How good was the soviet air force?

[special ed]

In the news media, it always pilot error. How will it be reported when planes are flown with no pilots?

 

[SaparotRob]

A minor glitch.

 

[Dimlee]

I take any information from the former USSR about WW2 with skepticism. It was a closed society. When you look at the numbers of tanks supplied via Lend Lease, about 1 in 5 tanks on the battle field would have been Western, but its rare to see photos.

the old Soviet saying about Pravda and Tass, there's no news in the truth and no truth in the news.

Your scepticism is justified. However, 15 countries with different information policies represent the former USSR today.
The problem is that most of the Soviet WWII archives (including tons of documents from Germany and other countries) are in the Russian Federation. There was a golden period for researchers in the 1990s-2000s when many of those archives were accessible even to the common public but it's over now.

 

[pinehilljoe]

The Official Soviet History of the Second World War, published sometime in the 60's or 70's, devoted a single line of text to the entire Lend Lease effort. Apparently it was 'minor', and almost unworthy of mentioning

I say one in five tanks based on about 65000 Soviet medium tanks produced, and Lend Lease about 12000 tanks. So round numbers 1 in 5 or 1 in 6 if the Soviet production numbers are correct.

 

[Clayton Magnet]

Tanks and airplanes were almost secondary in importance to the soviets. As far as I understand, the real backbone of lend-lease, were the trucks, jeeps, machine tools, food, butter, leather etc. The Soviets could build weapons and fighting vehicles, although the supplied vehicles were absolutely appreciated (at the time), it was all the other, less glamourous, stuff that allowed the Red Army to weather the Nazi's, and eventually push back

 

[pinehilljoe]

Tanks and airplanes were almost secondary in importance to the soviets. As far as I understand, the real backbone of lend-lease, were the trucks, jeeps, machine tools, food, butter, leather etc. The Soviets could build weapons and fighting vehicles, although the supplied vehicles were absolutely appreciated (at the time), it was all the other, less glamourous, stuff that allowed the Red Army to weather the Nazi's, and eventually push back

along with pig iron and aluminum, bullets and shells, and K-Rations

 

[SaparotRob]

..blankets, boots, wire, avgas...

 

[Art Medcalf]

Numerology of War:
I have not been following every part of this thread, but I would like to inject some statistical data. I have A.D.I.(K) documents with transcriptions of Luftwaffe operations data for all fronts for 1944 (complete) and the months of Dec. 44, Jan. and Feb. 45. There is a fair amount of detail, but what I have done is simply add up all the sorties and all the losses for the eastern front versus the western front and calculated the number of sorties per loss. The results are: 1944 Jan. through Nov.-eastern 139.7, western 19.3 sorties/loss; Dec. 1944-eastern 82.3, western 14.1; Jan. 1945-eastern 60.1, western 8.0, Feb. 1945-eastern 60.2, western 17.9. These summary figures have a lot of parameters all bunched together, but it shows that even quite late in the war, a Luftwaffe pilot had a better chance of survival in the east against the Soviet air forces. Before I had seen this data and analyzed what it really shows, I had thought the Soviets with their numeric superiority would have been much closer to parity with the west in air warfare.

Art Medcalf

 

[Luft.4]

along with pig iron and aluminum, bullets and shells, and K-Rations

Exactly! We have found that stereotypical Soviet aircraft such as the Il-2 were also constructed from USA aluminum. We have Il-2 pieces with the US ALCLAD stamped all over it.

 

[Retattack]

Numerology of War:
I have not been following every part of this thread, but I would like to inject some statistical data. I have A.D.I.(K) documents with transcriptions of Luftwaffe operations data for all fronts for 1944 (complete) and the months of Dec. 44, Jan. and Feb. 45. There is a fair amount of detail, but what I have done is simply add up all the sorties and all the losses for the eastern front versus the western front and calculated the number of sorties per loss. The results are: 1944 Jan. through Nov.-eastern 139.7, western 19.3 sorties/loss; Dec. 1944-eastern 82.3, western 14.1; Jan. 1945-eastern 60.1, western 8.0, Feb. 1945-eastern 60.2, western 17.9. These summary figures have a lot of parameters all bunched together, but it shows that even quite late in the war, a Luftwaffe pilot had a better chance of survival in the east against the Soviet air forces. Before I had seen this data and analyzed what it really shows, I had thought the Soviets with their numeric superiority would have been much closer to parity with the west in air warfare.

Art Medcalf

Caldwell makes the same point with similar data:

4.06 times as many aircraft were lost in combat in the West than were lost in the East, a ratio reasonably close to Groehler's 3.41 for all "losses". The most chilling statistic for the JG 26 pilots appears in the sortie data. An airplane flying a combat mission in the West was 7.66 times more likely to be destroyed than one on a similar mission in the East. It is clear that the burden of sacrifice was borne by the Luftwaffe aircrew on the Western Front and over the Reich, not on the Eastern Front.

 

[Retattack]

Exactly! We have found that stereotypical Soviet aircraft such as the Il-2 were also constructed from USA aluminum. We have Il-2 pieces with the US ALCLAD stamped all over it.

In the first chapter of his excellent How the War Was Won Phillips Payson O'Brien emphasizes the importance of aluminum to modern warfare:

It is common to refer to a nation's steel production as somehow indicative of its ability to wage a modern industrial war. On its own, this is highly deceptive. Aircraft, with few exceptions, could not be built of steel; they required aluminum. Aluminum, with its non-corrosive, lightweight and high strength characteristics, was the only material, other than wood, that could be used to construct modern airframes, and during the war all the major powers channeled the vast majority of the metal to this purpose. By 1944 well over 70 percent of German, Japanese, British and American aluminum production went into aircraft construction. As such, aluminum production is at least as important as steel production in demonstrating a nation's ability to produce the weapons needed to fight a modern war.

Later, he discusses Soviet and Japanese aircraft production and the effects of Lend Lease:

Finally we have aircraft, the key component of World War II production for all powers. Before analyzing this, it is worth noting that the USSR's production was only made possible by lend-lease shipments of bauxite, the key ore that was refined into aluminum. As Table 15 shows, between 1942 and 1944, Soviet access to domestically produced bauxite was severely limited. Yet, without bauxite, aircraft production in the USSR would have been almost impossible. During the war all the major powers used the vast majority of their aluminum to build aircraft, severely restricting its use in other areas. By November 1942, 60 percent of American aluminum was completely given over to the production of aircraft, a figure that would eventually rise to more than 80 percent.169 In Germany the situation was similar. In 1944 Albert Speer claimed that 80 percent of German aluminum was also being expended in the production of aircraft.170 The Soviet Union, however, was desperately short of aluminum. When Harry Hopkins paid his first visit to Josef Stalin in July 1941 to ask the Soviet dictator what the country needed to keep fighting in light of the German invasion, the number one priority he was given was immediate aluminum shipments so that the Soviet Union could build more aircraft.171 From then until the end of the war, the United States poured aluminum into the Soviet Union. By 1943 it was providing the Soviets more of the metal then was actually allocated to the entire United States Navy.172 By the end of the war, the United States had transferred almost 75,000 tons of processed aluminum and almost 195,000 aluminum bars and ingots to the USSR, 98 percent of which came under lend-lease.173 Only because of this enormous infusion of aluminum was the USSR able to out-produce the Japanese in aircraft between 1942 and 1944, though the numbers are closer than people often realize, and the Japanese even increased production by a larger number and at a higher rate. (See Table 17.)

 

[Dimlee]

In the first chapter of his excellent How the War Was Won Phillips Payson O'Brien emphasizes the importance of aluminum to modern warfare:

It's a good book, isn't it? I still can't find time to complete it.
As a "compensation", I have subscribed to the author's Substack.

 

[Retattack]

It's a good book, isn't it? I still can't find time to complete it.
As a "compensation", I have subscribed to the author's Substack.

Yes it is. Freshest take on WWII in decades, it completely changed the way I look at the war. He makes a compelling case that, from a production and national effort standpoint, the air and sea war predominated. And far from a sideshow, the air war over Germany was in fact the decisive front in the ETO, while the massed land armies in the East was a secondary effort.

I'm not sure it's entirely convincing . . . especially considering the millions of combatants involved on the Eastern Front . . . but it certainly adds some thought provoking nuance to the usual map centric analysis of the war.

 

[bf109xxl]

Moreover, the effectiveness of the air war is apparently the subject of one of their more persistent propaganda efforts. It impacts aircraft performance data, admitted losses, and kill claims. Interesting treatment by Chris Lawrence in Aces at Kursk (from Dupuy Institute blog):
...
Summary: Soviets overclaimed by a factor greater than 8, German claims overall were equal to Soviet losses (though not necessarily on each date).

Lawrence's figures do not match any source I have read - for example, they underestimate Soviet losses on July 6 according to the documents of the Soviet 16th Air Army. The high level of overclaim by the Soviets is well known, but Lawrence's figures look highly questionable. Seems I have to visit the library for "Die Jagdfliegerverbände der Deutschen Luftwaffe 1934 bis 1945. Vol.12/1, Einsatz im Osten : 4.2. bis 31.12.1943" by Jochen Prien... However, some researchers consider Prien's data on losses to be somewhat underestimated - due to the sophisticated and sluggish German system of accounting for aircraft losses as well as the loss of documents for 1944-1945, which might partly correct earlier data.

Adding in the recent re-blocking of the military archives, and the only reasonable conclusion is that any data allowed to leak out is unreliable (and likely designed to support the propaganda narrative).

Nevertheless, Russian historians still work in Soviet archives, which are quite open on this particular subject - it is rather of little interest to Russian propaganda now. Only a small number of enthusiasts read the work of historians, but perhaps I am overly optimistic.

 

[Retattack]

Lawrence's figures do not match any source I have read - for example, they underestimate Soviet losses on July 6 according to the documents of the Soviet 16th Air Army. The high level of overclaim by the Soviets is well known, but Lawrence's figures look highly questionable. Seems I have to visit the library for "Die Jagdfliegerverbände der Deutschen Luftwaffe 1934 bis 1945. Vol.12/1, Einsatz im Osten : 4.2. bis 31.12.1943" by Jochen Prien... However, some researchers consider Prien's data on losses to be somewhat underestimated - due to the sophisticated and sluggish German system of accounting for aircraft losses as well as the loss of documents for 1944-1945, which might partly correct earlier data.

Lawrence's figures are supposedly from original research from the archives, not secondary sources. From Amazon's review (of his Prokhorovka book):

This book is unique in that it draws upon in-depth research in both the German and Russian archival records. This was research that was begun in the 1990s, after the Soviet Union had fallen, when The Dupuy Institute was able to gain access to the Russian military archives. The book is built from the actual unit records from both sides, as opposed to the sometimes distorted narratives and legends that have grown up over the battle.

Nevertheless, Russian historians still work in Soviet archives, which are quite open on this particular subject - it is rather of little interest to Russian propaganda now. Only a small number of enthusiasts read the work of historians, but perhaps I am overly optimistic.

Just a casual observer, but I see resurgent propaganda memes. For example, one of the more prolific drone outfits is named Stalin's Falcons. They were in the news last week.

 

[bf109xxl]

In Collage I had a Statistics Professor that pointed to an Tass Article from the 1930's to show how at times the Soviet Propaganda did not outright lie, they just highlighted the facts in a way that showed the Soviet System in the best possible light.
The article was about the new Soviet designed and built car and how it stacked up to the competition. They held a race from the eastern part of the USSR, and ended in Moscow. At the time they were also making a License built Ford Model A Sedan and the race included a Ford and The new Soviet GAZ car. The Article stated that the Promoters were anticipating Dozens of entries in the race.
They Posted the Final Results that the GAZ placed in 2nd, and the Ford Finished 2nd from Last. Only if you did research and could come up with the Starting and Finishing lineups could you see that there where in fact only 2 cars entered in the race, they Finished Ford #1, GAZ #2. So in fact the GAZ entry did finish in 2nd place (behind the Ford) And the Ford did finish 2nd from Last in front of the only other entry the 2nd place finishing GAZ!
So he pointed out that the only real stretching of the truth was that the race promoters expected "Dozens" of entries. And that the other statements while technically Factual, made the reader think that the GAZ greatly outperformed the Ford. But they did not actually say that it did. I found his class very interesting, and always made me question everything a read in a for profit newspaper, where getting the story out 1st was more important than actually getting the facts correct.

This is a typical "professor's" story, which has no relation to reality whatsoever. There was no "competitiveness" in Soviet car rallies, they were organized for completely different purposes, namely for comparative tests. It was more of a car expedition - it was required that all cars reached the finish line, so there was no racing. The decisive issues were reliability and off-road ability of the cars. Based on the results of the rallies (and first of all - reliability, how often the car had to be repaired during the rally), decisions on serial production were made. The most famous was the Moscow-Tashkent-Moscow rally through the Karakum desert in 1933, which involved 96 people and 23 cars. Not only cars were tested, but also artificial rubber tires, etc. Sometimes it seems to me that there are even more tales about Soviet propaganda created than the Soviets themselves.

 

[bf109xxl]

Lawrence's figures are supposedly from original research from the archives, not secondary sources. From Amazon's review (of his Prokhorovka book):

I am not sure that Lawrence personally worked in the Soviet archives - usually it was done by Russian researchers, whose qualifications were very different. But I won't argue - I guess I have to order this book too. The book about Prokhorovka is an impressive work, but I will refrain from assessing the quality. I can't exclude that it is very high, but even just to read it I don't have the opportunity. Although I once read books by the Russian historian Zamulin, who described the events of the Battle of Kursk in great detail (including the episode known as the Prokhorovka Battle, although Prokhorovka was far from the scene). Zamulin's work was controversially appreciated in Russia, as he moved away from the Soviet-era myths and tried to give an adequate picture of what happened.

Just a casual observer, but I see resurgent propaganda memes. For example, one of the more prolific drone outfits is named Stalin's Falcons. They were in the news last week.

The expression Stalin's Falcons is known to immeasurably more people than a handful of enthusiasts arguing about methods of counting casualties in World War II.

 

[bf109xxl]

I say one in five tanks based on about 65000 Soviet medium tanks produced, and Lend Lease about 12000 tanks. So round numbers 1 in 5 or 1 in 6 if the Soviet production numbers are correct.

And why only medium tanks are included? About 40% of the tanks delivered to the USSR under Lend-Lease were light tanks. The Soviets produced over 80,000 tanks and over 20,000 self-propelled artillery vehicles during the war.