Reinforcing the VVS

hile Germany had entered the war with only very limited reserves and most of the armed forces com mitted to frontal zones in all corners of Europe, the USSR had deployed only slightly more than half of its twenty thousand available combat aircraft on June 22,1941, along the western border. At this time 23 per­cent of the strength of the WS was allocated to the Far East areas, 10 per cent to the southern borders of the USSR, and 14 percent to the interior military districts. Although a large portion of these aircraft had to remain in place in case the enemy opened a new offensive, this meant that the Soviets retained a large number of reserves, untouched by the destructive force of the Luftwaffe.

As losses rapidly drew down the strength of the VVS in the front sector, these reserves became the main source

of the gradual recovery of the Soviet Air Force in the late summer and fall of 1941. Among of the first avia­tion units to arrive from the “peace zones” were one fighter and two bomber aviation regiments of Polkovnik Sergey Rudenko’s 31 SAD, transferred from the Far East to the Smolensk combat zone during the first week of July 1941.

Other sources of reinforcements were the more than one hundred flight training schools. The flight training school at Borisoglebsk alone formed two fighter aviation regiments for the front during 1941. Even if the quality of the aircraft from the flight training schools was terri­bly low, these units nevertheless constituted a welcome reinforcement for the battered VVS in the war zone.

The third main source of VVS replacements and reinforcement was the aviation industry. During 1941, most first-line aviation regiments were completely wiped out after only a brief period of combat activity. These were withdrawn from first-line service to be outfitted with new planes, frequently of higher quality. Thus 95 SBAP, equipped with Pe-2s, first arrived at the Western Front on July 6. Having lost almost all its aircraft, the unit was pulled back, equipped with newly manufactured Pe-3s, and brought back to operations at the end of Au­gust. 9 SBAP (equipped with SB bombers) was completely obliterated during the first four days of the war, was then pulled out of combat and returned a few weeks later with an outfit of Pe-2s. Having lost fifty-five SBs and thirty-eight crews, 208 SBAP was withdrawn to the reserve at the end of July. Based around the regiment’s surviving crews, three regiments, each composed of two Eskadrilya, were formed. One of these regiments, retain­ing the old designation 208 SBAP, was relocated to the front after being outfitted with twenty Pe-3s.

In 1941 the German war industry could not com­pete with the Soviets in terms of output numbers. Against about twelve thousand aircraft manufactured in Germany during 1941, the Soviet output figure was nearly sixteen thousand, of which about ten thousand left production plants after the German invasion.

Nevertheless, out of more than twelve thousand com­bat aircraft available to the USSR in the fall of 1941, fewer than one-third were deployed to the front areas. This was partly due to the fear of a Japanese or Turkish “stab in the back,” which compelled the Stavka to keep considerable air forces in the eastern and southern parts of the USSR. Another reason was the rapid rate of attri­tion suffered by the aviation units in combat. Frequently; fresh VVS regiments arriving for front-line service were; almost completely annihilated in three to six weeks. Then the unit had to be pulled back to be reequipped, a task that took at least one month. Thus during the late sum­mer and fall of 1941 no less than half of the aircraft and pilots of the VVS intended for the front were in reaf areas.

The dominant reason for the VVS’s frightening losses was the decreasing quality of pilot training. The exten­sive network of flight training schools could maintain a steady flow of personnel reinforcements, but only at the price of abbreviated training cycles.

And even if the sources mentioned above managed! to fill some of the gaps created by the onslaught of the Luftwaffe, at a pace never anticipated by the attackers, it must be emphasized that it took the VVS several years before it had fully recovered numerically from the! extreme losses of 1941.