21 June 1944 Poltava. Leadership makes the difference.

[davebender]

Poltava Air Base - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
75 obsolescent He-111s with good leadership and a bit of luck wiped out a state of the art U.S. Army Air Corps B-17G group plus their airfield. German aircraft apparently escaped with few losses.

Is there another source for this air raid besides Wikipedia? I'd like to know what altitude they bombed from to achieve such a phenomenal level of accuracy, at night none the less.

 

[Milosh]

Read page 283-292 in Karl Gundelach's book Kampfgeschwader General Wever 4.

Before you get to giddy over this success, read this, http://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_memoranda/2006/RM6206.pdf

 

[Shortround6]

Thank you.

Some interesting stuff in there.

 

[tomo pauk]

The level of defense from night bombers the VVS Red Army were capable to bolster was perhaps an order of magnitude smaller than what it was to be expected over the UK or Germany in 1944.

Makes one wonder how much the damage to the VVS airbases could've the LW done had it attempted it in an orchestrated fashion, rather than to squander their strength against the UK in 1943/44.