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

SOVIET AIR FORCE
Stalin’s forced industrialization and the resulting “semi-isolationist”
foreign policy in the early 1930s were ideal for building up the Soviet military-industrial
complex. Nevertheless, Japanese expansion and the rise of
Hitler meant that the Soviets faced potential enemies in both the East and
the West, the perennial nightmare of Russian strategists, Tsarist or Communist.
In 1935 Stalin felt it advisable to shift to a “united front” policy,
i.e., cooperation with any anti-fascist party, whatever its leanings otherwise.
Hardly had he opted for his new policy when the Spanish Civil War
put him in a dilemma: either let down his allies in the popular fronts, especially
in France, or support the Republicans in Spain against Franco, a
move that might frighten the French and British governments. In October
1936 he began to ship, as cautiously as possible, aircraft, tanks, and artillery
to Spain along with the people to operate the weapons.
In aircraft, the Soviet assistance was approximately 1,500 machines,
although in any one month not more than a third of that number was operational.
Of the thousand or so fighter aircraft, around 500 to 600 were
I-15As or I-15Bs and the rest were 1-16s. There were over 200 SB-2 bombers,
and the rest were R-5 reconnaissance planes. Soviet aircraft made up
over 90 percent of the Republican air force by early 1937, and the Republicans
had air superiority until early 1938, when the Nazis equipped the Kondor
Legion in Spain with Messerschmitt Bf-109 fighters, superior to the
Soviet 1-15s and 1-16s in every way. The obvious inability of the Soviet
fighters to oppose the Germans led Stalin to begin phasing out the Soviet
Air Force in Spain in mid-1938 so that by the end of the year all Soviet
aircraft had left the country.
Although Soviet fliers gained valuable combat experience in Spain, the
concepts derived were mostly negative. For example, the VVS came to the
conclusion that strategic high-level bombing was an ineffective use of fliers
and machines, a conclusion the Germans also drew from their Spanish
experience. In retrospect, considering the modesty of the bombing effort in
both cases, plus the rather primitive equipment involved in that effort, it is
not surprising that neither the Luftwaffe nor the VVS was impressed with
the results obtained in the Spanish adventure. The Soviet pilots were also
made painfully aware of the inferiority of their machines in combat with the
German Bf-109s. All in all, the Soviet involvement in the Spanish Civil
War, especially in the air war, was far from successful.
The VVS, while still engaged in Spain, was also getting bloodied in
the Far East. In July 1937, the Japanese began an all-out assault on China,
‘The 1-16 had many nicknames applied to it during the Spanish Civil War. It was called Rara
(Rat) by the Franco forces, Mosca (Fly) by the Loyalists, while the Soviet fliers referred to it as
Ishak (Donkey). With its short, barrel-like configuration it was an easy plane to identify, and
everyone in Spain got to know it.
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