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

AIR SUPERIORITY
chose; superiority over all sectors simultaneously eluded them only for the
lack of aircraft.32
The Soviets claim that their aviation did better against the Germans in
the struggle for Kiev and the Black Sea area, flying over 26,000 sorties
during the August-September fighting.33 The magnitude of the German victory,
however, would seem to demonstrate the ineffectiveness of the
numerous sorties claimed. What little was left of the VVS during the summer
and fall of 1941 was used mostly for assistance to the faltering ground
forces. The situation was so desperate that some Soviet fliers resorted to
ramming German aircraft, or like Captain Gastello, flying their planes into
trains or troop con~entrations~~-heroic deeds much celebrated by Soviet
air historians, who have little to extol in that period, but hardly likely to
have affected the outcome of the air war.
Achieving air supremacy by deep penetration strikes against German
airfields, fuel and ammunition dumps, as well as transport in general-one
of the objectives set forth in the 1940 regulations and part of the accepted
doctrine-turned out to be a catastrophic failure. Soviet medium bombers
as they arrived over German targets at regular intervals were shot down
with ridiculous ease by German fighters or antiaircraft fire. Long-range
bombers of DBA were no more effective. The awful losses suffered in
the first few weeks of the war crippled the Soviet bomber effort for much of
the war.35 The combination of heavy losses in carrying out strikes
against the German rear, strikes flown without fighter escort, and the
dire straits of the ground forces resulted in some corps and divisions
of DBA being transferred to the operational control of Front commanders
for use in close-s~pport.~~ In describing the ineptness of
Soviet bombing, Rotmistrov put it succinctly that the experience in
Spain resulted in “a limitation of air operations to a tactical framework
over the battlefield.”37
The Luftwaffe was so confident in its air supremacy by the end of June
that the bulk of its planes was shifted to close-support for the ground
forces. Some sixty percent of sorties were in direct support with a concomitant
reduction of indirect support missions. Thus the Ju-88s, He-I 1 Is, and
Do-17s, designed for attacking objectives behind the front lines, were used
over the battlefield itself.3s
It was this Luftwaffe concentration on the battlefield that allowed the
Soviets to accomplish one of the operations that would eventually enable
the VVS to contest the German air supremacy, namedly the movement of
those airframe and engine factories from the vulnerable areas in the west
to safer eastern regions well out of range of German bombers. This transfer
of plants, personnel and all, began soon after the German attack and,
according to an official account, 1,360 large plants and 10,000,000 workers,
a total of 1,500,000 tons, had been moved by the end of December.” By
early 1942, the transplanted aircraft factories were turning out Yak-ls, 11-2
190