The Plague of the Soviet Bombers

I

t took the Soviet High Command several hours to analyze the full extent of the disaster. By then, the German armies, spearheaded by large tank concentra­tions, were flooding into the Soviet-held territories of Lithuania and Poland. Only to the south of the Pripyat Marshes were the defenders barely able to hold their positions. But to the north, the entire border defense had collapsed, and the invasion army kept streaming over bridges across the Dubisa, Neman, and Bug rivers in the border area. The confused directives sent from the High Command during the early morning hours had prevented the destruction of most of these bridges. As the Soviet High Command finally reacted, the VVS was instructed to launch every available bomber against these arteries of the invasion armies.

Beginning on the morning of June 22 and continu­ing throughout the remainder of the day, the Soviet Air

Force, despite all the difficulties, managed to dispatch large formations of mainly SB and DB-3 medium bomb­ers against the invaders. This response displayed a remarkable ability’ to improvise at the regimental level.

The next stage in the air war would be the downfall of the Soviet bomber force. The chronicle of JG 27 reads: “Alarmstart! Two Messerschmitts come dashing across the runway. Leutnant |Arthur] Schacht comes up on the tail of a DB-3, but in the next moment the bomber is torn apart by an antiaircraft hit. Schacht clings to a sec­ond bomber, aims, and opens fire. The Russian flew straight for a while, then dove vertically into the ground."15

The Soviet bomber missions during the first days of the war only furnished the overall catastrophe with additional multiple losses. There was no fighter escort available. Due to the lack of air-to-air radio, the bombers,
carrying out their missions in regimental groups, were forced to operate in open echelon formations that gave each pilot visual contact with the formation leader. This deprived the bomber formations of the opportunity to concentrate the gunners’ defensive fire against intercept­ing fighters. In reality, the SBs and DB-3s launched against the invaders on the first days of the war were more or less sitting ducks against the attacking Bf 109s. Never­theless, the bomber crews kept flying, literally “to the last man,” against the aggressor. This was not only a matter of obeying orders; these airmen were convinced that they represented the motherland’s last resort. From the air they clearly could see the full extent of the crisis. The courage and discipline displayed by the Soviet bomber crews during these first days of the war are virtually unequaled.

One of the first bombing missions was carried out by 39 ВАР/10 SAD in the central combat zone. After the first devastating German raid against their base, eighteen of the regiment’s SBs managed to take off at about 0700 hours to artack the German tanks and motorized units of Army Group Center as they crossed the Bug River. At least one bridge was hit, but all eighteen bombers were downed on the return flight.

All day long on June 22, 1941, the Soviet bombers kept coming; they held course and made no attempt to evade either ground fire or fighters encountered on the way to their targets. Over and over again they were shot down in huge droves. On several occasions, whole for­mations were completely wiped out by the Messerschmitt fighters. It was a tragic sight. Hauptmann Herbert Pabst of StG 77 witnessed the massacre caused by Bf 109s on Soviet bombers attempting to raid his air base at Biala Podlaska:

As the first one fired, thin threads of smoke seemed to join the bomber. Ttiming ponderously to the side, the big bird flashed silver, then plunged ver­tically downward with its engines screaming. As it crashed, a huge sheet of fire shot upward. The second bomber became a glare of red, exploded as it dived, and only the bits came floating down like great autumnal leaves. The third turned over back­ward, on fire. A similar fate befell the rest, the last falling in a village and burning for an hour. Six columns of smoke rose from the horizon. All six had been shot down!

They went on coming the whole afternoon.

From our airfield alone we saw twenty-one crash,

and not one get away.

The First air raid in the Russo-German war that pos­sibly could be called “strategic” was carried out by the Soviets on this first day of the war. Approximately sev­enty Soviet bombers, divided into several groups, were dispatched against various targets in German-held areas of Poland and East Prussia. About twenty bombers reached as far as the Tilsit-Insterburg axis. Their bombs killed or wounded a small number of civilians. Major Hannes Trautloft, Geschwaderkommodorc of JG 54 in East Prussia, made the following entry in his diary: “The airfields at Gerlinden and Lindental report that they had spotted enemy bombers passing the airfields. The alert Staffeln are scrambled to prevent them from reaching East Prussian territory. Out of twenty-six SB-2 ‘Martin’ bombers, seventeen are shot down. The remainder dis­appear in a wild escape. Everywhere you can see burn­ing, descending aircraft and parachutes in the sky.”

Soviet air units based in the rear area began deploy­ing to the forward zone from midday on June 22. The airmen of these units knew very little or nothing at all of what was taking place in the western border area. They were shocked by what they encountered as they arrived at the front-line airfields. First, there were distant, huge
smoke plumes, then raging fires, hangars and maintenance stores burning or com­pletely destroyed, runways littered with bomb craters, dozens upon dozens of destroyed and damaged Soviet aircraft, dead and wounded W’S soldiers, and terror painted on the faces of those sur­viving. The ground organization, respon­sible for the newly arrived aircraft, was in complete disarray. Fuel depots and am­munition dumps were destroyed. And then—without any warning—a formation of Stukas appeared, howling down over the field and bombing the newly arrived planes to pieces.

Among the Soviet bombers launched on combat missions this day were the new single-engine Su-2s of 210 BBAP/45 SAD.

Only seventy-five Su-2s were in ser­vice on June 22, and the new bomber type was a carefully guarded secret—in fact, too carefully guarded. The security shield surrounding the Su-2 was so strict that most Soviet airmen knew nothing of its existence.

During 210 BBAP’s approach flight, a 55 LAP MiG – 3 detachment was scrambled against incoming “enemy” planes. This was the first combat mission for Starshiy Leytenant Aleksandr “Sasha” Pokryshkin, who would soon emerge as one of the top Soviet fighter aces.

Spotting the formation of unfamiliar single-engine bombers, Pokryshkin immediately attacked: “I aimed at the first bomber and gave him a short burst. I couldn’t miss; I wras so close that the air current from his propel­ler shook my plane. 1 broke off to the right and started climbing over the bombers."

Leytenant Ivan Pstygo, one of the Su-2 pilots, recounts, “Two MiG-3s approached us. We hoped that flying with friendly fighters would make us safe, but suddenly one of the MiG-3s attacked our squadron commander’s airplane.

“As the MiG-3 followed through to attack my plane, 1 rocked the wings to try to show our identification insig­nia. It helped; the fighter pulled off.”

Pokryshkin adds,

From above 1 saw red stars on the wing surfaces!

Flying over the formation, I didn’t know what to do. The bomber l had attacked was lagging behind the others.

The rest of our fighters approached in a tight formation. The leading fighter started preparing an attack on the bombers from the opposite side. I was desperate—they’re going to shoot them all down! Without hesitating, 1 cut his way, waggling the wingtips of my aircraft. He almost collided with me, but then flung himself to the side. 1 had to repeat the same maneuver and fire warning bursts in front of each and every one of the remaining fighters. In spite of this, some took a shot at the bombers but scored no hits.

The bomber I had hit belly-landed on a field, while the remaining continued westward.16

To Sasha Pokryshkin’s luck, the general confusion of the war’s first day saved him from being court-martialed.

The remaining Su-2s continued on against their tar­
get, the Romanian railway station at Iasi, where they found at least forty trains with wagons. Leytenant Aleksandr Pavilchenko, recalls, “During the approach flight, our nine Su-2s flew in three close three-plane for­mations at 3,600 feet altitude, as on a parade. Despite heavy antiaircraft fire, we remained at the same altitude and released our bombs above the station. SBs and Ar-2s of other Polks of the 45 SAD also participated in this raid, and we could see them ahead of us.”

The twin-engine bombers of 45 SAD fared even worse than the Su-2s, as Leytenant Pavlichenko recounts: “During supper that evening we learned that twenty – seven planes from our Diviziya had failed to return from this mission."

The German fighter pilots reaped an enormous harvest. The most successful fighter unit, with seventy – four claims on June 22, was JG 53 Рік As (Ace of Spades). JG 51 was credited with twelve fighters and fifty-seven bombers shot down—four each by Oberstleutnant Werner Molders and Oberfeldwebel Heinrich Hofemeier. JG 54

Granherz (Green Heart), operating from East Prussia, reported forty-five aerial victories. On this first day of the war with the USSR, the German report stated that 1,489 Soviet aircraft were destroyed on the ground and 322 in the air. These figures appear incredible. They were even doubted by the Luftwaffe’s commander in chief, Reichsmarschall Hermann Goring, who had them secretly checked: “For days on end, officers from his command staff picked their way about the airfields overrun by the German advance, counting the burnt-out wrecks of Rus­sian planes. The result was even more astonishing: their tally exceeded 2,000." 7

In fact, Soviet sources confirm most of the German claims. Even the extensive History of the Great Patriolic War of the Soviet Union1’4 admits that on June 22, 1941, 1,200 Soviet combat aircraft were lost, of which there were “more than 800 on the ground." ll is interesting to note that whereas Soviet sources list 336 Soviet planes shot down in the air—including 204 in the operational
area of WS-ZOVO alone—on June 22, the Germans claimed 322 aerial victories, to which of course should be added a number of victories by Romanian pilots and antiaircraft batteries.

As June 22 drew to a close, there was no victory euphoria among the Luftwaffe airmen. They had achieved tremendous results, but sixteen to eighteen hours of relentless combat activity had worn out every flier. Their own losses were not small, either, and in some cases they were absolutely unbearable. In the chronicle of KG 51, Wolfgang Dierich wrote: “In the evening of the first day, follow ing the last landing at 2023 hours, the Kommodore, Oberstlcutnant [Hans Bruno I Schuk-Heyn, made a fright­ening summation in the castle Polanka Krosno: Sixty men (fourteen crews!) of the flying personnel had been killed or were listed as missing, the Hlrd Gruppc alone had fourteen planes put out of commission in crashes or shot down—in other words 50 percent losses. The scene was just as dismal in the other Gruppen. Even the old

German Aircraft Losses on the Eastern Front on June 22,1941

Losses due to enemy action Losses due to other causes

	Totally lost	Damaged	Totally lost	Damaged
Ju 88s	21	11	2	6
He 111s	11	6	—	2
Do 17s	1	3	—	—
Ju 87s	2	—	—	1
Bf109s	14	6	10	18
Bf110s	6	4	1	5
Hs 123s	—	—	—	3
Misc.	6	20	4	4
TOTALS	61	50	17	39

The armed forces of the tiny Slovak state took part in the multi-national “Crusade Against Communism" virtually from the very first day of hostilities. Similarly to their Italian Axis partners, the Slovaks sent to the Eastern Front a fighter and a reconnaissance/light bomber group, supplemented by a liaison/transport squadron. The three-squadron-strong 2nd Fighter Group was equipped with eleven Avia B-534 and Bk-534 biplane fighters, the three-squadron-strong 1st Reconnaissance Group with ten Letov S-328 reconnaissance/light bomber biplanes, and the unnumbered Liaison Squadron with a mixture of one Praga E-39 and two Praga E-241 biplanes, augmented by a sole, civilian-registered Stinson SR-10C Reliant high-wing VIP transport monoplane. The expeditionary air unit of Slovenske Vzdusne Zbrane (Slovak Air Force) started combat operation in mid-July 1941 in southwestern Ukraine. Although their equipment was largely similar to the Soviets’, the Slovaks reported good results over their adversary, with minimal losses. The Slovak air units returned to their homeland in late October 1941. Shown here are Avia B-534 fighters on a Slovak airfield, prior to their dispatch to the Eastern Front, in early July 1941. (Photo: Bemad)

"lucky guy,” Oberleutnant von Wenchowski, commander of the 5th Staffel, had been killed.”1’

Even considering the large number of sorties flown, the Luftwaffe’s own losses on June 22, 1941, were most severe. Although some published accounts have referred to the lower figure issued by the German news agencies during the war—thirty-five German aircraft lost—the offi­cial loss statistics of the Luftwaffe list seventy-eight combat aircraft destroyed and eightv-nine damaged on the Eastern Front on June 22, 1941. These figures sur­passed those of the fateful Battle of Britain day, Septem­ber 15, 1940, when sixty-one planes were destroyed and eleven damaged.

Roughly three-quarters of this total may be consid­