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

AIR SUPERIORITY
published his perceptions of some aspect of the struggle. John Erickson’s The Road
to Berlin (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1983) lists all the articles devoted to
World War I1 on pp. 816-22 in his superlative 200-page bibliography. Fugitive pieces
pertaining to the fortunes of the VVS in World War I1 occur in a number of other
military journals: for example, the Air Force’s own journal, Aviatsiya i kosmonavtika
[Aviation and Astronautics], Kryl’ya rodina [Wings of the Motherland], Morskoy
sbornik [Naval collection], Kommunist vooruzhennykh sil [Communist of the
Armed Forces], and Voprosy istorii [Problems of History]. There also are some
interesting sketches and articles in the Ministry of Defense’s daily newspaper, Krasnaya
zvezda [Red Star]. A judicious reading of this voluminous output in periodicals
and newspapers is probably the best way of getting an approximate picture of the
Great Patriotic War and the VVS’s role in it.
Some major Soviet books dealing with the Great Patriotic War have been translated
into English. Among these are the Memoirs of Marshal Zhukov (New York:
Delacorte Press, 1971); V. I. Chuikov, The Battle for Stalingrad and his The Fall of
Berlin (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1968); S. M. Shtemenko, The Soviet
General Staff at War, 1941-1945 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1975); and his The
Last Six Months (New York: Doubleday, 1977). There is, however, a paucity of
information about aviation’s role in these books-the authors seem to have kept
their eyes firmly on the ground. Aleksandr S. Yakovlev, designer of the famous Yak
fighters and also the Deputy Minister of the Aviation Industry during the war, has
written rather extensively about both planes and his part in the arcane goings on in
the Kremlin in his The Aim of a Lifetime (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1972), and
Fijty Years of Soviet Aircraft Construction (Washington: NASA, 1970). A good sampling
of memoir literature apropos the war can be found in Seweryn Bialer, ed.,
Stalin and His Generals (New York: Pegasus, 1969), and an overall analysis of the
conflict in V.D. Sokolovsky, ed., Soviet Military Strategy (New York: Crane, Russak,
1975), pp 136-166, in the third edition edited by Harriet Scott.
Finally, mention should be made of books written by American and British air
historians of the VVS’s role in World War 11. Surprisingly enough there are relatively
few good ones, especially in view of the voluminous output devoted to air
combat in the ETO, North African, and Pacific theaters. Probably the definitive
work in English on the Great Patriotic War is John Erickson’s two volumes: The
Road to Stalingrad (New York: Harper & Row, 1975), and The Road to Berlin (Boulder,
Colo.: Westview Press, 1983). Alexander Boyd’s The Soviet Air Force Since
1918 (New York: Stein and Day, 1977), in spite of its title, concentrates primarily on
World War 11. Von Hardesty, Red Phoenix: The Rise of Soviet Air Power, 1941-1945
(Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1982) is devoted to World War I1 and
has a very extensive bibliography. John T. Greenwood’s chapter entitled “The Great
Patriotic War, 1941-1945,” in Robin Higham and Jacob Kipp, eds., Soviet Aviation
and Air Power (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1977), is a good summary of the air
war over Russia. Raymond Garthoff’s Soviet Military Doctrine (Glencoe, 111.: Free
Press, 1953) has stood the test of time and is still one of the best analyses of how
Russia fought the war, while R. J. Overy, The Air War, 1939-1945 (New York: Stein
and Day, 1981) has some very perceptive things to say about the air war in general
and the Soviet participation in particular.
And lest we forget that essential ingredient of air warfare, the aircraft, let us
note a few of the better works: Jean Alexander, Russian Aircraft Since 1940
(London: Putnam, 1975), Henry Nowarra and G. Duval, Russian Civil and Military
Aircraft, 1884-1969 (London: Fountain Press, 1971), and William Green and Gordon
Swanborough, Soviet Air Force Fighters, 2 parts (New York: Arco, 1978). The
Soviet journal Aviatsiya i kosmonavtika has over the years published numerous
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