Soviet Union
In World War II, ramming became a legendary technique of
VVS pilots against the
Luftwaffe, especially in the early days of the hostilities in the war's
Eastern Front. In the first year of the war, most available Soviet machines were considerably inferior to the German ones and the
taran was sometimes perceived as the only way to guarantee the destruction of the enemy. Trading an outdated fighter for a technologically advanced bomber was considered economically sound. In some cases, pilots who were heavily wounded or in damaged aircraft decided to perform a suicidal taran attack against air, ground or naval targets. In this instance, taran becomes more like an unpremeditated
kamikaze attack (see
Nikolai Gastello).
Nine rammings took place on the very first day of the
German invasion of the Soviet Union, one within the first hour. At 04:25 hours on June 22, 1941 Lt. I. I. Ivanov drove his
Polikarpov I-16 into the tail of an invading
Heinkel He 111. Ivanov didn't survive but was posthumously awarded the gold star,
Hero of the Soviet Union.
[3] Lieutenant Boris Kobzan survived a record four ramming attacks in the war. Alexander Khlobystov made three. Seventeen other Soviet pilots were credited with two successful ramming attacks. About 200 taran attacks were made by Soviets between the beginning of Operation Barbarossa and the middle of 1943, when enough modern aircraft had been produced to make the tactic obsolete (even if Russian fighter pilots were still trained to perform it). However, Evgeny Stepanov stated in an interview that more than 580 taran attacks were made by VVS pilots in WWII.
[4]
Ramming - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia