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This is about as close as you're going to get a side-by-side comparison of the Yak3 and P-51. Not dog-fighting, I know.
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And running with other minor problems...The Yak was using an Allison engine. Power rating unknown. Race engine was pulled due to cooling problems and "stock" Allison (whatever that is) replaced.
You saw earlier that figures are hard for the eastern front. Many dismiss Soviet history as sheer revisionism, and often it is , but in the same breath will accept German claims (and as a flip side to that, VVS losses) as gospel truth. most of what you read about massive Soviet losses is based on unadulterated German claims and not much else. People like Grohler (???) and Caldwell have turned this number crunching into a sort of perverse spectacle really.
The truth is we don't know the full extent of losses , especially for the Soviets.
It should also not be overlooked that in the final two years of the war, the soviets gave up trying to win front wide air superiority. frontages were so extensive and german fighters so few, that the best tactic was simply to swamp the defenders with broad front attacks . Fighters were there to keep the VVS strike aircraft alive long enough to help the ground battle . An air victory was a good outcome, but a successful mission was more important. and the successful mission was always related to the ground battle, not control of the skies for the VVS. If the air mission was a success, it heightened the extent of breakthrough achieved, and would lead to more losses for the enemy on the ground (including grounded a/c) than could ever be hoped to be achieved by a more conventional application of airpower.
Success ought to be measured against those criteria. For the germans, their bombers were reduced to inconsequence, whilst their fighters were shown to be quite unable to stop the Russians from dominating the land battle, and the skies immediately above it. .
I agree, and we know from as early as the battle of britain german pilots were wildly over inflating the amount of kills scored. Incorrect figures/over claiming was rife on both sides RAF included, but where the luftwaffe fell short was a lot of Georing's info was based on the fact german pilots were giving him wildly innacurate figures, therefore when the number crunching was done he was convinced the RAF was down to just 60 fighters by late September and on the brink of destruction. When in fact the british production figures were well above german aircraft production. We all know it was pilot shortage on the british side. But i dont think the german pilots ever got out of that habit of wild and innacurate figures of aircraft kills and this was simply transferred to the eastern front. Soviet claims are the most hardest to call accurately because of the nature of their secrecy/propaganda agencies not allowing bad news.You saw earlier that figures are hard for the eastern front. Many dismiss Soviet history as sheer revisionism, and often it is , but in the same breath will accept German claims (and as a flip side to that, VVS losses) as gospel truth. most of what you read about massive Soviet losses is based on unadulterated German claims and not much else. People like Grohler (???) and Caldwell have turned this number crunching into a sort of perverse spectacle really.
The truth is we don't know the full extent of losses , especially for the Soviets.
It should also not be overlooked that in the final two years of the war, the soviets gave up trying to win front wide air superiority. frontages were so extensive and german fighters so few, that the best tactic was simply to swamp the defenders with broad front attacks . Fighters were there to keep the VVS strike aircraft alive long enough to help the ground battle . An air victory was a good outcome, but a successful mission was more important. and the successful mission was always related to the ground battle, not control of the skies for the VVS. If the air mission was a success, it heightened the extent of breakthrough achieved, and would lead to more losses for the enemy on the ground 9including grounded a/c) than could ever be hoped to be achieved by a more conventional application of airpower
Success ought to be measured against those criteria. For the germans, their bombers were reduced to inconsequence, whilst their fighters were shown to be quite unable to stop the Russians from dominating the land battle, and the skies immediately above it. .
These last few comments are some of the most common sense i've seen here. Your correct sir, people always talk about The battle of Kursk as being the biggest and most destructive tank battle in history. But i have reason to believe this is far from the truth and there were at least one other huge tank battle between germany and russia in 1941/42. Im still researching this as its long and lengthy trying to find accurate data. But im convinced there were huge battles and losses on both sides we dont even know about still to this day. Mixed in with the inaccurate data we have propaganda and deception from a lot of historians that simply were tying to either further their own careers or just muddy the waters until nothing can be made sense of. Either way we have never been told the whole truth not by a long shot....I don't know who Grohler and Caldwell are but I think you really nailed it here. I've seen this in many other places far beyond this forum for decades. Somehow we can remember all too well that the Soviets were totalitarian, engaged in propaganda, and so on, but we tend to forget that the Germans were nearly the same. The Soviets did have that extra bit of internal repression - the prison design bureaus already mentioned, the jails for troops who had the misfortune of being captured by the enemy or shot down behind enemy lines.
But the Germans had their sinister side too, and not just toward the enemy. They too had their punishment battalions. They too had their forced "volunteers", they too had their secret police, their political officers, their slave labor, their firing squads, not to mention the Enisatzgruppen. The Soviets threatened their own troops with being sent to Siberia, but the Germans openly threatened to send their guys to The Russian Front - where they were supposedly scything away vast hordes of defenseless Slavs and creating acres of Liebensraum every day - Goering specifically made this threat to the German fighter squadrons in the Med more than once. If it was such a cakewalk why was it so feared (and so early on).
This was a frightening point made by the historian David Glantz when he was pointing out that the reason we never heard of some of the largest tank battles of WW2 is because neither the Germans nor the Soviets decided to use the events as propaganda vehicles, so they being totalitarian regimes, nothing came out about it. Almost as if the battles had been fought in silence. An eerie concept.
Astute description. This is essentially the same exact policy the DAF consciously decided to pursue in North Africa - at great hardship to their pilots, while the Germans ala JG 27 etc. pursued almost the opposite tactic - to maximize their kill ratios, and in particular, the kill counts of the experten, at the expense of protecting the ground forces.
Well put. The power of German propaganda is truly more formidable than a Tiger Tank or a Ta 152. After all these years and in spite of all we know, many people are still drawn to it and swallow it hook, line and sinker.
S
Far from the truth, indeed. The biggest was probably near Dubno in June 1941....people always talk about The battle of Kursk as being the biggest and most destructive tank battle in history. But i have reason to believe this is far from the truth...
I,ve been looking into the battle of Brody.Far from the truth, indeed. The biggest was probably near Dubno in June 1941.
On Kursk, even Wiki put it outher way around, 5,128 Soviet and 2,928 German tanks.Wiki says 750 German and 3500 Soviet tanks at Brody and 5,128 German and 2,928 Soviet tanks at Kursk.
On Kursk, even Wiki put it outher way around, 5,128 Soviet and 2,928 German tanks.
Without wanting to nitpick the Bristol Blenheim was fitted with the very first night fighter A.I. radar unit. The early radar units were big bulky pieces of equipment and only a twin engine aircraft was suitable. The Blenheim of 25 squadron which was equipped during the b.o.b also achieved the first night intercept, shooting down a Dornier Do -17. After modifications were made on the early A.I sets they were able to fit into single engine aircraft such as the Boulton Paul Defiant, which was useless as a day interceptor but gained some success as a night fighter. Hurricanes came a little later in 1940, around Nov/Dec.I believe that the 'Po-2' was indeed one of the most under-rated aircraft of WW2 - I am really enjoying reading all of your most astute dissertations & discussions and I should like to add what I can...
The Polikarpov U-2 first appeared in early 1927, it became the Po-2 on 30 July 1944 in honour of it's designer after his death on that date. The Po-2 was built in the greatest number and in more variants than any other aircraft in history, in excess of 33,000 aircraft. - At a rough count in front of me there over 35 different variants.- Not bad for a 100 hp biplane that served in a variety of different roles, most notably were the night 'nuisance' raids over German lines in Russia.- In particular those performed by the 46th Guards Night Bomber Regiment, who received 18 of the highest military honour of 'the Hero of the Soviet Union', 18 women pilots and 6 women navigators. It was the only regiment of 3 that was entirely of women, in the others, men also served - Polina Gelman, one of these HSU recipients stated that the 46th "was not only equal to the men's regiments according to effectiveness and other indices, but was among the first"- In further explanation, "the effectiveness was determined by the accuracy of the hits from bombing and shooting. After completing a mission everyone had to report their results and the results of others, as they saw them, what and where it happened. Crews from other regiments reported on our results, as did ground reconnaissance - in fact, we worked for them. It was easy to verify everything, everything was recorded: the number of combat flights, of bombs dropped, of rounds fired... In the 4th Air Army our regiment was always first or among the first."
- August/September 1942 it got really hard, renewed German offensive pushing into Stalingrad, they were attacking columns of tanks who were advancing so fast they had no time to change bases, shortage of maps, they couldn't harvest the grain so it was torched by Stalin's old order of "scorched earth" policy. It was at this time they read Stalin's new Order No. 227: "not one more step back"... As I too know, duty and patriotism come first in wartime...
Although the Po-2 carried only a light bomb load {120-200kgs & also 4x RS-82 rockets], the rugged reliability and it being based right behind the front lines enabled it to maintain continuous harassment of German troops throughout the year, even in bad weather. The Germans themselves admitted that it would be "wrong to underestimate the effects of the attacks, since they were so unpredictable and therefore were extremely disturbing...[they] reduced the already short rest of the troops and had an adverse effect on supply operations, although the actual physical damage done in the raids was small." - In actual fact, it appears from the two books I've recently read on Russian WW2 Aviation victory claims etc. they were most accurate. The first one was written by a IL-2 pilot who claimed they recorded everything as described above, and this book on the Women pilots, including the Po-2 'Night Witches', was written in 1993 by an American woman called Reina Pennington who went over there and intensely viewed records and interveiwed surviving veterans...
I agree also that the Swordfish was also greatly under-rated especially if you factor-in Taranto, and we should mention 'Hope, Faith & Charity,' these Gloster Gladiators who 'saved' Malta in the early WW2 Mediterranean conflict...
I also agree the P.40 was under-rated [by some], but they were a sight for sore-eyes when passing through Singapore off to join the AVG while RAF, RAAF & RNZAF had to make do with the most useless piece of crap that flew, the Brewster Buffalo. The US Navy couldn't get rid of their first monoplane fighter fast enough, dumping it on the British who promptly sent it to Singapore where they sent all their potty Senior Air Staff. - Should also add the Grumman Wildcat to the Most Under-rated list too, it saved our arse in the South Pacific along with the P.40's - And finally, the Hurricane was the first with 4 cannon, first with rockets, first effective Nightfighter during the Blitz [until the Beaufighter got it's gremlins sorted-out] and the Hurricane was certainly better at Singapore than nothing, the Ki-43 was definately under-rated by both the Brits & US initially, they kept mis-identifying it as a Zero, it just lacked the latter's cannons ~
I can recommend a REAL book about the Singapore debacle - ''Last Stand In Singapore - The story of 488 Squadron RNZAF'' by Graham Clayton ISBN 978 1 86979 033 2 -It's quite an eye-opener on what really happened...
Cheers