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

AIR SUPERIORITY
“frivolous insouciance,” left most of the direction of the air force to successive
chiefs of staff, especially Hans Jeschonnek, who held that job between
February 1939 and his suicide in August 1943.II3 Jeschonnek was incapable
of questioning an order by Hitler, however potentially dangerous it might
be. As Goering’s stock with Hitler declined, the more readily Jeschonnek
acquiesced in carrying out even ridiculous directives and in promising
more than he could deliver, the ill-fated Stalingrad airlift being a case in
point.
Stalin, however, was an aviation buff, taking an intense interest in
design and production even before the war. He took a keen interest in the
VVS’s command structure, the procurement of its machines, and one of his
outstanding designers, Yakovlev, gave Stalin high marks in knowledgeability
of things aeronautical. Like his top commanders, Stalin learned during
the war, and although prone to botch things up in 1941 and early 1942, he
eventually assembled a capable staff in Sravka, a staff he listened to before
making decisions. Despite Khrushchev’s claim that Stalin plotted strategical
operations on a schoolboy’s globe, most of the testimony of those close
to him on the Stavka portray him as keenly interested in, and knowledgeable
about, the military situation at the front. It is hard to visualize Stalin as
relying on his “intuition” or consulting an astrologer.
At least one historian, Von Hardesty, has likened the experience of the
Soviet Air Force in World War I1 to that of a phoenix, rising from the ashes
of defeat in 1941.Il4 “The qualitative transformation of Soviet air power,
telescoped in the time frame of 1942-43,” he declared, “remains one of the
most remarkable turnabouts of World War II.”Il5 Certainly one result of
such transformation was the achievement of air superiority over the Luftwaffe,
although the Russian experience emphasized purely localized
achievement, and thus differed from the western Allied quest for theaterwide
air superiority. The Soviet Union parleyed its vast geographical distances,
tactics of attrition, the achievements of a redeployed and protected
aviation industry east of the Urals, and brutish use of men and machines to
achieve victory. Moreover, Soviet air leaders like Alexsandr Novikov tied
air power to Red Army ground operations in a way unrepeated in the West.
The VVS was not used as a separate strategic weapon. Localized air superiority
was achieved through massing of aircraft to provide air cover for
other distinctive Soviet tactics styled by Von Hardesty, “air offensive”
(application of enormous firepower of armor, artillery, rockets, and aircraft
for land breakthroughs) or “air blockade” (similar applications of aircraft
to isolate enemy operations such as at Stalingrad). The vast extent of the
war in Russia simply would not permit a goal of achieving overall air superiority
for extended periods. Ironically, the Soviet Air Force never devoted
prolonged operations to destroying the Luftwaffe as a fighting force in the
manner of RAF and AAF strategic bombardment. Also, the VVS and the
Luftwaffe never tangled one-on-one in a climactic struggle for air suprem-
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