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On the Eve of WarD.A. Sobolev, D.B. Khazanov
But, it would be wrong to think that all ties with Germany in the aviation sphere were severed. Aircraft engine designer A. A. Mikulin, Main Directorate of the Civil Air Fleet chief I. F. Tkachev, and several TsAGI and Air Forces Academy aerodynamics specialists visited Germany in 1936-1937. Previous talks held in 1934-1935 were aimed at the purchase of two high-speed Heinkel He 70 mail and passenger aircraft. However, Hitler banned the deal since the German Air Ministry considered the airplane to be a prototype of a future bomber. Several German military aircraft were brought from Spain for examination. Some were so badly damaged that they had to be examined on the ground, while others were restored and test flown. They even took part in simulated air combat with Soviet fighters. In 1937-1938, Air Forces Scientific Research Institute specialists familiarized themselves with He 51 and Bf 109 (with Jumo 210 engine) fighters, as well as Ju 52, Ju 86, and He 111 bombers. In general, the results of testing gave some hope: the flight characteristics of the Soviet aircraft exceeded -those of German planes. As proof, I will provide a few excerpts from Scientific Research Institute reports on the results of the simulated air combat. 1. He 51 fighter (designated I-25, flown by Stefanovskiy in 1938 in the USSR): Despite its low speed (315 km/h), the I-25 can engage in active defensive combat against I-16, M25, DI-6, and DI-6Sh airplanes and be successful in a surprise attack on SB, DB-3, and R-9 planes, but it cannot retain the combat initiative. In combat against the I-16, the latter has all the advantages". 2. Bf 109B fighter (tested by pilot Suprun in 1938): "Tactical flight characteristics of the Messerschmitt-109 (as written in the document) powered by a Jumo 210 engine are lower than those of high-speed fighters in service with the RKKA Air Forces". 3. He 111 bomber (test flown by Kabanov in 1938): "1. The speed of the Heinkel-111 is lower than that of the corresponding domestically produced aircraft. 2. The Heinkel 111 rate of climb, range, and ceiling are significantly lower than what is required of modern two-engine bombers. At the same time, Air Forces representatives pointed out the advantages of some construction elements and equipment on German aircraft: fiber self-sealing fuel tanks; oxygen equipment; and the crew intercom. But, what the military liked most of all was the Jumo 205 diesel engine installed in the Ju 86 bomber. Its fuel consumption rate and power-to-engine cubic capacity ratio noticeably exceeded those of the Soviet AM-34, M-25, and M-85 aviation engines. The Air Forces Scientific Research Institute even recommended that Jumo 205 engines be series produced at one of the Soviet plants. The German airplanes tested in the USSR in 1937-1938 were examples of the technology of Spanish Civil War's first phase. New Luftwaffe aircraft—the Bf 109E powered by a Daimler-Benz DB 601 engine and the Ju 88 high-speed bomber —appeared in Spanish skies in 1938. They demonstrated clear superiority over the Soviet I-16 and SB. It is amazing that, at the height of the Civil War in Spain, when the military confrontation between the USSR and Germany was at its peak, the government considered (and even approved) a project to grant to Lufthansa year-round concession rights for scheduled flights between Moscow and Berlin. This airline was to take the place of Deruluft from 1937 on. However, this plan was not implemented. Of course, all these occasional tests, business trips, and cooperation projects were insignificant compared to the large-scale cooperation with the US and France, which were the main suppliers of Western equipment and aviation technologies to the USSR. On 23 August 1939, everything had changed overnight when Hitler and Stalin signed the non-aggression pact between the USSR and Germany. Former sworn enemies became allies. An agreement to renew economic cooperation supplemented the military pact. The following was contained in a commentary published by the daily newspaper Pravda on 13 February 1940: On February 11th of this year, an economic agreement between the USSR and Germany was signed in Moscow after successful negotiations. This agreement meets the desires of both governments to work out an economic program of barter between Germany and the USSR. Such wishes were expressed in letters between Comrade Molotov, Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars and Commissar of Foreign Affairs, and Mr. J. von Ribbentrop, German Minister of Foreign Affairs, exchanged on 28 September 1939. The economic agreement envisions the export of raw materials from the USSR to Germany, compensated for by German exports of machinery to the USSR... The agreement was signed for the term of 27 months. The USSR was to export forage grain, cotton, oil, phosphates, and chrome and iron ores. In exchange, Germany promised to familiarize Soviet technical specialists with its industry and export machine tools and manufactured goods, including examples of military equipment, to Russia based on orders placed. The reasons for such sudden rapprochement between the USSR and Fascist Germany, and its political consequences, have been discussed repeatedly in the press and there is no point in bringing up this question again. Historians appraise this fact in different ways. However, one thing is absolutely clear. Experience from the final phase of the war in Spain demonstrated the clear superiority of German military technology over Soviet equipment. Stalin feared a •war with Germany and, taking every possible step to avoid it, banked on German know-how to reequip the Red Army from the technical standpoint. The official signing of the economic agreement was a formality. A new phase of military and economic cooperation between the USSR and Germany had begun immediately after the signing the non-aggression pact and the subsequent capture of Poland. The Defense Commissariat back in October 1939 had compiled a preliminary list of German military equipment planned to be bought for examination. The section on aviation included Me 109 (Bf 109) and He 112 fighters, Do 215 and He 118 bombers, various trainers, Focke-Wulf helicopters, Jumo 211 and DB 601 engines, Junkers diesel aviation engines, different types of control devices, and armament. Moreover, the plan was to acquire several examples of each type. The total sum allocated for the purchase of military equipment in Germany was the astronomical figure of 1 billion German marks At the same time, I.F. Tevosyan, a member of the Bolshevik Party Central Committee, led a large commission that went to Germany in October 1939 to study the achievements of the German aircraft industry and to select examples for purchase. Managers from different industries, designers, military specialists, and employees of scientific research institutes comprised the commission. General A. I. Gusev headed the aviation group. It included N. N. Polikarpov, A.S. Yakovlev, V.P. Kuznetsov, A.D. Shvetsov, I.F. Petrov, P.V. Dement'yev, and S.P. Suprun, among others. As it was agreed, the German Air Ministry showed the majority of aircraft industry enterprises to the Soviet specialists. In just over a month, the delegation's members traveled all around the country, visited the production factories of Junkers (Dessau), Messerschmitt (Regensburg, Augsburg), Henschel (Berlin), Focke-Wulf (Bremen), Heinkel (Rostock), Arado (Brandenburg), Blohm und Voss (Hamburg), Dornier (Friedrichshaven), and Bucker (Ransdorf). They familiarized themselves with the engine production of BMW (Munich), Junkers (Dessau), Hirt, Argus and Bramo (all three in Berlin); visited factories making propellers (VDM, Schwarz plant), radiators for water-cooled engines (Behr plant), crankshafts (Krupp in Essen), piston rings (Goetze plant in Cologne), bearings (Admos plant), instruments (Aska-nia, Bosch, Siemens, Lorenz, and so on), aircraft armaments (Henschel, Siemens, IG Farben Industry), rubber and Plexiglas products (Continental plant, Plexiglas factory in Darmstadt); and visited the Scientific Research Aviation Institute in Goettingen and the Luftwaffe Scientific Testing Center in Rechlin.8 And this is not the entire list... Just as the Germans hoped, the Soviet aircraft engineers highly appreciated the things they had seen in Germany. During a 27 December 1939 conference of the Technical Council of the People's Commissariat of the Aviation Industry, N. N. Polikarpov said "the German aircraft industry had taken a big step forward and had emerged in first place in the world". Not only the high quality of the German aircraft, but also the rates of their production worried Soviet leaders. In the opinion of L F. Petrov, Deputy Chief of the Air Forces Scientific Research Institute, German factories together with enterprises in occupied Poland and Czechoslovakia could, if necessary, produce 2500-3000 airplanes a month, more by a factor of three than the Soviet capability. (As it turned out later, this was an inflated estimate. During all of 1940, the Germans built 10,826 airplanes, including 7103 combat types. Prior to invading the Soviet Union, the Nazis accelerated the work of the aircraft industry and reached a production peak of 1174 airplanes in March 1941, whereupon production began decreasing. As a comparison, in 1940, the Soviet Union built 10,565 airplanes, including 8331 combat aircraft.) |
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