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

AIR SUPERIORITY
How the VVS Achieved Air Superiority
It would seem that the main reason for the Soviet victory in the air war
on the Eastern Front was the overwhelming numerical superiority in both
aircraft and manpower. The German and Soviet historians are at variance
in their evaluations of how well or how poorly the VVS and the Luftwaffe
fought the air war, and their statistics are very often far apart. Yet, they do
agree that the VVS had a vast superiority in aircraft and aircrews in 1944
and 1945.
Although the VVS took a murderous licking in the summer and fall of
1941, probably losing around 10,000 planes, a high percentage of them were
destroyed on the ground and thus did not entail the loss of pilots and navigators.
This factor was to loom largely in favor of the Soviets when aircraft
did become available in respectable numbers in 1942, since it was easier to
replace a plane than a trained pilot. By the spring of 1942 the Soviet aviation
industry was rolling out enough aircraft to put the VVS back in business.
In addition, by November 1942 the Allies had delivered 3,000 planes
to the Russians.108
During the Great Patriotic War, the Soviet aircraft industry turned out
125,000 planes, while the Germans produced only 100,000 between 1941
and the middle of 1945. The Soviets, however, had only 1 front to supply
while the Germans were using large numbers of their aircraft in the
Mediterranean Theater and in defending the Reich against the British and
American bombers. By 1943 the Luftwaffe was drawing down on its
aircraft in Russia to supply the needs of the Mediterranean and home
fronts. This left the Eastern Front with a relative scarcity of planes and
many of those obsolete at that. The Germans, because of the Luftwaffe’s
muddled leadership and Hitler’s misconceptions concerning the role of air
power, were late in putting the aircraft industry on a full-time basis. That
they could have done much better in the production of aircraft, especially
fighters, is borne out by the output figures for 1943 and 1944. In 1941 and
1942, when the German aircraft industry was relatively secure from Allied
bombing, the industry produced only 11,776 and 15,409 planes, respectively,
for a total of 27,185 versus the Soviet total of 41,171 for those same
two years. Yet in 1944, when the Reich was being plastered by Allied bombers,
the German aviation industry turned out 39,807 aircraft, almost the
same as the Russian production for that year.Ioy By then, however, the vast
majority of those aircraft were needed to defend the homeland, and only a
relatively sparse allotment could be spared to bolster the Eastern Front.
The same disparity existed in available aircrews-the Russians had
enough to fill all available cockpits and the time to train them adequately.
For reasons previously mentioned, the Germans were caught in a vicious
circle. As early as the airlift rescue of the troops trapped in the Demyansk
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