Case Studies in the Achievement of Air Superiority - Air Force ...

AIR SUPERIORITY
Soviet industry could support a modern aviation industry. During the First
Five-Year Plan (1928-32), however, there was a vigorous expansion of the
aircraft industry; old plants were expanded and modernized and new ones
constructed. Between 1928 and 1932, the labor force in the aviation industry
increased by 750 percent and the number of engineers and technicians
by 1,000 percent.2 As a result, during the Second Five-Year Plan (1933-37),
the output of aircraft quadrupled from 860 in 1933 to 3,578 in 1937.3
Although many specifics are either lacking or are dubious, the overall evidence
indicates a rapid expansion of the Soviet aircraft industry during the
1930s.
In that same period, Soviet aircraft designers were under intense
pressure to overcome the nation’s dependence upon foreign aircraft. N. N.
Polikarpov got the jump on the decade with his R-5 reconnaissance plane
in 1929. Although primarily a reconnaissance aircraft, later versions were
used as fighters and dive bombers, and it was in action during the Great
Patriotic War* up to 1944. In 1933 he really came to the fore as the preeminent
Soviet designer of fighters when he produced the 1-15 and the
1-16 in the same year. The former had a top speed of 230 miles per hour
and the latter a speed of 220 miles per The Polikarpov aircraft
were by far the best Soviet fighters in the late 1930s. Another outstanding
designer, A. N. Thpolev, produced a heavy bomber, the TB-3 [tyazhelyy
bombardirovshchik] in 1930 and a light bomber, the SB-2 [skorostnoy
bombardirovshchik], or fast bomber, in 1934. Tupolev’s bombers and
Polikarpov’s R-5, R-15, and R-16 were the main Soviet stable of aircraft
for subsequent adventures in Spain, China, and the Soviet Far East in the
late 1930s.
As the planes poured off the assembly lines in the later 1930s, the
demand for pilots and technicians needed to keep the planes operational
resulted in the VVS becoming a great technical training institution with
academies and flying schools mushrooming up all over the country. In addition,
the voluntary Society for the Promotion of Defense Aviation and
Chemical Warfare, called Osoaviakhim in its Russian acronym, taught
thousands of young people the various technical skills needed for aircraft
maintenance as well as training many to fly. According to a German
observer, “by the end of 1940 the clubs had almost achieved their target of
100,000 trained pilot^."^ Thus, it was not too surprising that the Soviets
were able to maintain a steady flow of replacement pilots during the Russo-
German war, a capability that played no small part in the eventual attainment
of air superiority.
*The Soviets divided World War I1 into two periods: the war prior to the German invasion of
Russia on June 22, 1941, is called the “imperialist” war, and the German-Soviet phase is entitled
the Great Patriotic War (Velikaya otechestvennaya voyna).
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