Hitler’s invasion catches
the Soviet air force off-guard. The German Luftwaffe is experienced
and well equipped. For Soviet pilots, the war starts
as a fight for survival. Originally produced
for Russian television in 2011, this is the story of Russia’s
Great Patriotic War and the Red Army’s long road
from defeat to victory. The first day of the war. Two Messerschmitt 109s were on the tail
of a damaged Soviet ‘Seagull’ fighter. Suddenly, another Seagull appeared
behind the two German fighters. The Germans left the damaged plane
and went after the new arrival. They put several holes through the Soviet
aircraft, but were unable to shoot it down. This Seagull was flown by Lieutenant
Rechkalov. This was his baptism of fire. Grigory Rechkalov shot down his
first German aircraft five days later. He went on to score 61 victories, making him the third highest-scoring
Soviet ace of the war. He was twice decorated as a Hero of the
Soviet Union — the USSR’s highest award. A medical board had declared Rechkalov unfit
for combat, because of colour-blindness. But when he reported to his regiment,
the war had just begun, and he was immediately
pressed into service. In 1941, the main Soviet fighters
were the I-153 Seagull, and the I-16. They were designed by the Polikarpov Bureau,
led by Nikolai Nikolaevich Polikarpov. The Seagull had a tight turning circle, but it was painfully slow compared
to the German Messerschmitt-109. Soviet pilots first encountered
the 109 during the Spanish Civil War. It was immediately clear
that it posed a serious threat. The Messerschmitt 109 was designed
by Willy Messerschmitt of the Bayerische Flugzeugwerke company. It would become the most
produced fighter of the war. By June 1941, the latest "F" variant
had a top speed of 390 miles per hour, compared to the Seagull’s
266 miles per hour. Its two machineguns
and one 20 millimetre cannon meant the 109 was also more heavily armed. The manoeuvrability of the Seagull
mean Soviet pilots could often escape, but they could never
fight on their own terms. On the first day of the war, more than
300 Soviet aircraft were shot down, but as many as 1,400
were destroyed on the ground. The worst losses were in Byelorussia,
where General Chernykh’s 9th Air Division, equipped with new Mig-3s,
lost 347 of its 409 aircraft. Sergei Aleksandrovich Chernykh
was a Hero of the Soviet Union, a veteran of the Spanish Civil War
and the first Soviet pilot to shoot down a Messerschmitt 109. But now he became a scapegoat for the air
force’s failures, and was arrested and shot. The Western Front lost 738 aircraft,
528 of them on the ground. When the Air Force Commander
in Byelorrusia, General Kopets, realised the scale of the disaster,
he shot himself. These men were talented young pilots who’d
been rapidly promoted to high command, to fill the vacuum created by Stalin’s
purge of senior air force officers. But when war came,
they were out of their depth. Despite the enormous
losses of the first day, the remnants of the Soviet Air Force
began to fight back. On 25th June, 27 Soviet Tupolev SB bombers
attacked the German 2nd Panzer Group, as it massed to cross
the Shchara River in Byelorussia. The bombers destroyed vehicles
and took out the river-crossing. On the way back the SBs
were attacked by German fighters. 10 were shot down. Soviet ground attack and fighter regiments
were under army command, but bombers were under Front
or Army Group command. It proved almost impossible
to co-ordinate their actions. Bombers attacked
without fighter protection, while fighters were ordered
to attack ground targets. Poor Soviet tactics
were also being exposed. Bomber pilots had been trained
to fly in loose formations, meaning their machineguns
couldn’t cover each other. Soviet tactics and organisation
needed a rapid overhaul. Nevertheless, Soviet bombers continued
to attack German ground forces, as well as strategic targets including
Koenigsberg in East Prussia, Warsaw, the Romanian port of Konstanza,
and the Ploiesti oil refineries. One of the pilots defending
the vital Romanian oil fields was Oberleutnant Günther Rall. On 26th June, his unit intercepted Soviet
bombers returning from a raid on Ploesti. Rall shot down three bombers.
His fellow pilots destroyed 6 more. Gunther Rall enlisted
in the infantry in 1936. Two years later he transferred to the
Luftwaffe to train as a fighter pilot. He first saw action over France in 1940,
where he scored two victories. He ended the war as Germany’s
third most successful fighter pilot, with 275 kills to his name. German pilots not only
had the advantage of superior aircraft — they also had excellent training. They followed the maxim of the legendary
First World War fighter ace, the Red Baron himself,
Manfred von Richthofen: “Find the enemy and shoot him down;
anything else is nonsense.” German fighter pilots fought
almost a separate war — more like an athletic contest, in which
only their individual scores mattered. Drawing on their experience
of the Spanish Civil War, Luftwaffe fighter pilots
had invented their own tactics. They flew in a flexible formation
made up of two pairs, known as the finger four, which allowed
them to utilise their superior speed. Other air forces, including the British and
Soviet, flew in rigid V-shaped formations, in which pilots spent most of their time
concentrating on holding position. In the Soviet case,
a tight formation was essential, because most aircraft
did not yet have radios. Section leaders had to communicate by
waggling their wings or using hand signals. It left the pilots
with no freedom to manoeuvre. In the weeks leading up
to the German invasion, a brand new aircraft began to arrive
at Soviet ground attack regiments. It was the Il-2, and it would become
the most famous Soviet aircraft of the war. The Il-2 Shturmovik was designed by Sergei
Ilyushin, and entered service in May 1941. His creation was soon
nicknamed "the flying tank". The Il-2 carried cannon,
machineguns, bombs and rockets, and was protected
from ground fire by armour-plating. More than 36,000 were eventually built, making it the most produced
military aircraft in history. The first unit to receive the Il-2
was the 4th Shturmovik Regiment. But the war began before its pilots
had had a chance to train with it. They’d practiced take-offs and landings, but hadn’t flown in formation or even
fired the aircraft’s weapons yet. Some of the pilots had never seen
an RS rocket before, and now they were expected
to use them in combat. On 27th June, pilots Spitsyn, Filippov, and Kholobayev flew off on
their first mission. They attacked a German column
from low altitude. They could only use their machineguns, since the 20 millimetre cannon
had a production defect. All the pilots returned to the airfield.
Kholobayev’s plane was riddled with holes. The fuselage was covered with oil. The aircraft was a write-off.
But he had survived. A week later, the regiment received
a citation from the Front commander for destroying 9 crossings over
the Berezina River. But losses were high. By mid-July, of the regiment’s 56 aircraft,
only 10 remained in service. In August the regiment handed
its last 3 aircraft to a neighbouring unit, and headed east for rebuilding. In the first summer of the war, an Ilyushin 2 was destroyed on average
after just 8 or 9 missions. In some regiments, after just 3 or 4. But better tactics and training would
gradually improve these survival rates. By 1945, the average
had gone up to 90 missions. That autumn, Grigory Rechkalov
was wounded during a combat mission. Despite serious leg injuries, he managed
to land his aircraft back at base. By then, his score stood
at 3 German aircraft destroyed. By the end of 1941 the Soviet air force
had lost more than 20,000 aircraft — the Luftwaffe just 3,800. But despite this success,
the Luftwaffe proved unable to effectively target Soviet
transport and infrastructure. The Luftwaffe had been designed
primarily to support ground operations. It lacked the aircraft
to carry out strategic bombing. The Luftwaffe was unable to prevent
the evacuation of Soviet industry to the Urals, or, crucially,
prevent Red Army reinforcements moving up from the Russian interior. German air raids against Moscow
underlined this weakness. Soviet fighters, supported
by formidable anti-aircraft defences, were able to prevent
any serious damage to the capital. By the winter counterattack,
the Soviet air force outnumbered the Luftwaffe by almost 3 to 1. And soon, it would start to receive some
desperately-needed modern aircraft... Above an airfield in Russia,
an aircraft slowed, began to shudder,
and then fell into a spin. Down below, its designer,
Semyon Lavochkin, feared the worst. The day before he’d told the pilots,
“Don’t test it for tailspin. You’ll destroy the prototype
and yourselves.” But the pilot quickly recovered
and returned to level flight. Two weeks later, the State Defence
Committee approved production of the LaGG-3 fighter
with a new M-82 engine. It would be called... the La-5. Its predecessor, the LaGG-3, was designed
in 1940 by Lavochkin, Gorbunov, and Gudkov. Because of the USSR’s shortage of aluminium,
the aircraft had a wooden airframe, with key sections made from a wood veneer that was treated with Bakerlite
and compressed at high temperature. This made the wood
very strong and fire-resistant. But it was heavy compared to aluminium. Its weight and an underpowered engine made
the LaGG-3 sluggish and unmanoeuvrable. In the autumn of 1941 it was decided
to cease production of LaGG fighters and concentrate instead on the Yak-7. In late 1941, the Yak-7B was
considered the best Soviet fighter. It was armed with one cannon
and two machineguns, and had a top speed of 365 miles per hour. The Lavochkin Design Bureau faced closure. Its saviour was a new,
more powerful M-82 air-cooled engine. Installed in the LaGG-3 airframe,
it gave birth to the LA-5, and the Lavochkin Bureau
was back in business. On 21st March 1942, a few days before
the Bureau was evacuated to the Caucasus, test pilot Vasily Mishchenko
took the prototype for its first flight. In the first year of the war, the Soviets
had lost huge swathes of territory, and suffered devastating losses. Of 22,600 tanks available at the start
of the war, about 2,000 were left. From 20,000 aircraft, just 2,000. And of 110,000 guns and mortars, 2,800. These losses had to be made good quickly, but at the same time Soviet factories
had to be evacuated east to safety. The People’s Commissariat
of Aviation Industry had evacuated 118 factories,
85% of its facilities. 9 major tank plants were evacuated. By the end of 1941,
more than 10 million people and 2,500 enterprises had been relocated. The task required more
than 1.5 million rail-wagons. On arrival, most factories
resumed production immediately. The Soviet Air Force, meanwhile, was putting
into practice the painful lessons of 1941. In March 1942, the air force received
a new commander, General Novikov. He immediately recommended that its
units be concentrated into "air armies", making it easier to manage
and co-ordinate air operations. Soviet fighter pilots learnt new tactics, some drawn from combat experience,
others borrowed from the Luftwaffe. The air force abandoned
its "mixed air groups". Instead, fighters, shturmoviks and bombers
were formed into specialised divisions. Obsolete aircraft such as the Seagull were gradually replaced by new Yaks,
Lavochkins, and Ilyushins. The La-5 made its debut
in August 1942, over Stalingrad. Gunther Raal gave his assessment
of the new aircraft: “The Russians were quick learners. The La-5, based on the inefficient
LaGG-3, was a great plane.” All German pilots soon learned
to respect the La-5. It had particularly impressive
performance at low-altitude, where it could out-turn a Messerschmitt
109, and outclimb a Focke Wulf 190. However, the Soviets continued
to suffer heavy pilot losses. The situation was described in a report
by the 49th Fighter Regiment. “The La-5 is the best type
of Soviet fighter. The regiment’s losses are explained by the
fact that 45% of personnel are young pilots. Casualties included 3 sergeants
with 15 to 17 flying hours on La-5s, and two lieutenants
with similar background. Only one in five is an experienced pilot.” Pilot training would remain one
of the Soviet Air Force’s greatest failings until the end of the war. Soviet flight schools suffered from
a shortage of instructors, and of fuel. Pilots graduated after
just 90 days of basic instruction. They concentrated on take-offs
and landings. Acrobatics were strictly forbidden,
because they led to too many accidents. As a result, pilots often
arrived at their unit with as little as 8 hours
flying experience – often, none of it on the aircraft
the unit was equipped with. Nor had they been trained
how to fly in bad weather. Flight school graduates received
virtually no instruction in air combat. Most had done some target-shooting. But few knew much about deflection
shooting or how to use their gun sights. These men were expected
to fight German pilots with hundreds of combat missions
under their belt. But what they lacked in experience,
they made up for in spirit. Sergey Gorelov typified
the commitment of Soviet fighter pilots: “We were eager for battle
and ready to die in combat. We even said our goodbyes
before going on a mission.” In late 1942, Grigory Rechkalov’s regiment was withdrawn from the front
in order to retrain on new aircraft: American Airacobras, sent to the USSR as part of the Allied Lend-Lease
programme of military aid. Of all the types of Allied aircraft
supplied through Lend-Lease, this was the pilots’ favourite. The Bell P-39 Airacobra
had one unusual design feature — the engine was situated behind the pilot.
Half of the 10,000 Airacobras built by Bell were sent to the Soviet Union
under the terms of Lend-Lease. The aircraft carried a 37 millimetre cannon
and two heavy calibre machineguns. Besides Rechkalov, other Airacobra
pilots included Nikolay Guliayev, the fourth highest-scoring Soviet ace
with 57 confirmed kills, and Aleksandr Pokryshkin,
the third highest with 59 kills. Rechkalov, who liked to hunt alone
in his Airacobra, won 42 victories in 1943. He finished the war
with 61 confirmed victories. By the war’s end, Rechkalov had twice been
decorated as a Hero of the Soviet Union. In April 1943,
the Red Army’s North Caucasus Front began an offensive against the Kuban
Bridgehead, on the Black Sea Coast. Their aim was to break through
the German fortification system known as the Blue Line,
and to liberate Taman. After 6 days of fierce fighting,
the 56th Army had succeeded in capturing just one German stronghold,
the village of Krymskaya. Any further Red Army
advance became impossible in the face of massive German air strikes, launched from Luftwaffe
bases in the Kerch Peninsula. The Soviet offensive
had to be called off on 15th May. That summer, a vicious struggle for air
superiority raged over the Kuban Bridgehead. On one side, the Soviet 4th
Air Army under General Vershinin, on the other, Field Marshal
von Richthofen’s 4th Air Fleet. It would prove the beginning of the end for
Luftwaffe supremacy on the Eastern Front. The Soviet Union’s top ace
was Ivan Nikitovich Kozhedub. Kozhedub spent two years
as a flight instructor, and only joined a frontline fighter
regiment in the spring of 1943, where he flew La-5s.
By the end of the war, he had shot down 62 enemy aircraft, making him the highest-scoring
Allied ace of the war. He was also a three-times
Hero of the Soviet Union. In his first 40 missions, Kozhedub
failed to shoot down any enemy aircraft. Instead, he often returned
with his own plane badly damaged. But his chance would come
at the Battle of Kursk. In the summer of 1943, near Kursk, the Wehrmacht planned
a massive two-pronged offensive that would lead to the encirclement and
destruction of substantial Red Army forces. The Red Army had never before withstood
the combined German assault of tanks, artillery and aircraft. Kholobayev, meanwhile,
was instructing young pilots of the 7th Guards Shturmovik Regiment. Above all, Kholobayev extolled
the virtues of aggression in his pilots. He urged them to attack without hesitation. By 1943, Soviet shturmovik regiments
had developed tactics based on solid combat experience. They began with a nosedive
from 3000 feet, to just a few hundred. Then they would form a circle. This formation gave them
freedom to manoeuvre, select their ground targets,
and engage them with cannon, machineguns, bombs and rockets. As they made their attack, the aircraft following behind
protected them from German fighters. Just before the battle of Kursk, IL-2 units received a new anti-tank
weapon, the PTAB aerial bomb. Grigory Cherkashyn was one pilot
to use the new weapon: “PTABs are our best weapon against tanks.
They’re a beast! 6 Shturmoviks approach an armoured column. The first unloads its four hatches,
then the second, then the third… The Germans unleashed their Kursk
offensive on 5th July 1943. The next day Kozhedub shot down
his first German aircraft. Over the next 2 days, he shot down 3 more. In one battle, Lieutenant Gorovets
was credited with destroying nine Stukas — the last by ramming it — before his heavily
damaged LA-5 was shot down. At the cost of his own life,
Aleksandr Konstantinovich Gorovets set a Soviet record of destroying
9 enemy aircraft in a single mission. The exact number of aircraft shot down
by the World War Two aces remains the subject of heated debate. The nature of air combat
made it difficult to be sure if an aircraft had been shot down
or just damaged. The Soviet air force, like all others, required victories to be corroborated
by witnesses in the air or on the ground, or for kills to be confirmed
by gun-camera footage. But pilots on all sides
were prone to exaggerate the number of aircraft they’d shot down. In the Battle of Britain, for instance, fighter pilots claimed for about twice as
many aircraft as were actually shot down. At Kursk, the air battle raged with as much
ferocity as the fighting on the ground. One thing was clear — the Luftwaffe
no longer had things all its own way. Experienced German aces, flying
high-performance modern aircraft, continued to exact a heavy toll
on the Soviet Air Force. But Sergey Gorelov exemplified
the Soviet learning curve: “By Kursk I’d learned how to manoeuvre
and shoot accurately. Now we had reliable radios
and ground control. I destroyed one plane
in 1941, five in 1942, and in the summer of 1943 – twenty.“ The Lavochkin fighter played
an important role in his success. In 1943 it received a new engine
with direct fuel injection, which made it a solid match
for the latest Messerschmitt 109. On 3rd August, Gorelov and nine other
La-5 pilots were escorting Shturmoviks to their target, when they were jumped
by 35 enemy fighters. In the ensuing dogfight, 8 Messerschmitts
were shot down, two of them by Gorelov. When attacking a formation of Soviet
shturmoviks and fighter escorts, German fighters would climb
500 metres above them. There they would circle, waiting for the
optimum moment to make a diving attack. Their plan was simple:
strike at maximum speed, take out a shturmovik,
and then climb away to safety. These high-speed diving attacks were
made at more than 400 miles per hour. The escort fighters’ orders
were to stay with the slower, less manoeuvrable Shturmoviks,
and protect them from these attacks. They would turn to face the attacking
German aircraft and open a defensive fire, which, even if it missed,
might force him to break off his attack. The escort would then rejoin the formation. It could be a frustrating experience
for Soviet fighter pilots, forbidden to pursue and destroy
damaged enemy fighters. German aces scored many victories
with these high-speed diving attacks. But there weren’t enough of them to prevent
the Shturmoviks carrying out their mission, to bomb and strafe German
ground forces without mercy. On 4th February 1944,
1st Lieutenant Kozhedub was awarded the Gold Star
of a Hero of the Soviet Union, for destroying 20 enemy aircraft
in 146 missions. His comrade Sergey Kramarenko
described this exceptional pilot: “Lots of pilots envied him,
thinking he must be realy lucky. Hitting so many planes
without being hit — it’s really rare. But after flying with him a few times,
I realised that behind the "luck", lay lightning reactions
and excellent situational awareness. “Kozhedub had an instinctive
understanding of aerial combat. He was always in the right place
at the right time. Then all he had to do was push
the gun button.” In 1943 British
and American air forces launched their Combined Bomber
Offensive against Germany. The Casablanca Directive stated its goals: “The progressive destruction and dislocation
of the German military, industrial, and economic system, and the undermining
of the morale of the German people to a point where their capacity
for armed resistance is fatally weakened.” Germany was to be bombed around the clock — the Americans attacking by day,
the British at night. On the Eastern front German pilots
were able to hunt freely. But against Allied bombers
and their fighter escorts, they no longer had the option
to fight only on their own terms. On two fronts, the Luftwaffe
was slowly being ground into submission. Shortly before dawn on 23rd June 1944, the alert was sounded
at the 7th Guards Shturmovik Regiment. All personnel formed up on the airfield. The regiment had been completely
re-manned three times, and the men who began the war
in Byelorussia were long gone. Commander Kholobayev
had been promoted and transferred. The men stood to attention: a parade was being held to mark
the start of Operation Bagration. Operation Bagration, with Shturmovik
regiments in the lead, resulted in the destruction
of an entire German Army Group. The Red Army had cracked
the Eastern Front wide open. A commission had been sent
to assess the efficiency of the 230th Ground Assault Division, of
which the 7th Guards Regiment was a part. They found that in one day, the division
destroyed more than 100 vehicles, 6 tanks, and 20 guns. As the Germans retreated through
Byelorussia, traffic jams formed, particularly around the river crossings. With the Luftwaffe nowhere to be seen, the columns were at the mercy
of the Soviet Air Force. In April 1945, the Soviet Air Force prepared
to support the Red Army’s final offensive, across the Oder river and into Berlin. They would outnumber
the Luftwaffe almost 7 to 1, but the German 6th Air Fleet
could be counted on to fight desperately in defence of the capital. Three pairs of La-7s took off
to guard the crossings. Ivan Kozhedub was in the lead. Below them, they spotted 32 Focke-Wulf-190s
flying in two groups. Kozhedub descended,
slipped under the German formation, and attacked the lead aircraft. A Focke-Wulf opened fire on Kozhedub. His wingman shot down the German
at almost point-blank range. Using their speed, the Soviet fighters
climbed and attacked the second enemy group. Kozhedub destroyed another plane. Then, another. A dogfight began,
as pilots twisted and turned, trying to get into a good firing
position on an enemy aircraft. In spite of their superior numbers,
the Focke-Wulfs turned tail and fled west, pursued by the Lavochkins. Back at base, the scores were tallied up.
Kozhedub had shot down three aircraft, getting away with a few holes in his tail. Gromakovsky had 2, and Kumanitsky,
Stetsenko and Orlov, one each. The once mighty Luftwaffe
had been chased from the sky, and Soviet fighter pilots roamed
at will over the enemy’s capital. Several became aces in the final
days of the war, amongst them, Vladimir Gromakovsky who shot down
5 aircraft during the Berlin offensive, and Viktor Aleksandriuk, who claimed 7. On the night of 9th May,
pilots woke to the sound of gunshots. They sprung out of bed
and raced outside with their sidearms. German regiments were still trying to
fight their way to the West, sometimes attacking
airfields on their path. But the shots
were being fired into the air. News had arrived of the German
unconditional surrender. The war was finally over. For the Soviet Air Force, it had
been a costly and bloody struggle. But from the devastating defeats of 1941 had emerged a ruthless
and powerful air force, that had played its full part
in the final Soviet victory.
