2. HOW MANY FIGHTERS DID THE USSR AND GERMANY LOSE IN THE FIGHT WITH EACH OTHER?

2. HOW MANY FIGHTERS DID THE USSR AND GERMANY LOSE IN THE FIGHT WITH EACH OTHER?

2. HOW MANY FIGHTERS DID THE USSR AND GERMANY LOSE IN THE FIGHT WITH EACH OTHER?

Let's start with establishing the amount of losses, because this question is somewhat easier to clarify: the data we have on the losses of Soviet and German fighter aircraft in all cases was made public by the side that suffered these losses. There is hardly any need to prove that she has incomparably more complete information about her losses than the enemy who inflicted them on her. In an air battle, where the situation changes in a matter of seconds, the pilot has no time to monitor the fate of the aircraft hit by his fire; he usually cannot say with certainty whether they fell or still reached their airfield; he does not know and cannot know how many of those that survived were destroyed during landing or written off as beyond repair, how many of the enemy vehicles that landed were destroyed or ended up not on their territory, and how many the enemy managed to evacuate and repair. The ground troops checking the pilots’ reports of those shot down cannot know this: the enemy’s territory (at least in the first hours after the air battle, or even days) is inaccessible to them; As a rule, they also do not have the strength and capabilities to completely comb through their location. They do not always know how to distinguish the remains of their own aircraft from the wreckage of an enemy... And anti-aircraft gunners often do not even see the one whose fire hit the falling or smoking enemy aircraft - their own battery or a neighboring one. For this reason alone, the number of destroyed and damaged enemy aircraft in their reports doubles, triples, etc.: the same aircraft is credited to several units at once...

True, some researchers (for example, D.B. Khazanov) believe that reliable information about enemy losses can be obtained without referring to the documents of the hostile side - from the testimony of prisoners of war. However - not to mention the fact that it is not always possible to capture prisoners (and even well-informed ones) - one cannot but agree with Yu.V. Rybin that this source is extremely unreliable (if not obviously unreliable). In fact, being in the power of the enemy and trying to ease his fate, the prisoner, wittingly or unwittingly, begins to “accommodate” the interrogator, to say what the interrogator wants to hear - and he, naturally, wants to hear that the enemy is running out of steam, is suffering heavy losses, etc. .P. “Russian pilots are trained and fight well,” said, for example, during interrogation, Chief Sergeant Major V. Pfrenger from the II Group of the 5th Fighter Squadron “Eismeer”, shot down on May 17, 1942 near Murmansk. – German pilots are also good, but now there is a large percentage of young people who [sic in the text. – A.S.

] do not have sufficient training”32. “It turns out that in the spring of 1942 our pilots were the best? So why did we have such horrific losses at this time?” – Yu.V. Rybin33 rightly asks the question. (In only six air battles between Soviet and German fighters, which took place in the Arctic between April 23 and May 17, 1942, Soviet aviators, according to their reports, irretrievably lost 17 aircraft - while the Luftwaffe, according to German data, lost only two34.) Having looked at a large number of interrogation protocols of German pilots shot down in the Arctic and comparing the latter’s testimony with Soviet reports on air battles, the researcher came to the conclusion that “the fighting qualities of our pilots and aircraft, their successes since 1942”, captured “in every possible way exalted”, exaggerated...35 Let's give another example. Shot down on July 8, 1943 over the southern front of the Kursk Bulge, Lieutenant G. Lyuti from the III Group of the 52nd Fighter Squadron showed that in the first three days of the Battle of Kursk (July 5-7), the squadron units participating in it irretrievably lost 35 airplanes. According to the German documents that most took into account the losses of their air force - reports from the service of the Quartermaster General of the Luftwaffe - this number was only 2236.

It cannot be ruled out that captured aviators were deliberately misinforming the enemy. The reconnaissance officers of the Soviet ground forces came across prisoners of war as disinformers more than once37; Luftwaffe Lieutenant A. Kruger, who was shot down in January 1943 near Leningrad, turned out to be an obvious conscious disinformer, declaring that he served in the IV group of the 100th bomber squadron "Viking", which, together with the II group of the 30th bomber squadron "Adler", is based on airfields of the Pskov air hub. The fact is that the first of the groups he named did not leave the French airfield of Chartres in January 1943, and the second did not leave the Sicilian airfield of Comiso...

Here they can point out to us that during the First World War, German prisoners of war were distinguished by their exceptional truthfulness of testimony. Unlike the soldiers of the Austro-Hungarian army, emphasized those who served in 1914-1916. at the headquarters of the 3rd Finnish Rifle Brigade and the 40th Army Corps of the General Staff, Colonel B.N. Sergeevsky, the Germans “always gave completely accurate and definite testimony. Almost every German seemed to be proud that he knew everything and could accurately report everything to “Mr. Captain.” “A German soldier knows everything a soldier should know,” “a German soldier cannot lie to an officer”—I heard similar phrases many times from captured enemies, and they, without any coercion, told everything they could tell. During the entire war, having interviewed thousands of prisoners, I met only two who tried to lie, and even then they retreated from this tactic at the first shout.”38 However, it is not for nothing that they say that it was in 1914 that the 20th century began - not as idealistic and patriarchal as the 19th... During the years that passed between the two world wars, the concept of soldier’s honor among the German military underwent changes, the essence of which is visible, for example, from the interrogation protocol of Sergeant Major Hartle from the 217th Long-Range Reconnaissance Squadron, who was shot down on June 23, 1941 near Slonim: “He refused to give information about the Heinkel-111 aircraft for two reasons: as a devoted soldier of Germany, he does not want to lose his conscience before his homeland. When asked whether we were talking about honor or fear, he replied that only honor did not allow him to reveal military secrets. Second: the Heinkel-111 aircraft were transferred to the Soviet Union and therefore do not represent any secret for the Russian command. Therefore, it would be an insult to demand that he lose his honor without any reason.”39 The German tankman, captured in September 1941 near Yelnya and interrogated by the commander of the Reserve Front G.K. Zhukov, reasoned in exactly the same way. "Why do not you answer?" “He’s silent,” Zhukov said after the war. - Then he declares: “You are a military man, you must understand that I, as a military man, have already answered everything that I should have answered you: who I am and what part I belong to. And I cannot answer any other questions. Because he took an oath. And you have no right to ask me, knowing that I am a military man, and you have no right to demand from me that I violate my duty and lose my honor”40.

Another thing is that the figures for irretrievable combat losses of aircraft, published by the parties that suffered these losses, are not absolutely accurate in our case either. Thus, the relevant information on the Soviet side was published on the pages of the statistical collection “Classified as Classified” released in 1993 by the Russian Ministry of Defense - and the method of work of its compilers raises many doubts and criticisms. At least in a number of cases, this methodology had nothing to do with science at all: the compilers of the collection have more than once been accused of falsification, of underestimating - for the sake of maintaining the prestige of the domestic Armed Forces - the losses suffered by the Red Army in the Great Patriotic War41. For our part, we point out facts that allow us to suspect the compilers of underestimating the losses of the Soviet Air Force. According to the collection, in the Crimean operation (April - May 1944), the Soviet side lost 179 aircraft; according to wartime documents studied by M.E. Morozov, the 8th Air Army of the 4th Ukrainian Front alone lost 266 vehicles at that time42. But the Black Sea Fleet Air Force, the 4th Air Army, and part of the long-range aviation forces also took part in the Crimean operation... In the Petsamo-Kirkenes operation (October 1944), according to the collection, 62 Soviet aircraft were lost, and according to according to Yu.V. Rybin, who independently carried out an archival search - 14243 (however, the collection gives loss figures for October 7-29, and Rybin - for October 7 - November 1, but it is impossible to assume that two or three days after the actual cessation of aircraft fighting more was lost than in three weeks of intense combat work...).

However, the figures given in the collection of irretrievable combat losses of Soviet fighters can, apparently, be considered unfalsified. According to the list of losses of combat aircraft of the Red Army Air Force for 1944, compiled during the war (and published by V.I. Alekseenko already in 2000), the irretrievable combat losses of fighters of these Air Forces then amounted to 3,571 aircraft44. And this is quite consistent with the data of the collection, which gives here a rounded figure of 4100 aircraft45 (the “shortage” in the list of about 500 fighters is easily explained by the fact that it does not take into account the losses of the Navy Air Force and Air Defense Fighter Aviation). Thus, there is no question of underestimating losses; the figure of 500 fighters lost in 1944 for combat reasons by naval and air defense aircraft seems even overestimated. The discrepancies with the data of M.E. Morozov and Yu.V. Rybin can be explained by the fact that the collection in all cases indicates the amount of irretrievable losses, and the named authors may give figures not for destroyed, but for downed aircraft - some of which were after an emergency landing renovated. It is known, for example, that during air battles over the Taman Peninsula in April - October 1943, out of 851 grounded Soviet aircraft, only 380 (44.7%) were written off, and 471 aircraft were repaired by the repair brigade of the 4th Air Army of the North Caucasus Front managed to return to service46.

But if suspicions of falsification in our case should most likely be discarded, then the confidence that the figures for Soviet aviation losses given in the collection “The Classification of Secrecy Has been Removed” are not underestimated (even if without malicious intent and to a very small extent) is such Still no certainty. After all, we do not know what kind of documents the compilers used to calculate losses, whether the peculiarities of compiling these documents were taken into account, or whether information from one source was checked against another. Meanwhile, for example, in reports on combat operations for a given period compiled by air regiment headquarters, their losses were sometimes underestimated. Thus, from the daily reports of the headquarters of the 900th Fighter Aviation Regiment of the 288th Fighter Aviation Division of the 8th Air Army of the South-Eastern Front, it is clear that, fighting from August 24 to September 3, 1942 in the Stalingrad area, the regiment irretrievably lost 14 their Yak-7b; these vehicles were either completely destroyed as a result of an air battle or went missing47. However, in the final report on the actions of the 900th fighter at Stalingrad, only 8 aircraft were listed as irretrievably lost during the indicated days - and it was from this figure that the regiment later proceeded when compiling reports on combat work for a given period...48 How far did the compilers of the collection “Grif” succeed? secrecy has been lifted”, it is unknown to restore the true picture in all such cases.

Some of the Wehrmacht documents are also incomplete in their data on their losses. In particular, air fleet combat diaries are unreliable in this regard. According to these sources, the 6th Air Fleet irretrievably lost 33 aircraft from July 5-11, 1943, and the 8th Air Corps of the 4th Air Force lost 111 aircraft from July 4-23. According to the 6th Department of the Quartermaster General's Service Luftwaffe (in charge of recording losses), the indicated losses amounted to 64 and about 170 vehicles, respectively49. Accordingly, the weekly reports of the Wehrmacht command (OKW) based on reports from air fleet headquarters are also unreliable. According to these latter, from June 22 to December 27, 1941, the Germans irretrievably lost 2,212 aircraft on the Soviet-German front (including those beyond repair due to too much damage)50 - and according to the service of the Luftwaffe Quartermaster General, these losses were already On August 31 there were 2631 units...51 For the period December 7-31, 1941, weekly OKW reports give a figure of 180 aircraft irretrievably lost on the Soviet-German front, and according to data processed by D.B. Khazanov from German historians O. Gröler and K. Becker it turns out 324...52 As R. Larintsev and A. Zablotsky, who studied this issue, note, individual errors can also be found in the materials of the Quartermaster General’s service53. And indeed, their information is based on reports from units and formations - and these latter, like the Soviet Air Force, sometimes underestimated their losses. Thus, according to the documents of the 1st group of the 28th bomber squadron, it turns out that from July 22 to December 31, 1941, 33 aircraft were killed or damaged in its 2nd and 3rd detachments54, and according to the report of the 2nd air corps, as part of which these detachments were operating at that time - 41...55

So, in principle, we cannot have absolutely accurate figures for irretrievable combat losses of Soviet and German aircraft on the Soviet-German front. Let us take into account, however, that the figures of their losses published by both sides, if they differ from the actual ones, then in the same direction (decrease) - so they should still reflect the ratio of the parties’ losses with a sufficient degree of accuracy. In addition, the degree of inaccuracy of information from such a German source as documents from the service of the Quartermaster General of the Luftwaffe, according to R. Larintsev and A. Zablotsky, is “very small.” “Copies of the relevant materials for 1943, which one of the authors managed to familiarize themselves with,” these researchers point out, “allow us to judge their sufficient completeness...”56. This information is fragmentary only for four months of 1945, when the system of centralized accounting of losses in the dying Reich went wrong. It seems that the information about the losses of the Soviet Air Force published in the collection “The Classification of Secrecy Has Been Removed” can also be considered quite complete; in any case, the opposite (we are now talking only about aviation losses) has not yet been proven.

Based on information from these two sources, we will try to establish the approximate amount of irretrievable combat losses of Soviet and German fighter aircraft on the Soviet-German front.

For Soviet aviation, the collection “The Classification Has Been Removed” gives a figure of 20,700 fighters irretrievably lost due to combat reasons57.

As for German fighter aviation, a similar final figure for it has not yet been published in Russian-language literature. However, we can try to determine it by calculation, based on the information at our disposal from the service of the Luftwaffe Quartermaster General:

– on the magnitude of the total (i.e., both combat and non-combat) irretrievable losses of German fighters on all fronts from June 22 to October 31, 1941 (1527 aircraft);

- on the magnitude of the total irretrievable losses of German fighters on the Eastern Front for January - November 1943 (1084 aircraft) and

– on the magnitude of irretrievable combat losses of German fighters on the Eastern Front in 1944 (839 aircraft)58.

Let us first try to determine the amount of total irretrievable losses of German fighters on the Soviet-German front in 1941 and 1943. In the case of the 41st, it is necessary first of all to establish how many Luftwaffe fighters were irretrievably lost from June 22 to October 31 on other fronts. According to German data, the 2nd and 26th fighter squadrons, which were then fighting with the British over the English Channel, lost 103 aircraft in battle from July 14 to December 3159. Let us assume that these losses were distributed evenly across months; then we can assume that from June 22 to October 31, the irretrievable combat losses of these formations amounted to about 80 vehicles. Let us assume that the value of non-combat irretrievable losses related to this figure as 47 to 53: approximately this was then (see below) the structure of the total irretrievable losses of the German Air Force. Then it turns out that from June 22 to October 31, the total irretrievable losses of the 2nd and 26th squadrons amounted to about 150 aircraft. The night fighters that protected Germany from British raids could have lost about 10 vehicles during this period of time: in the first nine and a half months of 1941, their total irretrievable losses amounted to only 28 units60. The share of German fighters who fought in June - October 41st over the North and Norwegian Seas (detachments of the 1st and 77th fighter squadrons) and in North Africa (I group of the 27th squadron, 7th detachment of the 26th, and in October also the II Group of the 27th), let's leave 100 irretrievably lost aircraft: near the coast of Germany and Norway, air battles were sporadic at that time, and in North Africa the Germans were opposed by units of British fighters less powerful in combat than over the English Channel. As a result, out of 1,527 fighters irretrievably lost by the German Air Force from June 22 to October 31, approximately 1,270 should fall on the Soviet-German front. In November and December, according to the service of the Quartermaster General of the Luftwaffe, the Germans irretrievably lost 613 aircraft in the East61; Let's assume that about 200 of them were fighters. Then the total irretrievable losses of German fighters on the Soviet-German front in 1941 can be estimated at approximately 1,470 aircraft.

With 1943 it is much simpler: if in 11 months of this year the total irretrievable losses of German fighters in the East turned out to be equal to 1084 aircraft, then we are unlikely to make a big mistake in assuming that for the entire year they amounted to 12/11 of this amount, i.e. . approximately 1180 cars.

Let us now calculate the amount of irretrievable combat losses of German fighters on the Eastern Front in 1941 and 1943. R. Larintsev and A. Zablotsky, based on data published in foreign literature, determine the share of these losses in the total irretrievable losses of the Luftwaffe on all fronts at 53% for 1942 and 55% for 1943 - and accept that in 1941- m it was the same as in 42-m62. On the Eastern Front, with its frosts, muddy roads, unpaved airfields, supply difficulties due to off-road conditions and a small number of landmarks in flight over flat, sparsely populated plains, the percentage of non-combat losses should have been higher than in other theaters of military operations, but due to the lack of relevant specific figures – let’s take the average figures of Larintsev and Zablotsky. Then it turns out that in 1941 the irretrievable combat losses of German fighters on the Soviet-German front amounted to about 780 aircraft, and in 1943 - about 650. By the way, for 1944 the figure of 839 aircraft must be reduced to approximately 800: after all, Of the fighters lost by the Germans in 1944 in the East, about several dozen were destroyed not by the Armed Forces of the USSR, but by US aviation - during its raids on industrial facilities in Romania and Poland.

For 1942 and 1945, the desired value can only be calculated very, very approximately. It is known that the average monthly number of groups of single-engine Luftwaffe fighters on the Soviet-German front (where the vast majority of German fighters were single-engine) in 1943 was approximately 12.4, and in 1942 - approximately 15,563, i.e. 1.25 times more. We would venture to assume that the total irretrievable losses of German fighter aircraft in the East in 1942 were 1.25 times greater than in 1943, i.e. amounted to about 1480 vehicles. Then the value of its irretrievable combat losses on the Soviet-German front in 1942 can be determined (taking it to be 53% of the total) at approximately 780 aircraft. We will calculate losses for four months of 1945 by analogy with 1944. However, let us take them to be equal not to 33%, but to 40% of losses for 1944. This will to some extent take into account the fact that in 1945 the number of German fighters operating against the Soviet Armed Forces increased. As a result, we will determine the approximate figure for irretrievable combat losses of German fighters on the Soviet-German front in 1945 at 320 aircraft.

Let us summarize all published and calculated figures in Table 1.

Table 1 IRREVERSE COMBAT LOSSES OF SOVIET64 AND GERMAN FIGHTERS ON THE SOVIET-GERMAN FRONT IN 1941-1945.

However, it would not be entirely correct to compare the loss figures of one side given in Table 1 with the loss figures of the other. Indeed, in addition to the German armed forces, losses by the Soviet Air Force in the Great Patriotic War were also inflicted by the Armed Forces of Finland, Hungary, Romania, Italy, Slovakia and Croatia. Thus, the Finns claim 2,787 Soviet aircraft shot down by them65, the Romanians - approximately 150,066, the Hungarians - judging by what is known about the activities of their aviators and anti-aircraft gunners - approximately 100,067, the Italians - apparently, 150-20,068, the Slovaks - no less than 1069. In addition, 638 shot down Soviet aircraft are listed in the combat accounts of the Slovak, Croatian and Spanish fighter squadrons, which were organizationally part of the German Air Force and were called, respectively, the 13th (Slovak) detachment of the 52nd fighter squadron, 15 - (Croatian) detachment of the 52nd fighter squadron and the 15th (Spanish) detachment, first of the 27th and then of the 51st fighter squadron ... 70 It is known that of the 526 aircraft that the Finns announced the downing of after the war of 1939-1940 gg., the Soviet side recognized at least 322 (apparently about 350) as irretrievably lost71. Some of them, however, could land on enemy territory due to malfunctions not related to combat damage, or due to loss of orientation in the usual inclement weather for winter - i.e. could actually refer to non-combat losses. Let us therefore accept that in the “Winter War” the irretrievable combat losses of the Soviet Air Force were not one and a half, but two times less than the number of vehicles that the Finns declared as shot down. Then, by analogy, we can assume that in 1941-1944. The Finnish armed forces managed to destroy about 1,400 Soviet aircraft. As for the rest of Germany's allies, we will accept that they, like the Germans, overestimated the number of aircraft they shot down by about 2.5 times (for the justification of this coefficient, see section 3 of this chapter) and that about 25% of those shot down by the Soviet side were able to return to formation (in Kuban in 1943, this percentage, as we saw, reached 45 - but there, almost all the battles took place over the territory occupied by Soviet troops, and those forced to settle more often found themselves among their own). With similar assumptions, it turns out that the Romanians, Hungarians, Italians, Slovaks, Croats and Spaniards destroyed about 1000 Soviet aircraft, and together with the Finns - about 2400. It is known that fighters accounted for 45% of the irretrievable combat losses of the Soviet Air Force in the Great Patriotic War72. Therefore (under the assumptions we made) we can assume that about 1,100 Soviet fighters were destroyed not by the Germans, but by their allies, and the Germans accounted for about 19,600.

On the other hand, of the German fighters destroyed on the Soviet-German front, not all were victims of the USSR Armed Forces. In addition to the latter, the French Normandy fighter regiment, the Armed Forces of Poland and Czechoslovakia, and from August to September 1944, the armed forces of Romania and Bulgaria, which sided with the USSR, also fought with German aviation. In particular, the Normandy pilots are credited with shooting down about 100 German fighter aircraft73. A check of the results of several air battles involving the Normandy, carried out by A.N. Medved and D.B. Khazanov using German documents, shows that the number of victories credited to the French was overestimated by 3-5 times74, so let us accept that in reality the Normandy was shot down 25 German fighters. Polish and Czechoslovakian pilots were credited with 16 and about 25 German aircraft shot down on the Soviet-German front, respectively75; how many anti-aircraft gunners were credited is unknown, but certainly no less than 100. Let us assume that Polish and Czechoslovak aviators and anti-aircraft gunners - most of whom were trained in the USSR - like the Soviet ones, overestimated their successes by at least 5 times (see about this in section 3 of this chapter); then we can assume that in reality they shot down about 30 German vehicles, of which about 10 could have been fighters. The Romanians claim 101 downed German and Hungarian aircraft76; in reality, they apparently shot down them 2.5 times less (see above), i.e. about 40, of which about 30 could have been German, including about 10 fighters. As for the Bulgarians, the 3-5 German fighters they destroyed in Serbia and Macedonia in 1944 did not belong to the air units of the Eastern Front,77 and in Hungary in 1945, Bulgarian pilots and anti-aircraft gunners were unlikely to shoot down more than 5 German fighters. Taking into account the fact that a small part of the downed German aircraft could be restored, we can conclude that about 40 German fighters on the Soviet-German front were destroyed by the USSR's allies; by the Soviet Armed Forces - about 3240.

Thus, in the confrontation between the Armed Forces of the USSR and Germany (without taking into account the actions of their allies on the Soviet-German front), the ratio of irretrievable combat losses of Soviet and German fighters is, according to our calculations, approximately 19,600: 3,240, i.e. approximately 6:1. Taking into account the large number of assumptions we made when calculating and the resulting significant error (much exceeding, in particular, the figure we derived for German fighters destroyed on the Soviet-German front by the allies of the USSR), for simplicity we will assume this ratio is equal to 6 : 1.

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A new message is NOT NECESSARILY located at the beginning of each topic and is highlighted in red for 10 days NB: active links to similar topics: “Little known facts about aviation” Reformatted the topic into a group of sections for each of the main participating countries and cleaned up duplicates, similar information and information that raised open doubts.

Air Force of Tsarist Russia: - during WW1, 120-150 captured German and Austrian aircraft were captured. Most - two-seat reconnaissance aircraft, fighters and twin-engine aircraft were rare (Note 28 *) - at the end of 1917, the Russian army had 91 air squadrons of 1,109 aircraft, of which: available at the fronts - 579 (428 serviceable, 137 faulty, 14 obsolete) , 237 loaded for the front and 293 in schools. This number did not include up to 35 aircraft of the Airship Squadron, 150 aircraft of naval aviation, aircraft of logistics agencies, 400 aircraft of air fleets and in reserve. The total number of aircraft was estimated at 2200-2500 military aircraft (Note 28*)

USSR Air Force: - in 1937 there were 18 aviation schools in the Red Army, in 1939 - 32, as of 05/01/1941 - already 100 (Note 32*) - order No. 080 of 03.1941: training period for flight personnel - 9 months in peacetime and 6 months in the military, flight hours for cadets on training and combat aircraft - 20 hours for fighters and 24 hours for bombers (a Japanese suicide bomber in 1944 had to have 30 hours of flight time) (Note 12*) - in 1939 the Red Army had 8139 combat aircraft , of which 2,225 were fighters (Note 41*) - 09/01/1939 the USSR had 12,677 combat aircraft at the beginning of WW2 (Note 31*) - in the summer of 1940 there were 38 air divisions in the Red Army, and by 01/01/1941 there should have been more became 50 (Note 9*) - only in the period from 01/01/1939 to 06/22/1941, the Red Army received 17,745 combat aircraft, of which 3,719 were new types, not inferior in basic parameters to the best Luftwaffe aircraft (Note 43*). According to other sources, at the beginning of the war there were 2,739 aircraft of the latest types Yak-1, MIG-3, LAGG-3, PE-2, of which half were in the western military districts (Note 11*) - as of 01/01/1940 in the western military districts there were 12,540 combat aircraft, excluding long-range bomber aircraft. By the end of 1940, these numbers were almost doubled to 24 thousand combat aircraft. The number of training aircraft alone was increased to 6800 (Note 12*) - as of 01/01/1941, the Red Army Air Force numbered 26392 aircraft, of which 14628 were combat aircraft and 11438 were training aircraft. Moreover, 10,565 (8,392 combat) were built in 1940 (Note 32*) - at the beginning of the Second World War, 79 air divisions and 5 air brigades were formed, of which the Western Military District included 32 air divisions, 119 air regiments and 36 corps squadrons. Long-range bomber aviation in the western direction was represented by 4 air corps and 1 separate air division in the amount of 1,546 aircraft. The number of air regiments by June 1941 increased by 80% compared to the beginning of 1939 (Note 11*) - the Second World War was met by 5 heavy bomber corps, 3 separate air divisions and one separate regiment of Soviet long-range bomber aviation - about 1000 aircraft, of which 2 were lost during the six months of the war \\3. By the summer of 1943, long-range bomber aviation consisted of 8 air corps and numbered more than 1,000 aircraft and crews. (Note 2*) - 1528 DB-3 long-range bombers were built in 1941 (Note 44*) - 818 TB-3 heavy bombers were produced at the beginning of the Second World War (Note 41*) - by the beginning of the war there were 2739 aircraft of the latest types YAK-1, MIG-3, LAGG-3, PE-2, half of which were in the western military districts (Note 11*). On 06/22/41, 917 Mig-3 (486 pilots retrained), 142 Yak-1 (156 pilots retrained), 29 Lagg (90 pilots retrained) (Note 4*) entered the Air Force - in the Red Army Air Force units of the border military districts at the beginning during the war there were 7,139 combat aircraft, 1,339 long-range bomber aircraft, 1,445 in naval aviation, which totaled 9,917 aircraft - on the eve of the war, only in the European part of the USSR there were 20 thousand aircraft, of which 17 thousand were combat aircraft (Note 12 *) - by spring 1942 The USSR reached the pre-war level of aircraft production - at least 1000 combat aircraft per month. From June 1941 to December 1944, the USSR produced 97 thousand aircraft - from the second half of 1942, Soviet industry reached the production line of 2500 aircraft per month with a total monthly loss of 1000 aircraft (Note 9 *) - as of 06/22/1942, 85% of all Soviet long-range bomber aircraft consisted of 1,789 DB-3 aircraft (from the DB-3f modification it was called IL-4), the remaining 15% were SB-3. These planes did not fall under the first attacks of German aviation, since they were based relatively far from the border (Note 3*) - during the years of production (1936-40) 6831 Soviet SB bombers were built (Note 41*) - 10292 I-16 biplanes and its modifications were produced from 1934 to 1942 - as of June 22, 1941, 412 Yak-1s were produced (Note 39) - 16 thousand Yak-9s were produced during the war years - Il-2 was the most popular attack aircraft of the Second World War. From 1941 to 1945, 36 thousand of them were produced (Note 41 * and 37 *) The losses of attack aircraft during the war years amounted to about 23 thousand. - during the Second World War, 11 thousand Soviet attack aircraft pilots died (Note 25*) - in 1944, in units there were two aircraft for each Soviet attack pilot (Note 17*) - the life of an attack aircraft lasted on average 10-15 sorties, and 25% of the pilots were shot down on the first sortie, while at least 10 sorties were required to destroy one German tank (Note 9*) - the USSR received 18.7 thousand aircraft from the USA under Lend-Lease (Note 34* ), of which: 2243 P-40 “Curtiss”, 2771 A-20 “Douglas Boston”, 842 B-25 “Mitchell” bombers from the USA, and 1338 “Supermarine Spitfire” and 2932 “Hurricane” - (Note 26* ) from England. - by the beginning of 1944, the USSR had 11,000 combat aircraft, the Germans had no more than 2,000. During the 4 years of the war, the USSR built 137,271 aircraft and received 18,865 aircraft of all types, of which 638 aircraft were lost during transportation. According to other sources, at the beginning of 1944, there were 6 times more Soviet combat aircraft than all German aircraft (Note 8*) - on the “heavenly slow-moving vehicle” - U-2vS fought during the Second World War about 50 air regiments (Note 33*) - from the monograph “1941 - lessons and conclusions”: “... out of 250 thousand sorties carried out by Soviet aviation in the first three months of the war, against tank and motorized columns of the enemy ...” The record month for the Luftwaffe was June 1942, when it was completed (according to according to Soviet VNOS posts) 83,949 sorties of combat aircraft of all types. In other words, “crushed and destroyed on the ground,” Soviet aviation flew in the summer of 1941 with an intensity that the Germans were able to achieve in only one month during the entire war (Note 13*) - Average survivability of Soviet pilots during the Patriotic War: fighter pilot - 64 combat departure attack aircraft pilot - 11 combat missions bomber pilot - 48 combat missions torpedo bomber pilot - 3.8 combat missions (Note 45*) - the accident rate in the Red Army Air Force on the eve of the Second World War was enormous - on average 2-3 planes crashed per day. This situation largely continued during the war. It is no coincidence that during the war, non-combat aircraft losses amounted to over 50% (Note 9*) - “unaccounted loss” - 5240 Soviet aircraft remaining at the airfields after their capture by the Germans in 1941 - the average monthly losses of the Red Army Air Force from 1942 to May 1945 were 1000 aircraft, of which non-combat - over 50%, and in 1941 combat losses amounted to 1,700 aircraft, and total - 3,500 per month (Note 9 *) - non-combat losses of Soviet military aviation in the Second World War amounted to 60,300 aircraft (56.7%) (Note .32*) - in 1944, the losses of Soviet combat aviation amounted to 24,800 aircraft, of which 9,700 were combat losses, and 15,100 were non-combat losses (Note 18*) - from 19 to 22 thousand Soviet fighters were lost in the Second World War (Note. 23*) - in accordance with Resolution of the Council of Ministers of the USSR No. 632-230ss dated March 22, 1946 “On the rearmament of the Air Force, air defense fighter aircraft and naval aviation with modern domestically produced aircraft”: “...to be removed from service in 1946 and written off: fighter aircraft foreign types, including Airacobra - 2216 aircraft, Thunderbolt - 186 aircraft, Kingcobra - 2344 aircraft, Kittyhawk - 1986 aircraft, Spitfire - 1139 aircraft, Hurricane - 421 aircraft. Total: 7392 aircraft and 11937 obsolete domestic aircraft (Note 1*)

German Air Force: - during the German offensive of 1917, up to 500 Russian aircraft became German trophies (Note 28 *) - according to the Treaty of Versailles, Germany had to scrap 14 thousand of its aircraft after the end of WW1 (Note 32 *) - serial production of the first combat aircraft aircraft in Nazi Germany began only in 1935-1936 (Note 13*). So in 1934, the German government adopted a plan to build 4,000 aircraft by September 30, 1935. Among them there was nothing but junk (Note 52*) - 03/01/1935 - official recognition of the Luftwaffe. There were 2 regiments of Ju-52 and Do-23 (Note 52*) - 771 German fighters were produced in 1939 (Note 50*) - in 1939 Germany produced 23 combat aircraft daily, in 1940 - 27, and in 1941 - 30 aircraft (Note 32*) By the spring of 1942, Germany was producing up to 160 aircraft per month - 09/01/1939 Germany began WW2 with 4093 aircraft (of which 1502 were bombers) (Note 31*) - on the eve of the Second World War Germany had 6852 aircraft, of which 3,909 aircraft of all types were allocated for the attack on the USSR. This number included 313 transport personnel and 326 communications aircraft. Of the remaining 3,270 combat aircraft: 965 fighters (almost equally - Bf-109e and BF-109f), 102 fighter-bombers (Bf-110), 952 bombers, 456 attack aircraft and 786 reconnaissance aircraft (Note 32 *). According to other sources, on June 22, 1941 the Germans concentrated against the USSR; 1037 (of which 400 are combat-ready) Bf-109 fighters; 179 Bf-110 as reconnaissance aircraft and light bombers, 893 bombers (281 He-111, 510 Ju-88, 102 Do-17), attack aircraft - 340 Ju-87, reconnaissance aircraft - 120. Total - 2534 (of which about 2000 are combat-ready ). And also 1000 aircraft of the German allies - after the transfer in December 1941 of 250-300 aircraft of the 2nd Air Corps from the USSR for operations in the Malta and North Africa region, the total number of Luftwaffe on the Soviet front decreased from 2465 aircraft on 12/01/1941 to 1700 aircraft on 12/31/1941 In January 1942, the number of German aircraft decreased even more after the transfer of aircraft from the 5th Air Corps to Belgium (Note 29*) - in 1942, Germany produced 8.4 thousand combat aircraft. According to other data, the Germans produced only up to 160 aircraft monthly - in 1943, on average, Germany produced 849 fighters per month (Note 49 *) - 84,320 aircraft of all types were produced in Germany in 1941-45. (Note 24*) - a total of 57 thousand German aircraft of all types were destroyed during WW2 - 1,190 seaplanes were produced by the German aircraft industry during WW2 (Note 38): of which 541 Arado 196a - 2,500 Storch communications aircraft were built in total . According to other sources, 2871 Fi-156 “Storch” (“Stork”) was produced, and in the summer of 1941 the Germans captured the plant producing its Soviet counterfeit copy of the OKA-38 “Stork” (Note 37*) - the German Ju-88 bomber was produced a total of 15,100 aircraft (Note 38*) - 1,433 Me-262 jets were produced in Germany during WW2 (Note 21*) - a total of 5,709 Ju-87 Stukas were produced (Note 40*) and 14,676 Ju -88 (Note 40* and 37*) - 20,087 FW-190 fighters were produced in 1939-45, while production reached its peak at the beginning of 1944, when 22 aircraft of this type were produced daily (Note 37* and 38*) - over the years of WW2, 35 thousand German Bf-109 fighters were produced (Note 14 * and 37 *) - having produced 3225 transport Ju-52 (“Auntie Yu”) since 1939, the German aircraft industry was forced to stop its production in 1944 (Note 40*) - during the war years, Czech aviation enterprises produced 846 “frames” - FB-189 fire spotters - for the Luftwaffe. In the USSR this type of aircraft was not produced at all. - a total of 780 reconnaissance spotters Hs-126 ("Crutch") were produced (Note 32 *) - German failed aircraft adopted by the Wehrmacht: 871 Hs-129 attack aircraft (produced in 1940), 6500 Bf-110 (6170 - Note 37*), 1500 Me-210 and Me-410 (Note 15*). The Germans retrained the failed Ju-86 fighter as a strategic reconnaissance aircraft (Note 32*). The Do-217 never became a successful night fighter (364 were produced, including 200 in 1943) (Note 46*). Produced in quantities of more than 1000 units (according to other sources, only 200 aircraft were produced, another 370 were in various stages of readiness, and parts and components were produced for another 800 aircraft - Note 38 *) the German heavy bomber He-177 due to numerous accidents, often simply burned up in the air (Note 41*). The He-129 attack aircraft turned out to be extremely unsuccessful due to difficult controls, weak engine armor, and weak rear weapons (Note 47*) - in 1945, the share of fighters out of all military aircraft produced in Germany was 65.5%, in 1944 - 62.3 % (Note 41*) - during WW2, the Germans produced 198 not entirely successful, heavy six-engine military transport aircraft Me-323 from converted "Giant" gliders, at one time intended for landing (could carry 200 paratroopers or a certain number of tanks and 88mm anti-aircraft guns) to the territory of England (Note 41 * and 38 *) - in 1941, the losses of transport Ju-52 for the first time exceeded their production - more than 500 aircraft were lost, and only 471 were produced (Note 40 *) - 273 Ju- 87 acted against the USSR, while Poland was attacked by 348 Ju-87 (Note 38 *) - in 8 months (01.08.40 - 31.03.41) due to accidents and disasters, the Luftwaffe lost 575 aircraft and killed 1368 people ( Note 32 *) - the most active Allied pilots flew 250-400 sorties in WW2, while similar figures for German pilots fluctuated between 1000 - 2000 sorties - by the beginning of WW2, 25% of German pilots had mastered the skill of blind piloting (Note 32 *) - in 1941, a German fighter pilot, leaving flight school, had more than 400 hours of total flight time, of which at least 80 hours were in a combat vehicle. Afterwards, in the reserve air group, the graduate added another 200 hours (Note 32*) - during the Second World War there were 36 German pilots, each of whom shot down more than 150 Soviet aircraft and about 10 Soviet pilots, each of whom shot down 50 or more German aircraft (Note .9*) - the ammunition of the Bf-109F fighter is enough for 50 seconds of continuous firing from machine guns and 11 seconds from the MG-151 cannon (Note 13*) - the V-2 missile consisted of 45 thousand parts, the maximum monthly Germany could produce up to 400 missiles of this type - of the 4,300 V-2 missiles, more than 2,000 exploded on the ground or in the air during launch or failed during flight. Only 50% of the missiles hit a circle with a diameter of 10 km (Note 27*). In total, 2,419 V-missile attacks were recorded on London, and 2,448 on Antwerp. Of those fired at targets, 25% of the missiles reached their target. A total of 30 thousand V-1 rockets were manufactured. In 1945, the speed of V-1 rockets reached about 800 km/h. (Note 9*) - On June 14, 1944, the first V-2 fell on London. Of the 10,492 V-2s fired at London, 2,419 reached the target. Another 1,115 missiles exploded in Southern England (Note 35*) - from Non-111 (N-22) carrier aircraft by the end of 1944 in Antwerp, London and Brussels produced 8696, 4141 and 151 V-2s, respectively (Note 35*)

US Air Force: - after WW1, in November 1918, the United States had 1,172 “flying boats” in service (Note 41*) - 09/01/1939, the United States had 1,576 combat aircraft at the beginning of WW2 (Note 31*) - during WW2, the US aircraft industry produced over 13 thousand Warhawks, 20 thousand Wildcats and Hellcats, 15 thousand Thunderbolts and 12 thousand Mustangs (Note 42*) - 13 thousand American B-17 bombers were produced in WW2 (Note 41*)

English Air Force: - the most massive English bomber of WW2 "Wellington" was produced in the amount of 11,461 aircraft (Note 51*) - 09/01/1939 England began WW2, having 1992 combat aircraft (Note 31*) - already in August 1940 England produced twice as many fighters daily as Germany. Their total number subsequently so exceeded the number of pilots that it soon made it possible to transfer some of the aircraft to conservation or transfer them to other countries under Lend-Lease (Note 31*) - from 1937 to the end of WW2, more than 20 thousand British Spitfire fighters were produced (Note .41*)

Air Forces of other countries: - 09/01/1939 France began WW2, having 3335 aircraft (Note 31*): 1200 fighters, 1300 bombers, 800 reconnaissance aircraft, 110,000 personnel - in 1942 Japan 3.2 thousand combat aircraft - the Polish Air Force had a total of beginning of the war 1900 aircraft (Note 8*) - Romanian Air Force on 06/22/1941: 276 combat aircraft, of which 121 fighters, 34 medium and 21 light bombers, 18 seaplanes and 82 reconnaissance aircraft. Another 400 aircraft were in flight schools. It makes no sense to specify types of aircraft due to moral and physical obsolescence. Romanian 250 (205 combat-ready) aircraft allocated against the USSR were opposed by about 1,900 Soviet aircraft. On the eve of the war, the Germans retrained 1,500 Romanian aviation specialists and agreed to supply modern Bf-109u and He-110e to Romania. On the eve of the war, 3 squadrons were re-equipped with the new Romanian fighter IAR-80 (Note 7*)

OTHER: - in the “Battle of England” the Germans lost 1733 aircraft (Note 30*). According to other sources, losses amounted to 1,792 aircraft, of which 610 were Bf-109s. British losses amounted to 1,172 aircraft: 403 Spitfires, 631 Hurricanes, 115 Blenheims and 23 Defiants (Note 37*) - more than 200 P-36 fighters were manufactured by the USA for France before WW2 (Note 41*) - in September 1944 there was a peak in the number of allied bombers in Europe - more than 6 thousand (Note 36 *) - 250 million aircraft cartridges received under Lend-Lease were melted down (Note 9 *) - during the Second World War the Finns (Air Force -PVO) claim 2787, the Romanians - about 1500, the Hungarians - about 1000, the Italians - 150-200, the Slovaks - 10 downed Soviet aircraft. Another 638 shot down Soviet aircraft are listed in the combat accounts of the Slovak, Croatian and Spanish fighter squadrons. According to other sources, the German allies together shot down no more than 2,400 Soviet aircraft (Note 23*) - about 3,240 German fighters were destroyed on the Soviet-German front, of which 40 were accounted for by the allies of the USSR (VVS-PVO Poles, Bulgarians and Romanians since 1944 , the French from “Normandy-Niemen”) (Note 23*) - on 01/01/1943, 395 German daytime fighters operated against Soviet 12,300 aircraft, on 01/01/1944 - 13,400 and 473, respectively (Note 23*) - after 1943 from 2 \\3 to 3\\4 of all German aviation countered the aviation of the anti-Hitler coalition in Western Europe (Note 23*) The 14 Soviet air armies formed at the end of 1943 put an end to the dominance of German aviation in the skies of the USSR (Note 9*) - losses of Soviet aviation in the first days of the war: 1142 (800 were destroyed on the ground), of which: Western District - 738, Kiev - 301, Baltic - 56, Odessa - 47. Luftwaffe losses in 3 days - 244 (of which 51 on the first day of the war) (Note 20*) - on June 22, 1941, the Germans allocated 3 bombers to attack each Soviet military airfield. The strike was carried out with 2-kilogram SD-2 fragmentation bombs. The radius of destruction of the bomb is 12 meters with 50-200 fragments. A direct hit from such a bomb was equivalent to a medium-power anti-aircraft shell (Note 22*) The Stuka attack aircraft carried 360 SD-2 bombs (Note 19*) - in 1940, 21,447 aircraft engines were produced in the USSR, of which less than 20% were domestic developments. In 1940, the standard repair life of Soviet aircraft engines was 100-150 hours, in reality - 50-70 hours, while this figure in France and Germany was 200-400 hours, in the USA - up to 600 hours (Note 16*) - at the beginning of the war in the European part of the USSR, the Soviet Air Force had 269 reconnaissance aircraft out of a total of 8,000 aircraft against German 219 long-range and 562 short-range reconnaissance aircraft out of a total of 3,000 aircraft (Note 10 *) - the allied air force in the Mediterranean theater after the fall of Tunisia , estimated at 5,000 aircraft, was opposed by no more than 1,250 Axis aircraft, of which roughly half were German and half were Italian. Of the German aircraft, only 320 were suitable for action, and among them were 130 Messerschmitt fighters of all modifications (Note 8*) - aviation of the Northern Fleet of the USSR in 1944: 456 combat-ready aircraft, of which 80 were flying boats. German aviation in Norway consisted of 205 aircraft in 1944 (Note 6*) - the German Air Force in France lost 1401 aircraft, the French only lost fighters - 508 (257 fighter pilots died) (Note 5*)

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What happened on June 22, 1941?

JUNE 22, 1941 What happened on June 22, 1941? Let us turn to the events of this day and start with the picture that German sources paint for us. “June 22, 1941. 3.20 am. A little more - and the rising sun will dry the dew... on the wings of the fighters of the 23rd Air Force division, lined up at the airfield near Rivne... Suddenly, the dull roar of engines broke the silence. ...three planes slipped out from the west, crossed the border of the airfield at low level and rushed towards the long lines of fighters. A second later...a shower of two-kilogram fragmentation bombs poured from their belly,...the bombs whistled down and exploded among the standing fighters. Hot fragments crashed into the wings and fuselages, pierced gas tanks... Streams of burning gasoline flooded one fighter after another. A thick cloud of oily smoke swirled and grew over the airfield. Three Heinkel-111s of the 53rd Bomber Squadron... turned around and walked over the airfield again, pouring machine-gun fire on the flaming wreckage. Then, having completed their mission, they left for the west, while the stunned pilots jumped out of their beds. In less than 2 minutes, the 23rd Air Force Division ceased to exist as a combat unit, without having time to fire a single shot in its defense. The division commander, Colonel Vanyushkin, stood among the rubble and cried. ... By noon on June 22, the Soviet Air Force had lost 1,200 aircraft: 300 were shot down in air battles, and 900 were destroyed at airfields...” (Military pilots, pp. 58-59). “...thanks to extensive photographic reconnaissance carried out mainly by part of Colonel Rovel's Aufklaringsgruppe in the preceding months, all air force bases were located. They came under attack from Ju-88s and He-111s, while low-altitude attacks were carried out by Bf-110s and bomb-carrying Bf-109s. The few Soviet fighters that took to the air were easily destroyed. On this day [June 22 - E.K.], having lost only 32 aircraft, the Luftwaffe destroyed 1811 Soviet aircraft, almost all of them, except 322, were destroyed on the ground. ...On the central and southern front, from June 22 to June 28, 1570 and 1360 Soviet aircraft were destroyed. The 1st Air Fleet (Army Group North, headquartered at Insterburg, East Prussia) declared 1,211 killed in the air and 487 on the ground from 22 June to 13 July 1941. ...these claims were no doubt exaggerated, but no doubts that Soviet losses were enormous (Hitler's Luftwaffe, p. 41). “during the period June 22–30... the Russians lost 4,990 aircraft of all types.” “As a result of these unexpected attacks, the air forces of the western districts lost about 1,200 aircraft on the first day of the war, including 800 that were destroyed at airfields.” The editor writes in a footnote: “The Germans declared (for the entire front) 322 aircraft destroyed in the air and 1,489 on the ground. Part of the discrepancy in the number of aircraft destroyed on the ground is due to the fact that some aircraft may have been considered repairable, but many were lost when German forces captured the airfields. ...airfields (Tarnovo and Dolyubovo) located right on the border were fired upon by German long-range artillery (Luftwaffe, p. 239). …”it was early Sunday morning and many soldiers were on leave, said Colonel Vanyushkin, commander of the 23rd Air Division, who was later captured [This Vanyushkin again! – E.K.]. With proverbial Russian carelessness... both old and new types stood together in uncamouflaged rows..." (Becker, p. 312-313). ...the effect of a surprise attack on Soviet airfields was devastating. …4 pound fragmentation bombs…. “We could hardly believe our eyes,” reported Captain Hans von Hann, commander of I/JG3, which operated in the Lvov area. “Row after row of reconnaissance aircraft, bombers and fighters stood in lines as if on parade. We were surprised by the number of airfields and aircraft that the Russians were preparing against us" (Becker, p. 313). In the sector of the 2nd Air Fleet near Brest-Litovsk, a Soviet squadron attempting to take off was bombed at the moment of takeoff. It later turned out that the perimeter of the airfield was littered with burnt debris (Becker, p. 314). ..."SD2 - fragmentation bombs, nicknamed "devil's egg", which were on the secret list, are now dropped for the first time in large quantities. Weighing only 4 pounds, they were equipped with small stabilizers and were originally intended for attacking infantry from the air. With fuses triggered either on impact with the ground or above the ground, the result of the explosion was the scattering of 50 large and 250 smaller fragments of shrapnel over a distance of 12-13 meters (ibid.). 1811 aircraft destroyed: 322 in the air: 1489 on the ground. ...for Goering, the commander of the Luftwaffe, the results seemed so incredible that he ordered them to be checked secretly. For several days, officers from his headquarters traveled to captured airfields, counting the burnt wreckage of Russian aircraft. The result was even more stunning, the total number exceeded 2000. ... in the western district sector, 528 vehicles were destroyed on the ground and 210 in the air (Becker, p. 317). The German pilot Heinz Nocke talks about his first combat flight on June 22, who after the war wrote a book of memoirs “I Flew for the Fuhrer” based on his diary entries. (The author of the comments asks the readers for forgiveness for quoting this rather odious document without cuts). Although this excerpt tells of a raid on the headquarters of one of the armies of the Baltic District, there is little doubt that the same thing happened over the airfields that day: “June 22, 1941. 04:00: Alert to all staff. The airfield is bustling with life. All night I hear the distant hum of tanks and cars. We are located just a few kilometers from the border. 04:30: All crews gathered in the operating room for briefing. Our commander, Captain Woitke, reads out a special order from the Fuhrer to all armed forces. 05:00: We take off and engage. In our staff, 4 aircraft, including mine, were equipped with bomb droppers and over the past few weeks I have been practicing bombing intensively. Now under the belly of my good “Emil” (Bf 109E - “Emil”) there are mounts for hundreds of 2-kg fragmentation bombs. I will gladly throw them to Ivan under his dirty feet. Flying low over the wide plains, we notice endless German columns rolling towards the east. Groups of bombers above us and frightening-looking Stuka dive bombers at the same altitude as us are flying in the same direction. We have to make a strafing attack on one of the Russian headquarters, located in the forests west of Druskininkai. On Russian territory, on the contrary, everything seems to be asleep. We discover the headquarters and fly over the wooden buildings, but do not see a single Russian soldier. Having dived onto one of the barracks, I press the bomb release button. I clearly feel how the plane, having gotten rid of its cargo, is jumping up. Others are also shedding their load. Huge masses of earth rise into the air like fountains and for some time we cannot see anything because of the smoke and dust. One of the barracks is burning furiously. The camouflage was torn off the cars standing nearby, and they themselves were overturned by the explosion. Finally, the Ivans woke up. The scene below resembles a torn up anthill, everyone below is scurrying around in confusion. Stalin's stepsons, wearing only their underwear, seek shelter in the forest. The anti-aircraft gunners start shooting at us. I take aim at one of them and open fire with a cannon and machine guns. Ivan, who fired the gun in only his underwear, falls to the ground. And now - onto the next one! One more turn and I'll treat you to lead. The Russians quickly jump up and shoot back. “Well, wait, now it’s my turn to have fun, you bastards!” I turn around for another attack. I have never shot as accurately as I did today. I descend to a height of two meters, almost cutting off the tops of the trees. Then I sharply pull the control stick towards me. My Ivans are lying face down next to their gun. One of them jumps to his feet and runs towards the trees. The rest continue to lie. I do five or six more passes. We circle around the camp like wasps. Almost all the barracks are on fire. I shoot at the truck. It lights up after the first burst. 05:56: Flight in formation. The commander sees our laughing faces during the report. The spell is finally broken. We have long dreamed of doing something similar to the Bolsheviks. We experience not so much hatred as extreme contempt. It is a real pleasure for us to trample the Bolsheviks into the mud from which they grew [Jawohl! - E.K.]”(Knoke, p.44-46). But further. The commander of the German bombers, General Werner Baumbach: “The true number of Russian losses by December 11 was 8,500 aircraft (Baumbach, p. 136). “...in 24 hours, 1817 Russian aircraft were destroyed, of which 1498 were on the ground, 322 were shot down by fighters and anti-aircraft fire. Goering refused to believe these figures and sent special units to investigate the airfields, which the army had meanwhile captured. They counted the wreckage of 2,000 Russian planes” (Paul, p. 219). “...there are 12,000-15,000 Soviet aircraft in total, of which 7,000 were concentrated in the western districts and occupied territories.” “...according to German intelligence, there are 5,700 aircraft on European territory, of which 2,980 are fighters. This turned out to be a serious underestimation; aircraft in reserve fleets were not taken into account.” “June 22... complete surprise... at many airfields construction was not yet completed and the planes stood wing to wing as if for inspection. It was an incredibly attractive target. Luftwaffe pilots were convinced that the Russians themselves were planning a massive attack. …When the bombers finished their work, the fighters shot down everything that was left.” “The Luftwaffe claimed 1,489 destroyed on the ground and 322 in the air or by anti-aircraft guns. Official Soviet history admits 1,200 casualties, 800 of them on the ground... Although the planes on the ground were destroyed, their pilots were not injured, and most importantly... this later simplified the task of forming new units” (Spick, p. 75-78). “1200 aircraft in the first 8 hours...” “...attacks on Soviet air bases led to the collapse of the Russian command, unable to control its units. Desperate calls broadcast in clear text leave the impression of chaos. According to Milch's personal diary: 1800 aircraft were destroyed on the first day, 800 on June 23, 557 on the 24th, 351 on the 25th, 300 on the 26th. The question of whether the Luftwaffe was able to destroy so many aircraft cannot even be discussed... a catastrophe of colossal proportions...” (Murray, p.82-83). “For several days, He-111, Ju-88, Do-17 made four to six sorties every day, Ju-87 from seven to eight, Bf-109 and Bf-110 - from five to eight, depending on the distance to goals. Between 22 and 25 June, I Corps attacked 77 airfields in 1,600 missions, the first bombers finding enemy vehicles on the ground, unprotected, often standing in long rows, extremely vulnerable to the effects of fragmentation bombs, 4 lb SD-2s, which bombers and fighter-bombers were carried in large numbers. ...on June 22, 1,800 enemy aircraft were destroyed; on June 29, the OKW reported the destruction of 4,017 Soviet aircraft and German losses of 150 aircraft.” “Goering did not believe Kesselring that 2,500 aircraft were destroyed in the central sector alone, and ordered an investigation. His check showed that Kesselring even downplayed the success of his pilots and the true figure was 200-300 more than he initially reported. “... On June 30, large air battles broke out in the Bobruisk area, when Soviet planes tried to prevent the Germans from crossing the Berezina River. 110 Soviet aircraft were shot down." “In the first 3 days, the 1st Air Fleet shot down 400 enemy aircraft and destroyed 1,100 on the ground, in the next three months - the same number... By August 30, the 2nd Air Fleet shot down 1,380 aircraft and destroyed 1,280 on the ground.” (Cooper, 222-223). “The first attack... 31 airfields near the border were attacked, by the end of the day 1,800 Russian aircraft were destroyed. By the end of the week, Goering announced the destruction of 4990 aircraft, the Luftwaffe lost 179 aircraft. On 9 July, JG3 shot down 27 Russian bombers attempting to attack their airfield in 15 minutes. By July 26, Me-110s had flown 1,574 sorties, shot down 92 enemy aircraft in the air and destroyed 823 on the ground. ZG 26 account - 620 Soviet aircraft." “On August 30, JG3 pilots destroyed the 1000th Russian aircraft. On August 19, when attacking a Soviet airfield 17 miles southwest of Leningrad, ZG 26 aircraft burned 30 fighters, damaged 15 and shot down 3, increasing their tally to 191 in the air and 663 on the ground.” “September 8 JG 51 – 2000th air victory. By September 10 - 1357 enemy aircraft in the air, 298 on the ground." "4th Air Fleet - 800th air victory by October 20." “By November 12, the 2nd Fleet - 40,000 sorties, 2,169 Soviet aircraft destroyed in the air, 1,657 on the ground. Probable enemy losses - another 281 aircraft destroyed and 811 damaged” (WWII... p.55-56). “On my first flight, I notice countless fortifications built along the border. They stretch for many hundreds of kilometers. They are still partially unfinished. We are flying over unfinished airfields: there is a newly built concrete runway, and planes are already parked here. For example, along the road to Vitebsk, along which our troops are advancing, there is one of these almost completed airfields with many Martin bombers. They lack either fuel or crews [emphasis mine - E.K.]. Flying over these airfields and fortifications, everyone understands: “We struck on time...”. It appears the Soviets were making these preparations to create a base for an invasion against us. Who else in the West would Russia like to attack? If the Russians had completed their preparations, there would have been almost no hope of stopping them" (Rudel, p.21-22). *** And now - Soviet sources. The very first reports make it possible to judge the serious situation in which the Air Force found itself after the start of the German attack. The operational report of the Northwestern Front, signed at 10 pm on June 22, reports that during enemy attacks 56 Soviet aircraft were destroyed in the air and 32 at the airfields themselves (Collection of combat documents ... hereinafter - issue 34, unless otherwise indicated, with 43). Another report, sent next to the NPO, increases the losses to 100 vehicles and admits that the enemy has achieved complete air superiority (Collection of combat documents ... p. 44). The reports constantly raise the problem of lack of communication with aviation units. On June 26, front commander Kuznetsov reported: “75% of the crews were not injured. Material losses amount to 80%. I ask you to reinforce the front with three mixed air divisions. First of all, we need equipment and pilots.” By July 4, the damage caused to frontline aviation becomes clear from the list of what remained: “6th mixed air division ... 69 aircraft, 7th - 26 aircraft, 8th - 29, 57 - 29 aircraft. In the 12 days since the start of hostilities, out of 887 aircraft of the front, only 153 aircraft remained in stock (Collection of combat documents ... p. 119). On June 21, 1942, General D. Kondratyuk, commander of the 6th Army, prepared a report on the air operations of the Northwestern Front in the first days of the war. In this report, he wrote about the problems faced by the front. He noted the shortage of airfields and the ongoing construction at almost all existing airfields - 21 permanent and 49 operational. Despite efforts to camouflage the aircraft, German reconnaissance flights brought this work to naught. He particularly highlighted the following problems of the front's air units: the concentration of aircraft on existing airfields and the lack of airfields in the depths, which increased vulnerability to German attack; proximity of airfields to the border, poor dispersal of aircraft and planning of unit movements; availability of old aircraft and equipment; pilots' inability to fly at night and in bad weather; insufficient staff work and lack of interaction between military branches; poor radio and wire communications; extreme lack of aerial reconnaissance; unfinished reform; Inadequate logistics mobilization planning. In conclusion, Kondratyuk writes: “The year of war has shown. That the Red Army's air force did not meet the demands of the war. ...a regiment based at two or three airfields was losing operational control over its constituent units; the headquarters organization did not provide battle control. ... Frequent reorganization of aviation had a negative effect on the combat effectiveness of units ... The lack of a plan for the air force in the event of war led to the loss of a significant number of aircraft and pilots. Control of radio equipment... was not worked out" (Collection of combat documents... pp. 179-183). The air bases of the Western District suffered even more in the first days of the war. The Germans began hostilities with devastating attacks on the entire network of airfields in the Western District, and German sabotage groups cut off ground communication lines. With communications disrupted, reports of casualties came only slowly, if at all, and commanders could only imagine the devastation German aircraft were wreaking in the air and on the ground. It is clear that the Germans were able to immediately achieve overwhelming air superiority. The commander of the front aviation, I. Kopec, convinced that it no longer existed, committed suicide, thereby avoiding the fate that soon befell the front commander D. Pavlov, who was shot on the orders of Stalin along with the officers of his headquarters. The first detailed report on Western Front aviation appeared on December 31, 1941. Two sections of the report written by N. Naumenko were devoted to a sober assessment of the state of the Air Force before the war and its participation in hostilities in the first eight days of the war: “By April 1941, the combat readiness of units of the air forces can be characterized as follows: fighters are complete inability to shoot and Work fighting, bombers - limited ability, there is no reconnaissance, since 8 squadrons received 6 aircraft. The 313rd and 314th reconnaissance regiments: all crews from young pilots are available, but there are no aircraft ... The 314th reconnaissance regiment ... By the beginning of the war, only 6 crews flew to the Yak-4. 215th assault air regiment-12 I-15 pieces, there were preparations for pilots on IL-2, which the district had not yet had ”(collection of combat documents ... p. 127) Naumenko noted that all the aircraft divisions had old aircraft except 9- S mixed, which were equipped with 262 new MiG-1 and MiG-3 aircraft. But only 140 division pilots could fly on these new aircraft, the preparation was accompanied by serious accidents ... "Interest in training flights on old aircraft fell, everyone wanted to fly on new cars ... Despite the military-staff exercises ... The headquarters had insufficient experience ...". He writes further: “As a result of the actions of German and Belopol saboteurs from 23:00 on June 21, all wired communications between the district headquarters, the headquarters of the air division and regiments were cut ... Each airfield was left to itself. Thus began the Great Patriotic War ”(collection of combat documents ... p. 130). Further, Naumenko moves on the results of the first eight days of the fighting: "On June 22, during the first attack, the enemy destroyed 538 of our aircraft (out of 1022 fighters and 887 bombers) and lost 143. After 8 days, our losses amounted to 1163 aircraft. By June 30, 498 aircraft remained (collection of combat documents ... p. 131). The most powerful units of the Air Force were, as in the case of ground forces, in the Kiev military district. Despite their strength, the aviation units suffered from the same problems. On August 21, the commander of the Air Force Zhigarev received a report on aviation of the Kyiv district in the pre -war months and the first days of the war. According to the author of the report, Colonel Astakhov, in 11 districts of the district and 32 regiments there were 1166 fighters, 587 bombers, 197 attack aircraft and 53 intelligence aircraft. This number included 223 new MiG-3 and Yak fighters, the new P-2 and Su-2 bombers and 31 Yak-4 reconnaissance aircraft. Most pilots of old aircraft were well prepared for flights under ordinary conditions, but could not perform more difficult tasks. On the other hand, the pilots of new types of aircraft only had the initial training and could not be considered combat -ready. Astakhov summarizes the characteristics of the combat effectiveness of the district aviation: “In general, aviation of the Southeast Front was not enough prepared for combat operations for the following reasons: a. During the re-equipment of the front aircraft with new weapons, some of the old, fully formed aviation regiments (52nd and 48th near-acting aviation) did not have enough new types of aircraft for conducting combat operations, and their old vehicles were used in new parts. As a result, before the start of the war, these regiments were in a state of low combat readiness ... in. Some aviation regiments formed in 1940 (224th, 225th, 138th) had equipment only 20-50% of the norm and as a result of their participation in the hostilities were insignificant. The divisions and regimental commanders did not use the winter period 1940-1941 for training, while the airfields were covered with snow and as a result the vast majority of young pilots were very little flyed in winter ... And from May to June he did not give them sufficient preparation for conducting military actions. It was before the war that the aircraft of the South-Western Front could not solve the problem of masking airfields and aircraft and organize air defense. This was explained not only by the lack of the necessary means of masking and the lack of air defense systems, but also by the fact that the commanders at all levels did not pay much attention to these issues. e. The lack of necessary organization ... In the actions of front -line aviation, when repelling enemy attacks on our airfields, in the first three days of the war, they confirmed that the combat effectiveness of the front parts of the front is low and in this critical period ... Aviation actions do not meet the requirements of the NCO No. 075 ″ order. Because of these and other problems, ”wrote Astakhov further,“ the aviation of the Southwestern Front was not ready to repel the enemy’s sudden attack on 06.22.41. ” As a result, from June 22 to 24, the Germans destroyed 237 aircraft at airfields. The faulty equipment and poor training led to the loss of another 242 aircraft due to accidents from June 22 to August 10, which is 13% of all losses (1861 aircraft). (Collection of combat documents ... Issue 36, p. 109-116) and the last. Data on Soviet aircraft captured by the Germans are known. For example, according to German data, (see comments on page 35 of the book “The Soviet Air Force in World War II”) by July 8, 1941, the Army Group Center captured 242 Soviet aircraft at airfields, and the total number of captured aircraft in all Western Districts were unlikely to exceed 1000 aircraft, simply because in the aviation of the Western district there were most aircraft (after Kyiv) and the Germans were moving here faster. The Germans are unlikely to number faulty and aircraft broken at raids among the captured ones. Why should they repair these cars? The latter, most likely, attributed only to technically serviceable aircraft, some of which, having received identification signs of the Luftwaffe, were used in German air parts (see section 6).

https://www.airforce.ru/ https://rkka1941.blogspot.com/

Chapter first. Basic summary data on Soviet and Nazi aviation

The first chapter of the work contains the most important digital materials that mainly characterize the state, development and combat operations of Soviet aviation by year and for the entire Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945. generally.

The tables in this chapter provide data on the quantitative composition of combat aircraft, engines and ammunition produced by the USSR industry; number of combat sorties, fuel and ammunition consumption; the losses of the Soviet, Nazi German army during the years of the last war and the heroism of the air force personnel of the spacecraft. In addition, this chapter contains generalized materials on the training of personnel, reserves and the work of services to support aviation combat operations and other generalized materials.

Chapter tables

(in brackets are the page numbers of the collection, in square brackets is my numbering of the tables (
Yu. Minkevich
), it is not in the original):

Quantitative composition and ratio of branches of front-line aviation of the Active Army according to the most important dates of the Great Patriotic War 1941-1945.

The share of foreign types of aircraft in the combat strength of front-line aviation of the Active Army according to the most important dates of the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945.

Characteristics of the air forces of the western border military districts (as of June 1, 1941)

Combat composition of the German Air Force and its satellites on the Soviet-German front on the most important dates of the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945.

The number of combat sorties carried out by Soviet aviation in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945.

The number of combat sorties carried out by the Red Army Air Force in some of the most important operations of 1941-1945. and distributing them according to tasks

The total number of enemy aircraft sorties on the Soviet-German front in 1941-1945.

Bomb consumption by Soviet aviation for 1941-1945.

Combat losses of Soviet and German aviation in aircraft for 1941-1945.

Total losses of the German Air Force in combat aircraft and personnel during the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945.

Assignment of guards ranks, their own names and awarding of aviation formations and units, awarding and awarding the titles of Hero of the Soviet Union to the personnel of the Space Forces and Long-Range Aviation for 1941-1945.

Receipt of funds from the working people of the USSR for the purchase of aircraft for the Air Force in 1941-1945.

Recruiting, training and sending to the front aviation units and subunits of the Space Forces Air Force in 1941-1945.

Training of personnel by the Air Force of the Red Army in 1941-1945.

Receipt of aircraft and engines to the Air Force from the aviation industry for 1941-1945.

Receipt of imported aircraft and engines into the KAAF for 1941-1945.

Receipt of aerial bombs from industry for 1941-1945.

Receipt of special ammunition, cartridges and shells from industry for 1941-1945.

Aircraft production by Nazi Germany for 1941-1945.

Construction, restoration and reconstruction of airfields for the spacecraft air force in 1941-1945.

Growth in the volume of railway transportation to support maneuvers of aviation formations and air force units of the spacecraft in 1942-1945.

The number of repairs of aircraft and motors carried out by the aviation engineering service of the Air Force KA for 1941-1945.

Provision of the spacecraft air force with basic ground communications in the period 1941-1945.

— return to table of contents — to main page —

The fiery sky of 1941 in numbers. Was everything so sad in the Red Army Air Force?

1941 was a difficult year for the Red Army Air Force and the entire country. Vast territories of the European part of the USSR were captured by the enemy. There were fierce battles on land, at sea and in the air. Huge losses in equipment, people, production capacity.

As a result of the summer-autumn defensive campaign, huge losses were suffered, but the enemy was stopped, and already in December the first big counter-offensive took place near Moscow.

Part of the aviation losses incurred were compensated by the transfer of regiments from the Asian part of the USSR, the Far East, and Siberia. Some of the equipment was confiscated from aviation colleges and schools, as well as flying clubs. A significant part of the equipment was restored by the aviation industry, which was practically in a coma due to the evacuation of 1941, some began to be restored thanks to supplies from the UK and the USA.

Below is a table of aircraft production in the USSR during WWII

And these are deliveries under lend-lease.

For comparison, Germany produced approximately the same number of aircraft over the period 1941-1945 as the USSR. Those. The USSR was able to single-handedly produce more aircraft than the combined forces of Europe minus Italy and Hungary.

As you can see, the ratio of aircraft supplied under Lend-Lease to those produced by domestic industry varies by almost seven times, an order of magnitude (117 thousand versus 17.5 thousand combat aircraft). This is to the question that without Lend-Lease, the Red Army simply had nowhere to go.

But these 740 aircraft in 1941 and 2,400 in 1942 arrived during the most difficult period, when there was a catastrophic shortage of equipment. Due to huge losses.

At the end of 1941, the total number of combat losses of Soviet aviation exceeded 10 thousand aircraft. Almost 2 thousand more were lost by Civil Air Fleet aviation

Moreover, a feature of the losses of 1941-1942 is the huge number of lost aircraft at airfields. A significant part of them were not damaged or destroyed there, but abandoned during the retreat, lack of fuel, technical malfunctions, lack of flight personnel, etc.

Those who have read the memoirs of A. Pokryshkin remember his adventures with the MiG-3 on the roads of southern Russia. For those unfamiliar with the situation, a brief summary. After an air battle, Pokryshkin made an emergency landing and retreated into the infantry fighting formations. At one of the airfields he found a MiG-3, which had been abandoned by the ferryman when the Germans approached the city. As a result, A. Pokryshkin was forced to hang out on the roads with the plane, but he still had to be burned.

And this situation was frequent precisely in the directions of the main attacks (I’m talking about abandoned equipment, and not hanging out with an airplane along front-line roads). In 1941, the Western and Southwestern Fronts suffered the most. And if the first constantly retreated under German attacks throughout the summer and autumn, then with the South-Western it was not so. The Southwestern Front held its defense quite staunchly. So, for example, the battle for Kyiv began on August 7, 1941. For comparison, the battle for Smolensk in the Western Front began on July 10, and on July 28, Smolensk was completely abandoned. Soviet troops left Kyiv on September 19.

Those. massive losses occurred, in fact, before and after the fall of Kyiv, when the German command decided to secure its flanks, and the Soviet command did not take timely action to withdraw troops. And here we must recognize the special role of Stalin, who was opposed to the surrender of Kyiv, as well as the confusion and nervous tension associated with this. Kirponos demanded reconfirmation of the order to abandon Kyiv, bearing in mind that Stalin was categorically against its surrender. Time was lost and, as a result, the Red Army lost a huge amount of equipment and people killed, captured and joined the partisans (yes, they were lost for the Red Army, at least until 1943-1944). The defeat occurred already in the autumn of 1941. At the same time, in the fall, immediately after leaving Kyiv, the commander of the Southwestern Front also died as a result of an attempt to break out of encirclement.

I would like to especially talk about the death of Kirponos. As I wrote in the last article, the commander of the KOVO Air Force, the future Southwestern Front, was arrested on June 24 and executed in the summer of 1941. Kirponos, on the contrary, was not subjected to repression, his command was considered quite successful. Although we must also recognize the fact that the Germans placed their main emphasis on attacking Moscow, and did not attach importance to Ukraine for a long time. But still, in fact, this was one of the most stable sections of the front in 1941.

After being encircled, units of the Southwestern Front tried to break out of the ring. A combined column of the front headquarters and the 5th Army of a thousand people, about 800 of whom were officers and generals, approached the village of Dryukovshchina on September 20, where it was attacked by the advanced forces of the 3rd Panzer Division of the Wehrmacht. Having lost several guns and armored vehicles, the combined column retreated to the grove, where it took up defensive positions. After some time, the grove was attacked by the Germans from three sides.

Kirponos with front headquarters officers

A heavy battle broke out among the trees, turning into hand-to-hand combat. All soldiers and officers took part in the battle, including the front commander. This battle went down in Russian history as the “attack of the generals.” There were few generals there, but most of them were either captured or died. However, not everyone returned from captivity either.

A lucky few managed to break through and subsequently participate in the Second World War, such as:

- Major General Dobykin (December 27 will become lieutenant general), head of the communications department of the Southwestern Front,

- Major General Panyukhov, head of the combat training department of the headquarters of the Southwestern Front

After the war, the generals and marshals each assessed Kirponos differently, calling him both worthy of his position and vice versa. But one thing can be said for sure, unlike Vlasov, Kirponos fought to the end and did not surrender.

But let's get back to aviation.

At the Nuremberg trials, G. Goering, who was interrogated about his activities as commander-in-chief of the Luftwaffe, stated: “ I had to ultimately consider the question of who would be the enemy in the war ... The enemy was Russia, which I considered as the main enemy

«

And these words were not an empty phrase.

I repeat, the losses listed here relate exclusively to the Luftwaffe, and not to the Air Forces of Hungary, Romania, Finland, etc.

Well, for a sketch:

This plane, shot down on November 27, 1941, is listed as missing.

And here is the report from the headquarters of the Army “South”, which acted against the Southwestern Front:

«97 of our reconnaissance aircraft were destroyed by the enemy. 92 pilots were killed. 41 wounded. These losses were mainly from enemy fighters. In addition, 27 transport and communications aircraft that were subordinate to these squadrons were destroyed. Another 38 aircraft were killed or damaged without enemy exposure. Note: aircraft that were damaged in battle and restored in units are not included in the records.

«.

Those. if the plane, as a result of fire from ZA or fighters, made an emergency landing, and for our anti-aircraft gunners and pilots was shot down, and then restored and returned to service, then it does not appear in this report.

The Luftwaffe command noted in its reports that with the outbreak of the war in the East, the gap between the losses of aircraft, flight personnel and the replacements received was constantly increasing.

Quite an interesting table of losses, which became widely known thanks to Solonin, although there is only the Red Army Air Force without naval aviation and air defense aviation. But it does not explain the document put into circulation by Khazanov, or rather the link to it, prepared by Colonel Ivanov from the headquarters of the Red Army on July 31, which includes an “unaccounted loss” of 5,240 aircraft. If in the first case (the first table) it could be “smeared” among the general figures, then in the second, where the categories of losses are clearly shown... Even the column “Did not return from a combat mission” is significantly less than the unaccounted for on July 31. Here either the question arises of the reliability of Khazanov’s document (it is impossible to find the original text or scan anywhere), or the main source of information for researchers “Soviet aviation in WWII in numbers”

In any case, you should understand how different the losses of the Luftwaffe and the Red Army Air Force are.

If you look closely, you can see that the most catastrophic losses on earth occurred in 1941. After that, the Germans were never able to destroy at least 300 aircraft on the ground. And even then, it seems that many were simply abandoned with minimal damage.

If you remember, in the previous article I said that the Red Army Air Force was defeated not in 1941, but in 1942? Look at the numbers of those shot down and not returning from a combat mission:

Yes, we can say that in 1941 there were fewer battles, but we must also recognize the fact that the pilots of 1941 had no combat experience, unlike 1942. But the increase in losses in 1942-1943 is obvious. And even according to such a column as those who did not return from a combat mission. Moreover, in 1941, the latter category did not always equal losses from a combat collision. They stuffed everything they could into this column. Into it and into the “unaccounted loss”.

Those. Despite such figures, the Red Army Air Force of 1941 as a whole showed itself to be at least no worse than the Red Army Air Force in 1943. Surprise? No. It’s just that the level of training of cadets dropped sharply in 1941-43. And therefore, I believe that a serious blow to the Air Force was dealt in 1942, when there was less equipment and, on the contrary, more losses.

But with all this, another plate is interesting: the ratio of aircraft losses and flight personnel based on the results of the Second World War:

It is worth noting here that the Japanese Air Force suffered the greatest losses in flight personnel and the second largest number of equipment. This was not surprising, since the bulk of the fighting took place over the Pacific Ocean at a great distance from the bases, which reduced the chance of survival of the pilots even in the event of successful escape from the damaged aircraft. The next point was the almost complete absence of protective tanks on Japanese planes, as a result of which the planes literally flared up like torches from a single hit of an incendiary bullet in the tank.

The Mitsubishi G4M3 aircraft was generally nicknamed by American pilots as the “ardent Betty” for this feature.

The next factor that reduced the survivability of pilots was the lack of armor protection for pilots, which again led to high mortality.

And such a “small” number of lost aircraft is explained by the fact that the industry simply could not produce them in the required volume.

The Germans hold the championship in equipment losses and the second “place of honor” in flight personnel losses.

This Bf-109 was picked up near the village. Sofronovo, Murmansk region

There is also a fairly simple explanation for this fact. Unlike Japan, the Luftwaffe fought in not one, but several theaters of operations. At the same time, German aircraft were both well protected and were generally among the best representatives in their classes. And the German industry could produce more aircraft than Japan. Therefore, the final losses of equipment for the Germans were higher. They lost fewer pilots, again, due to the characteristics of the theater of operations and the aircraft used: the majority of the fleet consisted of one or two-seater aircraft (at the end of the war, even the functions of bombers were transferred to the FW-190), and the theater of operations was located mainly over land.

At the same time, again, these losses are not only those shot down by aircraft and anti-aircraft artillery, but general combat losses: destroyed at airfields, written off due to damage, those who did not return from combat missions for unknown reasons, etc.

The third place in the number of lost aircraft is occupied by the USSR, which is not surprising, especially against the backdrop of 1941. Another surprising thing is that the USSR had the smallest losses of flight personnel. Those. Besides the fact that the Red Army Air Force was also based on one or two-seater aircraft, the death toll of personnel was less during the war years. The same fact casts doubt on the huge accounts of German fighters. It also questions the overall effectiveness of Allied aviation.

Fourth place in aviation and pilot losses for the United States. There is little surprise here. The gap between the equipment and the pilots is insignificant, since in the Pacific theater aviation was mainly used from aircraft carriers, the pilot was easy to lift, the majority of the crews consisted of one or two people, and there was, in fact, nothing to oppose to the massive raids of Japanese bombers. In Europe, the main losses occurred among the bomber crews, but those who were able to leave the plane lived out quite well until the end of the war in camps, unlike Soviet prisoners of war and their comrades in the Pacific.

Two of twelve American A-20 light bombers off Cocas Island, Indonesia, July 1943. The lower bomber was hit by anti-aircraft guns and crashed into the sea. Both crew members were killed.

The most interesting indicator is in Great Britain. Having the smallest losses of equipment, they had the highest losses of flight personnel. The only explanation is the death of the bomber crews who were actively operating over Germany, but still, this does not completely explain such a gap.

Downed RAF Spitfire near Dunker

But the most interesting thing is the breakdown of Luftwaffe losses by year and theater of operations:

This breakdown completely destroys the myth that the “Ivans were easy to fight.” Germany suffered the greatest losses, both in equipment and in flight personnel, precisely in the Soviet-German theater of operations, which fully confirms Goering’s words at the Nuremberg Trials.

The increase in losses from the Allies began only in 1944. Before that they were insignificant. However, there is nothing surprising here, since it was at the end of 1943 that the first US bombing of Germany began, and in 1944 this was put on stream and fighter cover was provided. Also in 1944, the landing in Normandy took place and the United States and Britain actively participated in the hostilities.

Those. in the skies of the USSR the backbone of the German Air Force was being ground down. Yes, many of the Luftwaffe pilots were able to increase their personal accounts, but did they fulfill the task assigned to them? In general, yes. The pilots of the Red Army Air Force were also given tasks. And they fulfilled them too. Only the tasks were different. Some were tasked with searching for and destroying the enemy, while others were tasked with supporting the activities of ground forces. And the result of completing the assigned tasks was Berlin 1945.

But by the end of the summer, in addition to equipment, the problem of flight personnel became acute. The loss of equipment and pilots was enormous. At the same time, there were enough pilots who knew the old technology, but the industry had already stopped producing the same I-16s, and the pilots did not have time to retrain for the new technology. As a result, already in June 1941, the NGO took unpopular measures. On June 26, 1941, the 401 IAP ON (special purpose fighter aviation regiment) was formed under the command of test pilot Colonel Hero of the Soviet Union S.P. Supruna. The regiment was staffed by test pilots from the Air Force Research Institute, teaching staff and students of the Red Army Air Force Command Academy, and MiG-3 fighters entered service. Already on June 27, the regiment commander will win his first and first victory of the regiment - he will shoot down an Hs-126 reconnaissance aircraft. For Suprun, this was not the first personal victory, just the first in the Great Patriotic War. Before this, Suprun took part in hostilities in China, where he won 6 victories. This one became the seventh.

Suprun will die a week later, on July 4th. No one knows the exact reason; according to one version, he was shot down by fighters after an attack by a bomber; according to another version, which is at least somehow consistent with the documents, on his way back from the flight he descended to attack a German convoy and was shot down by anti-aircraft fire. On July 22, he will become the first twice Hero of the Great Patriotic War. Posthumously.

He will also be replaced in his post by the famous test pilot K.K. Kokkinaki. In battles in China and the Second World War, he would win a total of 7 personal victories.

In July, the 2nd separate air defense squadron of Moscow air defense will be formed, again from test pilots. A special feature of the squadron will be that it will cover Moscow using equipment that has been tested. So Mark Gallay, on a Pe-3 fighter, will shoot down a Do-17 over Moscow, for which he will be awarded the Order of the Red Banner of Battle.

Many test pilots will also become bombers. The same Gallay in 1942 would be deputy commander of the 128th BAP squadron on the Kalinin Front.

Later, in 1943, Gallay will join the 890th ADD Regiment and fly the Pe-8. In the same 1943, he was shot down near Bryansk, went out to the partisans and returned to the regiment.

Those. Already with the beginning of the war, the issue of training pilots became acute. In 1942, due to huge losses of equipment, it “partially dissolved” following the example of the Podolsk cadets. Only now the role of infantrymen will not be cadets of combined arms schools, but future pilots and navigators.

PS: Initially, the article aimed to talk about the training and fate of cadets of aviation schools and schools in 1941-1942. After the text grew to 6 pages, I decided to stop. So there will be a next article on the cadets; at the same time, I hope, we will close the issue of battles in the summer-autumn period of 1941.

The truth about the losses of Red Army aviation during the Great Patriotic War

One of the most famous myths spread by Western and domestic liberals is the lie about the enormous superiority of the Luftwaffe over the Red Army aviation. This myth was carefully created by Dr. Goebbels and Hermann Goering. In a simplified form, this myth sounds something like this: “The Luftwaffe pilots are white bones, real aces, supermen, intellectuals of air combat, and our inept, collective farm Vanyas on crappy airplanes always lost, and won the war because they threw corpses at the infantrymen.”

Let's look at the numbers.

According to statistics, during the years of the Great Patriotic War, the combat aviation of the Red Army lost 88.3 thousand aircraft. Combat losses amounted to 43.1 thousand aircraft. That is, more than half of the aircraft (45 thousand) of the total losses are non-combat losses.

Now let's look at similar German aviation statistics. It is known that from 1940 until the end of the war, German industry produced about 84 thousand aircraft. Taking into account the aircraft produced earlier and surviving by the end of the war, German losses are estimated at approximately 80 thousand aircraft. Exact data on German combat losses is not known, but calculations show that they fit into the figure of approximately 40 thousand aircraft. That is, combat and non-combat losses are comparable to ours.

Now let's turn to the data on pilot losses. Over the entire period of World War II, the irretrievable combat losses of the warring countries in pilots amounted to:

1. Japan – 60,750 people
2. Germany - 57,137 people (losses on the Eastern Front 51.7% or 26,000 people)
3. England – 56,821 people
4. USA – 40,061 people
5. USSR – 34,500 people

Let's compare the total number of sorties in 1941-1945. We have about 3 million 800 thousand, the Germans have 1 million 600 thousand (data from the Russian Air Force Museum). Knowing the number of sorties and the number of pilots killed, we will calculate the average survivability of pilots of the USSR and Nazi Germany.

Luftwaffe pilot survivability 1,600,000 / 26,000 = 46 sorties

Survivability of Red Army Air Force pilots 3,800,000 / 34,500 = 110 sorties

Ratio of USSR and German flight personnel losses = 1.32

Next, let's see how consistent the data was about the huge number of Soviet aircraft shot down by German aces.

Nikolai Georgievich Bodrikhin in his book “Great Pilots of the World” considers the amazing results of the Luftwaffe aces to be untenable. He writes: “After all, the results of the combat work of more than 40 thousand fighter pilots alone who fought on the side of Germany during the Second World War are described by the law of normal distribution, and if we assume that the best of them actually won the declared number of victories (352 - E Hartman, 301 - G. Barnhorn, 13 more pilots - over 200, 88 - over 100, etc.), then the total number of aircraft shot down in air battles will exceed the actual one several times."

That is, hello again to the propaganda of Dr. Goebbels.

The number of downed aircraft in the Luftwaffe was determined in accordance with the number of engines on the downed aircraft. He shot down a 4-engine bomber and recorded 4 downed aircraft. If the pilots of the Red Army required mandatory confirmation of a downed plane from ground units, then the Wehrmacht pilots were exempt from such a “humiliating” procedure - if they said they shot them down, they meant they shot them down!

In this regard, for example, the Soviet ace Alexander Pokryshkin shot down 9 planes behind the front line, but they were not counted towards him. It is also known that Pokryshkin more than once handed over the planes he shot down to the pilots of his regiment to receive awards, and also repeatedly, for training purposes, took his wingman out to attack an enemy aircraft.

Thus, based on our research, it is clear that:

1. The losses of the Red Army flight personnel are only 1.32 times higher than the losses of the Luftwaffe.

2. The survivability of the Red Army flight personnel is 110 sorties; for Luftwaffe pilots this figure is lower - 42 sorties.

3. Losses of Red Army flight personnel - 34,500 people, Luftwaffe 26,000 people.

The obtained figures clearly demonstrate that the difference in the losses of the flight personnel of the Red Army Air Force and the Wehrmacht Luftwaffe is not significant (1.3 times). But the contribution of Soviet pilots to military operations looks much more significant (2.4 times) based on the total number of sorties during the Great Patriotic War.

Valery Plotnikov,

military pilot 1st class,

Chairman of the Kerch organization of the Russian community of Crimea

Soviet aviation suffered the fewest losses in World War II of all the warring powers.

Home » Real story » History of Wars » Soviet aviation suffered the least losses in World War II of all the warring powers

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Comparing air force losses of all countries participating in World War II: https://forum.guns.ru/forummessage/205/813676-2.html . Interestingly, it turns out that the USSR aviation suffered the least losses of all the warring countries, and indeed ALL, both the countries of the anti-Hitler coalition and the “Axis powers”.

And the data is like this:

• In first place is Japan: 60,750 killed pilots (well, this is understandable, “kamikaze”, traditions of honor, etc.)
• In second place is Germany: 57,137 killed pilots.
• In third place is England: 56,821 pilots killed.
• In fourth place is the United States: 40,061 killed pilots.
• And in FIFTH and last place is the USSR: 34,500 killed pilots.

Losses are even less than those of the USA! Why?

Maybe the Soviet military leaders hesitantly used aviation and “save” it? No! The USSR used aviation THREE times more intensively than Germany - during the war years on the Eastern Front, German aviation made 1,373,952 combat sorties, and USSR aviation - 3,808,136 sorties!

This fact alone shatters the legends about the “bastard Vanka”, who, they say, is stupid, stupid and narrow-minded to fight on equal terms with the “civilized Aryans” - for military aviation is always, then and now, the technical elite of the army . And a combat pilot is a unique fighter, combining the knowledge and intelligence of an engineer with the skills and reflexes of a professional Olympic-level athlete. Therefore, the main thing is to save the pilot, because compared to the cost of his training, the plane itself is pennies...

However, in terms of losses of “material parts” the USSR is also not in first place:

During the Second World War, the aviation of the warring countries lost:

1. German Air Force: 85,650 aircraft;
2. Japanese Air Force: 49,485 aircraft;
3. USSR Air Force: 47,844 aircraft;
4. US Air Force: 41,575 aircraft;
5. RAF: 15,175 aircraft.

(the number of lost vehicles is much less than the number of killed pilots among the British due to the fact that, for example, the English Lancaster bomber had a crew of 7 people, and the British fought mainly with strategic heavy bombers)

Yes, the USSR lost the most aircraft from the countries of the anti-Hitler coalition, but less than any of the enemy countries.

Source: https://topwar.ru/96391-sovetskaya-aviaciya-ponesla-naimenshie-poteri-vo-vtoroy-mirovoy-voyne-iz-vseh-voyuyuschih-derzhav.html

Original source: https://psyont.livejournal.com/9824029.html

War in the air

The hosts of the “Price of Victory” program on the Ekho Moskvy radio station, Vitaly Dymarsky and Dmitry Zakharov, will try to answer this question. You can read and listen to the original interview in full at this link.

By June 22, 1941, Soviet pilots averaged six hours of flight time. Among them were those who arrived at the front to fly the Il-2, with only two hours of flying time at school. However, they first saw the attack aircraft itself only at the field airfield. It is surprising, of course, that anyone managed to survive with such preparation.

As for the Germans, before 1943 they had no problems with preparation. The aspiring pilot graduated from three schools: "A-Shule" - initial flight training, "B-Shule" - intermediate flight training, where they taught shooting and more complex piloting, "Ts-Shule" - an advanced flight school, where front-line pilots taught, top-class instructors, aces who were called from the front to transfer experience. The minimum flight time during training with the Germans was about two hundred hours. After this, the young pilot arrived at the front, where he ended up in a training unit of a combat unit and flew for another two hundred hours, not having the right to engage in battles with the enemy. The total is about four hundred hours of flight time. This says enough about the level of preparation.

There is such a thing as “muscle memory.” This is when a person is so trained that his arms and legs do everything automatically. So, back in the 1930s, the Germans had centrifuges, pressure chambers where artificial vacuum was created. There were aircraft cockpit modules where a person had to perform the same actions that he would perform in a real battle in the air: with overloads, with a lack of oxygen and other related factors that interfere, so to speak, with combat work.

And at the holidays that were held in Germany, the Messerschmitt, at low level, approached targets in the form of balloons tied to posts on the ground, and, accordingly, shot them. These were not super-aces, but ordinary graduates of fighter flight schools.

Soviet airfield after a German air raid, 1941 (pinterest.com)

According to Soviet historiography, German aviation is presented as the main weapon of the Wehrmacht, the main reason for the defeat of ground forces in the first days of the war. After all, in total, it destroyed thousands of Soviet tanks, 6 thousand 700 wagons with ammunition, sixty district warehouses with flammable shells, and defeated two divisions. But the Luftwaffe accounted for only four percent of the tanks destroyed on the Eastern Front. What does it mean? In fact, a significant part of the cars were abandoned, and with a completely understandable diagnosis - destruction of the gearbox. This suggests that the person who drove this tank simply did not know how to choose the right gear, burned the gearbox and, accordingly, abandoned the car.

But the most important thing is that the interaction between aviation and ground forces was superbly adjusted, because until the infantryman steps on enemy territory, this territory is not captured, you can fly over it from the fence until lunchtime. Luftwaffe officers were located directly in battalion headquarters (not only in regimental, but also in battalion), as Eike Middeldorf, an officer of the Wehrmacht General Staff, writes about. This was a mandatory requirement in order to “soften” the enemy’s defenses before the infantry rushed. That is, first aviation, then artillery, and when everything is suppressed, the infantry moves. The iron principle of German combat operations. Literally: “Don’t break into the wall, look for an open door.” That is, if they encountered effective resistance, they, according to their regulations, stopped, turned around and began to look for the junction of the flanks of the ground forces.

But let's return to aviation. The Great Soviet Encyclopedia informed us that from 1939 to June 1941, 17 thousand 700 aircraft of all types were produced, including about 3 thousand aircraft, even more, new modifications, etc., etc. Accordingly, When the first preemptive strike by the Germans was launched on the morning of June 22, according to various sources, between 800 and 1,200 aircraft were destroyed on the ground. On the one hand, this seems to be an impressive figure, but in fact it amounts to no more than four percent of the total strength of the Red Army Air Force as of June 22. That is, it would seem that this should not have affected the effectiveness of further combat work.

What did the Germans have on June 22? According to various sources, this figure ranges from 2.5 thousand to 2 thousand 900. Sixty percent of the Luftwaffe fleet were bombers, because these aircraft are needed for effective offensive impact. Fighters accounted for about thirty percent.

The first, second and third groups of Jagdgeschwader-53, that is, the 53rd Fighter Division; first, second, third, fourth groups of Jagdgeschwader-51, 51st division; first, second groups of the 52nd division; 3rd Division at full strength; the second and third groups of Jagdgeschwader-77; The 54th Geschwader on the Leningrad Front and one group of the training fighter unit Jagdgeschwader-2 - these are all the fighter units that were armed on June 22 with the Bf.109, E-4, E-7, already obsolete in German aviation, and the new F-2. In total, these are twenty regiments, that is, each regiment has about thirty aircraft.

The Germans had 600 (according to other sources, 640) fighters who fought with all our countless aircraft. But we must pay tribute to one more thing: not a single sane commander would throw all his forces into battle at once. The Germans had a division: a strike group, a cover group and a reserve group. That is, a third of these fighters never took part in operations; they always sat on the ground and waited. One third returned - the second took off...

It turns out that there were no longer six hundred, but about four hundred, give or take, fighters. Here they were, as the Germans put it, “serving” three fronts: Central, Southern, and in the North, in general, one regiment operated - in the Murmansk-Arkhangelsk direction. That is, there were about two hundred fighters at the front. Considering that they worked on rotation, even less. These were the statistics.

And, accordingly, from June 22 to December 1941, these young people destroyed 10 thousand 600 Soviet aircraft, and, interestingly, exactly the same number were lost as a result of accidents, disasters, inept piloting, bad weather, and system failure.

Hermann Hoth and Heinz Guderian. USSR border. (pinterest.com)

In the first days of the war, huge forces of the Red Army Air Force were thrown against the tank group of General Hoth. So, when assessing the effectiveness of Soviet aviation, it is worth noting one interesting detail: in Goth’s memoirs, when he describes the first days of his group’s attack on Minsk, there is only one entry about our Air Force, dated June 24: “The actions of enemy aviation have intensified.” One gets the feeling that Soviet aviation did not exist, the Germans did not even notice it...

By the way, one more curious thing: it was on these days, more precisely, on June 26, 1941, that Captain Nikolai Gastello, commander of the 2nd squadron of the 207th air regiment, accomplished his famous feat while attacking the 3rd tank group on the Molodechno-Minsk highway. By the way, he was a veteran of the battles in Finland, at Khalkhin Gol. For him, this was already the third war, as well as for Colonel General of Aviation Fyodor Polynin.

Most often, failures are attributed to anything, for example, to outdated equipment. Let us assume that the French aircraft, the 406th Morand-Saulnier, were not a competitor to the Messerschmitt (it was an outdated machine), but nevertheless, during the Battle of France, the Germans lost about a thousand aircraft.

They paid approximately the same price during the Battle of Britain. True, everything was more serious there: the British Spitfires were close in their characteristics to the Messerschmitts, they were flown by very well trained pilots.

Of all the pilots against whom the Germans had to fight, they ranked the British above all, although the number of personal victories among the latter, well, even compared to ours, was relatively small. But the British, who invented football, understood very well what teamwork is. And the statistics of losses on the Western Front and on the Eastern Front relative to the number of sorties is such that, for example, in 1944, in 80 thousand sorties in the West, the Germans lost 6 thousand 340 fighters, and on the Eastern Front, in 60 thousand sorties, the losses amounted to a little more than 700 aircraft . That is, the loss coefficient in the west was 7.9, and in the east - 1.1. Again, statistics.

And many German pilots, who fought for a long time on the eastern front and then were transferred to the west, paid for it with their lives. As the ace of the African war, Hans-Joachim Marcel, who shot down 158 British planes, recalled, the British were very demanding opponents, they did not allow them to blunder even once. Apparently, their muscle memory was also quite good.

IL-2. Flight over Berlin. (pinterest.com)

As for, as it was customary to say in Soviet times, satellite countries, none of these states had in their arsenal aircraft that could compare in quality and efficiency even with our outdated I-16. This time. Two - in quantity. Let’s say, if we take the Slovak Air Force, then they had as many as 50 Avia-534 biplane aircraft, which simply could never be placed next to, again, the same I-16. Croatia has as many as 60, Hungary and Italy have as many as 100. These are the satellites. In Soviet history, Germany's allied air forces somehow recruited a thousand aircraft, although there were 440 in total.

But there are two more important factors. Looking through the German chronicles of the war, you can most often see Romanian planes, which, by the way, did not fly to us because they covered Constanta, together with Jagdgeschwader-52 they protected Romanian oil. The Finns did not fly to Leningrad, but fought only on their own territory.

And one more important thing. They all did not want to fight for the cause of the Fuhrer and for the cause of the National Socialist Party. The Italians who took part in the battles near Stalingrad found themselves in the worst trouble. In fact, they all died there. In terms of training, these pilots, of course, also did not stand next to the Germans. These were fairly average, let's say, pilots. Only the Finns had good pilots, who had up to ninety victories and fought over their land. The rest were usually “led by shepherds,” that is, if a group of Romanian planes was flying, a couple of German fighters usually went with them. Just in case, so that they don’t freak out the moment they see the first Soviet plane. This is what can be said about the Luftwaffe's allies.

As for the designer Bartini, he developed several aircraft, but they did not have any significant influence on the course of the war. Berlin was bombed by long-range aviation aircraft (LDA), Il-4 and Pe-8. They bombed as much as possible. These strikes were largely of a propaganda nature, because there were few planes, they numbered in the dozens.

These were not American raids, when one ball bearing factory was bombed by up to a thousand bombers, wiping it off the face of the earth so that balls from these bearings were found in the 60s at a depth of fifty meters underground.

A few words about the fascist reconnaissance aircraft Focke-Wulf Fw 189. The great advantage of the “Rama” (as the plane was called in the Soviet troops) was its very low speed. That is, due to the difference in speed between the fighter and the 189th Focke-Wulf, it was extremely difficult to attack it, approximately the same as our Po-2 “corn farmer”. This is the first thing. Secondly, it was perfectly armored, and most of our fighters at the beginning of the war had only machine gun armament, which did not pose a serious threat to German fighters, which were well armored, and to bombers, including reconnaissance aircraft.

Pe-8 on a USSR postage stamp. (pinterest.com)

One more thing to note. Naturally, the Germans also suffered losses. According to Soviet historiography, from June 22 to November 10, the Germans lost 5 thousand 180 aircraft, that is, they were completely destroyed twice. It’s not clear how they continued to fight... But that’s not the point. The fact is that the Germans were shot down. The teacher of the most outstanding German pilot, Erich Hartmann, who shot down 352 planes from the fall of 1942 to April 1945, Walter Krupinski, nicknamed “Mustle” (he accounted for a total of 192 planes), was shot down nineteen times. On average, a German fighter pilot was shot down up to ten times. Why? Because the amount of spaced armor on the Messerschmitt more than doubled the combat protection of our fighter.

It was possible to destroy the plane, but it was quite difficult to kill the pilot. There were losses. The record holder was Lieutenant Glunts, who lost five Messerschmitts in a day, but shot down twelve of our planes on the same day. That is, having experienced their death many times, the Luftwaffe pilots gained even more experience and fought with greater caution in the future.

A separate topic is the Il-2, the aircraft that we lost in the largest quantities. Firstly, he did not meet the combat mission that was expected of him. Secondly, it was still an absolutely necessary aircraft for the front line. Yes, until 1943, until cumulative bombs appeared, the Il-2 was absolutely ineffective against tanks, but it was quite effective against trucks, artillery crews, infantry, and so on. That is, he really plowed the leading edge.

As for its effectiveness as an anti-tank aircraft, it appeared in 1943. However, the Germans very quickly changed their tactics, and, pouring out their two hundred bombs, the Il-2 probably covered several cars, but that was already good.

And finally, a few words about the system for counting Luftwaffe air victories. For example, the commander of the Jagdgeschwader-11 air defense of the Reich, an ace who had about two hundred victories to his name, was not counted for twenty victories. Heinz Baer, ​​who had more than two hundred victories, was also not counted about two dozen. And, interestingly, the German counting system was so conservative that during the fighting in Africa during the first months of 1941, the German command recognized 101 victories for its pilots, while the British said that they lost 197. That is, 96 aircraft the Luftwaffe command did not count its pilots. The logging system was very strict.

And two more words. Looking through the German chronicle of air battles, you will notice that everything was recorded with a machine gun. In addition, there had to be confirmation from the ground, the participants in the battle. Twenty positions needed to be filled. And if the machine gun did not give a picture of complete destruction, the victory was not counted. So, for example, Anton Hakl was not credited with twenty victories because there was a photo machine gun, but there were no witnesses in the air or on the ground.