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

AIR SUPERIORITY
Denouement in Europe, 1944 and 1945
The year of 1943, the annus mirabilis (“year of wonders”) in Soviet
military fortunes, was one in which the VVS wrested air superiority from
the Luftwaffe. By the end of the year, the Germans, in obedience to Hitler’s
orders, were trying to hold a defensive line from near Leningrad to the
Black Sea. By early 1944, with manpower stretched exceedingly thin, the
German army commanders were clamoring for air support to supplement
their inferior ground forces, but the Luftwaffe was stretched even thinner.
German air power, which two and a half years earlier had been an overpowering
offensive weapon on the Eastern Front, was now reduced to a
defensive force rushing about like a fire brigade trying to put out fires all
along the front.
While the Luftwaffe struggled to overcome a lack of good aircraft and,
even more important, a shortage of skilled pilots, the VVS, supplied with
an ever-increasing flow of excellent planes and good pilots, was dominating
the air through sheer numbers. According to the Soviets, the Red Army
only increased by 11 percent in manpower during 1943, but increased 80
percent in guns, 33 percent in tanks, and 100 percent in aircraft.” Russian
industry proved itself more than adequate to fulfill the needs of the armed
forces. Although Soviet statistics cannot be checked for accuracy, the following
would seem to serve as rough indicators of the growing Soviet might
in the air: the VVS had 1,200 aircraft in the Moscow counteroffensive,
5,000 during the battle for Kursk, 6,000 during the liberation of Byelorussia,
and 7,500 at Berlin, and by then was able to coordinate the actions of
600 to 700 planes in a single operation. At the battle of Moscow, Soviet
planes flew 16,000 combat sorties, 36,000 at Stalingrad, 90,000 at Kursk,
and 153,000 sorties in the Byelorussian operation.y3 Making some allowance
for the propensity of the then current commander in chief of the VVS
to boast a bit, the difference between 16,000 sorties at Moscow in 1941 and
153,000 sorties in the Byelorussian operation in 1944 was not only impressive,
but also tells the story of the Luftwaffe’s loss of air superiority on the
Eastern Front.
By March 1944, the Red Army, ably assisted by the VVS, pushed its
frontline in the Ukraine to the Bug River, with a salient along the Black
Sea that encompassed Odessa. In the north, the Baltic and the three
Byelorussian Fronts took to the offensive on June 22 in commemoration
of the Nazi attack in 1941. The four Fronts had a combined total of 6,000
air~raft.’~ By July, Minsk had fallen and the Soviets had torn a 250-mile
hole in the German lines, thus opening the path to Poland and Lithuania.
In the south, the Ukrainian Fronts, four of them, tore into Rumania,
helped by the Rumanian Army’s turning on its erstwhile German ally. By
the fall of 1944 the various Ukrainian Fronts had fanned out over the
Balkans.
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