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

SOVIET AIR FORCE
Development of Air Tactics
Despite Soviet protestations to the contrary, the Luftwaffe fighter
pilots outclassed their Russian counterparts decisively in the first year and
a half of the war. The Russians were faced with the catastrophic loss of
planes in 1941-42, the German advantage in battle-hardened fliers in better
machines, the inflexibility of the average Soviet flier, and a reluctance to
engage in air combat with the enemy. Pilot desperation even manifested
itself in the ramming [taran] of German aircraft, a maneuver in which the
Russian flier, his ammunition exhausted, would fly his plane into his
opponent’s, usually trying to cut up the empennage with his prop. If done
skillfully, or with luck, the Russian pilot might be able to land his damaged
plane or succeed in bailing out. In the early years of the war the exchange
of an obsolescent 1-16 for a German bomber with a two- or three-man
crew was a good swap from the point of view of the VVS, but by 1943
most Soviet fighters were modern enough to make it a poor trade for
obsolescent German bombers. Consequently, the taran maneuver fell out
of favor. 73
By 1943, as was shown in air combat over the Kuban River area in
the North Caucasus, and in the mass engagement at Kursk, the Soviet
pilots were displaying more aggressiveness and much more flying skill.
They had acquired extensive combat experience, were equipped with
much better machines, and were the products of better training. Local
air superiority at widely separated locations, such as the defense of
Moscow in December 1941 and the battle of Stalingrad a year later, was
transformed into air superiority along most of the Soviet-German front
by late 1943. It was the Luftwaffe that was reduced to the role of striving
for temporary air superiority at crucial points along the front after the
Battle of Kursk.
By late 1942, Soviet fliers were using different and more flexible tactics.
The basic flight unit was by then the pair, or para, and the flight of two
pairs, the zveno, was in vogue in place of the former flight of three aircraft
in a tight V, or “Vic” formation, forced to stick close together because of
the lack of on-board radios. Continuous combat against the German Rotte,
a loose pair, or the Schwarm, a flight of two pairs, convinced the best Russian
pilots that emulation was in order. The Rotte and Schwarm, as one
author put it, “was never bettered. . . and was adopted by all the major air
force^."'^ A larger German formation consisting of three Schwmrme, the
Staffel, was also duplicated in the Soviet gruppm, a formation of three or
four pairs. The great advantage of the para was that it enabled each pilot to
cover the other’s blind spots; in other words it was “the classic fighting
pair, the leader and his wingman to cover him.”” In the numerous dogfights
over the Kuban in the spring of 1943, the paru and the zveno of four aircraft
became the standard fighter units.’6
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