Category Air War on the Eastern Front

he German standard single-seat, single-engine mono­plane fighter, Professor Willy Messerschmitt’s immor tal Bf 109, probably had better combat performance than any other aircraft—with the famous British Spitfire as the only exception—in service in early 194.. Designated “Bf’-from Bayerische Flugzeugwerke even after the com­pany became Messerschmitt AG—the 109 gave the Ger­man fighter pilots an enormous advantage in combat. In June 1941 most Luftwaffe fighter units had converted to the latest version, the Bf 109F, equipped with a 1,300- horsepower Daimler-Benz engine that gave a top speed of about 390 miles per hour at 22,000 feet. The earlier model, the Bf 109E, had a slightly weaker engine and was about 30 miles per hour slower. On the other hand, the E model featured two wing-mounted two 20mm automatic cannon in addition to two 7.92mm machine guns mounted over the engine nacelle. The Bf 109F was intended for precision shooting, with only one nose – mounted 15mm or 20mm automatic cannon together with the two 7.92mm machine guns. Both versions were vasdy superior to almost all that the Soviets could launch into the air in 1941.

The only deficiency of the Bf 109 was its short flight range, normally not more than slightly over 400 miles. This was due to the fact that it originally had been constructed as a local defensive interceptor. The twin – engine Bf 110 Zerstorer, intended for an offensive fighter role, had proved to be a failure during the Battle of Brit­ain. Although heavily armed with two 20mm automatic cannon and four 7.92mm machine guns in the nose, plus a 7.92mm aft machine gun—the Bf 110’s wide turn­ing radius and slow acceleration had turned it into an

easy prey for the RAF fighters. Nevertheless, on the East­ern Front the Bf 110’s top speed of 340 miles per hour and its ability to sustain battle damage gave it a com­pletely new chance.

Regarding bombers—the backbone of the Luftwaffe at this time—the Germans relied entirely on three twin – engine tactical medium bombers: the Heinkel He 111, the Junkers Ju 88, and the Domier Do 17. The former two were the most common, with the Ju 88 as the most modem. The He 111, a heavily armored “workhorse” armed with five machine guns and two automatic can­non, was able to carry about a 4,000- pound bomb load 800 miles. Entering service in 1939, the Ju 88 had been designed in response to the “high-speed bomber” concept of the late 1930s. This concept, aimed at producing bombers able to outrun enemy fighter interceptors, was hastily abandoned with the entrance of fast monoplane fighters of the Bf 109 and British Hurricane generation.

Neverthless, against obsolescent Soviet fighters on the Eastern Front, the high­speed bomber concept proved to work during 1941. With a maximum speed of 286 miles per hour, the Ju 88 was one of the fastest bombers in service at that time.

Armed with three 7.92mm machine guns and able to carry a bomb load of about 4,000 pounds, it was a most versatile air­craft, capable of carrying out roles as level bomber, dive-bomber, and reconnaissance aircraft. The Do 17Z, the least modern of the three German bomber types, also was a product of the high-speed bomber concept. The Do 17’s relatively small bomb load of 2,200 pounds and the vul­nerability’ of the airplane to hostile fire was to compel the Luftwaffe to withdraw this type from front-line service in 1942.

One of the most famous—not least among the enemy ground troops—Ger­man combat aircraft at this time was the feared Stuka, the single-engine Ju 87 dive- bomber. Although slow at a top speed of about 230 miles per hour and only lightly armed-and thus an easy victim to fighter
interception—the Ju 87 was able to deliver more than 1,000 pounds of bombs with frightening precision. The screaming sound from a formation of siren-equipped div­ing Stukas was enough to make an entire enemy unit take cover during the early years of the war.

In general, the Soviet Air Force material was of low technical quality at the onset of the war. The main Soviet fighter aircraft in 1941, the single-engine Polikarpov 1-16 monoplane—called lshak (Jackass) by the Soviet pilots and Rata (Rat) by the Germans, who had adopted this from their allies in the Spanish Civil War—was out-

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classed by the Bf 109 fighter in most aspects. At 9,800 feet flight altitude—where most air combats took place on the Eastern Front—the 1-16 was more than 60 miles per hour slower than the Bf 109F (around 280 miles per hour compared to 346 miles per hour). According to German fighter pilots’ reports, the 1-16 ‘‘easily caught fire if struck from above or from the sides.” Neverthe­less, the Ishak held two important advantages over the Bf 109. First, the Ishak was highly maneuverable. The German fighter ace Hans-Ekkehard Bob describes it as a “flying phenomenon” as the 1-16 Mark 5 could perform a full turn in 14 to 15 seconds. Second, the I-16’s radial engine was air-cooled. Since the Bf 109’s inline engine was liquid-cooled, a few hits in the radiator was enough to send a Messerschmitt trailing coolant down to the ground. According to the Soviet fighter ace Arkadiy Kovachevich, this was one of the main reasons why the 1-16 pilots preferred to enter combat with the Bf 109s head-on.

Frequently, Bf 109s hit in the radiator force-landed and were only slightly damaged, causing them not to be recorded in the German loss lists. This could help explain the large gap between Soviet victory claims and Luftwaffe loss data. (Several Bf 109s of the F-2 type were equipped with an emergency valve that enabled the pilot to close down the damaged radiator and return safely to base on the second radiator.)

The armament of the 1-16 differed among two 7.62mm machine guns in the Mark 5, four 7.62mm machine guns in Marks 10, 18, and 24, and two 20mm automatic cannon and two 7.62mm machine guns in Marks 17, 27, and 28.

In battles at Khalkhin Gol—in the Soviet Far East—in 1939 the second Polikarpov single-engine fighter, the 1-153 Chayka (Gull) biplane, had been a large success during the air combat with Japanese monoplane fighters with nonretractable landing gear. This definitely was one of the finest biplane fighters ever produced. The retract­able landing gear gave the 1-153 an unusually high top speed for a biplane—almost on the same level as the 1-16. It was even more maneuverable than the 1-16, but its weak armament—four 7.62mm machine guns—proved to be inadequate against armored enemy aircraft such as the He 111. On top of this, the weak structure of the 1-153 rendered it quite vulnerable to hostile fire. In 1941 this aircraft was on its way out of service in the VVS.

The predecessor of the Chayka, the Polikarpov l-15bis biplane fighter, was a rather unsuccessful upgrade of the 1-15, one of the world’s best fighters in the early thirties. By 1941, the I-15bis had become a slow, vulnerable, and poorly armed “morsel” for the victory-hungry Bf 109 pilots. “A few rounds fired into the sides were often enough to set them on fire,” reported the German pilots.1

As the Germans launched their attack, the Soviet Air Force was in the midst of a sweeping modernization program. The first aircraft of the new generation to arrive in large numbers to the front-line units was the Mikoyan-Gurevich mono­plane fighter, the MiG-3. Still, this new fighter was inferior to the Bf 109. The MiG-3 was heavier and had a slightly weaker armament—two 7.62mm and one 12.7mm machine gun, all mounted over the engine nacelle—than the German fighter. It also proved to be less maneuverable than the Bf 109, particularly at the lower altitudes. Intended as a high-altitude interceptor, the MiG – 3 was extremely fast at these levels, reaching al­most 400 miles per hour at 25,000 feet. But at lower altitudes, where most air combat on the Eastern Front were fought, it proved to be slow and heavy. German fighter pilots reported that the MiG-3’s “easily caught fire if hit from any direction.”2

Although part of the “new generation” of

fighters in 1941, most serial manufactured examples of the single-engine monoplane fighter Lavochkin-Gorbunov – Gudkov LaGG-3 were inferior even to the 1-16 in many aspects. The LaGG-3 was outclimbed, outmaneuvered— taking 30 seconds to perform a full turn!—and outgunned by the Bf 109. "While sturdy, the Soviet fighter demon­strated a unique and devastating blend of sluggishness and poor maneuverability.”5 The LaGG-3 proved to have a tendency to flip over into a spin if put into a tight turn. To a large extent the deficiencies of this plane derived from bad manufacturing qualities. Although the LaGG – 3 was designated with a top speed of 360 miles per hour, several examples that reached combat units were not able to exceed 315 miles per hour.

“The LaGG-3 suffered from serious shortcomings and vices, few of which were ever to be entirely eradicated, and the units supplied with the new fighters had prob­lems with learning how to operate it. The LaGG-3 gained a reputation for being a “widow maker” after high attri­tion during the initial conversion phase. It was found to be overweight and underpowered and difficult to fly,
there were frequent undercarriage failures, the gun« operating mechanism was unreliable, etc.”4 The Sovietfl fighter pilots’ gallows humor soon reinterpreted theLaGGM abbreviation as Lakirovannyy Garantirovaimyy GW), the И “Varnished Guaranteed Coffin.”

Nevertheless, production of the LaGG-3 tontinuedB until 1944, and it remained in front-line service until the |B.{ end of the war. A total of 6,528 LaGG-3s were built. As ■ I better Soviet fighters were introduced later in the war, Я the LaGG-3 became the favorite target for many “push’ *:] ers” among the fighter aces in the Luftwaffe,

By far the best Soviet fighter of 1941 was AleksandiT Yakovlev’s beautiful Yak-1 single-engine, single-seat! fighter. This was something completely different from 1 the Polikarpov, the LaGG, and the Mikovan-GureviaH fighters on hand at that time. Although the MiG-3 w faster at higher flight levels, both aircraft were equally I fast at lower altitudes. The Yak-1 had better maneuver ability than both the MiG-3 and the LaGG-3; on average, the Yak-1 could complete a full turn in 19 or 20 sec­onds, compared with the 23 seconds that it took the

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MiG-3. The nose armament of the Yak—one 20mm ShVAK-was far superior to the 12.7mm of the MiG-3. Just as with the Bf 109, the nose gun of the Yak-1 was supplemented with two machine guns (7.62mm) mounted over the engine nacelle. But the main advan­tage of the Yak was that it was much easier to handle. The disadvantage of both the MiG-3 and the LaGG-3 was that these aircraft had a tendency to go into a spin during tight maneuvers. This did not apply to the Yak-1. The similarities between the Bf 109F and the Yak-1 are striking. Both aircraft were very nearly equal in speed, maneuverability, and armament. The Germans reported that the Yak-1 was “more difficult to set on fire in attack from the rear than the MiG-3.1,5 Unfortunately for the Soviets, only a very small number of *Yak-ls were on hand at the outbreak of the war.

The Soviet medium bombers, mainly twin-engine DB-3s and SBs, were roughly comparable to the German Do 17 in speed and armament. Sergey Ilyushin’s DB-3, with a modern all-metal design would remain in front­line service throughout the war. With a maxiumum bomb load of 2,200 pounds on long-distance flights and 5,500 pounds of bombs over short distances, the DB-3 can be compared to early models of the He 111.

Andrey Tupolev’s “high-speed” SB bomber (incor­rectly referred to as “SB-2” in most Western publications) largely proved to be a failure. The normal bomb load of the SB—1,320 pounds—was not much more than that of the single-engine German Ju 87. Constructed to be as light as possible to improve speeds, the SB’s lack of armor and its light defensive armament gave it little chance when attacked by Bf 109s. While the fuel tanks of the DB-3 were encapsulated with rubber, the SB’s unprotected drop-feed aluminum fuel tanks over the engines were easily ignited by gunfire, thus causing the engines to burn. The German fighter pilots—and not least the Soviet bomber crews—soon learned that the SB was “highly flammable.”

Only with the appearance of the Petlaykov Pe-2, which had started to reach the combat units only in 1941, did the Soviets posess a twin-engine dive-bomber compa­rable to the German planes. With a top speed approach­ing the performances of the Bf 109F, the Pe-2 was the first true “high-speed bomber.” Yet the limited bomb load of 1,300 pounds remained a weak spot.

[ Sergey Ilyushin’s 11-2 was the unchallenged triumph of Soviet aviation industry during World War II. Enter­ing service in small numbers shortly before the German invasion, it probably was the most modern and suitable ground-attack aircraft in the world at the time. It was very heavily armored, and thus became known among the German fighter pilots as “the cement bomber.” The 11-2’s entire fuselage was protected with 4mm-to-13mm – thick steel plating and 5mm-thick duraluminum, capable of withstanding any hostile fire except heavy antiaircraft artillery. Despite its typically poor Soviet payload—a mere 880 pounds of bombs and eight rockets—the 11-2 soon earned the nickname Schwarzer Tod (Black Death) among the German ground troops. The Soviet airmen, who loved this fighting machine, nicknamed it Ilyusha or Gorbatyy (Hunchback, derived from the “humped” cockpit canopy on the slim fuselage). But to the world the 11-2 became known simply as Shturmovik, which in reality is the Russian word for “ground-attack airplane."

Regarding tactics, the Luftwaffe also was ahead of the Soviets. Adopted after the performance of the famous fighter pilot Werner Molders in the Spanish Civil War, the German fighters operated aggressively in loose two – and four-aircraft formations. This famous Rotte and Schwarm tactical formation would revolutionarize the fighter tactics of the world’s air forces within a few years. Abandoning the previous tight three-plane V formation, this new formation was perfectly adapted to the fast Bf 109 fighter, enabling the pilots to utilize the speed advantage in a flexible manner. Just as their British coun­terparts in 1940, the Soviet fighter pilots were trained to operate in tight V formations throughout 1941. This added a tactical advantage to the superior performance of the German fighters.

The most common German fighter attack tactic was a snap bounce from above, followed by a rapid climb to a superior altitude, utilizing the high-speed climb advan­tage of the Bf 109. This would be repeated over and over again during the same engagement. Only rarely did Bf 109 pilots enter turning combat with Soviet fighters.

Under attack from enemy fighters, the Soviet fighter pilots often formed the same Lufbery defensive circle (Oboronitel’nyy krug) as the RAF pilots encountering Bf 109s over the Western Desert or the Bf 110s during the Battle of Britain. The Lufbery was a rather sound defensive measure, but it rendered the entire mission of the fighters useless. The most courageous Soviet fighter pilots would turn nose-to-nose against attacking enemy planes, often attempting to ram them.

While the German bombers usually flew in one or several tight three-plane V formations, maximizing the defensive firepower of the gunners both through the formation and via air-to-air radio calls, the Soviet bomb­ers were compelled to operate in wedge and line configu­rations typically consisting of three to twelve aircraft— sometimes far above that figure—echeloned in altitude. This reduced the effect of the defensive firepower against intercepting fighters, but it was an imperative measure due to the need to maintain visual contact with the unit leader, because air-to-air radios—standard equipment in all German aircraft types—was something of a luxury to Soviet airmen. Only the unit commander’s aircraft was equipped with radios, but these radios were very unreli­able. Thus cooperation in the air’was difficult, and on several occasions this enabled German fighters to sneak behind a Soviet formation and shoot down one plane after another, the last victim caught by the same surprise as the first one.

The Soviet fighter ace Aleksandr Pokryshkin wrote: “Another deficiency was that our planes still lacked radio equipment. And the transmitters and receivers installed in the aircraft flown by some unit command* took up a great deal of space, were difficult to handle, and very unreliable. We could communicate only by rock-j ing the wings of our planes. In order to maintainj contact, we were forced to keep so tight together that we lost maneuverability.”6

At least in one field of high technology—radar-bodil sides were equal. Although the Germans made use of radar against British strategic bombers at this time, ground radar stations were only rarely used on the Eastern Front, | On the other side of the hill, Soviet technicians had ere-1 ated two different types of radar equipment to comple-1 ment one another, the RUS-1 and RUS-2 models. Nev-i ertheless, these were only deployed for the air defenses j of Moscow and Leningrad. Air surveillance on both sides on the Eastern Front mainly depended on air surveil-i lance posts and visual sightings at the front.

he fact that a numerically weaker Luftwaffe dealt its Soviet counterpart devastating blows during 1941- 42 is well known. These German successes have been widely described in the West in postwar aviation litera­ture, mainly based on information obtained from Ger­man sources. Although not openly stated, the generally meager attempts to explain these immense victories are almost w’ithout exception influenced by wartime Nazi propaganda. Some Western writers even assume that the “Soviet people” were inferior to the Germans. Hence American aviation historians Raymond F. Toliver and Trevor J. Constable state unhesitatingly that the Germans were “psychologically superior” to the Soviets.1 Several captured German airmen who had the privilege of visiting a Soviet air base described how surprised they were to find that “the Russian airmen were exactly like us.”

On the other hand, the old “Stalinist literature” pro­vides only a distorted picture, and the 1941 disaster is attributed to “incompetence” (without giving any rea­son) and even “treason” on the frontal command level, thus justifying the purging measures taken against the Red Army in the 1930s. Even if Premier Nikita Khrushchev’s brief “de-Stalinization” period removed the worst of these excesses, a lot still remains in Soviet historical literature. In fact, the Soviet Union’s and its air force’s defeat of the German forces was not due to Josef Stalin. On the contrary, victory was achieved despite Josef Stalin.

In the political campaign against the organizer of the Red Army, Leon Trotsky, Arkadiy Rosengoltz, one of the first commanders of the Soviet Air Force, had been removed from his command as early as 1924.

Nevertheless, under the supervision of the commander in chief Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevskiy, the Red Army and particularly its military’ aviation arm rose to a top level in the world during the early thirties. By 1935 the Soviet Union had the largest and most modem bomber force in the world. Meanwhile, the Soviet aviation industry created some of the best fighter planes in the world—the 1-15 and the 1-16. A few years later, the qual­ity of the Red Army had fallen far below Western stan­dards, despite several war experiences between 1936 and 1939 that could have improved the tactics and qualities further. The dominant reason for this downfall is the Stalinist purging measures in the late thirties.

A total of 772 Soviet airmen took part on the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War between 1936 and 1939. Several of the most successful Soviet pilots in the first years of the war with Germany had drawn their first blood in the skies over Spain. The most successful, Polkovnik Vladimir Bobrov, claimed thirteen individual and four shared victories in Spain and went on to claim a further thirty individual and twenty shared victories in the war with Germany. Mayor Mikhail Fedoseyev, who was one of the top-scoring fighter aces in the VVS when he was killed in combat in the spring of 1942, had achieved seven victories in Spain.

During the Spanish Civil War the Soviet pilots discovered the advantages of the German Schwann (finger-four) fighter formation and the value of the enemy’s radio-controlled ground-attack sorties. Back in the Soviet Union, the High Command completely disregarded this valuable experience.

The purges of the Red Army opened with the sudden arrest of Marshal Tukhachevskiy in May 1937. An atmo­sphere of distrust, particularly against “new thinkers,” rapidly unfolded. The “dual-command” system, characterized by political commissars supervising all unit commanders, was implemented in 1937. This prevented pilots from using their initiative at field level. A large number of Soviet airmen who had served in Spain fell victim to the wave of political repres­sions.

The Soviet fighter ace Polkovnik Yevgeniy Stepanov gives the following account: “In 1939 and 1940, a number of Soviet pilots who had fought in Spain were framed and arrested, usu­ally without being charged formally and without any kind of investigation—Feliks Arzhenukhin, [Yevgeniy] Ptukhin, [Petr] Pumpur, Emil Shakht, Pavel Proskurin, and others. Most of these were executed by firing squad. Yakov Smushkevich, who had been awarded the Gold Star as a Hero of the Soviet Union on June 21, 1937, and a second Gold Star on November 17, 1939, rose to deputy commander of the Air Force, only to be arrested for treason shortly afterward. He spent almost two years in an NKVD (Narodnyy Kommissariat Vnutrennikh Del, or Secret Police) prison. As the invading Germans ap­proached Moscow in October 1941, he was executed on the assumption that he might be freed by the Germans. Pavel Rychagov, a fifteen-victory ace of the Spanish con­flict, delivered a critical speech on the state of the air force at the end of December 1940. He was arrested early the next year and eventually executed.”2

Between 1937 and 1939, repressive actions were car­ried out against 5,616 Soviet airmen.3

Technical innovations also suffered tremendously from the Stalin regime’s paranoia. Hundreds of aviation designers, engineers, and specialists were imprisoned between 1934 and 1941. Many were executed and

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others perished in labor camps. Historian Alexander Boyd states: “Georgi Ozerov, a member of KOSOS [Experi­mental Aircraft Design Section] and later of Tupolev’s [aircraft designer A. N. Tupolev’s] internee design bureau, has estimated that four hundred and fifty air­craft designers, engineers, and specialists were interned between 1934 and 1941, of which some three hundred were later set to work in NKVD-supervised design bureaux, about a hundred died in GULAG labour camps, and no less than fifty were executed."4

In the midst of the war in Spain, the USSR sent a ^“Volunteer Air Brigade” consisting of 700 pilots and aviation technicians to aid China in its defense against the Japanese invasion between October 1937 and November 1939. Kapitan Petr Kozachenko, who would fight the Luftwaffe and other Axis air forces in the air over the Ukraine in 1941, claimed to have shot down eleven Japanese aircraft over China. Test pilots Podpolkovnik Stepan Suprun and Mayor Konstantin Kokkinaki, who were among other Soviet pilots who would earn reputations during the first months of the war with Germany, learned much from their air combat with the Imperial Japanese Army air force over China. Soviet DB-3 bombers were particularly successful in raids against Japanese air bases. During two raids against airfields in the vicinity of Hankow in August and September 1939, a Japanese source admits, 140 aircraft were destroyed on the ground.

" In 1938 and 1939 the USSR was drawn into two other separate conflicts with Japan. In the summer of 1938, a limited border conflict evolved at Lake Khasan on the border between the Soviet Union and Japanese-held Korea.

Here the Soviets were in complete con­trol of the air. And here, for the first time, Soviet bombers operated in large formations.

p In May 1939 Japan invaded Mongolia in the Khalkhin-Gol River area. The Soviet Union immediately in­tervened to defend Mongolia. Known as the Battle of Khalkhin-Gol, this prob­ably was the first time in history that both sides tried to win the ground battle
by achieving supremacy in the air. Between May and September 1939 when the Japanese withdrew, Soviet avia­tion carried out more than 20,000 combat sorties over Khalkhin-Gol. Losses were high on both sides.

The success achieved by the Red Army during these conflicts compelled Tokyo to refrain from an attack on the Soviet Union in 1941, thus saving the USSR from a complete disaster. On the other hand, the Soviet leader­ship attempted to apply the tactical experience gained against Japan to European conditions in 1940 and 1941— with devastating results to the Soviets.

The losses suffered by the Soviet Air Force at the hands of the small Finnish Air Force during the Winter War in 1939-40 served as a warning. According to Soviet sources, 261 Soviet aircraft were lost5—against no more than sixty to seventy Finnish aircraft admitted destroyed. This was the price for the crippling political purges against the entire Red Army. Highly professional senior commanders and officers had been rooted out and replaced with inexperienced second-raters. Historian Von Hardesty’s judgment regarding Stalin’s effect on the Soviet Air Force is harsh: “If the VVS had entered the
decade of the thirties as one of the premier air forces of the world, it found itself in a position of obsolescence by 1940.”6 In his characteristic fashion, Stalin next made a new 180-degree turn. He abolished the “dual command” system and ordered a rapid modernization and professionalization of the Red Army. But this came too late, and in June 1941 the Red Army still was a top – controlled, inflexible colossus with mainly obsolescent equipment and methods-and personnel largely inad­equately trained in technological fields.

t the outbreak of war between Germany and the USSR, the former had the most skillful, war-experi­enced airmen in the world, outfitted with some of the most modern equipment. The new German Wehrmacht, founded in a spirit of vengeance against the Versailles Treaty, was the piledriver of the most advanced military doctrines and tactics.

The fate of history’ had brought two “outcast states,” Germany and the USSR, together in the 1920s. In exchange for German high technology, the Soviet Union, poor and devastated after the Civil War, allowed Ger­many to secretly train military aviators at Lipetsk after Germany had been forbidden to have its own air force by the victorious Western powers after World War I. Between 1923 and 1933 Germany trained and devel­oped completely new military aviation tactics secretly at

Lipetsk. About 120 fighter pilots, the core of the new Luftwaffe, received their training at Lipetsk.

With Hitler’s rise to power and the eagerness of the Western states to forget the military restrictions of the Versailles Treaty in exchange for the strengthening of a reliable anti-Communist bulwark in the center of Europe, Hermann Goring’s new Luftwaffe was officially founded on February 26, 1935.

Within a few years, a modern air force with an offensive, tactical doctrine aimed at a short but decisive war, had been formed. The cream of the Luftwaffe was tested and refined while supporting Francisco Franco’s Loyalist forces during the Spanish Civil War. The Con­dor Legion became synonymous with “Guernica,” the startling blow by modern German bombers against a defenseless Basque town. But the Condor Legion’s

significance was more than this; it was the cradle of mod­ern aerial warfare, for it was in Spain that the Blitzkrieg concept was evolved.

Having had to start from scratch, the young men of the Luftwaffe were not burdened with the conservative thinking that thwarts new ideas. Without a doubt, the Luftwaffe was the most dynamic air force in the world as Hitler commenced the world war in 1939.

The Blitzkrieg, and in particular the Battle of Brit­ain, brought not only bitter losses to the Luftwaffe but also hardened the airmen and improved their skills. By the end of the Battle of Britain, the famous fighter pilot Oberstleutnant Werner Molders had amassed a total of sixty-eight aerial victories, plus fourteen in Spain. Molders and a number of other young and extremely dangerous fighter aces, such as Hauptmann Walter Oesau, Hauptmann Herbert Ihlefeld, Oberleutnant Hans Philipp, Hauptmann Hermann-Friedrich Joppien, and Leutnant Heinz Bar had formed a core from which the new “hor­rible flying wolves” (in the words of Soviet aircraft designer Aleksandr Yakovlev) were developing.

On the other side of the hill, more than 91 percent of all commanders of larger VVS units had held their posts for fewer than six months on the eve of the Ger­man invasion.’ The stage was set for a massacre of the inexperienced Soviet airmen with their obsolete equip­ment. It was a matter of technology, experience and tac­tics—not “psychology.”