How good was the soviet air force?

[EwenS]

There is a fuller article here including a map of the various sea routes used.

https://www.cnrs-scrn.org/northern_mariner/vol27/tnm_27_31-58.pdf

It was autumn 1942 before the US began supplying shipping to augment the Soviet fleet and increase the volume of supplies shipped. Note it was Aug 1943 before military Lend Lease supplies were sent by sea via the Pacific routes, and then initially via the shallow Tartary Strait route that did not involve passage through Japanese waters. So until then the Arctic convoy route, and more particularly the Persian Gulf route which was largely unaffected by enemy action, were vital to getting military supplies to the Soviets.

The Pacific route was not trouble free. Problems included:-

Climactic conditions - storms, fog, ice
Diplomatic objections from Japan from Aug 1941 into 1944
Inspections and detention of some cargoes as permitted by International Law
Shipping channels bordered by Japanese minefields.
US submarine attacks which prevented use of the southerly Tsushima Strait route between Korea & Japan from mid-1943.

Another interesting Lend Lease project involving the USSR and the North Pacific was Project Hula in 1945. That involved the transfer of frigates, minesweepers, sub-chasers and landing craft to the Soviets in the Aleutians and the training of crews to operate them.

Project Hula - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

 

[Wild_Bill_Kelso]

Thank you all. It's really a fascinating chapter of the war that I think is little known about outside of historians and fairly deep in the weeds hobbyists.

 

[NevadaK]

Thank you all. It's really a fascinating chapter of the war that I think is little known about outside of historians and fairly deep in the weeds hobbyists.

Greetings Wild Bill,

The attached document is illustrative of the USSR Lend Lease effort as it documents the material asks and provided for the different USSR Protocols. One of my favorite lend-lease "facts" is that the western allies largely clothed the Soviet Army by either providing whole cloth material or US/Canadian manufactured uniforms and boots. A while back, there was a museum exhibit at the Henry Ford Museum (I believe) that documented a Detroit area manufacturer who made Soviet uniforms with images of Soviet staff working with the staff to refine the designs. They did winter testing in Michigan as well and had they great images of folks in Soviet gear in the snow in Detroit and other recognizable locations.

 

[Wild_Bill_Kelso]

Greetings Wild Bill,

The attached document is illustrative of the USSR Lend Lease effort as it documents the material asks and provided for the different USSR Protocols. One of my favorite lend-lease "facts" is that the western allies largely clothed the Soviet Army by either providing whole cloth material or US/Canadian manufactured uniforms and boots. A while back, there was a museum exhibit at the Henry Ford Museum (I believe) that documented a Detroit area manufacturer who made Soviet uniforms with images of Soviet staff working with the staff to refine the designs. They did winter testing in Michigan as well and had they great images of folks in Soviet gear in the snow in Detroit and other recognizable locations.

Wow, fascinating stuff!

Also very useful document, thank you. This gives the numbers for all the aircraft types requested in the later period, this is from the third protocol in late 1943:

This is from the fourth protocol, late 1944. I didn't realize they got (or just asked for?) B-17s and B-24s

 

[special ed]

Although not shown on these forms, The USSR always wanted B-29s.

 

[Ovod]

Although not shown on these forms, The USSR always wanted B-29s.

And eventually got them, as did the UK. China too, essentially.

 

[special ed]

The USSR had to have Tupolev copy the three that made emergency landings in USSR.
China got USSR copies.

 

[bf109xxl]

For those who can read Russian, I can recommend some more detailed sources:
1.

2.

The latter is the most comprehensive overview of aircraft received by the USSR under the Lend-Lease program to date.

Soviet officials blocked information about Lend Lease and foreign aircraft types:

I read the memoirs of General Nikitin, who was in charge of supplying Soviet troops with fuel during the war - he NEVER mentioned the supply of gasoline and high-octane components under the Lend-Lease in his book. It is very amusing to read how the volumes of oil production and refining decreased in the USSR, but there was still enough gasoline. Apparently the Soviets had a secret magic for that.

I spent quite a bit of time and efforts to satisfy my amateur interest in the history of the Soviet Air Force. Below I provide the most common conclusions:

1. The true history of the Soviet Air Force in World War II is still not written.
2. I doubt it will ever be written, as there are too few people interested in it.
3. If it does get written, it will be quite tragic. New historical documents that became available in last decades rather favor this view.
4. The price paid by the Soviets for the victory was extremely high. The road to Berlin was abundantly covered with the blood of soldiers - and pilots, among others. Not only the Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe, but also the incompetence of the Stalin's regime were to blame for this. Soviet losses are still the subject of historical discussions, in which official Russian historians try in every possible way to hide the truth by manipulating of numbers.
5. Russian propaganda widely uses the lack of reliable historical research, replacing it with myths. As a result, Russia is turning (or has already turned) into a fascist dictatorship.

PS. May be, my opinion was still too optimistic...

 

[Jabberwocky]

1. The true history of the Soviet Air Force in World War II is still not written.
2. I doubt it will ever be written, as there are too few people interested in it.
3. If it does get written, it will be quite tragic. New historical documents that became available in last decades rather favor this view.

The revised edition of Black Cross/Red Star is probably as close as we'll get to a comprehensive history of the Soviet Air Force in WW2.

The first edition was published in the early 2000s. Christer Bergstrom has revised and expanded it over the last two decades. Volume 1 & 2 have now been published, and each is essentially double the length of the original versions. Plans are for 3-5 to be revised in the next few years, with 6-8 to follow.

 

[Snautzer01]

The revised edition of Black Cross/Red Star is probably as close as we'll get to a comprehensive history of the Soviet Air Force in WW2.

The first edition was published in the early 2000s. Christer Bergstrom has revised and expanded it over the last two decades. Volume 1 & 2 have now been published, and each is essentially double the length of the original versions. Plans are for 3-5 to be revised in the next few years, with 6-8 to follow.

Black cross is highly regarded.

 

[Wild_Bill_Kelso]

For those who can read Russian, I can recommend some more detailed sources:
1.View attachment 765552


2.View attachment 765551
The latter is the most comprehensive overview of aircraft received by the USSR under the Lend-Lease program to date.

Appreciate the sources, that's always helpful.

I read the memoirs of General Nikitin, who was in charge of supplying Soviet troops with fuel during the war - he NEVER mentioned the supply of gasoline and high-octane components under the Lend-Lease in his book. It is very amusing to read how the volumes of oil production and refining decreased in the USSR, but there was still enough gasoline. Apparently the Soviets had a secret magic for that.

In that lend lease PDF posted upthread, aside from all the tanks, aircraft, other weapons, ammunition and fuel, I was struck by the vast quantities of rare metals and every other kind of industrial chemical and precursor they were shipping to Russia. Even rails, as in train rails? Am I reading that correctly?

I spent quite a bit of time and efforts to satisfy my amateur interest in the history of the Soviet Air Force. Below I provide the most common conclusions:

I would say that you are not the only person in the world who has made this effort, and I hope I will be forgiven for playing Devil's Advocate here:

1. The true history of the Soviet Air Force in World War II is still not written.

That is probably true. And for two major reasons, but I'll circle back to that.

2. I doubt it will ever be written, as there are too few people interested in it.

I'm not so sure about this part, but it is true that there are relatively few sources in English, (which is used not only by Anglophones but as a kind of international Lingua Franca for those who speak many other languages) as people tend to focus much more on the air forces of their own home country.

However there is still significant interest in WW2, and in the Soviets specifically, not least because of the ongoing wars involving the Russians to this day. There is a lot to learn which is worth learning. There are definitely some serious people, including academics and military think tanks and so on, as well as amateurs like many of us here, pursuing an active interest in the reality of the Soviet-German war and specifically on the aviation side of it, as there are many important questions to answer (such as the use of tactical air power to affect a ground war). But again, more on that in a second.

3. If it does get written, it will be quite tragic. New historical documents that became available in last decades rather favor this view.

I think that is true as well, though probably not in the way you mean.

4. The price paid by the Soviets for the victory was extremely high. The road to Berlin was abundantly covered with the blood of soldiers - and pilots, among others. Not only the Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe, but also the incompetence of the Stalin's regime were to blame for this.

Here is where we start to part ways. I'm not a professional WW2 expert, but having been studying it for a very long time as an amateur, like so many of us in here, I can see pretty clearly that every nation had serious blunders and made catastrophic mistakes during the war, and every nation also had their successes and triumphs. The Germans made serious mistakes too, in other words. Hitler's Nazi regime was also, much like the Soviets under Stalin, not a believer in transparency, democracy, good government, oversight, truth, or honesty. They did not typically admit their own mistakes, setbacks and errors when they could manage to conceal them.

The Soviets started out very much on their back foot, and this was indeed largely the fault of Stalin and other Soviet leaders. But the Soviet's also just as clearly rallied, in part with the help of Lend-Lease and other contributions from Western Allies, but certainly not exclusively for this reason. As the war progressed, they applied good strategy, fielded improved weaponry, and outfought the Germans.

The classic example, which is low-hanging fruit but which most people reading this can easily verify, was Stalingrad. It was a bloody nightmare, very costly for the Soviets, but one in which they also completely fooled the German high-leadership, one in which they waited with ruthless patience for exactly the right moment when the Nazi head was in the noose, and which they exploited, including largely with the use of their best available technologies (KV and T-34 tanks, Katyusha rockets, and a variety of newer and improved aircraft types) to utterly annihilate a vast army of the Germans and their other Axis allies.

Another very well known example was at Kursk, which has certain echoes of recent events in roughly the same area.

Soviet losses are still the subject of historical discussions, in which official Russian historians try in every possible way to hide the truth by manipulating of numbers.

Official Russian historians, especially now under the late Putin regime, may do this, but not all Russian or Russian-speaking historians have. And during the sadly brief detante which we experienced during the 90s, many records from Russia became available to western researchers. More on that in a moment.

5. Russian propaganda widely uses the lack of reliable historical research, replacing it with myths. As a result, Russia is turning (or has already turned) into a fascist dictatorship.

Both the Soviets and their enemies were fascist dictatorships, it bears keeping in mind.

PS. May be, my opinion was still too optimistic...

Or it may also be a bit selective in the other direction .



View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qkmO7tm8AU

This is a video by a very good American historian, David M. Glantz. He is a decorated veteran of the Vietnam war, an instructor at the Army Staff College and a top researcher on the Soviets. He got his hands on Soviet records in the early 1990s, and in this video, he discusses the scope and scale of the fighting in the Soviet-German war, and the surprising fact revealed by these records, that there appear to be at least two major tank battles that occurred in 1941 which were on a much larger scale than had been previously known. One which may have been bigger than Kursk. And that the Germans suffered far more losses during the earlier phases of the invasion than previously thought.

The reason, he points out, is that both the Nazis and the Soviets were totalitarian regimes, and they only released news about their war when one or both sides thought they could gain a propaganda advantage thereby. In some cases, they saw no such advantage, so nothing came out. It's a really sinister, kind of scary thing to consider. The German records may to some extent have been more available to us, but not all of them, and not always enough to penetrate their own intentional obfuscation of many important events and even major incidents during the war. It's important to keep in mind, that while the Soviets lied, and were an evil and dishonest regime, so were the Nazis.



Post WW2, in the 1950s and 60s, we had a lot of memoirs by former German fighter aces, bomber pilots, tank aces and so on. Many of these stories were quite gripping and interesting to read. Some, like say Hans Ulrich Rudel's memoir, were also more or less openly sympathetic to the twisted cause he once fought for. Others were definitely not sympathetic to the Nazi cause, but still tended to glorify the German kit and pilots / soldiers over that of their enemies, especially the Soviet enemy who had no voice in the West. Not that this is unusual or bad, necessarily, because all fighter pilots do that. But it's unbalanced, since (until much more recently) there are so few Soviet pilot's narratives to provide the other half of the story. Even now we basically only have a few short interviews and fragments.

At the same time in the 50s and 60s, we in the West were fighting wars against communism. People in Eastern Europe (including half of Germany) and parts of Asia were suffering under Soviet Marxist rule, (or Maoist, in some parts of Asia). The US also to be blunt about it, brought former Nazi scientists into our weapons and space programs, and Nazi spys into our intelligence community. The Soviets did the same, of course, but that had little influence on Western culture.

All of this had a tendency to influence our outlook such that some people downplay Soviet contributions in the war, and tend to denigrate Soviet technology and capability. And that is something that has bitten us in the ass, including in the aviation world when our pilots first encountered planes like the MiG 17, MiG 19, and MiG 21, in ground warfare due to the RPG and other anti-tank weapons, during the Vietnam war in general, in the Space program with Sputnik. Just to cite a few examples.


We tend to forget that it was in fact mainly the Soviets who defeated the Third Reich. No matter how much you dislike Stalin, or Putin, I think it's foolish to ignore this.

And this includes a rather vast quantity of German military kit which was destroyed on the Russian front. A huge number of German-war graves with 'Töte im Osten' inscribed on them.


With regard to WW2, I just think the blanket dismissal of Soviet air power in WW2 tends to teach us incorrect lessons about the use of airpower during the war, and about all tactial aircraft in general. That is my main interest in it. That, and I just don't like spreading falsehoods even when they are comforting ones. Missing in Action is a fun film, but as painful as it is to admit, I know Churck Norris didn't go win the Vietnam War for us.

 

[Wild_Bill_Kelso]

There is a certain mystique about the German kit and pilots, very much encouraged by the regime during the war, and inculcated into the Luftwaffe which was a creation of the regime (with, oddly enough, the collusion of the Soviets, as another example of the secrecy between them). Upon close examination though, a lot of the German superiority melts away. Not all of it, but a good bit.

There is also a false sense, I think, of familiarity with German sources, which sometimes (and among some people more than others) tends to obfuscate the true nature of their regime.

Conversely, there is a sense of the Soviets as an alien and remote enemy, which they were for many countries that people in this forum lived in during much of the 20th Century, but which can lead to dismissals, exaggerations and distortions. Some of which, ironically, can be dangerous for us if and when we have to confront troops or kit from that part of the world today.

Combine a very dangerous, and false sense of "The Germans were sort of like the Western nations" with "The Soviets are bad, and also bad at everything they did" and you end up with pretty much pure bullshit.

 

[Wild_Bill_Kelso]

(To be clear - the Germans are familiar to us. Many people where I live originate there, I myself lived there and have some close links to German culture. But the Nazi regime of 1933 -1945 was an aberration, and nothing like the nations we live in today)

 

[NevadaK]

Hi Wild Bill,

Yes, rails are for the construction/repair of rail lines. The USSR relied heavily on trains for transportation and had to either repair lines destroyed by the Germans or build new ones to facilitate offensive movement.

 

[Shortround6]

The hard part about judging Lend Lease is all the behind the scenes (not front line) stuff.
Russians brag (and rightly so) about their tank and gun production during the war, but it was the behind the scenes stuff, like hundreds of thousands of tons of rail road rail that allowed the Russian factories to concentrate on weapons. Soviets can make shells, but without explosives to fill them?

All kinds of claims are made for food supplies. Sometimes it is claimed that L-L only supplied a few % of the Soviet army rations, which may be true, but if you break it down further than just percent of rations total (and is that calories or grams of food?) the Allies supplied more fats/protein than that basic percentage indicates. Soviet diet was poor by anyone's standard, But troops, especially on foot, need fats and proteins in order to stay healthy on long moves, Bread does not work.

Creative accounting can work both ways.

 

[special ed]

Don't forget all of the stories about SPAM considered a delicacy by Soviet troops.

 

[Wild_Bill_Kelso]

I read once that they tried (unsuccessfully) to use LL butter for lubrication (for machines lol)

 

[z42]

Both the Soviets and their enemies were fascist dictatorships, it bears keeping in mind.

It's important to keep in mind, that while the Soviets lied, and were an evil and dishonest regime, so were the Nazis.

I've often thought one reason for the (relative) lack of interest in the Eastern front was that there was no "good vs. evil" narrative there. Just two evil empires duking it out. Of course, even among those mostly interested in, say, the Western front there's efforts to whitewash what the German regime was; the myth of the "clean Wehrmacht" springs to mind.

 

[Wild_Bill_Kelso]

I've often thought one reason for the (relative) lack of interest in the Eastern front was that there was no "good vs. evil" narrative there. Just two evil empires duking it out. Of course, even among those mostly interested in, say, the Western front there's efforts to whitewash what the German regime was; the myth of the "clean Wehrmacht" springs to mind.

Yes, that and I think the Nazis were very good at propaganda, their propaganda definitely still lingers, and thanks to the uncomfortable fact that (theoretically former) Nazis ended up part of many western defense and intelligence establishments, and many others (who were in some cases quite remarkable warriors) published their often compelling memoirs in English, as the Cold War got colder we tended to see the Soviet war from their side, to some extent, and to buy into their myths and legends of superiority (that were so much part of the 'DNA' of the Luftwaffe, as it was unlike the Wehrmacht, created during the Nazi regime) that we have been influenced by Nazi mythology.

So the exaggeration of Soviet losses, and this legend that the Soviets payed such an unholy, incredible price in lives for their victory (which certainly has a great deal of truth in it), feeds into the notion that their victory was somehow illegitimate or unfair. There is a long, long history of this kind of legend in some parts of German society. It was part of the lingering resentment over WWI, their loss being blamed by far-right veterans and fascist political factions on Jews, which in turn led to the creation of the Third Reich.

But it also goes much further back. The Teutonic Knights, a Crusading Order based in Prussia, were notoriously tough, efficient, ruthless, and very capable. But they had blind spots. They had hubris and a tendency to push things too far. They had fundamental failures in strategy, as in - who should we be fighting, and why. And as a result they lost a series of truly catastrophic defeats in their Crusades against the Lithuanians which ultimately led to their undoing. They alienated their former ally Poland, and attacked their allies and their own "brother knights" as scapegoats every time they were defeated. They created legends to explain their defeats instead of looking at their actual mistakes. After the catastrophic (for the Teutonic Order) battle of Grunwald in 1410, they blamed the members of a Prussian (German, basically) knightly league called the Lizard Union, who they claimed betrayed them at a key moment in the battle. They also lashed out at their own towns, massacring the city council of the town of Danzig (today Gdansk) when they balked at paying the enormous ransom payments to recover captured brother knights held by Poland after the debacle.

This, in turn, led to their own German cities and vassal-knights rebelling against the Order about 40 years later, and ultimately joining with Poland.

With something as emotionally heavy as war, it can be very hard to be clear-eyed and admit your own mistakes, and make the necessary adjustments. But if you don't, you will definitely lose. It's a fascinating phenomenon even on the personal level. I used to see it all the time as a martial arts instructor. Students who perform brilliantly in drills struggle to face reality in a fight. They will literally start to look down at the floor instead of at their opponent. That's a great way to get KTFO. Some people never manage to make this adjustment, and I've seen people do that and lose sparring or tournament matches and then blame the judges (there is always room to do so) or blame 'cheating' moves by their opponent, when in reality, they just got defeated.

In the US as a nation we have similar legends,

In the southern US there were and still are many similar legends about the civil war.

Another, I think very dangerous to us, is that the Viet Kong and NVA defeated the US and our Australian etc. allies in Vietnam because they 'cheated'. I grew up hearing "we never lost a battle in Vietnam" (which isn't true). It was a complaint about guerilla warfare. But there is no such thing as 'cheating' in full scale war. The communists in Vietnam played to their strengths, as we (and the French before us) played to ours. They had more advantages, in the long run, partly because it was their country. We faced problems we didn't want to think about in Vietnam.

Similarly, there were legends about the Korean War - heavily exaggerating the numerical superiority and 'human wave' attacks to explain our defeats, rather than acknowledging our own mistakes (like staying too much on the roads, apparently) and the successes of enemy tactics.

And we repeated many of these cycles, in different but also familiar ways, in more recent conflicts.

Part of the reason for figuring out what really happened in past wars, is so that we can learn from mistakes made - by us, by our enemies, by others - and not make the same mistakes in the future. Both the learning and the adjustments for future strategy and tactics are quite tricky bits, partly because there are always some people who won't admit that any mistakes were ever made. Personally, I don't read forums like this to fan delusions. I want to know the truth as much as I can figure out. I don't have a time machine and can't say I know 100% of the truth about the Soviet-German war, or the Soviet Air Force in WW2.

But to the extent I can and do understand any of it, it looks like the Germans came in very, very strong, very well trained, with very good equipment, and the Soviets were a mess, largely because of their own ideology and political system. But the Germans made many mistakes too. They killed people for example in Ukraine who might have aligned with them, because they bought into their own diabolical (and very delusional) racial theories far too much and far to literally (and brutally). They timed their attack badly, and lacked the winter gear they needed.

Over time, in spite of their catastrophic early losses and blunders of leadership by Stalin and others, the Soviets did seem to rally. They faced the extremely harsh realities and became much more pragmatic. Guys like Georgy Zhukov were not promoted out of loyalty to the party or to Stalin personally, the way Gernerals were in the 1930s-1940, but due to battlefield success (in fact, Stalin hated Zhukov). At the same time, the Germans became ever more delusional. Hitler making screaming demands of no retreat, resulting in the loss of the 6th Army at Stalingrad. And the same pattern followed over and over.

Hermann Goering, the boss of the Luftwaffe, was the very personification of delusion and lies, to the point that is comical if it wasn't also so tragic.

With regard to aviation, the Germans started with a clear, major advantage. But it does seem like that advantage slipped to almost nothing, as Germans fell behind in every area - tactics, training, and kit. By 1944 I don't see much German superiority on the front line, or over it. In fact at that point, I don't think there was any way they could win.

 

[NevadaK]

The summer of 1993 I had the opportunity to spend a couple of weeks in Berlin visiting a college friend. Since it was during the 50th anniversary of WW2 there was a lot of documentary presentations and discussions on TV. What struck out to me then was that German television held tight to the narrative that the Eastern front was the most important theater in the entire war. The portrayal of the ferocity of the fighting and magnitude was eye opening. The Western Allies were definitely considered secondary. I found the discussion of about Allied bombing illuminating especially in the context of city bombing by the RAF constituting a war crime.