Why, then, did German fighter aviation operate more efficiently, and why did German fighter pilots shoot down more enemy aircraft on the Eastern Front and suffer fewer losses than the Soviet Air Force?

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The German fighter pilots really had more opportunities to improve the statistics of their air victories than the Soviet ones - not because they surpassed them in the number of sorties, but because they met much more enemy aircraft than our pilots. After all, the Soviet Air Force on the Soviet-German front throughout the war had a numerical superiority over the Luftwaffe, and from 1943 - many times, and in 1945 - generally by an order of magnitude.

* For November 20th.

** Estimated data.

It is the sharp increase in the strength of the Soviet Air Force that explains to us why the combat accounts of many German aces grew so rapidly in 1943-1944. - when the superiority of the Germans in the characteristics of aircraft, the training of pilots and tactics was no longer as tangible as in the initial period of the Great Patriotic War. So, for example, V. Novotny, who fought on the Eastern Front in the 1st group of the 54th fighter squadron for 29 months - from June 22, 1941 - three-quarters of the official victories over Soviet aircraft (190 out of 255) fell on the period from March 7 to November 15, 1943 But after all, during these eight months he participated, for example, in the Battle of Kursk, on the first day of which for each of the 88 serviceable fighters of the 6th German air fleet (I, III and IV groups of the 51st fighter squadrons and I group of the 54th) accounted for at least 15-20 air targets: the 16th Air Army of the Central Front, which opposed these 88 FW190s, had 1218 combat aircraft by July 1, 1943; in the same area, part of the forces of the 15th Air Army of the Bryansk Front also operated, numbering 967 vehicles by July 1 ... It is not surprising that Chief Sergeant Major X. Strassl from the III group of the 51st Fighter Squadron then caught in sight in just four days almost the same number of aircraft as in the previous two years: having 37 official victories by the beginning of the Battle of Kursk, he achieved another 30 during July 5-8, 1943. V. Shuk, who fought in the East in the III group of the 5th fighter squadron about For 32 months (since March 1942), he won half of his official victories over Soviet aircraft (98 out of 198) over the past three and a half months - from June 16 to the end of October 1944. But, for example, in October, at the beginning of Petsamo-Kirkenes operation, for each of the 66 fighters of III and IV groups of the 5th squadron participating in it, there were 15-16 air targets (1022 aircraft of the 7th Air Army of the Karelian Front and the Air Force of the Northern Fleet were involved on the Soviet side), while on each of the 468 Soviet fighters - about 0.3 (the Germans had only 169 machines) ...

Thus, since 1943, the chances of Soviet pilots to meet an enemy aircraft in the air have been decreasing and decreasing ... By the way, in foreign literature, the fact that the overwhelming numerical superiority of one of the parties reduces the chances of each of its individual pilots to meet in air with the enemy, has been noticed for a long time. It is precisely the sharp reduction in the number of potential victims that explains, for example, M. Spikto the fact that in 1944-1945. British fighter pilots shot down far fewer German aircraft than in 1940-1942 during the Battle of England and air battles over Malta. Indeed, during the summer fighting of 1944 in France, the training of British pilots was already better than that of the bulk of the German ones; their aircraft are the Supermarine Spitfire F Mk. IX and Mk. XIV and Hawker "Tempest" Mk. V - no longer inferior to the German ones (like the Hurricane Hawker in 1940 or the Spitfire F Mk.V and Curtiss P-40 in 1942). This means that only because of the multiple numerical superiority of the Anglo-American Air Force, only one of the 58 sorties of their fighters then ended with a report on the downing of a German aircraft. The American W. Coloni, flying from the middle of 1944 over Italy, France, Romania and Germany, managed to never meet a single enemy machine in the air! And "his case was far from being a single one, but one of hundreds"...

SOVIET AND GERMAN PRINCIPLES FOR THE USE OF FIGHTER AVIATION

It was easier for Luftwarf fighters to meet an enemy aircraft in the air - and thereby get a chance to fulfill their mission - thanks to the rationality of the German and the irrationality, depravity of the Soviet principles of using fighter aircraft. German fighters, as a rule, solved offensive tasks:

1) "cleared the sky" in front of their bombers in the directions of the main attacks of their own or Soviet ground forces;

2) were engaged in "free hunting" in these areas, as well as over Soviet airfields.

Soviet "hawks" were used mainly for defensive tasks:

1) to cover ground troops by air patrols over the areas they occupy;

2) to cover attack aircraft and bombers by escorting them.

In other words, German fighter pilots were most often assigned the task of purposefully searching for enemy aircraft in the areas of their most probable appearance. And the Soviets - to passively wait for the appearance of the enemy, remaining tied to a certain area or point (a group of escorted strike aircraft). It is clear that this further reduced the chances of Soviet pilots to meet with an air enemy: after all, German aviation did not appear in most of these areas and points - it concentrated its efforts on a limited number of directions! And a significant part of our "hawks" "ironed the air" in vain - especially in 1941, when the warning system for the approach of enemy aircraft was imperfect, and the Soviet headquarters did not seem to be engaged in the analysis of the actions of German aviation. According to the testimony of the German ace G. Rall, who was then fighting in Ukraine as part of the III group of the 52nd fighter squadron of the German ace G. Rall, “the actions of the Russians in the air turned into endless and useless sorties with a very large numerical superiority, which lasted from early dawn until late twilight. There were no signs of any system or concentration of effort. In short, there was a desire to keep aircraft in the air at all times, in constant patrol missions over the battlefield. Approximately the same, as shown by Yu.V. Rybin, was going on in the summer of 1941 and at the opposite end of the front, in the Arctic. Here, for each of the 158 fighters of the Air Force of the 14th Army and the Air Force of the Northern Fleet, there were not so few potential targets: the German aviation group operating in the Murmansk direction had 83 aircraft by the end of June. Nevertheless, out of 1480 sorties made by I-15bis, I-153, I-16 and MiG-3 of the 72nd mixed aviation regiment of the Air Force of the Northern Fleet in the first month of the war, 1360 (i.e. 92%) ended without encounters with German aircraft ...

Against this background, the opportunities provided to German pilots to increase their combat scores look simply enormous, if only because until the end of 1943 they constantly and purposefully appeared over Soviet airfields. Here, not only was a meeting with an air enemy practically guaranteed - here it was incomparably easier to shoot down this enemy! After all, a plane taking off from an airfield or landing on it is completely defenseless. Not yet gaining or already extinguishing speed, he could not maneuver in time to escape from the attack; he didn’t have the altitude reserve often necessary for such a maneuver ...

But even if a meeting with an air enemy took place, the Soviet "hawks" who solved defensive tasks very often found themselves forced to refuse to fight with him - again, missing a sure opportunity to increase their combat score. Indeed, for air patrols and escort fighters, the destruction of enemy aircraft was by no means an end in itself! Their official main task was to prevent enemy air strikes against Soviet ground forces and inflict losses on Soviet bombers and attack aircraft. To do this, in no case was it possible to leave the cover area and break away from the escorted strike aircraft. As a result, cases like the one that took place on August 5, 1943 during the Oryol operation, in the Krom region, became common. Covering the crossing of the 2nd Tank Army across the Kroma River, the Yak-7B of the 163rd Fighter Aviation Regiment of the 336th Fighter Aviation Division of the 16th Air Army of the Central Front discovered a group of German bombers. “We went on the attack,” recalled A.S., a participant in this sortie. Morozov, - but they, seeing our fighters, turned back. But it was impossible for us to pursue them - the crossing was more expensive "... The pilots of one of the fighter regiments of the 14th Air Army of the 3rd Baltic Front, who covered their troops in September 1944, during the Riga operation, also told about the same cases. in the Daksta area - the Seda River (north of Valmiera) and who suffered greatly from the attacks of the “air hunters” from the 54th Luftwaffe fighter squadron: “They attack suddenly from the direction of the sun, they try to tie up our group in battle. But we can’t join the battle: just look, the bombers will swoop down ... "

And escort fighters - at least those of them that were part of the direct cover group - since 1943, in fact, were generally deprived of the opportunity to conduct air combat. After all, they were strictly forbidden even for a short time to break away from their wards. As a result, these fighters could only make fire contact with the enemy, i.e. be limited to conducting barrage fire, which does not allow "Messers" or "Fokkers" to approach the Soviet attack aircraft or bomber. The maximum maneuver that the Soviet “hawk” could afford at the same time was only to turn a little towards the attacking “German”. “And it can be very insulting,” recalls the former pilot of the 5th Guards Fighter Aviation Regiment G.A. Baevsky, - when a downed enemy fighter leaves, and our fighter cannot move away from the covered aircraft. Engaged in August - November 1943, mainly escorting attack aircraft, junior lieutenant of the 267th Fighter Aviation Regiment of the 236th Fighter Aviation Division of the 8th Air Army of the Southern Front D.D. Tormakhov in 128 sorties was able to record only three German aircraft on his combat account. Meanwhile, in January - early May 1943, flying in the 269th Regiment of the same Division (which was then part of the 5th and then the 4th Air Army of the North Caucasian Front) to cover his troops, he, according to official data, scored 10 victories in 99 sorties, i.e. showed a performance 4.3 times higher. And this despite the fact that at that time Tormakhov had much less experience and flew not on the Yak-7B and Yak-1 (as on the Southern Front), but on the LaGG-3, which was inferior to them in terms of flight characteristics ... German fighters were also engaged in escort their bombers, but much less frequently.

But even if an air battle did break out, it was much more difficult for Soviet air patrols and escort fighters to win an air victory than for German "hunters" and "cleaners" of airspace. The fact is that, performing defensive tasks and passively waiting for the appearance of the enemy, Soviet fighters involuntarily gave the initiative in battle to the Germans (unless, of course, they encountered Luftwaffe fighters). Indeed, it was more difficult for a pilot who scurried back and forth, being chained to a limited cover area or to a group of escorted aircraft, to be the first to notice the enemy than a pilot who purposefully searched for an air enemy. And therefore, it was the German who attacked first, as a rule - and even the first blow could be fatal ... “When the pilot sees his enemy first, then this is already half the victory,” emphasized the master of such sudden attacks, the most effective ace of the Luftwaffe E Hartmann. “The first one saw - half won,” the commander of the famous 5th Guards Fighter Aviation Regiment V.A. Zaitsev; the best tactician of the Soviet fighter aviation, A.I. Pokryshkin: “Look for the enemy. He is not you, but you must find him. Surprise and initiative are a victory. How much easier it was for the Germans to achieve it with their bet on a targeted search for the enemy can be judged by the following combat episodes of the Battle of Kursk.

On July 6, 1943, a dozen Yak-7Bs of the 163rd Fighter Aviation Regiment of the 336th Fighter Aviation Division of the 16th Air Army of the Central Front covered their troops over the northern face of the Kursk Bulge, in the Ponyri-Maloarkhangelsk region. At one point, she was suddenly attacked by FW190s that emerged from above from the clouds - and one of the "Yaks" was immediately shot down ...

On August 5, 1943, three La-5 quads of the 181st Fighter Aviation Regiment of the 2nd Air Army of the Voronezh Front, patrolling in the Kuleshovka - Orlovka - Gumzino - Tomarovka area (west of Belgorod), were also suddenly attacked from above by a Fokke-wulfs "- and immediately lost one plane in the very first moments of the battle ...

The eight La-5 of the 482nd Fighter Aviation Regiment of the 15th Air Army of the Bryansk Front, which on one of the August days of 1943 covered its troops in the area Moschenoe - Rogachevo - Klemenovo (Oryol Region), was not saved by the echeloning of their forces in height - when the strike link was covered from the attacks of the "hunters" by others flying higher. Two pairs of FW190s managed to suddenly fall on both the attack and cover links - and again, they immediately shot down one aircraft from the strike ...

And here is a chronicle of one day of combat work of the 900th Fighter Aviation Regiment of the 240th Fighter Aviation Division of the 1st Air Army of the 3rd Belorussian Front - June 23, 1944, the starting date of the Vitebsk-Orsha operation.

Six Yak-9s were escorting attack aircraft heading to the Orsha region, when they were suddenly attacked by Bf109Gs from the 51st Fighter Squadron that fell out of the clouds, immediately losing the machine of Junior Lieutenant G.V. Pozdnyakov...

After some time, the four, performing a similar task in the same area, were also subjected to a sudden attack from the clouds - and the Yak-9 of Junior Lieutenant M.V. Pchelin was again instantly shot down ...

Four La-5s from the 240th Fighter Aviation Regiment of the 302nd Fighter Aviation Division of the 5th Air Army of the Steppe Front, which on October 15, 1943, during the Battle of the Dnieper, covered ground troops over the bridgehead between Kremenchug and Dneprodzerzhinsk, a pair "Hunters" from the 52nd Fighter Squadron lay in wait at the moment when the "shops" scurrying back and forth made another 180° turn. And although the Soviet pilots were on their guard, two La-5s were shot down...

In general, as D.B. Khazanov, and in 1942, and in 1943, and in the first half of 1944, Soviet pilots suffered the greatest losses from surprise attacks by "hunters", as well as in large group battles as a result of the well-established interaction of German pairs and fours ...

It was easier for the German "hunters" to maintain the initiative in battle even after the first strike. After all, before the start of the battle, Soviet air patrols and escort fighters were forced to keep a speed far from the maximum. Otherwise, it would be difficult for air patrols to stay within the boundaries of a given area and withstand - due to the increase in gasoline consumption - a given patrol time, and for escort fighters to stay close to low-speed attack aircraft and bombers. The German "hunters" flew at speeds close to the limit - thus, by the beginning of the battle, guaranteed superiority in speed of movement. And this increased the chances of the Germans to leave with impunity after the first strike and take an advantageous position for a new attack ...

Of course, it was absolutely impossible to do without direct fighter cover for their attack aircraft; it is no coincidence that the Germans sometimes did not neglect this either. But it was doubly irrational to continuously cover huge areas with air patrols! In addition to the fact that he made it difficult to destroy enemy aircraft, this method still did not allow you to reliably cover your troops - even if not destroying, but only pushing back enemy bombers or attack aircraft. In the case described above with the German attempt to bomb the Krom crossing, the Soviet air patrols were able to accomplish their task - although they did not shoot down a single enemy aircraft. However, this was not always the case. The desire to cover as much territory as possible led to the dispersal of forces, to the fact that Soviet fighters often turned out to be too small in number or were completely absent in the place and at the hour where and when the German bombers or attack aircraft struck. For example, E.I. Malashenko in 1942-1943, fighting on the North-Western Front as a reconnaissance commander in the 33rd and 117th rifle divisions and the 15th Guards Marine Rifle Brigade, observed only the following picture: “Our planes sometimes flew in small in groups (2-4 planes) and patrolled when the German planes flew away”... You can also point to the same Battle of Kursk. Assessing the work of the fighters of the 2nd Air Army of the Voronezh Front in the defensive operation on the southern face of the Kursk Bulge (July 5–23, 1943), Deputy Chief of Staff of the Red Army Air Force, Lieutenant General of Aviation N.I. Krolenko, in his order dated July 29, stated that “during the battles, there were cases when our fighters were not in those zones where the situation required, did not look for the enemy, acted passively or simply [aimingly. - A.S] ironed the air. And as a result, "separate groups of bombers got the opportunity to bomb our ground troops with impunity." The same was noted by the senior officer of the General Staff at the Voronezh Front, Colonel M.N. Kostin. During the defensive battle on the Kursk Bulge, he pointed out in his report to the Chief of the General Staff of the Red Army dated August 23, 1943, the fighter aircraft of the 2nd Air Army “allowed enemy bomber aircraft to bombard our combat formations in an organized manner. The reason is that our fighters performed purely passive tasks - covering the area where our troops were located, patrolling and directly escorting attack aircraft, and fighter aircraft did not perform active combat missions.

This advantage of the German (offensive) method of using fighter aircraft over the Soviet (defensive) method was revealed even more clearly in the battles on the northern face of the Kursk salient. The numerical superiority of the Soviet "hawks" was even greater here than on the southern front, in the strip of the Voronezh Front. And yet, on July 5, 1943, a paradoxical situation developed here, when only 88 serviceable German fighters were enough to create, according to the Soviet side, “a powerful curtain in the air” in front of their bombers and terrorize Soviet attack aircraft, and 386 combat-ready fighter pilots and 511 serviceable "hawks" - Yak-1, Yak-7, Yak-9, La-5, LaGG-3 and "Aerocobra" - the 16th Air Army of the Central Front was not enough to neutralize the German bombers, nor in order to provide escort for their attack aircraft. And this despite the fact that all reserve links and crews were raised into the air! The Soviet command also dispersed its forces here, forcing a significant part of the fighters to barrage over areas that were not threatened from the air. The Germans, on the other hand, threw all the few “Fokkers” that were available into the area of ​​\u200b\u200bthe main strike of their troops - on which their bombers were supposed to work - in order to purposefully search for Soviet fighters and destroy them even on approaching the battlefield. As a result, according to the testimony of the senior officer of the General Staff at the Central Front, Colonel V.T. Fomina, "bomber and attack aircraft of the enemy [...] carried out bombardment and shelling of our combat formations to the entire tactical depth [...]".

But back on May 14, 1943, the first deputy commander of the Red Army Air Force, Colonel-General of Aviation G.A. Vorozheikin reminded the army commanders of the 2nd and 16th air forces: "Experience shows that usually all air battles take place in the decisive areas of action of our ground forces" ...

Nothing has changed during the offensive stage of the Battle of Kursk, during the Oryol operation. So, on July 16, 1943, German dive bombers bombed the 1st Tank Corps of the Western Front with impunity all day long. The fact is that the fighters of the 1st Air Army, allocated to cover it, again had the task not to clear the airspace in the path of the tankers’ offensive, but to patrol over certain areas; in this case - over the area in which the corps was supposed to go by the 16th. Therefore, all that day, the “hawks” uselessly “ironed the air” over the vicinity of the Khotynets station, and the tankers who were delayed on the way to it turned out to be without cover ...

With this method of using fighters, it was possible to reliably cover your troops from the air only by having air patrols absolutely everywhere! Therefore, as I.V. Stalin dated July 26, 1943, the representative of the Headquarters of the Supreme High Command on the Western, Bryansk and Central Fronts, Marshal of Artillery N.N. Voronov, "the number of our fighter aircraft is a matter of paramount importance." According to Voronov, in the Orel operation "we should have had up to 1,000 fighter aircraft for three fronts" - twice as many as the Germans had on the entire Soviet-German front!

And in June - July 1944, during the Belarusian strategic operation, the 1st Air Army of the 3rd Belorussian Front and the 16th - 1st Belorussian Front already had up to 2000 fighters, but still could not reliably cover their tank corps! “We met Russian fighters very rarely,” testified V. Gail, a former pilot of the III group of the 3rd assault squadron of the Luftwaffe, who then bombed Soviet tanks in Belarus. “Personally, I saw them only 2 times”. In order to have air patrols absolutely everywhere, with the rapid development of the operation of ground forces in depth, even 2000 fighters were too few ...

“The art of the chief, who uses and controls the actions of fighters, lies in ensuring, even with small forces, numerical superiority at the right time, in the right place [...]”, rightly pointed out in July 1942, the commander of the Red Army Air Force, Lieutenant General of Aviation A.A. Novikov. As you can see, the Soviet aviation command did not differ in such art: it sought to have a numerical superiority at the same time wherever the enemy could appear. And that means that it could fight only with an overly bloated Air Force ...

Of course, in 1941 - 1942, when most of the Soviet "hawks" did not have radio stations, and the warning system about the appearance of an air enemy was poorly established, it was necessary to keep a lot of aircraft in the air "just in case" involuntarily. But since the autumn of 1942, radio receivers were installed on all newly produced fighters, and radio transmitters on many, and in a report addressed to I.V. Stalin dated February 3, 1943, who had already become Colonel-General of Aviation A.A. Novikov reasonably suggested "refusing to cover troops on the battlefield by patrolling and resorting to it in extreme cases, and to consider the duty of fighters at forward airfields and calling them by radio as the main method." This would minimize the number of useless sorties that did not end in a meeting with an air enemy, and would also make it possible to meet German attack aircraft on the way to the front line. The fact that tying fighter aircraft to any specific object, area or covered group of bombers and attack aircraft "disperses its efforts, leads to excessive expenditure of forces and means and deprives fighters of the opportunity to conduct active offensive combat, which is the only means of destroying enemy aircraft in the air" , was also noted in the directive of Air Marshal A.A. Novikov dated July 7, 1943. However, the cover of ground troops by the method of patrolling in the air over their location was widely used until the very end of the war!

It can be assumed that the widespread use of "free hunting" was hindered by the insufficient training of the majority of Soviet fighter pilots; it can also be assumed that in 1943 the transition from continuous patrols to sorties on call to the guidance radio station was still hampered by the poor training of guidance officers. “Each gunner considers it his duty to command fighters, to give them instructions,” stated, for example, Guard Lieutenant Colonel Berezovoy from the headquarters of the 8th Air Army of the Southern Front, analyzing the combat work of her “hawks” in the Mius operation from July 17 to August 2, 1943 g. - And very wordy, nervously, with the use of obscenities. Walkie-talkies clog each other. By this, firstly, they do not give any opportunity for the leader of the group to give any command to his followers and, secondly, the leader does not know what command to execute. There is such noise and uproar on the air that the pilots, apparently, in the interests of preserving their ears, turn off the receivers. But in 1944-1945. (when, as even the Germans note, “radio control of fighters” in the Soviet Air Force “became a general rule”), in many air formations the guidance technique had already been worked out, but they nevertheless did not refuse continuous patrolling! So, in the 4th Fighter Air Corps of the 5th Air Army, even during the battle for the Dnieper, in the autumn of 1943, they were convinced that “free hunting” and sorties to intercept when called by a guidance radio station make it possible to shoot down or disperse enemy aircraft much more often than continuous patrol. Nevertheless, it was precisely this that was the main way of using the "hawks" of the corps during the air battle in the Yass region on May 30 - June 8, 1944. Why?

The answer given by the commander of this formation looks truly amazing. “Still, we have to continue patrolling,” said Major General of Aviation I.D. Podgorny in June 1944 at a conference on the exchange of experience - because of the moral satisfaction of the ground troops, especially the infantry, who feel confident when their fighters are constantly in the air "...

As you know, fighter aircraft are designed to fight enemy aircraft, and not to raise the morale of ground troops. But it seems that the Soviet command really cared about the mood of the infantry here! Commander of the 9th Guards Fighter Aviation Division of the 8th Air Army of the Southern Front, Colonel I.M. Dzusov in September 1943 demanded that the pilots of the 16th Guards Fighter Aviation Regiment stop engaging in "free hunting" over enemy territory and patrol only in the field of view of their troops. In any case, another intelligible explanation for such a stubborn commitment to continuous patrols over their troops has not yet been found.

Well, what we found once again confirms the unprofessionalism of the Soviet aviation command that we have already noted. Judging by the “correct” directives of Novikov and the apologetic tone of Podgorny’s explanations, it cannot be said that they did not know the basics of military art, known since the time of Epaminondas and requiring concentration of their forces in the right place at the right time. However, the aviation command was not able or unwilling to apply their formal knowledge in practice, preferring to fight, as they say, "worker-peasant". And this is real unprofessionalism.

• "Combat work of Soviet and German aviation in the Second World War." /Andrey Smirnov/