to catch, and ram into of the BF109's, again with fatal results for all involved.

Porucnik Tanasic

The tally of Germans downed came at a high cost, seven pilots dead, and one wounded. All but one of the Furies in the squadron had been destroyed.
The remaining Fury joined Grupa 35, which fought for the remainder of the war.  The only other air to air engagement was against the Italians, which saw both sides having aircraft shot down.

Furies were to see action once more in the Second World War, their last engagement is strange in that it technically wasn't under any air force.

In August 1941 the Soviets and British forces invaded Iran. The Iranians resisted, but in a patchy way.  In some places they put up fierce fights, in others little resistance. The Iranians were facing an overwhelming force and the matter was decided before it began.
Less than three days later the war was all but over, political agreements meant that the Shah issued orders for a cease fire, including orders to the main Tehran airbase not to engage Soviet paratroopers should they land.

Iranian Pilots by their Furies

The men of the airbase mutinied at these orders, arresting the Chief of the Air force as he tried to enforce the orders.  The Army moved to crush the defenders, sending an armoured column against the air base, and surrounding it with AA guns.  Two pilots took their Furies up in the face of the AA guns and made a strafing run on the armoured column then flew off and simply disappeared.

On September the 17th a flight of five Polikarpov I-16's heading to reinforce the Soviet forces in Iran were over the Caspian sea approaching land, when the two Furies reappeared.  The Iranians immediately launched an attack on the Soviets.  Their planes were outclassed and one of the Furies was shot down.

The distance the Furies had flown to attack was suddenly demonstrated, as in the intervening weeks the Iranian pilots hadn't been able to secure any more fuel. The second Fury ran out of fuel and crashed into a forest.