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

SOVIET AIR FORCE
Ya. Malinovsky, was strung out along some 1,300 miles of Mongolian-
Manchurian border. The offensive, which began on August 9, called for
all 3 Fronts to push into Manchuria, but the main punch to be delivered
by Malinovsky’s Trans-Baikal Front plunging through the Great Khingan
Mountains toward Changchun and Mukden. Malinovsky’s tanks penetrated
some 250 miles into Manchuria by August 15, and his greatest problem
was not Japanese resistance, but supplying his machines with fuel. By
August 19 the Japanese Kwantung Army had arranged surrender terms
with Vasilevsky.
Air operations played a minor role in the August campaign in the Far
East. The VVS flew only 14,030 combat sorties and 7,427 noncombat missions,
partly because of the inclement weather between August 11 and 20.
About a fourth of the sorties were reconnaissance, but the most important
contribution of the Air Force to the campaign was the hauling of supplies
and men. The transports carried 2,777 tons of POL, 16,497 men, and 2,000
tons of munitions and other materiel.Inh
Gaining air superiority was an easy task for the battle-hardened VVS.
The Japanese planes were obsolete, the best having been siphoned off to
oppose the American drive across the Pacific. The Japanese fighters, Type
97 and Type 1 (Nakajima fighters NATE and OSCAR) were 60 to 100 miles
per hour slower than the Soviet Yak-9s and La-7s, while the Mitsubishi
bombers were 100 miles per hour slower than the Russian Pe-2s and
Tu-2s.107 In addition, the Soviets were fighting a disheartened Japanese
Army-the atomic bombs hit Hiroshima on August 6 and Nagasaki on the
9th. On August 10, the Emperor told the Imperial Council that the war must
end. All in all, this was not the milieu in which troops could give their all in
a do-or-die effort.
Despite the fact that the Red Army was attacking a badly demoralized
Kwantung Army, in some respects a Soviet “mopping-up operation,” the
speed with which the armored and motorized forces, in close synchronization
with the VVS, carried out the campaign testified to lessons welllearned
on the Eastern (German) Front over four years of hard campaigning.
A comparison between the smoothly coordinated air operations in
Manchuria, northern China, Korea, and the Kuriles in August 1945 and the
bewildered Red Army and its air forces in the summer of 1941 was a vivid
demonstration of how well the Soviet commanders had been trained in the
murderously effective school of combat.
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