Wild_Bill_Kelso
Senior Master Sergeant
- 3,231
- Mar 18, 2022
Before Stalingrad, aviation was on the sidelines. There were few aircraft and pilots. The pilots who survived the initial period of the war, by Stalingrad, were already veterans. They already had a lot of downed planes, they knew the tactics of the enemy. Here's Pilot Safonov. A total of 234 battles before the summer of 1942. 13 shot down alone and 6 in a group... As you can see, the main work is to repel air attacks and ground attack forces. He fought in the North on I-16, then switched to Kittyhawk. The same Pokryshkin. By the time he fought in the Kuban, he already had his own tactics of fighting. There were many downed. But most importantly, he taught young pilots. And that was the main thing.
Then there was Kursk. A lot of Luftwaffe pilots were knocked out there. Both aces and young pilots were transferred from Germany to replace them. The same Hartmann. As noted, the Luftwaffe had erroneous tactics. The bombers were flying without fighter cover. The fighters waged their war in the air. But after huge losses, they changed their tactics. But even that didn't help much. Pokryshkin's regiment introduced layered tactics. One link covered the attack aircraft or bombers, the second hung above the formation and could immediately help if necessary. As we can see from the regiment's track record, the planes flew most of all to escort attack aircraft or bombers. After all, the main battle of the war was on earth. And the downed ones appeared if there was an attack on the assault group. It was later, after the Kuban and the Dnieper, that the fighters flew on a free hunt. They were already ready to face the enemy.
I must apologize for the slight inaccuracy. It was not the Pe-8 that began bombing Berlin, but the DB-3F aircraft. A total of 9 night sorties were made. 3 groups of 15 aircraft. The Pe-8 was continued, but already from Belarus. Just as the front was moving eastward. I read that a German general, I don't remember who wrote that the battle of Moscow was lost due to severe frost. Were the Russians in hothouse conditions?
One of my favorite WW2 aviation stories is the absolutely insane raid by TB-3 with I-16 parasite fighers, along with some Pe-2s, against the King Carol I bridge near Ploesti.
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