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Old April 7th, 2008, 07:30 AM
Vanir Vanir is offline
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Default Re: Russian aircraft losses in the Crimea

Oh goodie, a thread to call home.

The Soviet Klimov engine at that time was roughly equivalent to an Allison, whilst the Fw-190F was as fast at sea level carrying a full bomb load as a Thunderbolt is flying clean. In terms of interceptor performance flying a Yak or LaGG against one is like flying a Warhawk. Actually except for turn and climb performance the Soviet fighters until the late war period are very much equivalent to something like a Warhawk. You need an La-5FN to take on a Fw-190F with and then you should hope he isn't equipped with boost or you'll never catch him.

But the higher proportion of German victories in the Crimea of course came from the Me-109G flying overhead, flown by such aces as Erich Hartmann. I'm sure there would have been some degree of tag team tactics involved in protecting the schlachtstaffeln.
The thing German schlacht attack fighters could do which was a departure from close support doctrine was they were still high performance fighters once their load was delivered, and often served as their own escorts. This effectively means you have at least two fighter groups operating if you have one of jagd and one of schlacht (staffeln) in the vicinity.

Finally Soviet training and doctrines had only just recently undergone reorganisation from the prewar period, where indeed there was a great reluctance to develop new flying and tactical skills to due totalitarian imposed fear. Late in 42 the Soviet air forces were reorganised into a series of air armies and for the first time, radios were mentioned as necessary to be used. Previously this relatively mundane technology was considered somewhat of an oddity, although fitted regularly in fighters since 1940 (poor quality sets however).
Generally speaking, according to anecdote Soviet aerial equipment and tactics only achieved parity with extended Luftwaffe forces at the Kuban in 43. Then of course you have to consider the more experienced veterans and aces, of which the Soviets had much fewer. New "aces schools" had been set up to develop Luftwaffe skills even further.

In Kursk, I like one field commander's remarks about the aerial battles above. The Soviets he said, seemed to have no regard for the fact the Luftwaffe had total air supriority. German fighters continued to shoot down Soviet ones, whilst their attack aircraft continued to bear down on Wehrmacht formations anyway. He thought it was heroic.
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